It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
China-Russia Partnership Threatens US Global Hegemony The U.S. expected China to integrate into global capitalism as a subordinate power, but recent deals with Russia show China is moving towards equality in economic and military power
IMAGINE THESE TWO PROFILED ON YOUR BITCOIN IN THE FUTURE
Trump Targets Cuba's Tourism and Small Businesses Trump administration sanctions that impose new travel restrictions on Cuba are aimed at Cuba's economy and will have no effect on Cuba's support for Venezuela, says Nefta Freeman of IPS THEREALNEWS.COM
Venezuelan Families Build Solidarity Amid Crisis Once a month, 181 families in Caracas, Venezuela, collectively buy tons of produce, directly from a cooperative in Lara state, five hours away. The project, known as Alpargata, shows how the economic crisis is also building solidarity. Mike Fox reports from Venezuela
COMMENTS
Pedro SánchezOrganization, cooperation, solidarity, that's what the remote communities in Puerto Rico has done to survive after hurricane Maria struck us. The economic crises before and after Maria were contributing factors that led people to take initiatives that have been rewarding. Hope Venezuela can survive the onslaught.
Victor Webster(from Oz)...if Venezuela can survive this economic siege conducted by America Inc. in it's endless war on socialism - as Cuba has done for 60 years - it will be another nail in the coffin of US hegemony in not only the western hemisphere. but also in the world as a whole.
“What they’re asking for now is that the situation, the government, has to be transferred into civilian hands, and those who are responsible for the massacres have to be held accountable” - Professor Khalid Ahmed
THEREALNEWS.COM
Sudan was suspended from the African Union following a military attack on peaceful demonstrators that killed over 100. But Saudi Arabia and UAE continue to support Sudan's military regime. We discuss the situation with Prof. Khalid Ahmed
Biden's Real Union & Labor Track Record Biden has presented himself as a friend of unions. But does he have a record of showing up for workers? Kamau Franklin and Jeff Cohen discuss his record with host Jacqueline Luqman THEREALNEWS.COM
Specious claims that Russians plan to use disaffected African Americans in a covert war against the U.S. reveals the long history of corporate media blaming “outside agitators," dismissing the Black freedom struggle
There’s a long history of the US media blaming “outside agitators,” especially Russia or communism, for black radical thought, movements, and efforts.
Newly unearthed documents about Martin Luther King make for uncomfortable reading
D Day: Mythology of America as Liberator Feeds Trump’s Militarism It was the Soviet army that broke Hitler's back at Stalingrad, but the myth that the American army liberated Europe, serves aggressive U.S. policy, including Trump targeting Iran - historian Peter Kuznick joins Paul Jay
"At least the United States is intervening in an aggressive way to stop fascism. That’s a good thing. I wish the Americans would do more of that now rather than coddle many of the fascist forces around the globe today." - Peter Kuznick
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Human Ancestors Invented Stone Tools Several Times
The excavation site, known as Bokol Dora 1 or BD 1, is close to the 2013 discovery of the oldest fossil attributed to our genus Homo discovered at Ledi-Geraru in the Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia. The fossil, a jaw bone, dates to about 2.78 million years ago, some 200,000 years before the then oldest flaked stone tools. The Ledi-Geraru team has been working for the last five years to find out if there is a connection between the origins of our genus and the origins of systematic stone tool manufacture.
A large green artefact found in situ at the Bokol Dora site. Right: Image of the same artefact and a three dimensional model of the same artefact [Credit: David R. Braun]
A significant step forward in this search was uncovered when Arizona State University geologist Christopher Campisano saw sharp-edged stone tools sticking out of the sediments on a steep, eroded slope. "At first we found several artifacts lying on the surface, but we didn’t know what sediments they were coming from," says Campisano. "But when I peered over the edge of a small cliff, I saw rocks sticking out from the mudstone face. I scaled up from the bottom using my rock hammer and found two nice stone tools starting to weather out."
Sediment layer with animal bones and stone chips
It took several years to excavate through meters of sediments by hand before exposing an archaeological layer of animal bones and hundreds of small pieces of chipped stone representing the earliest evidence of our direct ancestors making and using stone knives. The site records a wealth of information about how and when humans began to use stone tools.
Blade Engda of the University of Poitiers lifts an artefact from 2.6 million year old sediment exposing an imprint of the artefact on the ancient surface below [Credit: David R. Braun]
Preservation of the artifacts comes from originally being buried close to a water source. "Looking at the sediments under a microscope, we could see that the site was exposed only for a very short time. These tools were dropped by early humans at the edge of a water source and then quickly buried. The site then stayed that way for millions of years," noted geoarchaeologist Vera Aldeias of the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Behavioral Evolution at the University of Algarve, Portugal.
Habitat change
Kaye Reed, who studies the site’s ecology, is director of the Ledi-Geraru Research Project and a research associate with Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins along with Campisano, notes that the animals found with these tools were similar to those found only a few kilometers away with the earliest Homo fossils.
"The early humans that made these stone tools lived in a totally different habitat than 'Lucy' did," says Reed. Lucy is the nickname for an older species of hominin known as Australopithecus afarensis, which was discovered at the site of Hadar, Ethiopia, about 45 kilometers southwest of the new BD 1 site. "The habitat changed from one of shrubland with occasional trees and riverine forests to open grasslands with few trees. Even the fossil giraffes were eating grass!"
Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute, and the Ethiopian Authority for Research and the Conservation of Cultural Heritage as well as geologists from University of Algarve study the sediments at the Bokol Dora site. Stones were placed on the contact surface during the excavation to preserve the fragile stratigraphic contacts [Credit: Erin DiMaggio]
In addition to dating a volcanic ash several meters below the site, project geologists analyzed the magnetic signature of the site’s sediments. Over the Earth’s history, its magnetic polarity has reversed at intervals that can be identified. Other earlier archaeological sites near the age of BD 1 are in "reversed" polarity sediments. The BD 1 site is in "normal" polarity sediments. Because the reversal from "normal" to "reversed" happened at about 2.58 million years ago, the geologists knew that BD 1 was older than all the previously known sites.
The recent discovery of older hammering or "percussive" stone tools in Kenya dated to 3.3 million years ago, described as "Lomekwian", and butchered bones in Ethiopia shows the deep history of our ancestors making and using tools. However, recent discoveries of tools made by chimpanzees and monkeys have challenged "technological ape" ideas of human origins.
Archaeologists working at the BD 1 site wondered how their new stone tool discovery fit into this increasingly complex picture of hominin behavioural evolution. What they found was that not only were these new tools the oldest artifacts yet ascribed to the "Oldowan", a technology originally named after finds from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, but also were distinct from tools made by chimpanzees, monkeys or even earlier human ancestors.
Little in common with other tools
"We expected to see some indication of an evolution from the Lomekwian to these earliest Oldowan tools. Yet when we looked closely at the statistical patterns in the stone artefacts, there was very little connection to what has been described from older archaeological sites or to the stone tools modern primates are making," said Will Archer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
An image of the Bokol Dora excavation during the 2015 excavation. Stones were placed on the contact surface during the excavation to preserve the fragile stratigraphic contacts [Credit: David Feary]
The major differences appear to be the ability for our ancestors to systematically chip off smaller sharp-edged tools from larger nodules of stone. Chimpanzees and monkeys generally use tools for percussive activities, to hammer and bash food items like nuts and shellfish, which seems to have been the case with the 3.3 million year old Lomekwian tools as well.
Something changed by 2.6 million years ago, and our ancestors became more accurate and skilled at striking the edge of stones to make tools. The BD 1 artifacts captures this shift. It appears that this shift in tool making occurred around the same time that our ancestor’s teeth began to change. This can be seen in the Homo jaw from Ledi-Geraru. As our ancestors began to process food prior to eating using stone tools, we start to see a reduction in the size of their teeth. Our technology and biology were intimately intertwined even as early as 2.6 million years ago.
New ways of manufacturing tools
The lack of clear connections with earlier stone tool technology suggests that tool use was invented multiple times in the past. David Braun, an archaeologist with George Washington University and the lead author on the paper, noted, "Given that primate species throughout the world routinely use stone hammers to forage for new resources, it seems very possible that throughout Africa many different human ancestors found new ways of using stone artifacts to extract resources from their environment. If our hypothesis is correct then we would expect to find some type of continuity in artifact form after 2.6 million years ago, but not prior to this time period. We need to find more sites."
Aerial photography around the Bokol Dora site [Credit: David Feary]
By 2.6 million years ago, there appears to be a long-term investment in tool use as part of the human condition. Continued field investigations at the Ledi-Geraru project area are already producing more insights into the patterns of behavior in our earliest ancestors. New sites have already been found, and the Ledi-Geraru team will begin excavating them this year.
An international team of researchers has analyzed human remains from 21 archaeological sites to learn more about the impact and evolution of the plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis during the first plague pandemic (541-750 AD). In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers reconstructed 8 plague genomes from Britain, Germany, France and Spain and uncovered a previously unknown level of diversity in Y. pestis strains. Additionally, they found the first direct genetic evidence of the Justinianic Plague in the British Isles.
Lunel-Viel (Languedoc-Southern France). Victim of the plague thrown into a demolition trench of a Gallo-Roman house; end of the 6th-early 7th century [Credit: CNRS - Claude Raynaud]
The Justinianic Plague began in 541 in the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled at the time by the Emperor Justinian I, and recurrent outbreaks ravaged Europe and the Mediterranean basin for approximately 200 years.
Contemporaneous records describe the extent of the pandemic, estimated to have wiped out up to 25% of the population of the Roman world at the time. Recent genetic studies revealed that the bacterium Yersinia pestis was the cause of the disease, but how it had spread and how the strains that appeared over the course of the pandemic were related to each other was previously unknown.
In the current study, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History analyzed human remains from 21 sites with multiple burials in Austria, Britain, Germany, France and Spain. They were able to reconstruct 8 new Y. pestis genomes, allowing them to compare these strains to previously published ancient and modern genomes.
Additionally, the team found the earliest genetic evidence of plague in Britain, from the Anglo-Saxon site of Edix Hill. By using a combination of archaeological dating and the position of this strain of Y. pestis in its evolutionary tree, the researchers concluded that the genome is likely related to an ambiguously described pestilence in the British Isles in 544 AD.
High diversity of Y. pestis strains during the First Pandemic
The researchers found that there was a previously unknown diversity of strains of Y. pestis circulating in Europe between the 6th and 8th centuries AD. The 8 new genomes came from Britain, France, Germany and Spain.
Sampling of a tooth from a suspected plague burial [Credit: Evelyn Guevara]
"The retrieval of genomes that span a wide geographic and temporal scope gives us the opportunity to assess Y. pestis' microdiversity present in Europe during the First Pandemic," explains co-first author Marcel Keller, PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, now working at the University of Tartu.
The newly discovered genomes revealed that there were multiple, closely related strains of Y. pestis circulating during the 200 years of the First Pandemic, some possibly at the same times and in the same regions.
Despite the greatly increased number of genomes now available, the researchers were not able to clarify the onset of the Justinianic Plague.
"The lineage likely emerged in Central Asia several hundred years before the First Pandemic, but we interpret the current data as insufficient to resolve the origin of the Justinianic Plague as a human epidemic, before it was first reported in Egypt in 541 AD. However, the fact that all genomes belong to the same lineage is indicative of a persistence of plague in Europe or the Mediterranean basin over this time period, instead of multiple reintroductions."
Possible evidence of convergent evolution in strains from two independent historical pandemics
Another interesting finding of the study was that plague genomes appearing towards the end of the First Pandemic showed a big deletion in their genetic code that included two virulence factors. Plague genomes from the late stages of the Second Pandemic some 800-1000 years later show a similar deletion covering the same region of the genomes.
Map and phylogenetic tree showing the newly published (yellow) and previously published (turquoise) genomes. Shaded areas and dots represent historically recorded outbreaks of the First Pandemic [Credit: Marcel Keller]
"This is a possible example of convergent evolution, meaning that these Y. pestis strains independently evolved similar characteristics. Such changes may reflect an adaptation to a distinct ecological niche in Western Eurasia where the plague was circulating during both pandemics," explains co-first author Maria Spyrou of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
The current study offers new insights into the first historically documented plague pandemic, and provides additional clues alongside historical, archaeological, and palaeoepidemiological evidence, helping to answer outstanding questions.
"This study shows the potential of palaeogenomic research for understanding historical and modern pandemics by comparing genomes across millennia," explains senior author Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
"With more extensive sampling of possible plague burials, we hope to contribute to the understanding of Y. pestis' microevolution and its impact on humans during the course of past and present pandemics."
