In major ocean polluter Philippines, group turns plastic waste into planks


Sun, October 24, 2021

By Adrian Portugal

MANILA (Reuters) - A group of recyclers in the Philippines is trying to ease the country's worsening plastic waste crisis by turning bottles, single-use sachets and snack food wrappers that clog rivers and spoil beaches into building materials.

The Plastic Flamingo, or "The Plaf", as they are commonly known, collect the waste, shred it and then mould it into posts and planks called "eco-lumber" that can be used for fencing, decking or even to make disaster-relief shelters.


"(It) is 100% upcycled material, 100% made from plastic waste materials, we also include some additives and colorants and it is rot-free, maintenance-free, and splinter-free," said Erica Reyes, The Plaf's chief operating officer.

Having collected over 100 tonnes of plastic waste to date, the social enterprise is doing its bit to address a local problem that has global ramifications.

Approximately 80% of global ocean plastic comes from Asian rivers, and the Philippines alone contributes a third of that total, according to a 2021 report by Oxford University's Our World in Data.

The Philippines does not have a clear strategy on tackling its plastics problem and its environment department has said it has been in contact with manufacturers to identify ways to manage waste.

COVID-19, though, has made the battle against plastic waste harder to win.

Some 300 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced annually, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, a problem that has been exacerbated by the pandemic which sparked a rush for plastic face shields, gloves, takeaway food containers and bubble wrap as online shopping surged.

"People are unaware of how to dispose of these plastics," said Allison Tan, The Plaf's marketing associate.

"We give that avenue that instead of putting it in landfills or oceans...you give it to recycling centres like us and we would upcycle them into better products."

As well as tackling waste problems, the group says it is in talks with other non-government organisations to help rebuild houses destroyed by typhoons using their sustainable building materials.

(Reporting by Adrian Portugal; Editing by John Geddie and Muralikumar Anantharaman)






In major ocean polluter Philippines, group turns plastic waste into planks
Making lumber out of plastics
Adrian Portugal

 

A mom told Jeff Bezos that Amazon was underpaying her $90 a month, sparking an internal probe that found the company was shortchanging some workers, a report says

Isobel Asher Hamilton

Mon, October 25, 2021

• An Amazon worker on leave emailed Jeff Bezos to say she'd been underpaid, The New York Times said.

• A subsequent investigation found that Amazon was systematically underpaying some workers on leave.

• A spokesperson told The Times that Amazon was still identifying underpaid workers.

An email sent to Jeff Bezos from an Amazon worker who was on leave triggered an internal investigation that exposed flaws with the company's payroll system, The New York Times reported.

Tara Jones, an Oklahoma Amazon warehouse worker, emailed Bezos in 2020 to tell him she was being underpaid $90 out of $540 she was supposed to get a month, The Times reported. She had a newborn baby at the time, The Times said.

"I'm behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up," Jones wrote in her email. She added, "I'm crying as I write this email," the report said.

The Times interviewed Amazon staff and reviewed internal documents that showed that Amazon subsequently discovered it was shortchanging some employees who were on leave, including medical and disability leave. The problems spanned at least a year and a half, and it potentially affected as many as 179 warehouses.

An Amazon spokesperson told The Times that the company was still in the process of identifying workers it had underpaid.

One of those people, a warehouse worker from Tennessee named James Watts, told The Times that his disability payments stopped for several months in the spring. Watts told The Times that his car was repossessed and that he and his wife sold their wedding rings.

Current and former HR employees also told The Times that workers facing medical problems were automatically fired by Amazon's attendance software after it mistook their leave for absence.

Bethany Reyes, an Amazon HR employee who has recently been charged with fixing the company's leave system, told The Times that the company was trying to rebalance its mantra of "optimizing" for the customer.

"A lot of times, because we've optimized for the customer experience, we've been focused on that," Reyes said. She added that the company was working to address "pain points" and "pay issues." She also said the automatic firings were "the most dire issue that you could have."

Amazon did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider for comment on the report.

In a letter to shareholders last year, Bezos boasted that the lowest-paid Amazon worker made more than 40 million people in the US.

Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon on July 5 and was replaced by Andy Jassy, a longtime executive. Bezos remains the chair of the company. 

Read the original article on Business Insider

Big Banks Haven't Quit Fossil Fuel, With $4 Trillion Since Paris

Tasneem Brogger and Alastair Marsh
Sun, October 24, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- As executives from JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and other lenders prepare for the most important UN climate summit in six years, their companies continue to help provide almost as much money for fossil fuels as for green projects.

Scientists have made clear that time is running out to prevent a climate catastrophe. Yet this year alone, banks have organized $459 billion of bonds and loans for the oil, gas and coal sectors, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At the same time, they arranged $463 billion worth of green bonds and loans, with fees more or less evenly split.

Since the Paris Agreement at the end of 2015, banks have played a prominent role in enabling the warming that’s behind increasingly deadly storms, fires and floods. During the period, the industry generated more than $17 billion of fees from facilitating almost $4 trillion of fossil-fuel financing. The money has helped feed carbon emissions that, at the current pace, mean temperatures will rise well above the 1.5 degrees Celsius identified as critical to avert irreversible damage.

Now, as global leaders prepare to descend on Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP26 climate talks, a growing chorus of investors and activists are demanding that banks stop funding polluters -- before it’s too late.

“What banks need to do is extremely clear,” said Miguel Nogales, co-chief investment officer at Generation Investment Management LLP, the $36 billion fund manager co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. “No financing for new coal plants, no financing for new oil fields.”

Next month’s talks in Glasgow have been dubbed the finance COP, meaning focus will be on the extent to which the banking industry is pulling its weight to help prevent carbon dioxide from spewing into the atmosphere. In the lead-up to the talks, banks and asset managers have released a deluge of climate declarations, assuring stakeholders they’re committed to eliminating net emissions from their lending and investing portfolios -- or reaching net zero -- by the middle of the century.

On the surface, banks are acknowledging the issue. Most of the world’s biggest lenders, including JPMorgan, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America Corp., are part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. But in reality, they’ve yet to show that they can purge their loan books of CO2 fast enough.

“At the top of many big banks, there is a realization that they will have to step back from financing certain fossil-fuel projects, but many are only just beginning this journey,” said Jessica Ground, the London-based global head of environmental, social and governance at Capital Group, which has $2.6 trillion of assets under management.

Bill Winters, the chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Plc, said earlier this month that " it’s just not practical” to expect banks to stop financing the fossil-fuel industry, in part because to do so would undermine transition efforts, particularly in the emerging markets. And then last week, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO David Solomon said his firm won’t abruptly stop working with fossil-fuel companies, stressing the need for a balanced transition to green energy that avoids higher energy prices.

According to the Sunrise Project, an environmental nonprofit based in Australia, if banks are to be taken seriously on their net-zero commitments, they need to stop financing companies and projects expanding coal, oil and gas output infrastructure or power generation. And all corporate finance and underwriting of rich-world coal companies should be phased out by 2030 “at the very latest,” the group said in an email. For non-OECD countries, the deadline should be 2040, it said.

Banks will often respond to criticisms of their fossil-fuel financing by citing their commitment to funding clean energy, Sunrise Project said. But the group characterized this as a “distraction.” Investing in clean energy doesn’t alleviate the effects of lending to the world’s worst polluters, it said.

JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, is the world’s leading provider of finance to the fossil-fuel industry and also ranks as the No. 1 underwriter of green bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The New York-based firm has made about $985 million in revenue since the end of 2015 arranging debt and lending for the oil, gas and coal industries. That compares with the roughly $310 million it generated in income from green finance.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. provides even more loans to the fossil-fuel industry than JPMorgan, but does far less bond underwriting. Citigroup places second among the top providers of fossil finance, from which it has generated almost $890 million in revenue during the past six years, Bloomberg data show. Bank of America is next with roughly $690 million.

To measure the involvement of each bank, Bloomberg’s data include the bonds and syndicated loans underwritten for companies that produce or extract oil, natural gas and coal. Those figures are assessed against the debt that each bank arranged on behalf of corporate and government issuers for eligible climate or environmental projects.

There are weaknesses in the data set. For example, it’s possible some portion of a loan to an oil company might have been used on a clean-energy project. Bloomberg started tracking fees that banks earn from extending loans in 2018, so fees from 2016 and 2017 might be under-represented. But none of that changes the overall picture left by the data -- namely that banks have financed hundreds of billions of dollars worth of carbon emissions.

At the current rate of greenhouse-gas emissions, the United Nations warns that the average global temperature is set to be 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. At that level of warming, whole populations will be displaced by rising sea levels, vast numbers of species will face extinction, and deadly wild fires and flooding will become far more frequent.

The International Energy Agency said this month that the world is woefully behind in delivering the necessary emissions cuts. “Every data point showing the speed of change in energy can be countered by another showing the stubbornness of the status quo,” the agency said in its latest report.

At JPMorgan, executives say they’re aware of the urgency of the moment. “Climate change is a critical issue of our time, and we are committed to doing our part to address it,” Marisa Buchanan, the firm’s global head of sustainability, said earlier this month in connection with a public commitment to carbon neutrality by mid-century.

JPMorgan said in May that it plans to report a 35% reduction in “operational carbon intensity” for its oil and gas portfolio by the end of the decade. The commitment followed the company’s announcement last year that it was aligning its financing activities with the Paris Agreement.

Nogales called JPMorgan’s decision to join the Net-Zero Banking Alliance a “positive step.” But he also referred to it as “a high standard of action that, according to the IEA, means turning off the finance tap to new fossil-fuel projects as soon as this year.” The extent to which signatories do this will be the “real test,” and one that investors “will be watching very closely,” Nogales said.

An important plank of the 2015 Paris climate agreement was to involve the financial industry, reflecting the need to steer money away from activities that pollute. The latest flurry of net-zero commitments from banks and asset managers follows on from that agreement. But details on how they plan to achieve carbon neutrality 30 years from now remain scarce.

Nogales said part of the problem is that most net-zero goals are too far in the future. “The problem with very long-term targets is that it’s typically going to be a different set of executives running those businesses at that point,” he said, adding that Generation Management wants to see CO2 targets set for 2030, in line with the UN’s recommendations to halve emissions in the coming decade.

The latest assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “was extremely clear,” Nogales said. “We’re facing a massive emergency.”

Fossil-Fuel Divestment Supported by Investors With $39 Trillion



Alastair Marsh
Mon, October 25, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- The pool of potential buyers for fossil-fuel stocks keeps shrinking and shrinking.

About 1,500 investment institutions overseeing a combined $39.2 trillion of assets are now committed to divesting from fossil fuels, according to a report issued Tuesday by DivestInvest. That’s a huge increase from $52 billion across 181 institutions in 2014, the first year the group tallied such commitments.

So far in 2021, the $16 billion Ford Foundation, started by the son of Henry Ford and now one of the largest private family foundations in the world, said it will cease to invest in fossil fuels. Harvard University made a similar pledge for its giant $42 billion endowment and Maine became the first U.S. state to order its public pension fund to sell off fossil-fuel holdings.

New York City’s pension funds have announced plans to divest about $4 billion worth of fossil fuel-related investments and Canada’s second-largest pension manager, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, has said it will sell billions of dollars worth of oil assets, including large equity stakes in Canada’s top crude producers, as part of a new strategy that aims to dramatically cut the emissions from its investments.

“The fossil-fuel divestment movement is growing at an accelerated clip, because the world has realized where the money flows determines our success in slowing climate change,” said Richard Brooks, climate finance director at environmental nonprofit Stand.earth. “More money simply needs to get out of financially risky coal, oil and gas companies, and switched over to companies driving climate solutions, including renewables.”

Dumping fossil fuels is a quick win for funds wishing to decarbonize portfolios, yet whether it also produces a positive outcome for the climate is fiercely debated. Simply selling fossil-fuel stocks doesn’t change the demand or use of fossil fuels, and in fact can lead to carbon-intensive companies being held predominantly in portfolios of investors that are less motivated to push for lower emissions.

Still, authors of the DivestInvest report said the movement can now “offer solid proof that divestment is a sound financial strategy” and that “fossil fuels are a bad bet financially.” Early adopters of divestment strategies are reporting positive financial results and more institutions “cite the financial reality that climate change will make fossil fuels obsolete and a renewable energy future inevitable,” according to the report.That chimes with the findings of a BlackRock Inc. report commissioned by New York City that said “no investors found significant negative performance from divestment, but rather have reported neutral to positive results.”

Dutch pension fund to divest from fossil fuel producers


Netherlands Climate Pension FundFILE- In this Monday, Oct. 4, 2021, file photo, Dutch police, second right and fourth right, top, break up a demonstration of Greenpeace climate activists who lowered themselves from a fuel storage tank during a protest at a Shell refinery in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The Netherlands' biggest pension fund announced Tuesday Oct. 26, 2021, that it will stop investing in companies that produce fossil fuels, saying the move that has long been demanded by members of the fund was prompted by recent climate reports by the United Nations and International Energy Agency. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, file)Less

MIKE CORDER
Tue, October 26, 2021,


THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Netherlands' biggest pension fund announced Tuesday that it will stop investing in companies that produce fossil fuels, saying the move — long been demanded by many members of the fund — was prompted by recent climate reports by the United Nations and International Energy Agency.

The ABP fund is a wealthy and influential investor that manages the pension savings of more than 3 million Dutch workers in the government and education sectors. It has some 15 billion euros ($17.4 billion) invested in fossil fuel production, almost 3% of its assets.

In a tweet, the Dutch branch of Greenpeace called the move “a huge victory for all the people who called on ABP to take climate action!”

The announcement comes just days before a U.N. climate conference known as COP26 opens in Glasgow. Many environmental activists, policymakers and scientists say the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 event marks an important and even crucial opportunity for concrete commitments to the targets set out in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

“We want to contribute to minimizing global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Large groups of pension participants and employers indicate how important this is to them," ABP Chairman of the Board Corien Wortmann said in a statement.

“The ABP Board sees the need and urgency for a change of course,” she added. "We part with our investments in fossil fuel producers because we see insufficient opportunity for us as a shareholder to push for the necessary, significant acceleration of the energy transition at these companies."

The fund said it will invest in major users of fossil fuels — energy producers, the automotive and aviation industries — and, using its clout as a shareholder, “will encourage companies that use fossil fuels to become more sustainable.”

It said it will divest its fossil fuel holdings in phases with most expected to be sold by the first quarter of 2023.

UNION BUSTING

Exxon Texas refinery workers to vote on removing union


FILE PHOTO: An Exxon gas station is seen in Houston

Erwin Seba
Mon, October 25, 2021, 6:48 PM·2 min read

HOUSTON (Reuters) -Locked-out workers at Exxon Mobil Corp's Beaumont, Texas, refinery will vote between Nov. 12 and Dec. 22 in a mail-in ballot on whether to remove the United Steelworkers union (USW) from representing them, according to the company and union.

The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will send out the ballots on Nov. 12 to workers represented by USW Local 13-243 at the refinery and adjoining lubricants blending and packaging plant, according to Exxon and the union. The ballots must be returned by Dec. 22.


At least 30% of the workers locked out of their jobs at the 369,000 barrel-per-day refinery and lubricants plant signed a petition calling for a decertification vote that was submitted to the NLRB in early October.

About 650 workers were locked on May 1 after a deadline passed without a new labor contract, but resignations and retirements from the union have reduced that number to about 585, according to union officials. Of those workers, about 500 are dues-paying members of the USW.

The remainder are still represented by the union under the Texas right-to-work law.

All who are represented by the USW will be eligible to cast ballots in the decertification vote.

The decertification vote follows the rejection of an Exxon contract proposal on Oct. 19, in which 400 union members cast ballots.

Exxon has said either adoption of the contract or decertification of the union will end the lockout, which began after the union refused to agree to a contract that would eliminate job seniority.

The rejected proposal would have given Exxon control over staffing of a new crude distillation unit that would add 250,000 barrels per day capacity in 2024, making Beaumont the largest U.S. oil-processing plant by volume.

The NLRB has yet to rule on USW complaints alleging Exxon supported the decertification campaign, in violation of federal law. The NLRB could impound the votes and not reveal the outcome until it rules on the union complaints.

If the NLRB does not impound the ballots, they could be counted by the end of the year.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Leslie Adler)

CRYPTO CAPITALI$M IS STILL CAPITALI$M

Bitcoin Is Still Concentrated in Few Hands, Study Finds



Emily Graffeo
Mon, October 25, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin’s surging popularity hasn’t changed one of its original attributes. Its ownership is still concentrated in just a few hands.

The top 10,000 individual investors in Bitcoin control about one-third of the cryptocurrency in circulation, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Crypto enthusiasts have long pondered who the largest owners of Bitcoin are since the early days of the its existence. It can be especially difficult to determine the concentration of ownership, as many of the largest addresses don’t often represent individuals, but exchanges and other entities that hold Bitcoin on behalf of other investors.

However, by using a data collection method that differentiated between addresses belonging to intermediaries and individuals, NBER researchers were able to find the former controlled about 5.5 million Bitcoin at the end of last year while the latter controlled about 8.5 million. Additionally, the top 1,000 individual investors controlled about 3 million, and the concentration could be even greater.

“This measurement of concentration most likely is an understatement since we cannot rule out that some of the largest addresses are controlled by the same entity,” researchers Igor Makarov and Antoinette Schoar wrote.

For instance, the data did not not assign the ownership of early Bitcoins held in about 20,000 addresses to one person (Satoshi Nakamoto) and considered them as belonging to 20,000 different individuals.

The concentration of miners is even more profound, data show. NBER found that the top 10% of miners control 90% of the Bitcoin mining capacity, and just 0.1% (about 50 miners) control 50% of mining capacity.

Such a high concentration could make the Bitcoin network vulnerable to a 51% attack, where a colluding set of miners or one miner is able to take control of a majority of the network. NBER found the concentration also decreases following sharp increases in the Bitcoin price, meaning the probability the network is vulnerable to a 51% attack is higher when Bitcoin’s price drops sharply.

“Our results suggest that despite the significant attention that Bitcoin has received over the last few years, the Bitcoin ecosystem is still dominated by large and concentrated players, be it large miners, Bitcoin holders or exchanges,” the researchers wrote. “This inherent concentration makes Bitcoin susceptible to systemic risk and also implies that the majority of the gains from further adoption are likely to fall disproportionately to a small set of participants.”

Hilcorp to replace Exxon as operator of Alaska's Point Thomson field


Yereth Rosen
Mon, October 25, 2021

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Hilcorp Energy Company, which has evolved into a major operator on Alaska's North Slope after BP's departure from the state, is now set to take over operations of a field run by another global giant, Exxon Mobil.

Big oil companies like BP and Exxon Mobil have stepped back from Alaska as activity in the state has dwindled, paving the way for smaller independent operators. Crude production in Alaska last year fell to 448,000 barrels per day, the lowest since 1976.

Hilcorp is set to take charge of the Point Thomson field, which will still be majority owned by Exxon. Point Thomson, the easternmost producing North Slope field, languished for decades, with the state in past years nearly nullifying leases until a deal was struck for production of liquid gas condensates.

Exxon signed an agreement with Hilcorp to transfer the Point Thomson operator position, said Exxon spokeswoman Julie King, with the change in operatorship expected by early 2022. Exxon will continue to own more than 60% of Point Thomson, King said.

Even though Exxon holds major shares of Prudhoe Bay and other Alaska oil assets, Point Thomson, located about 60 miles (96 km) east of Prudhoe Bay, is the only field the company has operated.

Texas-based independent Hilcorp acquired all of BP's Alaska assets in 2014 and 2020, including its 32% share of Point Thomson and 26% share of Prudhoe Bay. Hilcorp last year replaced BP as Prudhoe Bay's operator.

"Hilcorp is excited about our continued commitment to Alaska. We welcome the opportunity to apply our proven record of enhancing legacy conventional assets to Point Thomson," Luke Saugier, senior vice president for Alaska, said in a statement Friday.

Point Thomson is considered critical for any commercialization of North Slope natural gas. It holds about 8 trillion cubic feet of known reserves, roughly a quarter of the North Slope total known reserves. Alaska's marketed natural gas production was about 0.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in 2020, down from a record 1.5 bcfd in 1994.

Natural gas liquids production at the field averaged about 8,300 barrels a day between January 2020 to July 2021, according to Exxon data submitted to the state. (Reporting By Yereth Rosen in Anchorage, Alaska; editing by David Evans)

Incredible videos show the Canadian Coast Guard using tugboats to drench an 853-foot cargo ship that caught on fire

Connor Perrett

Mon, October 25, 2021

The Canadian National Guard used tugboats to spray the Zim Kingston to keep the blaze from spreading. Canadian National Guard via Twitter

• Videos show tugboats putting out a fire on the 853-foot Zim Kingston near Canada's Vancouver Island.

• The cargo ship caught fire on Saturday not long after it lost roughly 40 shipping containers.

• Officials said they would board the ship Monday to put out any remaining fires if weather permitted.

Videos the Canadian Coast Guard shared on Twitter Sunday show the agency using tugboats to drench the 853-foot cargo ship Zim Kingston with water after it caught fire on Saturday.

Canadian officials on Sunday said the fire aboard the cargo ship had been "stabilized," adding that a crew of hazardous materials firefighters planned to board the ship on Monday to "fight any remaining fires" if the weather permitted.

According to an early Monday Reuters report, 16 crew members were evacuated from the ship on Saturday while five remained on the ship to help keep the fire under control.

The tugboats sprayed water on the ship to keep the fire from spreading while the blaze burned itself out, the Canadian Coast Guard told Reuters.

The agency ordered all ship traffic to stay 2 nautical miles away from the ship. The Canadian Transport Ministry restricted all aircraft from flying within 2 nautical miles of the ship or fewer than 2,000 feet above it, Reuters reported.

"We can't see any scorching or charring of those adjacent containers - that's a really good sign," said Canadian Coast Guard Commander JJ Brickett, according to Reuters. "The fire is smoldering as you would expect, and we're continuing to cool on either side."

Officials said air quality monitoring stations around the area were monitoring the smoke coming from the ship. Danaos Shipping Co, the company that manages the vessel, said on Sunday it had no injuries to report as a result of the fire.

As Insider previously reported, the fire broke out on the Zim Kingston on Saturday while it was anchored off the coast of Canada's Vancouver Island. The fire occurred just one day after it lost about 40 shipping containers. Some of the containers that fell off the ship contained hazardous materials, officials said.

At least 35 of the containers have been located, the US Coast Guard said in a press release Sunday.

The blaze started in damaged containers that were still on board the vessel, the Canadian Coast Guard said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

LIDAR NOT PSYCHICS

Remote-sensing reveals details of ancient Olmec site in Mexico


Will Dunham
Mon, October 25, 2021

(Reuters) - Aerial remote-sensing of a large region of Mexico has revealed hundreds of ancient Mesoamerican ceremonial centers, including a large one at an important site for the ancient Olmec culture that is known for its colossal stone heads.

The remote-sensing method, called lidar, pinpointed 478 ceremonial centers in areas that were home to the ancient Olmec and Maya cultures dating to roughly 1100-400 BC, researchers said on Monday. The study was the largest such survey involving ancient Mesoamerica, covering all of the state of Tabasco, southern Veracruz and bits of Chiapas, Campeche and Oaxaca.

Lidar, short for Light Detection and Ranging, uses a pulsed laser and other data obtained while flying over a site to generate three-dimensional information about the shape of surface characteristics. It penetrates vegetation and pinpoints structures that otherwise might not be seen from the air or the ground.

A large ceremonial center was spotted at the early Olmec site called San Lorenzo, which is located in Veracruz in the lowlands near the Gulf of Mexico and was at its peak from roughly 1400-1000 BC. The Olmecs represented the oldest-known major Mesoamerican civilization and are thought to have influenced later cultures, including the Maya.

University of Arizona archaeologist Takeshi Inomata, who led the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, said lidar spotted a large and previously unknown rectangular earthen ceremonial space at San Lorenzo.

It measures about 3,300 feet by 900 feet (1,000 meters by 275 meters), with 20 platforms around the edge slightly elevated above it. Its purpose remains unclear but it may have been a plaza where large numbers of people gathered for some type of ceremonies, while the platforms surrounding the plaza may have had residences, Inomata said.

The Olmec heads, each fashioned from a single basalt boulder, are among the most evocative pieces of art from ancient Mesoamerica. The naturalistic facial features are carved in such a way that experts suspect they are representations of actual ancient Olmec rulers.

Ten of the heads have been discovered at San Lorenzo. Inomata said there may be more of them undiscovered at related sites.

Many of the hundreds of ceremonial complexes identified in the study share common layouts like the one at San Lorenzo. Many appear to have been built with orientations aligned with the direction of sunrise on specific key ceremonial dates.

"These centers were probably the earliest material expressions of basic concepts of Mesoamerican calendars," Inomata said, noting that such calendars were based on a unit of 20 days - matching the number of platforms around the San Lorenzo ceremonial center.

An even larger ceremonial center https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-maya/oldest-and-largest-ancient-maya-structure-found-in-mexico-idUSKBN23A2EH, described by Inomata and his colleagues last year, was found at a site in the Maya region called Aguada Fenix in Tabasco near the Guatemalan border. Dating to slightly later than the one at San Lorenzo, it and others found in the study suggest that Olmecs and other peoples in the region exchanged ideas.

Lidar has proven increasingly useful for archaeologists.

"The advantage of lidar is that it provides a three-dimensional, birds-eye view of the landscape and modifications to it made by humans - ancient and modern - in the form of building, transportation, agricultural and water control infrastructure," said lidar engineer and study co-author Juan Carlos Fernandez-Diaz of the University of Houston's National Center of Airborne Laser Mapping.

"Lidar also allows us to 'see' the landscape and infrastructure that in many parts of the world is hidden under forest cover," Fernandez-Diaz added.

(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

Genetic Analysis Reveals Origin of All Domesticated Horses

Matthew Hart
Mon, October 25, 2021

Domesticated horses are ubiquitous enough in real life and fictional worlds for it to seem like they’ve always just been there, in their “final form,” so to speak. But where and when did we homo sapiens begin to domesticate the majestic hoofed animals? According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the journey from wild horse to Seabiscuit started around 4,200 years ago in the western Eurasian steppe.

Smithsonian Magazine reported on a new study about this topic. The research outlines how scientists pinpointed the modern domesticated horse’s origins. As Science shares, the interdisciplinary team of scientists analyzed 300 ancient horse genomes from 121 archaeological sites across Eurasia. The scientists ruled out other longstanding candidate regions such as Central Asia and the Iberian Peninsula thanks to previous research efforts.

Two horses running together in a field, emblematic of the domesticated horses that began their lineage 4,200 years ago in Eurasia.
Coen Dijkman

Molecular archaeologist Ludovic Orlando of the French national research agency (CNRS) and Paul Sabatier University led the interdisciplinary team. First, they visited sites from Kazakhstan to Mongolia to gather horse bones. These bones ranged in age from 2,000 to 10,000 years old. The team then sequenced the bones’ genomes and organized them into a family tree. One that allowed the scientists to see how the horses were related to each other and their modern counterparts.

Using the family tree, the scientists pinned domesticated horses’ genetic origins to one type of the equid that herders on the western Eurasian steppe domesticated 4,200 years ago. The western Eurasian steppe, in turquoise in the image immediately below, is a vast ecoregion of Eurasia. It consists of temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands. Since the Paleolithic age, people have used the steppe as a trade route connecting Central and Eastern Europe with Central, Eastern, and Southern Asia.

A map showing the western Eurasian steppe, where a team of scientists now believes the modern-day domesticated horse originated.

Shattered Gnome

“The horses living in Anatolia, Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia used to be genetically quite distinct,” Orlando told Science. “[But once] we domesticated this new kind of horse, suddenly they were everywhere,” the molecular archaeologist noted.

The genetic profile of the western Eurasian horse began to spread out across Eurasia; replacing existing lineages as it did so. By 3,000 years ago, it had replaced all other genetic profiles in Eurasia. Eurasia includes everything from what is modern-day Turkey to central Russia. The new horse was so entrenched in human life; it even became a symbol of Bronze Age art.

A 3D map showing where modern-day domesticated horses originated in the western Eurasian steppe.
Orlando et al. / Nature

As for why this particular western Eurasian horse became so dominant? The scientists say two genetic mutations gave them the domestication edge. These predecessors to DOM2—or “second domestication”—horses had a gene mutation that helps control anxiety and aggression. As well as one that researchers have linked to chronic back pain in people. These genetic mutations, the scientists say, made the horses calmer and less likely to have back problems than earlier breeds. However, nascent domesticated horses had plenty of other problems to worry about, unfortunately. Like carrying soldiers into battle. Their more recent relatives have also had to star in TikTok videos, which is, of course, terrible in its own right.

The post Genetic Analysis Reveals Origin of All Domesticated Horses appeared first on Nerdist.