Archaeologists Unearthed the First Pope In History. What They Found Proved Something Incredible

The mummy of Pope St. Pius I is one of the best preserved in the history of mankind. His corpse was not embalmed it was mummified naturally for a period of about 1,700 years.

His remains are considered a true discovery for science, because even though during life he suffered from cardiovascular diseases, gallstones, gout, diabetes, caries and tuberculosis, these organs preserved very well.

This bishop is considered as the first official Pope. He was born in Aquileia, Italy. And he died in 155, to be buried in the beautiful cathedral of Aquileia.

Much later, in the year 1789 the building of the cathedral was demolished. The coffin of the Pope was opened and everyone was surprised by the fact that the body was in perfect condition. Finally the body was transferred to a chapel in the year 1875.

Studies say there are several reasons why the body has been preserved in such a good way. First, because he was naturally mummified thanks to the air between the months of November and December, which are the coldest of the year and because of the large amount of plants and humidity inside the crypt.



But until 2010 scientists had no possibility to study the remains carefully.
The coffin’s pillow and mattress were filled with plants and vegetables that gave off a strong smell, probably to hide the smell of the corpse, but also to preserve it. There were lavender, mint, hops and juniper berries. ”

However, the most surprising thing was that they found a plenty of documents narrating different versions of the alleged life of the son of God, Jesus of Nazareth.



The discovery suggests that senior leaders of the Catholic Church hid the evidence that proves that the history of the Messiah was only an invention to carry out the purposes of the order.

Among the documents could be found the stories of hundreds of prophets who had a life very similar to that of Christ, among which stand out the figures of Horus, Mithra, Krishna, Dionysius, etc.

After the find, a large number of versions about what actually happened with Jesus has emerged. Science, on the other hand, claims that there is evidence to prove the existence of Jesus the man, but not as the life of the supposed son of God, that the narrative created from the life of other prophets and different cultures of the world.

Source: www.smithsonianmag.com

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Neanderthal dental tartar reveals plant-based diet – and drugs

This Neanderthal individual was eating poplar, a source of aspirin, and had also consumed molded vegetation including ‘penicillium fungus,’ source of a natural antibiotic. Photograph: Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC

Analysis of teeth of Spanish Neanderthals shows diet of pine nuts, mushrooms and moss and indicates possible self-medication for pain and diarrhea

A diet of pine nuts mushrooms and moss might sound like modernist cuisine, but it turns out it was standard fare for Spanish Neanderthals.

Researchers studying the teeth of the heavy-browed hominids have discovered that while Neanderthals in Belgium were chomping on woolly rhinoceros, those further south were surviving on plants and may even have used naturally occurring painkillers to ease toothache.

The findings, the researchers say, are yet another blow to the popular misconception of Neanderthals as brutish simpletons.

“Neanderthals, not surprisingly, are doing different things, exploiting different things, in different places,” said Keith Dobney, a bio-archaeologist and co-author of the research from the University of Liverpool.

Writing in the journal Nature, Dobney and an international team of colleagues describe how they analyzed ancient DNA – from microbes and food debris – preserved in the dental tartar, or calculus, of three Neanderthals dating from 42,000 to 50,000 years ago. Two of the individuals were from the El Sidrón cave in Spain while one was from the Spy Cave in Belgium.



The results reveal that northern Neanderthals had a wide-ranging diet, with evidence of a mushroom known as grey shag in their tartar, together with traces of woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep.

By contrast Neanderthals from El Sidrón showed no evidence of meat eating – instead they appear to have survived on a mixture of forest moss, pine nuts and a mushroom known as split gill.

The difference was further backed up by DNA-based analysis of the diversity and make-up of microbial communities that had lived in the Neanderthals’ mouths.

The findings support previous studies suggesting that the Neanderthals of El Sidrón ate little meat, although Dobney cautioned against drawing broader conclusions, citing the small sample size of the latest study. “I hesitate to say that we have clear, definitive proof that Neanderthals in Spain were vegetarian,” he said.

Indeed, research looking at marks on the bones of Neanderthals from ‘El Sidrón’ has suggested they, might been the victims of cannibalism. While Dobney does not rule out the possibility, he points out that the two Neanderthals in the latest study are unlikely to have been feasting on their relatives.



“You would expect if Neanderthals were eating each other, that the quantity of Neanderthal DNA would be a lot higher in [the tartar] – it would be part of the food debris,” he said. “[That] doesn’t appear to be the case.”

One of the Spanish Neanderthals is known to have had a painful dental abscess, while analysis of the tartar from the same individual yielded evidence of a parasite known to cause diarrhea in humans.

To cope, the researchers add, the unfortunate individual might have been self-medicating. While previous work has suggested the El Sidrón Neanderthals might have exploited yarrow and chamomile, the tartar of the unwell individual shows evidence of poplar, which contains the active ingredient of aspirin, salicylic acid, and a species of ‘penicillium fungus’, suggesting the Neanderthal might have benefited from a natural source of antibiotics.

“Potentially this is evidence of more sophisticated behavior in terms of knowledge of medicinal plants,” said Dobey. “The idea that Neanderthals were a bit simple and just dragging their knuckles around is one that has gone a long time ago, certainly in the anthropological world.”



Dobney believes the new approach could prove valuable in understanding the evolution not only of our diet but also of our microbiota, suggesting similar analysis be carried out on the remains of even earlier hominid relatives. “We can really start to mine this amazing record of our joint evolutionary history with these key microorganisms that are basically part of our lives and keep us alive,” he said.

Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist and expert in human origins from the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the research, welcomed the study. “It is tremendous work and very exciting,” he said.
But, he warns, the dental tartar might not tell the full story, since it might not preserve all components of a Neanderthal’s diet, nor the proportions in which they were eaten. Contamination from DNA preserved in sediments in the cave must also be considered, he said, while the plant material found in meat-eating Neanderthals might, at least in part, have come from the hominids eating the stomach contents of their prey.

Stringer is also enthusiastic about the revelations around the Neanderthals’ microbiota. “To have that data from inside the mouth of a Neanderthal from 50,000 years ago is astonishing stuff,” he said.
Source: Nicola Davis - The Guardian

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Questions of Refugee Deservedness

As anthropologists of forced migration, we are used to being kept on our toes as the nature, causes, consequences, and policies that enshroud forced migration are constantly fluctuating. When I returned to Cameroon for ethnographic fieldwork after over a decade living in the region as a humanitarian professional, I came with the intention of working with a large and growing population of Central African refugees.

When I had last left Cameroon a year earlier in 2015, this population was growing rapidly, and garnering the attention of the world, or at least those of us who pay attention to forced migration in Africa. However, in the midst of my research over the summer of 2016, I found a Rwandan community silently struggling with the invocation of a Cessation Clause, built into the 1951 Geneva Convention, for all Rwandan refugees who arrived in asylum countries prior to 1998 and who had not been resettled. They feared this clause would cause the majority to lose their refugee status at the end of 2017. As many had hedged their bets on resettlement, they were at a loss of what to do next, after decades of waiting, and what now felt like rejection of the very foundation of their fears of returning home. Intrigued,

I shifted my focus.
When I first met Francois (pseudonym), a Rwandan refugee in his early 40s, he was dressed in a pressed, dark gray, suit. He stood out in the middle of the informal boutiques made out of plywood and vegetable stands set-up in the open air market. He told me that he was on his way to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) office. However, looking at the crushing traffic, he decided to delay his travel to the next day for fear of arriving late and wasting fuel along the way. He was going to follow-up on his request for resettlement in the United States. A dossier ten years in waiting still provided him with an inkling of hope. When I introduced myself as an anthropologist who wanted to better understand the Rwandan urban refugee community, he asked if I had time to visit his house, which was down the street.



As we pulled up to a dusty neighborhood store, he introduced me to his wife Antoinette (pseudonym), a nurse. Antoinette brought me to a back room attached to the store where they lived with their two young children. Francois immediately pulled out stacks of papers and handed them to me. They were piles of balances owed to different vendors, which demonstrated to me that all he owned had been purchased on credit.

This family was surviving month to month, but only by borrowing money. Business was slow as the shop was tucked inside of a semi-informal settlement where the population had limited purchasing power. He shook his head quietly, noting that with the Cessation Clause, he wasn’t really sure about their future. Antoinette added that she had tried supplementing their income by working at a local hospital. However, she stopped working because her wages did not cover costs of transportation to the hospital. Antoinette felt that her employer believed that because she was a refugee, who was “treated better” than Cameroon citizens who also needed support, she did not need a higher salary.



This narrative exemplifies that for outsiders, the combination of Rwanda’s current perceived stability and evidence of the Rwandan stores that had cropped up signaled that refugees had successfully integrated. This, coupled with the global migration crisis and increasing pressures on humanitarian agencies, may have culminated in the UNHCR and the Rwandan government’s agreement to instill the Cessation Clause. To many Rwandan refugees, this means that at the end of 2017, they may find themselves without the legal protection that the UNHCR offers them, losing the right to their status as refugees in exile. These individuals need and are actively seeking allies.

I draw attention to these Rwandan refugees because they represent several issues which we are still grappling to understand in the area of forced migration. In today’s climate of xenophobia towards refugees, the refugee label has become increasingly politically and emotionally charged. In some rhetoric refugees are imagined as moochers, taking resources away from others in society who need it more. The false binary between services for refugees and Veterans, for example, often comes up without much justifiable reason as the two budgets are not and never have been in opposition to each other, or even under the same agency. Other times refugees are feared. The fear and the violence that they are fleeing is somehow thrust back onto them in an attempt to make them look like perpetrators, rather than survivors, of human rights abuses. Even as scholars and advocates write articles, op-ed pieces, and conduct interviews, it seems that too often our words and well-researched pieces either preach to the choir or fall on deaf ears of those who have already made up their minds about how dangerous refugees are. Sadly, the latter often occurs without them having ever met a refugee.



As anthropologists, we want our efforts to reach a broader audience. This raises the question: How we can better unite to make sure that our research is disseminated in ways that can influence policies, and public opinion on refugees? Over my humanitarian and research career, I have seen refugees, countless times, feel the need to repeat their stories, to package them in a way that make them “deserving” of the refugee papers and the protection and hope they provide. They need allies to help in their push against these enormous bureaucratic obstacles both in the United States and the many other countries of the world where refugees we are working with are facing similar, often chronic, issues related to rejection of their asylum or refugee status. We should figure out how to be among these allies.
Sources: Kelly Yotebieng is a doctoral student in anthropology at Ohio State University.
Newman is assistant professor of anthropology at Wayne State University and secretary of SUNTA.

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Myths and Truths about Phlegm, Snot and Boogers

By: Alexandria Addesso

Although Spring is slowly approaching, the cold and flu season is still among us. One of the most unpleasant symptoms of such winter sicknesses as the cold and flu is an increased amount of mucus. Whether, if it's in the form of phlegm, a runny nose or dry booger build-up, an increase in mucus production is a major annoyance and inconvenience.

Although it seems that most people experience an increased production of mucus at least once a year, whether it be during cold and flu season or allergy season, there is still a lot of misinformation about it. Although it seems like a nuisance, mucus actually plays a beneficial role for the human body’s ecosystem. Mucus functions as naturally occurring moisturizer for nasal, mouth, and sinuses, without which the tissue surface could easily become dry and crack. The thick and sticky consistency of mucus also helps prevent bacteria, dust, and other harmful substances from entering the body by trapping it and removing it when it is extracted.



Many parents have taught their children that you can tell what type of common illness you have by judging the color of the snot or phlegm. This is not exactly true, when a harmful virus or bacteria enters the sinuses the enzymes in the mucus contain high levels of iron to combat it thus producing a thick green consistency. When mucus sits for several hours without being expelled, such as when a person is asleep, it becomes more concentrated thus making it a dark yellow or green, thick consistency.

Mucus in all forms; snot, phlegm, and boogers; usually gross most of the general population out. Most believe that they are loaded with harmful germs. Yet, these forms of mucus are actually loaded with a variety of strong antibacterial, antiviral, and other protective chemicals that work to keep you healthy. Now this doesn't mean that you should seek out other people’s runny noses to bask in, but rather just not be too freaked out about it. Especially when it comes to your own. When someone touches snot or phlegm and then touches an object or surface without washing their hands first, the virus will only live on that surface for 24 hours.
Be safe, don’t be too grossed out by mucus, and wash your hands.

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The Evolution of Area 51

By: Alexandria Addesso

Area 51 has seemed to exist in two different places for decades, on both the southern shore of Groom Lake about 83 miles north-west of Las Vegas, and in the collective consciousness of those who can only imagine the whereabouts of the military base that has long been kept “top secret” and confidential. Over three-dozen films have been made about Area 51 as well as a host of mini-series despite the fact that very little information about the base has been verified. The idea of Area 51 has definitely evolved over the years.

Area 51 was built in 1941 and was given the official name of “Watertown” in 1956. Other monikers for the test site were Paradise Ranch and Dreamland, the latter was based on a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. The site was originally used as an auxiliary airfield. By 1951 the base was being utilized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop the Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, an American single-jet engine, ultra-high altitude aircraft nicknamed “The Dragon Lady.” It is believed that over half of the unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings during the 1950s and 1960s were actually U-2 aircrafts.



This of course has helped contribute to the largely believed lure that aliens as well as their spacecrafts have been or are currently held at Area 51. It is true that aside from the U-2, numerous odd looking aircrafts have been developed, held and tested at the base. Most of which are used for spying or other military purposes. Also many of the projects done at the site are deemed confidential, to which information and details of can never be disclosed. Despite this fact many so called past employees of the base have “leaked” information. Retired Area 51 scientist Boyd Bushman released a video in which he describes the base as containing aliens, UFOs, and anti-gravity projects. The video was released right before his death.



Whether or not you believe that the confidential information about what is done at Area 51 has to do with alien life forms or not seems to be influence on your belief in extraterrestrials in general. Top secret projects done at the base having to do with both domestic and international spying is already factually known. Another reason why certain projects at Area 51 are kept confidential is because they can actually harm the general population. In the 1970s and 1980s Area 51 employees were repeatedly exposed to jet fuel toxins. In 1996 Helen Frost, the wife of one of the employees that died from these toxins, brought up a lawsuit against the United States government but it was dismissed because such allegations could not be “confirmed” and the base is exempt from any environmental laws.

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New Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered inside Qumran Cave Twelve

Fault cliff and entrance to Cave 12. Image credit: Casey L. Olson / Oren Gutfeld.

Archaeologists working near Qumran in Israel have found a cave that previously contained Dead Sea scrolls. They now suggest ‘the cave should be numbered as Cave 12, along with the 11 caves previously known to have housed the famous manuscripts.’

The surprising discovery was made by an international team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Liberty University in Virginia, the United States.

“This exciting excavation is the closest we’ve come to discovering new Dead Sea scrolls in 60 years,” said Hebrew University archaeologist Oren Gutfeld, director of the excavation.



“Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave.”
“Finding this additional scroll cave means we can no longer be certain that the original locations (Caves 1 through 11) attributed to the Dead Sea scrolls that reached the market via the Bedouins are accurate.”

Numerous storage jars and lids from the Second Temple period were found hidden in niches along the walls of Cave 12 and deep inside a long tunnel at its rear.

The jars were all broken and their contents removed, and the discovery towards the end of the excavation of a pair of iron pickaxe heads from the 1950s (stored within the tunnel for later use) proves the cave was looted.

The finds from Cave 12 include not only the storage jars, which held the scrolls, but also fragments of scroll wrappings, a string that tied the scrolls, and a piece of worked leather that was a part of a scroll.


A piece of parchment to be processed for writing, found rolled up in a jug. Image credit: Casey L. Olson / Oren Gutfeld.

“Although no scroll was found, and instead we ‘only’ found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing, the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen,” Dr. Gutfeld said.

“The findings include the jars in which the scrolls and their covering were hidden, a leather strap for binding the scroll, a cloth that wrapped the scrolls, tendons and pieces of skin connecting fragments, and more.”

Like Cave 8, in which scroll jars but no scrolls were found, Cave 12 will receive the designation Q12 (the Q=Qumran standing in front of the number to indicate no scrolls were found).

The finding of pottery and of numerous flint blades, arrowheads, and a decorated stamp seal made of carnelian, a semi-precious stone, also revealed that the cave was used in the Chalcolithic and the Neolithic periods.

“The important discovery of another scroll cave attests to the fact that a lot of work remains to be done in the Judean Desert and finds of huge importance are still waiting to be discovered,” said Israel Hasson, Director-General of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Source: Science News (Sci-news.com)

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What Did Neanderthals Leave to Modern Humans? Some Surprises

At Vanderbilt University, John Anthony Capra, an evolutionary genomics professor, has been combining high-powered computation and a medical records databank to learn what a Neanderthal heritage — even a fractional one — might mean for people today.
We spoke for two hours when Dr. Capra, 35, recently passed through New York City. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows.

-Let’s begin with an indiscreet question. How did contemporary people come to have Neanderthal DNA on their genomes?

-He replied: “we hypothesize that roughly 50,000 years ago, when the ancestors of modern humans migrated out of Africa and into Eurasia, they encountered Neanderthals. Mating must have occurred then, and later.”

One reason we deduce this is because the descendants of those who remained in Africa — present day Africans — don’t have Neanderthal DNA.

What does that mean for people who have it?
At my lab, we’ve been doing genetic testing on the blood samples of 28,000 patients at Vanderbilt and eight other medical centers across the country. Computers help us pinpoint where on the human genome this Neanderthal DNA is, and we run that against information from the patients’ anonymized medical records. We’re looking for associations.



What we’ve been finding is that Neanderthal DNA has a subtle influence on risk for disease. It affects our immune system and how we respond to different immune challenges. It affects our skin. You’re slightly more prone to a condition where you can get scaly lesions after extreme sun exposure. There’s an increased risk for blood clots and tobacco addiction.

To our surprise, it appears that some Neanderthal DNA can increase the risk for depression; however, there are other Neanderthal bits that decrease the risk. Roughly 1 to 2 percent of one’s risk for depression is determined by Neanderthal DNA. It all depends on where on the genome it’s located.

Was there ever an upside to having Neanderthal DNA?
It probably helped our ancestors survive in prehistoric Europe. When humans migrated into Eurasia, they encountered unfamiliar hazards and pathogens. By mating with Neanderthals, they gave their offspring needed defenses and immunities.



That trait for blood clotting helped wounds close up quickly. In the modern world, however, this trait means greater risk for stroke and pregnancy complications. What helped us then doesn’t necessarily now.

Did you say earlier that Neanderthal DNA increases susceptibility to nicotine addiction? Yes. Neanderthal DNA can mean you’re more likely to get hooked on nicotine, even though there were no tobacco plants in archaic Europe.

We think this might be because there’s a bit of Neanderthal DNA right next to a human gene that’s a neurotransmitter implicated in a generalized risk for addiction. In this case and probably others, we think the Neanderthal bits on the genome may serve as switches that turn human genes on or off.

Aside from the Neanderthals, do we know if our ancestors mated with other hominids? We think they did. Sometimes when we’re examining genomes, we can see the genetic afterimages of hominids, which haven’t even been identified yet.




MORE REPORTING ON HUMAN ORIGINS
A few years ago, the Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo received an unusual fossilized bone fragment from Siberia. He extracted the DNA, sequenced it and realized it was neither human nor Neanderthal. What Pääbo found was a previously unknown hominid he named Denisovan, after the cave where it had been discovered. It turned out that Denisovan DNA can be found on the genomes of modern Southeast Asians and New Guineans.

Have you long been interested in genetics?
Growing up, I was very interested in history, but I also loved computers. I ended up majoring in computer science at college and going to graduate school in it; however, during my first year in graduate school, I realized I wasn’t very motivated by the problems that computer scientists worked on.

Fortunately, around that time — the early 2000s — it was becoming clear that people with computational skills could have a big impact in biology and genetics. The human genome had just been mapped. What an accomplishment! We now had the code to what makes you, you, and me, me. I wanted to be part of that kind of work.

So I switched over to biology. And it was there that I heard about a new field where you used computation and genetics research to look back in time — evolutionary genomics.



There may be no written records from prehistory, but genomes are a living record. If we can find ways to read them, we can discover things we couldn’t know any other way.

Not long ago, the two top editors of The New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial questioning “data sharing,” a common practice where scientists recycle raw data other researchers have collected for their own studies. They labeled some of the recycling researchers, “data parasites.” How did you feel when you read that?
I was upset. The data sets we used were not originally collected to specifically study Neanderthal DNA in modern humans. Thousands of patients at Vanderbilt consented to have their blood and their medical records deposited in a “biobank” to find genetic diseases.

Three years ago, when I set up my lab at Vanderbilt, I saw the potential of the biobank for studying both genetic diseases and human evolution. I wrote special computer programs so that we could mine existing data for these purposes.

That’s not being a “parasite.” That’s moving knowledge forward. I suspect that most of the patients who contributed their information are pleased to see it used in a wider way.

What has been the response to your Neanderthal research since you published it last year in the journal Science?

Some of it’s very touching. People are interested in learning about where they came from. Some of it is a little silly. “I have a lot of hair on my legs — is that from Neanderthals?”

But I received racist inquiries, too. I got calls from all over the world from people who thought that since Africans didn’t interbreed with Neanderthals, this somehow justified their ideas of white superiority.

It was illogical. Actually, Neanderthal DNA is mostly bad for us — though that didn’t bother them.

As you do your studies, do you ever wonder about what the lives of the Neanderthals were like?
It’s hard not to. Genetics has taught us a tremendous amount about that, and there’s a lot of evidence that they were much more human than apelike.

They’ve gotten a bad rap. We tend to think of them as dumb and brutish. There’s no reason to believe that. Maybe those of us of European heritage should be thinking, “Let’s improve their standing in the popular imagination. They’re our ancestors, too.’”
Source: Claudia Dreifus

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Twelve new tombs discovered in Gebel el Silsila, Egypt

Researchers have discovered 12 new tombs dating from the 18th Dynasty (Thutmosid period).
Credit: Image courtesy of Lund University

The Swedish mission at Gebel el Silsila has discovered 12 new tombs dating from the 18th Dynasty, including crypts cut into the rock, rock-cut tombs with one or two chambers, niches possibly used for offering, a tomb containing multiple animal burials, and several juvenal burials, some intact.

The Swedish mission at Gebel el Silsila, led by Dr. Maria Nilsson from Lund University and John Ward, has discovered 12 new tombs dating from the 18th Dynasty (Thutmosid period), including crypts cut into the rock, rock-cut tombs with one or two chambers, niches possibly used for offering, a tomb containing multiple animal burials, and several juvenal burials, some intact. “The eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt (Dynasty XVIII) (c. 1543–1292 BC) is the best known ancient Egyptian dynasty. It boasts several of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, including Tutankhamun, whose tomb was found by Howard Carter in 1922. The dynasty is also known as the Thutmosid Dynasty for the four pharaohs named Thutmosid (English: Thot bore him)”.



The archaeological material produced from the newly discovered tombs and burials chronologically correlate with those excavated within the cemetery previously, so far limited to the reigns of Thutmosis III and Amenhotep II. In addition to the architecture, the excavation has revealed a wealth of material culture, including finely dressed sandstone sarcophagi, painted car-tonnage, sculptured and occasionally painted pottery coffins, textile and organic wrapping, ceramic vessels and plates, as well as an array of jewelry, amulets and scarabs.



Preliminary studies of the vast amount of human remains so far recovered from the necropolis indicate generally healthy individuals. At this time, very little evidence of malnutrition and infection has been discovered. Fractures of the long bones and increased muscle attachments amongst the skeletal remains indicate behaviors related to occupational hazards and an extremely labor intensive environment. Furthermore, many of the injuries appear to be in an advanced stage of healing, suggesting effective medical care.

The new finds add exciting new components to the necropolis, changing yet again the perceived function and apparent appearance to the site of Gebel el Silsila, and with further fieldwork the team look forward, to increasing their understanding of the overall function and role of the area during the New Kingdom.
Story Source: Lund University

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A New Questioning of the Bible

Handwritten Draft of King James Bible Discovered: Reveals No ‘Divine Powers’

An American professor who came upon the manuscript last fall at Cambridge says it is the earliest known draft for the King James translation, which appeared in 1611.



The earliest known version of The King James Bible, perhaps one of the most influential and widely read books in history, has been discovered mislabeled inside an archive at the University of Cambridge. The find is being called one of the most significant revelations in decades. It shows that writing is a process of revising, cutting, and then more rewriting. The Bible is no different in this regard, even though some conservative Christians claim it is the divine word of God himself. Perhaps God, then, is a revisionist. This find certainly seems to suggest that.

The notebook containing the draft was found by American scholar, Jeffrey Alan Miller, an assistant professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey, who announced his research in an article in The Times Literary Supplemental. The New York Times didn’t take long to pick up the story. Mr. Miller was researching an essay about Samuel Ward, one of the King James translators, and was hoping to find an unknown letter at the archives. While you can say he certainly accomplished that end, he definitely wasn’t expecting to find the earliest draft of the King James Bible — which is now giving new insights into how the Bible was constructed.



He first came across the plain notebook not knowing what it was — it was incorrectly labeled. That’s why no one has found it until now. It had been cataloged in the 1980s as a “verse-by-verse” Biblical commentary with “Greek word studies, and some Hebrew notes.” When he tried in vain to figure out which passages of the Bible the commentary was referring to, he realized that it was no commentary at all — it was an early draft of part of the King James Version of the Bible.

Professor Miller described what it felt like when he first knew what he had in his hands: “There was a kind of thunderstruck, leap-out-of-bathtub moment. But then comes the more laborious process of making sure you are 100 percent correct.”

The material in the manuscript discovered by Miller covers the apocryphal books called Esdras and Wisdom and seems to show that the translation process at Cambridge worked completely different than what researchers had previously known. Until now, it had been assumed that six different teams or companies of translators that is, had worked more collaboratively rather than individually. Yet — this draft throws that idea out the window.



Ward’s draft seems to indicate the people were assigned individual sections of the Bible and then worked on them almost entirely by themselves — a massive undertaking with little guesswork. You would think this would cause people to become more error prone. In fact, quite hilariously, Professor Miller noticed that the draft suggests that Ward was picking up the slack for another translator. This really shows how human the entire job was, according to him.

“Some of them, being typical academics, either fell down on the job or just decided not to do
it. It really testifies to the human element of this kind of great undertaking.”
This is sure to piss off a lot of religious conservatives who claim that the Bible is the “actual word of God.” While this finding certainly doesn’t disprove God, it does show that the translators of the Bible didn’t get a finalized product the first go around — it wasn’t a walk in the park with an angel over their shoulder telling them what to write. It took many different individuals, working separately — and they often suffered from man-made struggles, like meeting deadlines. You know, now that we think of it, doesn’t sound that much different from the writers of today’s workforce.
Source: Antiphon Freeman

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New Dead Sea Scrolls Discovered

Archaeologists Excited to Unearth Two New Fragments in the Cave of Skulls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a set of nearly 1,000 manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and ancient Greek, which contain some of the oldest known versions of the Hebrew Bible and are said to be one of the greatest archaeological finds in history. Now, two more pieces of Dead Sea Scrolls and some textile wrapped around a bundle of beads have been found in the Cave of the Skulls in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea.

The scroll fragments have yet to be deciphered because the writing on them is so faint, but it is possible that they will add new, previously unknown information about the life of Jesus. Researchers from Hebrew University and the Israel Antiquities Authority say they still are unsure whether the writing is in Hebrew, Aramaic or a completely different dialect altogether.

The pieces of papyrus are about 2 by 2 cm (0.78 by 0.78 of an inch) and others are fragmentary. Some have writing, some do not have discernible writing, says Haartez in an article about the find.

Archaeologists renewed explorations of the cave in May and June 2016 after Roman and Iron Age documents started being sold on the black market.

“The most important thing that can come out of these fragments is if we can connect them with other documents that were looted from the Judean Desert, and that have no known provenance," Dr. Uri Davidovich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told Haaretz.



Some of the 870 Dead Sea Scrolls found in past years showed clear writing, but others are more difficult to decipher and are still being analyzed. The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls was found in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who tossed a rock into a cave near Qumran and heard a jar cracking, Haaretz says. The shepherd went into the cave and found documents that came to be called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Archaeologist Yohanan Ahranoi discovered the Cave of the Skulls in 1960. It was named for the seven human skulls and other bones in it. It is one of several caves that comprise a large cave complex of natural spaces on a steep cliff alongside the Tze’elim stream in the desert.

Nearby is the Cave of the Arrows where 30-inch arrow shafts plus iron arrowheads about 1,800 years old were located. Extremely dry conditions in the Judean Desert help preserve even organic objects.

Also nearby is the Cave of the Scrolls, where early documents dating to the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt have been unearthed.

People have occupied the caves on and off from prehistoric times until the period when Rome ruled Judea. Many of the finds made during the latest period are fragmentary and may have been from secondary dumps by looters.

Earlier finds in the cave include fragments of textiles, rope, leather items, wooden artifacts and bone tools. Pieces of a wooden lice comb dating to the Bar Kokhba revolt also were found there, Haaretz reports.

Supplementing the organic finds are pottery shards, stone vessels and flint objects. Metal objects included needles and hollow-headed hobnails for use on sandals.

The most recent textile bundle containing beads has not been opened but was x-rayed to ascertain what is inside. This bundle joins two others that Dr. Aharoni found. It is the biggest cache of beads in the Levant from the Chalcolithic period, which predates the Copper Age.



Unfortunately, looters digging in the caves have upset the layers so much it is hard to determine exactly when some artifacts and objects date from.

The findings of remains of thousands of food items, including palm dates, olives, pomegranates and barley and wheat back up professional estimates that the caves’ use by humans dates to the Chalcolithic and by rebelling refugees during the Roman era more than 2,000 years ago.

Uri Davidovich, one of the excavation directors, told Haaretz: “We have all the reasons to believe that there are still scrolls hidden. Several documents from the Roman times and even from the Iron Age have surfaced in recent years in the antiquities market. They must have originated in the Judean Desert caves.”

Source: Mark Miller

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Jersey was a must-see tourist destination for Neanderthals for over 100,000 years, showing a nomad behavior

New research led by the University of Southampton shows Neanderthals kept coming back to a coastal cave site in Jersey from at least 180,000 years ago until around 40,000 years ago.

Neanderthals kept coming back to a coastal cave site in Jersey from at least 180,000 years ago until around 40,000 years ago, researchers reported. As part of a re-examination of La Cotte de St Brelade and its surrounding landscape, archaeologists have taken a fresh look at artefacts and mammoth bones originally excavated from within the site's granite cliffs in the 1970s.

As part of a re-examination of La Cotte de St Brelade, and its surrounding landscape, archaeologists from Southampton, together with experts from three other universities and the British Museum have taken a fresh look at artefacts and mammoth bones originally excavated from within the site's granite cliffs in the 1970s. Their findings are published in the journal Antiquity.




The researchers matched types of stone raw material used to make tools to detail mapping of the geology of the sea bed, and studied in detail how they were made, carried and modified. This helped reconstruct a picture of what resources were available to Neanderthals over tens of thousands of years -- and where they were travelling from.
Lead author Dr. Andy Shaw of the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO) at the University of Southampton said: "La Cotte seems to have been a special place for Neanderthals. They kept making deliberate journeys to reach the site over many, many generations. We can use the stone tools they left behind to map how they were moving through landscapes, which are now beneath the English Channel. 180,000 years ago, as ice caps expanded and temperatures plummeted, they would have been exploiting a huge offshore area, inaccessible to us today."

Previous research focused on particular levels in the site where mammoth bones are concentrated, but this new study took a longer-term perspective, looking at how Neanderthals used it and explored the surrounding landscape for over 100,000 years.
The team, including academics from the British Museum, University College London (UCL) and the University of Wales found that Neanderthals kept coming back to this particular place, despite globally significant changes in climate and landscape. During glacial phases (Ice Ages), they travelled to the site over cold, open landscapes, now submerged under the sea. They kept visiting as the climate warmed up and Jersey became a striking highpoint in a wide coastal plain connected to France.



Dr. Beccy Scott of the British Museum added: "We're really interested in how this site became 'persistent' in the minds of early Neanderthals. You can almost see hints of early mapping in the way they are travelling to it again and again, or certainly an understanding of their geography. But specifically what drew them to Jersey so often is harder to tease out. It might have been that the whole Island was highly visible from a long way off -- like a way marker -- or people might have remembered that shelter could be found there, and passed that knowledge on."

Paper author Dr. Matt Pope, of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, agrees: "La Cotte de St Brelade is probably the most important Neanderthal site in northern Europe and could be one of the last known places that Neanderthals survived in the region. It was certainly as important to them as it is to us, as we try and understand how they thrived and survived for 200,000 years.

"With new technology we have been able to reconstruct the environment of the La Cotte Neanderthals in a way earlier researchers couldn't. Our project has really put Neanderthal back into the landscape, but emphasized how significant the changes in climate and landscape have been since then."

Project leader Professor Clive Gamble, of CAHO at the University of Southampton, comments: "Jersey is an island that endures, summed up by the granite cliffs of St Brelade's Bay. The elements which led to Neanderthals coming back for so many thousands of years show how this persistence is deep rooted in Jersey's past. Our project has shown that more unites the past with the present than separates. We are not the only humans to have coped successfully with major environmental changes. Let's hope we are not the last."

The team's work was undertaken as part of the 'Crossing the Threshold' project led by Professor Clive Gamble and Dr. John McNabb at the University of Southampton, together with UCL and the British Museum. The research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and looks at major changes in how early humans used places from 400,000 years ago.

Story Source: University of Southampton

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Human Trafficking in a Time of Crisis

How exaggerated media reports misconceive the realities of migration and displacement.

The current refugee crisis in Europe has once again sounded alarms about increased human trafficking. This is nothing new! Trafficking—or the recruitment, transport and harboring of people for severe exploitation, such as forced labor, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography or the unlawful removal of organs—is a recurrent concern during armed conflicts, earthquakes, cyclones, health pandemics and even sporting events. It is worth noting that Western media, taking clues from Western advocates, tend to misconceive the realities of human trafficking during crises. Western journalists often use isolated incidents to suggest catastrophic scale of trafficking. We need to better understand the dynamics of mobility during and in the aftermath of crises. We cannot conflate migrants’ desire for safe and secure environments where livelihoods might be more viable with organized crime taking control of the trade in people. Our understanding of migration, smuggling and trafficking has to be grounded in empirical data. Advocacy, even the best intentioned, cannot be developed in an empirical vacuum.

Scholarly literature on trafficking in persons during armed conflict is robust in terms of policy and legal analysis but very limited regarding empirical data on actual cases of trafficking. Reports issued by human rights groups and humanitarian assistance organizations working in conflict and post-conflict situations tend to discuss risks for trafficking related to perceived vulnerabilities, mainly of children, and do not provide reliable statistics on the prevalence of trafficking during and immediately after conflict, although there is some evidence of the increased demand for sex workers by military and peacekeeping personnel.



The question remains whether these reports conflate intensified demand for sex workers with an increase in trafficking for sexual exploitation. Scholars of sex work such as Ronald Weitzer, for example, argue that the oppression paradigm depicts all types of sexual commerce as institutionalized subordination of women, regardless of the conditions under which it occurs. In reality, there is a broad constellation of work arrangements, power relations and personal experiences among participants in sexual commerce. Victimization, exploitation, choice, job satisfaction, self-esteem and other factors differ between types of sex work, geographical locations and other structural conditions. Commercial sexual exchange and erotic entertainment are not homogenous phenomena, stresses Weitzer. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, known as the Palermo Protocol, also makes a rather clear distinction between sex work and trafficking for sexual exploitation.



In the current refugee context, the label “trafficking” is often used where smuggling would be more appropriate or where a more nuanced discussion about gender inequalities and exploitation of vulnerable women would be warranted. Men’s inability to protect women and women being forced into situations that they would never have considered if it had not been for war is seen locally—in Syria or Iraq—as a breakdown of moral authority and of male and family protection, as well as exploitation, but not as trafficking. Don’t get me wrong, smugglers can be ruthless, they often charge migrants exorbitant fees for their services, but they do not force refugees onto their boats. Refugees undertake risky journeys out of fear and desperation. Without smugglers, many asylum seekers would have died crossing the Mediterranean. Smugglers are a necessary evil for many refugees fleeing conflict. For some, smugglers can be saviors.

There seems to be a considerable difference between what media and advocates in the global North stress and what reports originating in the global South emphasize. Trafficking stories became attached to disaster narratives in the context of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Western media reported that criminal gangs were befriending children orphaned by the tsunami and selling them to sex traffickers, that organized syndicates were exploiting the crisis in Aceh province and sending SMS messages to people throughout the region offering children for adoption. These reports were contradicted by experts who said that there was no increase in verified incidents of human trafficking in countries hit by the tsunami. Later assessments of media reporting of the disaster commissioned by UNICEF noted that local newspapers in Indonesia and Sri Lanka were very suspicious of stories of child trafficking from the very beginning.

The reporting about the effects of the tsunami on children tended to be more positive, focusing on the resilience of local people, on the rebuilding of schools and on strategies to normalize children’s lives as best and as soon as possible. After cyclone Negris hit Myanmar in 2008, a UNICEF spokesperson said that the organization had no reports of an increase in trafficking. He hastened to add that if there were such reports he would be cautious about using them since there are no accurate figures on the numbers of people who were trafficked on a regular basis before the cyclone.



In Haiti, fears over vulnerable children increased in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Haiti is home to a large number of ‘restavèks’, extremely poor children who are sent to other homes to work as unpaid domestic servants. Unfortunately, many of the trade networks have links with the international adoption “markets.” The association of child trafficking with intercountry adoption might strike some readers as obvious, others as offensive, but in the aftermath of the earthquake it provoked exaggerated stories of child kidnapping for international adoptions. The “good intentions” of Laura Silsby of the New Life Children’s Refuge (NLCR), an Idaho-based Southern Baptist charity, who attempted to rescue Haitian orphans from collapsed orphanages in Port-au-Prince and bring them to a refuge in Cabarete, Dominican Republic, fueled such stories even further.

It is worth noting that the alarmists’ fear that the earthquake would spark a tidal wave of child trafficking portrayed all Haitian children as passive victims vulnerable to increased abuses during crises. This conceptualization did not take into account children’s motivations and maneuvers in their lives, including their working lives. The child trafficking discourse has only recently appropriated ‘restavèks’, to the detriment of discussions about long-standing patterns of poverty, social inequality and lack of employment for young people that deprive them of ways to make their livelihoods.



Interestingly, other natural or manmade disasters have sparked few concerns about human trafficking, showing that there are inconsistent assumptions about which crises and populations are most vulnerable to trafficking. The 2012 nuclear disaster in Japan, for example, did not cause speculation about trafficking. On the other hand, the Frontline documentary Sex Slaves includes a story of a young Ukrainian woman who became a sex worker in the hope of earning money to pay for medical care for her brother who suffered from cancer related to the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.

There is no doubt that there is a profound disconnected and at times collision between the anti-trafficking discourses found in the global North and global South. Narratives about crises found in many Western media are often framed by hegemonic representations of “us” and “them”, and focus mainly on death and destruction, on survivors’ misery and suffering. Narratives found in locally produced reports present the insiders’ point of view and focus on courage, resilience and generosity under duress.

These differences complicate the story even further. The human trafficking discourse is becoming globalized. The UN, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, Interpol, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and international organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) have all launched policies and programs aimed at combating trafficking through efforts to prevent trafficking, protect victims, prosecute traffickers and form partnerships for more effective action (the four Ps). While the Palermo Protocol recognizes human trafficking as a human rights violation, different agencies regard the trafficking phenomenon within different frameworks, including organized crime, migration management and forced labor, to name a few examples.



Given the lack of empirical knowledge about human trafficking—including during crises—what drives the globalization of the trafficking discourse and the international anti-trafficking movement? Is this global discourse simply forced upon less powerful actors? Do less powerful actors have their own motivations for adopting the global anti-trafficking discourse? What effects does this discourse have locally? In Nepal, where I have done a lot of work on human trafficking, the government’s strategy to prevent trafficking of women was to ban migration of females under the age 30 to the Gulf States for domestic work. This decision de facto stripped young women of a basic human right: the right to migrate. Officials acknowledged the ban had increased illegal migration and subsequently heightened migrants’ risks to exploitation; however, the government viewed these policies as temporarily necessary to protect (sic!) female migrant workers while formulating safe migration guidelines. In Laos, the anti-trafficking discourse is deployed to keep Lao youth from cross-border migration to Thailand simply because migration poses a threat to the construction of a Lao national identity.



Exaggerated reports of trafficking are quite damaging because they divert attention away from structural problems underlying increased exploitation of migrant workers. There is a need for more dialogue between members of the anti-trafficking movement and workers’ rights advocates because much trafficking in persons boils down to the exploitation of different types of workers. Finally, existing critiques—particularly evidence-based ones—of the shortcomings of the four Ps have to be taken on board and applied as lessons learned in the times of crises and calm.

Elżbieta M. Goździak is research professor at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University. In the Fall of 2016 she will serve as the George Soros Visiting Chair in Public Policy at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She received her PhD in anthropology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland in 1984.

The Effects of the Winter Drought

By: Alexandria Addesso

Water. It is what keeps us alive as well as other animals and all vegetation. Without it the Earth as we know it would cease to exist. Although oil has been the main liquid fought over in hundreds of wars and conflicts around the world for the past century, water seems like it may be a new cause for nation to rise up against nation. There are currently 36 countries under high water stress according to the World’s Resources Institute.



Although the United States is considered to be a medium water stress country, there are currently significant droughts happening across 45 percent of the mainland of the country. There has been a record breaking drought in the state of California for nearly six years straight according to the government’s figures although it is believed to be part of a larger drought that has lasted decades. Yet, the drought period for the winter of 2016-2017 may have even more major ramifications.



The winter of 2015-2016 was an El Niño year, which is a climate cycle characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific which usually brings about cooler and wetter weather to the southern tier of the U.S. While there was slightly more rainfall last year than previous years, it was not enough to break any significant droughts, and to make matters worse the winter of 2016-2017 will be exhibiting the La Niña climate cycle which is the opposite of El Niño being that it is characterized by warmer and drier weather for the southwestern parts of the country currently experiencing the most drought.

Aside from possible water regulations that limits the regular daily use of water by individuals and corporations, the hardest hit will be irrigated land. In severe drought states such as California, irrigated land already consumes the highest percentage of water. Further restrictions on such irrigated lands, which already have to funnel water from eight other states, will definitely negatively affect the produce industry in the U.S. One can only imagine what the dry season during the summer months will bring.



So what can be done? Although the water conflicts currently between the downstream Nile River countries Egypt and Sudan, and the upstream countries which includes Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, Southern Sudan, Rwanda and Kenya, are far more immediately alarming than anything happening in the U.S., does not mean Americans should not take action. Showering less, letting nature water your lawn, swimming in lakes, rivers, and oceans instead of filling man-made pools are all viable options. The age-old phrase “take no more than is needed” needs to be in the minds of every individual concerning the conservation of everything. The fact that Los Angeles, which is highly affected by drought, has more fountains than any other U.S. city I have ever seen is definitely alarming. The revolution must first take place in the mind.

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Did Oil Production Cause 20th Century Earthquakes in California?

By: Alexandria Addesso

The more man finds new corners to cut in terms of the environment, the more planet Earth seems to strike back with ecological karma. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction according to Newton, and we must be able to face the ramifications of our actions. For over a 150 years people have been drilling for oil, and new evidence has been uncovered concerning how it has affect the planet.

A recent study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA) followed the correlation between 20th century oil extraction and earthquakes. The study focused on drilling done in the 1920s and 1930s in the County of Los Angeles that are linked to several devastating earthquakes. These earthquakes include the 1920 Inglewood earthquake, the 1929 Whittier earthquake, the 1930 earthquake in Santa Monica, and the most devastating 1933 Long Beach earthquake which had a 6.4 magnitude on the richter scale and killed 120 people.



"If you take our four-the 1920, 1929, 1930 and 1933 earthquakes out of the calculations as induced or potentially induced, it does call into question what the rate of natural earthquakes in the L.A. Basin really is," said U.S. Geological Surveyor Susan Hough. "Maybe the L.A. Basin as a geological unit is more seismically stable than we've estimated."

The U.S. Geological Survey team studied 22 earthquakes that took place during the 20th century and found that 13 of them were most likely connected to nearby “oil production activities”. The study attributed these earthquakes to “industry practices that are no longer employed (i.e., production without water reinjection), and do not necessarily imply a high likelihood of induced earthquakes at the present time." Yet, another study released last year by U.S. Geological Surveyors suggested that mid-20th century earthquakes in Oklahoma were caused by injecting wastewater into the earth to extract oil, unlike the oil production methods of the 1920s and 1930s but very similar to the fracking method used to extract oil today.



Fracking is a very controversial method of oil extraction because it can very easily taint the water supply of the surrounding area. In the past year, after much urging by environmental and civil rights groups , the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a 1,000 page document confirming "specific instances" when fracking "led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells." With this information as well as the oil extraction connections to earthquakes, it would appear that more concern would be raised about halting such projects. Yet, neither of the U.S. Geological Surveys mentioned any concerns with the current fracking method.

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Evolutionary Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion

A new light on the importance of further empirical and theoretical exploration into all aspects of religious behavior and motivations from an evolutionary perspective

Historically, evolutionary anthropologists have allocated the majority of our attention to topics like subsistence strategies, parental investment, warfare, etc. One topic that has been given only minimal space is religion. We have seen an increase in the exploration into evolutionary explanations for religious behavior and religious affiliation in the evolutionary and human behavioral ecological literature over the last few years.

Some scholars, like Richard Sosis, Joseph Heinrich and EAS member William Irons, have been focusing on the evolutionary origins of religion. Others, like Benjamin Purzycki, Scott Atran and former EAS president Frank Marlowe, have been examining the contribution of religion to the evolution of increasing population size and societal complexity. Finally, scholars such as Richard Sosis and EAS member Eleanor Power have tested specific predictions that have emerged from evolutionary theory regarding the individual benefits of engaging in religious behavior. This recent focus has also shed new light on the importance of further empirical and theoretical exploration into all aspects of religious behavior and motivations from an evolutionary perspective.



Religion poses a problem for evolutionary anthropologists. Many of us are interested in explaining how particular behaviors allow individual humans to adapt to their surrounding environments in ways that increase their own survival and reproduction, and it isn’t immediately clear that participation in religious behaviors should directly influence either survival or reproduction. Participation in religious ritual can be very costly for an individual in terms of time, money or even physical pain or bodily harm and the question – from an evolutionary perspective – is why would an individual engage in this costly behavior when there is no obvious reproductive benefit that results?

Using costly signaling theory, some have argued that religion is one way to honestly signal one’s commitment to pro-sociality within the community. And if pro-sociality is considered important to that community, one may gain reputational benefits that would afford him or her future survival or reproductive benefits. Sosis and others have shown evidence for the honesty of the signal: religious signalers across societies are, on average, more prosocial than those who do not signal their commitment to the group via religious ritual. However, in order to complete the circle and apply the reputational benefits to the appropriate actor, the honest signal must be received by community members.



In her 2015 EAS talk and her 2016 paper, Power describes two modes of religious practice among Hindu and Christian residents living in two villages in rural South India. First, individuals may engage in behaviors that are quite dramatic, but only costly in the short-term, such as piercing their skin with spears, walking across hot coals and becoming possessed by a deity. Second, they can engage in behaviors that are more subtle but also are costly over a longer period of time, such as worshiping at a church or temple each week. Power showed that community members were perceiving different signals, from different modes of practice. Those who perform greater and costlier acts in the short-term are more likely to be perceived as physically strong and hard-working, while those performing subtle, long-term investment behaviors are more likely to be seen as more devout and more prosocial by their peers.

But, here we bump up against yet another potential problem for evolutionary anthropologists. Why should pro-sociality matter to other community members? And what does this have to do with religion? Researchers focused on a group-level explanation of the role of religion in the evolution of human behavior suggest that an individual might participate in costly behavior because he or she benefits through benefiting the group at large. Specifically, within-group pro-sociality and cooperation are useful for coordinating in subsistence work or warfare – making sure everyone in the group is fed and safe. Therefore, an individual’s costly contribution to the group cooperative effort may be seen as beneficial to all and people with such a reputation may gain individual benefits.



A primary focus for the group-level study of evolution and religion has been on ‘moralistic gods.’ Hervey Peoples and Frank Marlowe (2012) found a positive association between the size and social complexity of a society and belief in a moralistic god or gods (meaning the society has perceptions that gods are increasingly knowledgeable of one’s thoughts and actions and that they are increasingly likely to punish violators of social norms). In their recent Nature paper, Purzycki and his colleagues also show a positive association between the perception of a moralistic god(s) and societal complexity, as well as prosocial tendencies of individuals. They suggest that this association may be partially responsible for the evolution of social complexity in that religion served as a mechanism through which people were motivated to act in a prosocial way towards others they weren’t related to or didn’t know and that through this cooperation, group sizes could expand with minimal conflict. This may be why religions with moralistic gods (e.g. Christianity, Islam) are spread so far and wide around the world and why large-scale societies and pro-sociality are as well. The authors also suggest that these results may help understand the evolution of the wide-ranging cooperation found in large-scale societies.

In a discussion with Purzycki, he suggested the path forward for the study of religion by evolutionary anthropologists can serve two critical purposes. Currently much of the focus on the study of religion more broadly is centered around Abrahamic religions, though Purzycki says, “We know that not all societies are complex, not all religions are Abrahamic, and not all gods are concerned with morality.” We just don’t have a good sense about the variation that exists across cultures, therefore the first step for anthropologists should be describing that variation. Next, in order to have a better grasp on how and for what purposes religion evolved, we need to explain the variation. As Purzycki suggests, the study of religion seems to be at a critical point and as evolutionary anthropologists, we have particular skills we can bring to bear on the development of scholarship going forward.
Source: Kathrine Starkweather is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and co-editor of EAS News.

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The Amazing Cockroach, Are They The Pest Or Are We?

By: Alexandria Addesso

One out of every four living creatures on the planet is a beetle. Let that sink into your brain that has been long taught that humans overpower and subdue the Earth and everything on it. One of the most infamous, quickly multiplying, and common of beetles is the cockroach of which there are also many varieties. Billions, if not trillions, of dollars are spent on exterminating these creatures that seem almost undefeatable.

The much hated pest has a very long history. The oldest cockroach fossil ever found dates back to 350 million years ago, which predates the earliest known dinosaurs by approximately 150 million years. As you may know if you have ever unwillingly lived with them, cockroaches do not die easily and it is nearly impossible to rid them from a house or building once they have begun to colonize it. Cockroaches are also the only living beings that can successfully survive nuclear blasts.



Not only are these bugs known for their immense ability to survive and their extreme strength, with the ability to bite 50 times more than its body weight, studies have revealed that these insects actually have consciousness.

“Groups decide collectively on where to feed and shelter, and there’s evidence of sophisticated communication, via chemical signals rather than dances. When kept in isolation, individual roaches develop behavioral disorders; they possess rich spatial memories, which they use to navigate; and they might even recognize group members on an individual basis,” said Brandon Keim as he explored the cockroach consciousness concept in an article for Aeon Magazine.



There currently isn’t a mass amount of information in the field of cockroach consciousness, but it is believed that their level of cognitive function is less on scale of that of a human but more comparative with that of a honeybee. Humans possess 100,000,000,000 brain cells whereas a cockroach has nearly 1,000,000 brain cells. It is the current scientific consensus that many living beings, including humans and cockroaches alike, descended from a common simple life form called the urbilateria that lived around 600 million to 1 billion years ago. It is very possible the roaches and many other life forms developed consciousness from the urbilateria as we humans did.

They have been here longer than we have, will most likely be here unchanged long after we are gone, and outnumber us many times over. Are cockroaches the pests or are we? Do we have a right to exterminate them? Does might make right? Stay curious.

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Are Indigenous Australians The Oldest Civilization?

By: Alexandria Addesso

When ancient civilizations are spoken of Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Mesopotamians usually get brought up. We look to these groups as instrumental in the building of early civilized societies. Yet a recent study coming out of the University of Cambridge has uncovered new information that will change who we recall when thinking about the oldest civilization.

According to this study, aboriginal Australians are the oldest civilization on the planet. Researchers from several different continents studied groups of indigenous Australians and spoke to them about what they themselves knew about their origins. They also extracted DNA samples from the saliva of 83 Aboriginal Australians and 25 Papuans from New Guinea. After the DNA was sequenced it was uncovered that Aboriginal Australians most likely migrated out of Africa approximately 75,000 years ago in comparison to European and Asian ancestral groups who would have made the same migration about 58,000 years ago.



“Our results suggest that, rather than having left in a separate wave, most of the genomes of Papuans and Aboriginal Australians can be traced back to a single ‘Out of Africa’ event which led to modern worldwide populations,” said senior author from the Sanger Institute and University of Cambridge Manjinder Sandhu.

"It was a truly amazing journey that must have demanded exceptional survival skills and bravery," said Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen.
In their trek through Asia to Australia via the landbridge, it is also believed that the oldest civilization on Earth interbred with a Serbian ancestral group called the Denisovans. This was discovered to have taken place around 44,000 years ago, the researchers also found out that Aboriginal Australians separated from Papuans approximately 37,000 years ago, before the Australian land mass separated from New Guinea roughly 10,000 years ago.

Common knowledge, while always common is not always accurate but is always changing. What was believed to be scientifically accurate when we were children is often disproven by the time we are adults. This is the result of inquiring minds constantly questioning everything. Will an even older civilization be uncovered in the next several decades? Stay curious.

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A NEW HUMAN ANCESTOR SPECIES HAS BEEN DISCOVERED

Anthropologist has discovered a 3.3 to 3.5 million-year-old new human ancestor species. Upper and lower jaw fossils recovered from the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia have been assigned to the new species Australopithecus Deyiremeda

A new relative joins “Lucy” on the human family tree. An international team of scientists, led by Curator of Physical Anthropology Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, has discovered a 3.3 to 3.5 million-year-old new human ancestor species. Upper and lower jaw fossils recovered from the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia have been assigned to the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. This hominin lived alongside the famous “Lucy’s” species, Australopithecus afarensis. The species was described in the issue of the international scientific journal Nature.

Lucy’s species lived from 2.9 million years ago to 3.8 million years ago, overlapping in time with the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. The new species is the most conclusive evidence for the contemporaneous presence of more than one closely related early human ancestor species prior to 3 million years ago. The species name “deyiremeda” (day-ihreme-dah) means “close relative” in the language spoken by the Afar people.



Australopithecus deyiremeda differs from Lucy’s species in terms of the shape and size of its thick-enameled teeth and the robust architecture of its lower jaws. The anterior teeth are also relatively small indicating that it probably had a different diet.

"The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus Afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia during the middle Pliocene”, said lead author and Woranso-Mille project team leader Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie.
“Current fossil evidence from the Woranso-Mille study area clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity.

“This new species from Ethiopia takes the ongoing debate on early hominin diversity to another level,” said Haile-Selassie. “Some of our colleagues are going to be skeptical about this new species, which is not unusual. However, I think it is time that we look into the earlier phases of our evolution with an open mind and carefully examine the currently available fossil evidence rather than immediately dismissing the fossils that do not fit our long-held hypotheses,” said Haile-Selassie.



Scientists have long argued that there was only one pre-human species at any given time between 3 and 4 million years ago, subsequently giving rise to another new species through time. This was what the fossil record appeared to indicate until the end of the 20th century. However, the naming of Australopithecus bahrelghazali from Chad and Kenyanthropus platyops from Kenya, both from the same time period as Lucy’s species, challenged this long-held idea. Although a number of researchers were skeptical about the validity of these species, the announcement by Haile-Selassie of the 3.4 million-year-old Burtele partial foot in 2012 cleared some of the skepticism on the likelihood of multiple early hominin species in the 3 to 4 million-year range.

The Burtele partial fossil foot did not belong to a member of Lucy’s species. However, despite the similarity in geological age and close geographic proximity, the researchers have not assigned the partial foot to the new species due to lack of clear association. Regardless, the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda incontrovertibly confirms that multiple species did indeed co-exist during this time period.



This discovery has important implications for our understanding of early hominin ecology. It also raises significant questions, such as how multiple early hominins living at the same time and geographic area might have used the shared landscape and available resources.

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Communal Living: Is This How Humans Are Meant To Live?

By: Alexandria Addesso

Often I go to sleep to the sound of laughter or music coming from the next room over and wake up to people talking, unfortunately for me sometimes quite loudly. I currently share a living space with over 20 other people, but I also share my meals with them, my work and my overall life. Unlike many other people in Western society and even the world, I live in an intentional community.

To some communal living may seem scary or completely repulsive, but is it how humans are meant to live? In the extremely individualistic culture of the United States communal living may seem unnatural but it is believed that early humans lived and hunted in herds. During the most recent Ice Age, about 20,000-10,000 years ago, the human herd may have looked very similar to the wolf packs of that time. Both hunted bison and other large animals and were most likely familial. Adult members of both species were protective of the young and good at interpreting the moods of others in the group, whether through facial expression or other forms of body language.



In modern society it is expected that once a person reaches adulthood they should strike out on their own and become independent, but humans are social creatures. We thrive in groups. Although in Western culture a child is expected to leave their family’s home once they have reached full maturity, many Eastern societies abhor this notion. Although not an intentional community, living with family is living communally. Especially if it is a large family.

“Some people thrive, but some people cannot live in community or with others and that’s why they leave,” said Catherine Morris, who has been living communally for the past 56 years.



Although some people thrive living in a communal setting, it is definitely not an easy task. So many different personalities from different cultures and backgrounds living under the same roof can definitely prove difficult and be a test in the virtue of patience. But the payoff is the lack of one of the most primal human fears, being alone. And furthermore dying alone.

When human beings can successfully work together much can be accomplished. Revolutions can be started, oppression can be defeated, much can be built and much needed change can be made. As technology is making it easier for people to connect, it is also pushing us farther and farther spatially apart. If people can successfully live together on one plot of land or under one roof, than maybe we could learn to live together successfully and peacefully on one planet. The burdensome workload of one becomes easier to carry when it becomes the cooperative workload of many.

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