Posted on

Lucy Was a Stand-Up Girl

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ai-free.png

A Cambridge University researcher has digitally reconstructed the missing soft tissue of an early human ancestor—or hominin—for the first time, revealing a capability to stand as erect as we do today.

Dr Ashleigh Wiseman has 3D-modelled the leg and pelvis muscles of the hominin Australopithecus afarensis using scans of ‘Lucy’: the famous fossil specimen discovered in Ethiopia in the mid-1970s.

Australopithecus afarensis, it has been reported, was an early human species that lived in East Africa over three million years ago. Shorter than us, with an ape-like face and smaller brain, but able to walk on two legs, it adapted to both tree and savannah dwelling—helping the species survive for almost a million years.

Named for the Beatles classic ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, Lucy is one of the most complete examples to be unearthed of any type of Australopithecus—with 40% of her skeleton recovered.
Wiseman was able to use recently published open source data on the Lucy fossil to create a digital model of the 3.2 million-year-old hominin’s lower body muscle structure. The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230356).
That Lucy walked upright indicates that, in fact, she was no ape, and indeed was more like modern humans. The finding supports the position of those like Atlantis Rising columnist Michael Cremo that there have been modern humans on Earth for millions of years, much longer that is maintained by traditional Darwinian science. In his book Forbidden Archaeology Cremo uncovered extensive scientific evidence developed for over a century by many researchers which supports that view, but which has been swept aside by established academia.

Paleoanthropologists have agreed that Lucy was bipedal, but disagreed on how she walked. Some have argued that she moved in a crouching waddle, similar to chimpanzees.

Research in the last 20 years have seen a consensus begin to emerge for fully erect walking, and Wiseman’s work adds further weight to this. Lucy’s knee extensor muscles, and the leverage they would allow, confirm an ability to straighten the knee joints as much as a healthy person can today.

AR #112

Ethiopian Jawbone—First Human? Not Really

by Michael Cremo

Posted on

Ancient Fossil Spirals Were Different from Modern Ones

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ai-free.png

A 3D model of a 407-million-year-old plant fossil has overturned thinking on the evolution of leaves. The research has also led to fresh insights about spectacular patterns found in plants.

Leaf arrangements in the earliest plants differ from most modern plants, overturning a long-held theory regarding the origins of a famous mathematical pattern found in nature, research shows.


The findings indicate that the arrangement of leaves into distinctive spirals, that are common in nature today, were not common in the most ancient land plants that first populated the earth’s surface.


Instead, the ancient plants were found to have another type of spiral. This negates a long held theory about the evolution of plant leaf spirals, indicating that they evolved down two separate evolutionary paths.


Whether it is the vast swirl of a hurricane or the intricate spirals of the DNA double-helix, spirals are common in nature and most can be described by the famous mathematical series the Fibonacci sequence.


Named after the Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci, this sequence forms the basis of many of nature’s most efficient and stunning patterns.


Spirals are common in plants, with Fibonacci spirals making up over 90% of the spirals. Sunflower heads, pinecones, pineapples and succulent houseplants all include these distinctive spirals in their flower petals, leaves or seeds. 
Why Fibonacci spirals, also known as nature’s secret code, are so common in plants has perplexed scientists for centuries, but their evolutionary origin has been largely overlooked.


Based on their widespread distribution it has long been assumed that Fibonacci spirals were an ancient feature that evolved in the earliest land plants and became highly conserved in plants. 


However, an international team led by the University of Edinburgh has overthrown this theory with the discovery of non-Fibonacci spirals in a 407-million-year old plant fossil. 


Using digital reconstruction techniques the researchers produced the first 3D models of leafy shoots in the fossil clubmoss Asteroxylon mackiei – a member of the earliest group of leafy plants.


The exceptionally preserved fossil was found in the famous fossil site the Rhynie chert, a Scottish sedimentary deposit near the Aberdeenshire village of Rhynie.


The site contains evidence of some of the planet’s earliest ecosystems – when land plants first evolved and gradually started to cover the earth’s rocky surface making it habitable.


The findings revealed that leaves and reproductive structures in Asteroxylon mackiei, were most commonly arranged in non-Fibonacci spirals that are rare in plants today.


This transforms scientists understanding of Fibonacci spirals in land plants. It indicates that non-Fibonacci spirals were common in ancient clubmosses and that the evolution of leaf spirals diverged into two separate paths.
The leaves of ancient clubmosses had an entirely distinct evolutionary history to the other major groups of plants today such as ferns, conifers and flowering plants.


The team created the 3D model of Asteroxylon mackiei, which has been extinct for over 400 million years, by working with digital artist Matt Humpage, using digital rendering and 3D printing. 


The research was published in the journal Science (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg4014).

AR #100

Divine Proportions

by Patrick Marsolek

Posted on

Untouched Human Remains from 70,000 Years Ago

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/1087828937

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ai-free.png

Fifteen years of archaeology in the Tam Pa Ling cave in northeastern Laos has yielded a reliable chronology of early human occupation of the site, scientists report in the journal Nature Communications. Excavations through the layers of sediments and bones that gradually washed into the cave and were left untouched for tens of thousands of years reveals that humans lived in the area for at least 70,000 years – and likely even longer. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38715-y)

“When we first started excavating the cave, we never expected to find humans in that region,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign anthropology professor Laura Shackelford, who led the research with Fabrice Demeter, a professor of anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. “But beginning that first season when we started work there, we found our first modern humans. At the time, that made them the only early modern human fossils in the region.”
While the remains of modern Homo sapiens dating back roughly 197,000 years have been recovered in Israel, genetic studies suggest the main phase of early human migration out of Africa and into Asia occurred much later – around 50,000 years ago, Shackelford said. Her team’s earliest excavations in Tam Pa Ling found bone fragments from modern human remains dating to about 40,000 years ago. But as the excavations dug deeper, the age of sediments and animal remains found alongside human bones dated back much earlier.
In 2019, the team had excavated as far as they could in the cave, reaching bedrock about 23 feet (7 meters) below the surface. The excavations yielded dozens of animal bones and many fragments of human skeletal remains. The deepest human bone recovered – a partial tibia – was resting on bedrock near the bottom of the trench. Analyses of sediments taken not far above this bone indicate the soil was deposited there between 67,000 and 90,000 years ago.
The excavation of Tam Pa Ling cave involved digging a 23-foot (7-meter) trench from the surface of the cave to bedrock while painstakingly collecting and documenting the soils, animal bones and human bones discovered there.
“The entire section of the trench goes from about 30,000 years ago to 80,000 to 100,000 years ago,” Shackelford said. “Flood season after flood season, the sediments and bones washed into the cave and were deposited. They’ve been sitting there ever since.”

AR #110

Exploring Indonesia’s Bada Valley

by David Hatcher Childress

Posted on

Early Ancestors Buried Dead & Left Mysterious Engravings

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ai-free.png

New observations and excavations in South African caves have found that Homo naledi, an early human ancestor, intentionally buried their dead and made crosshatch engravings in the cave walls nearby, 100,000 years before humans, almost 300,000 years ago (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.01.543135v1).

Fossils of Homo naledi were first discovered in these caves 10 years ago. The new findings,, are now the earliest evidence of mortuary and meaning-making behaviors in human ancestors. Until now, scholars believed that the mental capacity behind complex cultural behaviors like burial and mark-making required a larger brain, like those of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. And yet, Homo naledi’s brain was only about one-third the size of humans’.

“It’s not how big your brain is, it’s how you use it and what it’s structured for,” says Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who has helped lead the Homo naledi team since the beginning.

Not only did H. naledi have a smaller brain, but the species also had a smaller frame than their human cousins. Based on the skeletons they have excavated, archaeologists estimate the average H. naledi individual weighed less than 90 pounds and stood under 5 feet tall. That would make navigating the narrow, cramped passageways of the Rising Star Cave System where their remains have been found easy for H. naledi. But for human archaeologists and researchers, the cave site is a challenging environment to study and excavate.

The chambers where the burials and crosshatch markings were found are in the Dinaledi subsystem of the cave, about 50 meters from the main entrance where archaeologists shimmy in. The team found two burial sites, one near the entrance to the subsystem and another further back in another chamber. While limestone does erode and crack over time, Hawks says that those natural patterns tend to be easily recognized by their complex “elephant skin” texture. Instead, the artificial engravings are a few bold lines on a mostly flat surface, made of multiple striations that appear to have been made with a tool.

For Hawks, the most convincing line in the panel occurs near a spot in the limestone that has a natural waved texture due to older algae fossils in the walls. The lines making up these parts of the engravings are irregular and appear to have been gone over again and again, as if their creator were persistently trying to etch the markings in as they were diverted by the bumpy texture on the wall.

“That’s not natural,” Hawks says. “That, to me, is really convincing that somebody was making these, and where the rock gets uneven, they had more difficulty controlling and keeping the mark in the same line.”

he Archaic period.

AR #131

Tiny Prehistoric Brains Make Big Trouble for Science

Posted on

Startling Discovery in Architecture of Notre Dame

The 2019 Notre Dame fire in Paris presented archaeologists with a unique opportunity to peer into the cathedral’s history.

Parts of the landmark that were concealed for centuries are now being picked apart and put back together, providing a window into the architectural innovations that once made this 32-meter-high (105 feet) building the tallest cathedral in its age, thanks to the iron that runs through the majestic structure’s veins.

Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of metal staples in various parts of the cathedral, some dating back to the early 1160s.

The findings suggest the extensive use of iron in masonry is not as modern as experts once assumed. Medieval builders working on Notre Dame were employing the architectural technique long before restoration works started in the 19th century.

“Notre Dame is now unquestionably the first known Gothic cathedral where iron was massively used to bind stones as a proper construction material,” archaeologists working in Paris conclude.

The team estimates that the iron fixtures found at Notre Dame were designed up to two decades before France’s Soisson cathedral was built and four decades before the Bourges cathedral came to be. Until now, both these gothic buildings were considered the first examples of systemic iron masonry.

The architect that was initially in charge of Notre Dame’s construction was clearly ahead of the game.
The study was published in PLOS One. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0280945

The Gothic cathedral architecture originated in France in the early twelfth century during the heyday of the Knights Templar. The Templars officially called the ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’ formed a knight’s order of priests who ostensibly protected the pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem.

Founded in 1118 by Hugo van Payens the order originally included nine brave knight-priests. The group eventually became one of the richest and most powerful in history. With the vast wealth, collected from financing the crusades, the templars were able to build Europe’s gothic cathedrals. With twin towers facing west, the cathedrals resemble the Temple of Solomon with its two pillars Jachin and Boaz standing in front. This explains why in many cases a statue of Solomon is placed at the West portal of the French cathedrals between the twin towers.

Much has been written about the mysteries of the French Gothic cathedrals and the sacred geometry employed in their architecture. One famous book, Le Mystère des Cathédrales was written in 1929 by Fulcanelli (1839 – 1953), the mysterious French alchemist. According to Fulcanelli a cathedral is an alchemical book written in stone.

AR #73

Secrets of the Cathedrals

by Jan Wicherink

Posted on

Breaking the Spirituality Taboo

Do you ever think about what happens when we die, whether we have a soul, or what the meaning of life is? New research is shedding light on the difficulties that may be facing you. Researchers a the University of Southern Denmark have conducted the world’s largest study on spiritual and existential needs, revealing a significant need among Danes. The results have just been published in the journal Lancet Regional Health, Europe (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(23)00020-0/fulltext).

In 2021, more than 100,000 Danes were invited to participate in the largest questionnaire survey ever conducted on spiritual and existential needs.  They were asked 20 questions, all related to these topics. Over 80 percent of those who responded reported experiencing at least one strong or very strong spiritual need in the past month. 106,000 Danes received the survey in their e-box. 26,678 participated (25.6%). Of the included participants, 19,507 (81.9%) reported at least one strong or very strong spiritual need in the past month. 

Danes do not talk much about their beliefs and personal values and have a low degree of religious practice. But as the study shows, Danes have the same needs for inner peace, meaning, faith, and hope as seen in more religious countries
According to Tobias Anker Stripp, a medical doctor and PhD student who is the lead author of the study, one of the study’s authors, “We live in a society where religion and spirituality are taboo and something we rarely talk about with each other. What we believe in, why we are here, what happens when we die. And we might be led to believe that it’s not important, or something we shouldn’t concern ourselves with in the healthcare system. But our study convincingly shows that these topics are important to Danes. 

Participants were asked about their need for finding inner peace and doing something for others, with these two topics being the most highly valued.

Experiencing inner peace and giving something of oneself to others are classic existential or spiritual needs, says Dr. Strip. And even though we don’t always verbalize it that way, most of us intuitively feel that this is important. About one-fifth of Danes have also reported a religious need—that is, a need directly related to belief in something greater. All of this we have now shown in numbers. 

AR #119

Wedding Taboos

by Dr. Rita Louise

Posted on

Evidence of Ancient Brain Surgery Found in the Middle East

‘Trephination’ (also known as ‘trepanation’) is an ancient medical practice that involves cutting a hole in the patient’s head. Ancient civilizations across the globe, from South America to Africa and beyond, performed the surgery. Now, thanks to recent excavations at the ancient city of Megiddo, Israel, there’s new evidence that one particular type of trephination dates back to at least the late Bronze Age.

Rachel Kalisher, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, led an analysis of the excavated remains of two upper-class brothers who lived in Megiddo around the 15th century B.C. She found that not long before one of the brothers died, he had undergone a specific type of cranial surgery now called angular notched trephination. The procedure involves cutting the scalp, using an instrument with a sharp beveled edge to carve four intersecting lines in the skull, and using leverage to make a square-shaped hole. Kalisher said the trephination is the earliest example of its kind found in the Ancient Near East. Her analysis, written in collaboration with scholars in New York, Austria and Israel, was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Whatever may be said of the technical prowess of Peru’s ancient Inca civilization, it is now clear that they achieved a mastery of brain surgery, unequaled even by the time of the American Civil War four centuries later. That was the conclusion of a study published in the journal Science. In fact, say the scientists, they were able to analyze evidence of ‘trephination’ from many ancient societies. The survival rate for the procedure could be determined from any healing observed in the subject skulls. If there was no healing, then it was clear the patient had not survived the operation. Commonly, said the study, the procedure was intended to relieve pressure from swelling following a head injury, but it may also have been intended for headaches or other conditions that were not evident in the skulls examined.

Dr. David Kushner of the University of Miami, and a team of experts looked at 59 skulls from Peru’s central highlands over a period of several centuries and determined that survival rates eventually reached over 90%, whereas, in almost half of head wounds treated with trepanation during the Civil War, the patient died. Once again, the advancement of ancient science has surprised modern science, but, ironically, the Incan culture, itself, also represents a decline from levels achieved much earlier by their own predecessors, now virtually unknown to us, except though their architecture. In Sacsayhuaman and many other Peruvian sites, the great refinements of a much older and more advanced culture, contrast sharply with the cruder practices of the more recent Inca.

Clearly, they were only inheritors of the older ruins, not their creators.

AR #131

Was Inca Science Ahead of its Time, or Not

Posted on

Olmec Temples Set Up for 260-day Calendar

Mesoamerican structures built thousands of years ago along Mexico’s gulf coast were aligned with a 260-day calendar, archaeologists have found. According to a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Ivan Šprajc, Takeshi Inomata and Anthony Aveni tell how aircraft-based LIDAR allowed them to see the alignment of the ancient structures. They also discuss how these structures could have been used by ancient cultures. (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq7675)

Prior research has shown that ancient people living in Mesoamerica had developed and used a 260-day calendar as far back as 300 to 200 B.C. The written evidence was found on plaster mural fragments. But since that discovery, researchers have suspected that such a calendar had been developed long before the people using it developed a means of writing it down. In the new research evidence was found of such a calendar made thousands of years earlier using large structures.

The work involved pointing LIDAR equipment at the ground from an airplane flying above Mexico’s gulf coast. The researchers observed the remains of 415 ceremonial complexes built by Olmec or Mayan people. Analysis of the structures showed that they were aligned in ways that noted the rising and setting of celestial bodies on certain days represented in a 260-day calendar. They noted that most of the angles of the complexes were aligned east to west, which would have corresponded to the rising and setting of celestial objects such as the sun. The structures have been dated to between 1100 B.C. and 250 A.D.

Ancient peoples belonging to the Olmec society lived in parts of Mesoamerica as far back as 3,500 years ago. Prior research has found that after the decline of the Olmec society, the Mayan culture developed. Inscriptions and documents made by the Mayans described a 260-day calendar.

Having such a calendar, the researchers say, would have allowed ancient people to plan rituals as well as to coordinate farming activities. They note also that some modern Maya communities still use the 260-day calendar.

AR #65

Who Were the Olmecs?

by David H. Childress

Posted on

Why was Roman concrete so durable?

An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for millennia.

The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.

Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.

Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic et al (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add1602).

For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete’s durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time.

Under closer examination, these ancient samples also contain small, distinctive, millimeter-scale bright white mineral features, which have been long recognized as a ubiquitous component of Roman concretes. These white chunks, often referred to as “lime clasts,” originate from lime, another key component of the ancient concrete mix. “Ever since I first began working with ancient Roman concrete, I’ve always been fascinated by these features,” says Masic. “These are not found in modern concrete formulations, so why are they present in these ancient materials?”

Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. “The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” says Masic. “If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story.”

Upon further characterization of these lime clasts, using high-resolution multiscale imaging and chemical mapping techniques pioneered in Masic’s research lab, the researchers gained new insights into the potential functionality of these lime clasts.

Historically, it had been assumed that when lime was incorporated into Roman concrete, it was first combined with water to form a highly reactive paste-like material, in a process known as slaking. But this process alone could not account for the presence of the lime clasts. Masic wondered: “Was it possible that the Romans might have actually directly used lime in its more reactive form, known as quicklime?”

Studying samples of this ancient concrete, he and his team determined that the white inclusions were, indeed, made out of various forms of calcium carbonate. And spectroscopic examination provided clues that these had been formed at extreme temperatures, as would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture. Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature.

“The benefits of hot mixing are twofold,” Masic says. “First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction.”

Pictures and captions:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add1602

https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106

AR #79

Romans in America

by Frank Joseph

Posted on

Enigma of the Long Skulls

Societies around the world portray distinct characteristics that define the language spoken, and the customs and traditions that are passed from generation to generation, each of these can provide insights into a cultural group. There are, however, a number of universal customs that are practiced on each continent around the globe. They include circumcision, death and burial rituals, and cranial deformation. These traditions originated in our remote past, their purpose and meaning seemingly lost to the sands of time.

It was once believed that head modifications developed in Egypt and then spread around the world. Researchers have concluded that this phenomenon was not isolated to one geographic area and then disseminated out into the surrounding areas. Instead, this bizarre hallmark of ancient societies sprang up around the world in different cultural groups independently. Many have come to believe it to be an inherent step in the evolution of a group’s culture.

Cranial deformation is a distinct and painful tradition. The objective of cranial deformation is to elongate the shape of the head. This procedure, once performed, cannot be reversed. More importantly, individuals who have had the procedure performed, unlike circumcision, cannot conceal it. It is a permanent visible marker that identifies not only a cultural group but also select individuals within that society. When a child is born, the infant’s head is fashioned or molded into a unique long and slender shape. The simplest method a caregiver employed was to put pressure on, or gently massage, the child’s head daily until the desired shape was achieved. The second method constrained the child’s head in a mechanical device, which, over time, would produce the desired elongated shape. Head modifications were always performed during infancy, when the cranial bones were still tender and pliable and the sutures between the cranial bones are unfixed. This allowed shaping or reshaping the head. But why would a mother or caregiver subject her child to such a painful and ongoing process?

Skulls displaying clear signs of cranial deformation surfaced in the archaeological record of the early Neolithic Era starting around 10,000 BCE. The practice of head modifications during the Neolithic era (prior to 5000 BCE) appears episodic. This may be due to the number of individuals whose heads were modified, or, could be tied to the limited number of remains that have been unearthed. Some of the earliest examples of elongated skulls discovered were unearthed in southeastern Australia in Coobool Creek and Kow Swamp. Remarkably, finds that date to about the same time were also found in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq. In the eastern highlands of Brazil, a skull was recovered from Confins Cave that dates back to 7566 BCE.

Starting around 5000 BCE, the tradition of skull modification appears to have expanded. This assumption is based upon the increased number of remains with elongated skulls recovered. Some researchers believe that the convention of cranial manipulation mushroomed as early hunter-gatherer societies began to coalesce into urban environments. Figurines with deformed crania also begin to appear in the archaeological record, further supporting the antiquity and distribution of this custom.

In the modern world, the tradition of cranial deformation is often associated with ancient indigenous cultures and not with advanced western civilizations. If it was practiced in the Western world, one might assume that it occurred sometime in our remote past

AR #103

Enigma of the Long Skulls