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Brains and the Daydream Factor?

By Catherine Caruso

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You are sitting quietly, and suddenly your brain tunes out the world and wanders to something else entirely — perhaps a recent experience, or an old memory. You just had a daydream.

Yet despite the ubiquity of this experience, what is happening in the brain while daydreaming is a question that has largely eluded neuroscientists.
Now, a study in mice, published Dec. 13 in Nature, has possibly brought a team led by researchers at Harvard Medical School one step closer to figuring it out (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06810-1).
The researchers tracked the activity of neurons in the visual cortex of the brains of mice while the animals remained in a quiet waking state. They found that occasionally these neurons fired in a pattern similar to one that occurred when a mouse looked at an actual image, suggesting that the mouse was thinking — or daydreaming — about the image. Moreover, the patterns of activity during a mouse’s first few daydreams of the day predicted how the brain’s response to the image would change over time.
The research provides tantalizing, if preliminary, evidence that daydreams can shape the brain’s future response to what it sees. This causal relationship needs to be confirmed in further research, the team cautioned, but the results offer an intriguing clue that daydreams during quiet waking may play a role in brain plasticity — the brain’s ability to remodel itself in response to new experiences.
“We wanted to know how this daydreaming process occurred on a neurobiological level, and whether these moments of quiet reflection could be important for learning and memory,” said lead author Nghia Nguyen, a PhD student in neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.
Scientists have spent considerable time studying how neurons replay past events to form memories and map the physical environment in the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped brain region that plays a key role in memory and spatial navigation.
By contrast, there has been little research on the replay of neurons in other brain regions, including the visual cortex. Such efforts would provide valuable insights about how visual memories are formed.
In the new study, the researchers repeatedly showed mice one of two images, each consisting of a different checkerboard pattern of gray and dappled black and white squares. Between images, the mice spent a minute looking at a gray screen. The team simultaneously recorded activity from around 7,000 neurons in the visual cortex.
The researchers found that when a mouse looked at an image, the neurons fired in a specific pattern, and the patterns were different enough to discern image one from image two. More important, when a mouse looked at the gray screen between images, the neurons sometimes fired in a similar, but not identical, pattern, as when the mouse looked at the image, a sign that it was daydreaming about the image. These daydreams occurred only when mice were relaxed, characterized by calm behavior and small pupils.
Unsurprisingly, mice daydreamed more about the most recent image — and they had more daydreams at the beginning of the day than at the end, when they had already seen each image dozens of times.
Throughout the day, and across days, the activity patterns seen when the mice looked at the images changed — what neuroscientists call “representational drift.” Yet this drift wasn’t random. Over time, the patterns associated with the images became even more different from each other, until each involved an almost entirely separate set of neurons. Notably, the pattern seen during a mouse’s first few daydreams about an image predicted what the pattern would become when the mouse looked at the image later.

AR #76

Deathbed Visitations

by Michael Tymn

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Cognitive strategies to augment body with robotic arm

Alain Herzog CC-BY-SA

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EPFL scientists show that breathing may be used to control a wearable extra robotic arm in healthy individuals, without hindering control of other parts of the body.

Neuroengineer Silvestro Micera develops advanced technological solutions to help people regain sensory and motor functions that have been lost due to traumatic events or neurological disorders. Until now, he had never before worked on enhancing the human body and cognition with the help of technology.
Now in a study published in Science Robotics, Micera and his team report on how diaphragm movement can be monitored for successful control of an extra arm, essentially augmenting a healthy individual with a third – robotic – arm.
“This study opens up new and exciting opportunities, showing that extra arms can be extensively controlled and that simultaneous control with both natural arms is possible,” says Micera, Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering at EPFL, and professor of Bioelectronics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.
The study is part of the Third-Arm project, previously funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (NCCR Robotics), that aims to provide a wearable robotic arm to assist in daily tasks or to help in search and rescue. Micera believes that exploring the cognitive limitations of third-arm control may actually provide gateways towards better understanding of the human brain.
Micera continues, “The main motivation of this third arm control is to understand the nervous system. If you challenge the brain to do something that is completely new, you can learn if the brain has the capacity to do it and if it’s possible to facilitate this learning. We can then transfer this knowledge to develop, for example, assistive devices for people with disabilities, or rehabilitation protocols after stroke.”

“We want to understand if our brains are hardwired to control what nature has given us, and we’ve shown that the human brain can adapt to coordinate new limbs in tandem with our biological ones,” explains Solaiman Shokur, co-PI of the study and EPFL Senior Scientist at the Neuro-X Institute. “It’s about acquiring new motor functions, enhancement beyond the existing functions of a given user, be it a healthy individual or a disabled one. From a nervous system perspective, it’s a continuum between rehabilitation and augmentation.”
To explore the cognitive constraints of augmentation, the researchers first built a virtual environment to test a healthy user’s capacity to control a virtual arm using movement of his or her diaphragm. They found that diaphragm control does not interfere with actions like controlling one’s physiological arms, one’s speech or gaze.
In this virtual reality setup, the user is equipped with a belt that measures diaphragm movement. Wearing a virtual reality headset, the user sees three arms: the right arm and hand, the left arm and hand, and a third arm between the two with a symmetric, six-fingered hand.
“We made this hand symmetric to avoid any bias towards either the left or the right hand,” explains Giulia Dominijanni, PhD student at EPFL’s Neuro-X Institute.
In the virtual environment, the user is then prompted to reach out with either the left hand, the right hand, or in the middle with the symmetric hand. In the real environment, the user holds onto an exoskeleton with both arms, which allows for control of the virtual left and right arms. Movement detected by the belt around the diaphragm is used for controlling the virtual middle, symmetric arm. The setup was tested on 61 healthy subjects in over 150 sessions.
“Diaphragm control of the third arm is actually very intuitive, with participants learning to control the extra limb very quickly,” explains Dominijanni. “Moreover, our control strategy is inherently independent from the biological limbs and we show that diaphragm control does not impact a user’s ability to speak coherently.”
The researchers also successfully tested diaphragm control with an actual robotic arm, a simplified one that consists of a rod that can be extended out, and back in. When the user contracts the diaphragm, the rod is extended out. In an experiment similar to the VR environment, the user is asked to reach and hover over target circles with her left or right hand, or with the robotic rod.
Besides the diaphragm, but not reported in the study, vestigial ear muscles have also been tested for feasibility in performing new tasks. In this approach, a user is equipped with ear sensors and trained to use fine ear muscle movement to control the displacement of a computer mouse.
“Users could potentially use these ear muscles to control an extra limb,” says Shokur, emphasizing that these alternative control strategies may help one day for the development of rehabilitation protocols for people with motor deficiencies.
Part of the third arm project, previous studies regarding the control of robotic arms have been focused on helping amputees. The latest Science Robotics study is a step beyond repairing the human body towards augmentation.
“Our next step is to explore the use of more complex robotic devices using our various control strategies, to perform real-life tasks, both inside and outside of the laboratory. Only then will we be able to grasp the real potential of this approach,” concludes Micera.

AR #84

Molecular Machines that Defy Darwin

by Casey Luskin

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Finnish team found out the composition of asteroid Phaethon

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The asteroid that causes the Geminid shooting star swarm has also puzzled researchers with its comet-like tail. The infrared spectrum of rare meteorites helped to determine the composition of the asteroid.

Postdoctoral Researcher Eric MacLennan holds in his hands a very rare type of meteorite, the so-called CY carbonaceous chondrite. Only six specimens of the same type are known. The sample is on loan from the Natural History Museum in London. (Image: Susan Heikkinen)
Asteroid Phaethon, which is five kilometers in diameter, has been puzzling researchers for a long time. A comet-like tail is visible for a few days when the asteroid passes closest to the Sun during its orbit.
However, the tails of comets are usually formed by vaporizing ice and carbon dioxide, which cannot explain this tail. The tail should be visible already at Jupiter’s distance from the Sun.
When the surface layer of an asteroid breaks up, the detached gravel and dust continue to travel in the same orbit and give birth to a cluster of shooting stars when it encounters the Earth. Phaethon causes the Geminid meteor shower, which also appears in the skies of Finland every year around mid-December. At least according to the prevailing hypothesis because that’s when the Earth crosses the asteroid’s path.
Until now, theories about what happens on Phaethon’s surface near the Sun have remained purely hypothetical. What comes off the asteroid? How? The answer to the riddle was found by understanding the composition of Phaethon.
A rare meteorite group consisting of six known meteorites
In a recent study published in the journal Nature Astronomy by researchers from the University of Helsinki, the infrared spectrum of Phaethon previously measured by NASA’s Spitzer space telescope is re-analyzed and compared to infrared spectra of meteorites measured in laboratories.
The researchers found that Phaethon’s spectrum corresponds exactly to a certain type of meteorite, the so-called CY carbonaceous chondrite. It is a very rare type of meteorite, of which only six specimens are known.
Asteroids can also be studied by retrieving samples from space, but meteorites can be studied without expensive space missions. Asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, the targets of recent JAXA and NASA sample-return missions, belong to CI and CM meteorites.
All three types of meteorites originate from the birth of the Solar System, and partially resemble each other, but only the CY group shows signs of drying and thermal decomposition due to recent heating.
All three groups show signs of a change that occurred during the early evolution of the Solar System, where water combines with other molecules to form phyllosilicate and carbonate minerals. However, CY-type meteorites differ from others due to their high iron sulfide content, which suggests their own origin.
Phaethon’s spectrum match the spectra of CY carbonaceous chondrites
Analysis of Phaethon’s infrared spectrum showed that the asteroid was composed of at least olivine, carbonates, iron sulfides, and oxide minerals. All of these minerals supported the connection to the CY meteorites, especially iron sulfide. The carbonates suggested changes in water content that fit the primitive composition, while the olivine is a product of thermal decomposition of phyllosilicates at extreme temperatures.
In the research, it was possible to show with thermal modeling what temperatures prevail on the surface of the asteroid and when certain minerals break down and release gases. When Phaethon passes close to the Sun, its surface temperature rises to about 800°C. The CY meteorite group fits this well. At similar temperatures, carbonates produce carbon dioxide, phyllosilicates release water vapor and sulfides sulfur gas.
According to the study, all the minerals identified on Phaethon appear to correspond to the minerals of CY-type meteorites. The only exceptions were the oxides portlandite and brucite, which were not detected in the meteorites. However, these minerals can form when carbonates are heated and destroyed in the presence of water vapor.
The tail and the meteor shower get an explanation
Asteroid composition and temperature explained the formation of gas near the Sun, but do they also explain the dust and gravel forming the Geminid meteors? Did the asteroid have enough pressure to lift dust and rock from the surface of the asteroid?
The researchers used experimental data from other studies in conjunction with their thermal models, and, based on them, it was estimated that when the asteroid passes closest to the Sun, gas is released from the mineral structure of the asteroid, which can cause the rock to break down. In addition, the pressure produces by carbon dioxide and water vapor is high enough to lift small dust particles from the surface of the asteroid.
“Sodium emission can explain the weak tail we observe near the Sun, and thermal decomposition can explain how dust and gravel are released from Phaethon,” says the study’s lead author, postdoctoral researcher Eric MacLennan from the University of Helsinki.
“It was great to see how each one of the discovered minerals seemed to fall into place and also explain the behavior of the asteroid,” sums up associate professor Mikael Granvik from the University of Helsinki.

AR #87

Russians Warn of Asteroid Hit in 2036

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Neanderthals Genes from ‘Cousins’ of Modern Humans Found

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Modern humans migrated to Eurasia 75,000 years ago, where they encountered and interbred with Neanderthals. A new study published in the journal Current Biology shows that at this time Neanderthals were already carrying human DNA from a much older encounter with modern humans. A new study shows that an ancient lineage of modern humans migrated to Eurasia over 250,000 years ago where they interbred with Neanderthals. Over time, these humans died out, leaving a population with predominantly Neanderthal ancestry ( https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01315-5 )

“We found this reflection of ancient interbreeding where genes flowed from ancient modern humans into Neanderthals,” says Alexander Platt, a senior research scientist in the Perelman School of Medicine and one of the study’s first authors. “This group of individuals left Africa between 250,000 and 270,000 years ago. They were sort of the cousins to all humans alive today, and they were much more like us than Neanderthals.”
Because most Neanderthal-human interbreeding is thought to have occurred in Eurasia, not in Africa, Neanderthal ancestry is expected to be limited in sub-Saharan Africa; however, a recent study made the puzzling observation that several sub-Saharan populations contain chunks of DNA that resemble Neanderthal DNA. The study was unable to determine how this Neanderthal-like DNA entered these populations, whether it originated from modern humans who had migrated from Africa, interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia, and then returned, or whether it was the result of an earlier encounter between Neanderthals and humans. Because the study relied on a limited number of genomes from the 1,000 Genomes Project, all of which share a relatively recent common ancestry in Central and Western Africa, it was also unclear whether Neanderthal-like DNA is widespread among sub-Saharan populations.
To better understand how widespread these Neanderthal-like DNA regions are across sub-Saharan Africa and to elucidate their origins, Tishkoff’s team leveraged a genetically diverse set of genomes of 180 individuals from 12 different populations in Cameroon, Botswana, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. For each genome, the researchers identified regions of Neanderthal-like DNA and looked for evidence of Neanderthal ancestry.
Then, they compared the modern human genomes to a genome belonging to a Neanderthal who lived approximately 120,000 years ago. For this comparison, the team developed a novel statistical method that allowed them to determine the origins of the Neanderthal-like DNA in these modern sub-Saharan populations, whether they were regions that Neanderthals inherited from modern humans or regions that modern humans inherited from Neanderthals and then brought back to Africa.
They found that all of the sub-Saharan populations contained Neanderthal-like DNA, indicating that this phenomenon is widespread. In most cases, this Neanderthal-like DNA originated from an ancient lineage of modern humans that passed their DNA on to Neanderthals when they migrated from Africa to Eurasia around 250,000 years ago. As a result of this modern human-Neanderthal interbreeding, approximately 6% of the Neanderthal genome was inherited from modern humans.
In some specific sub-Saharan populations, the researchers also found evidence of Neanderthal ancestry that was introduced to these populations when humans bearing Neanderthal genes migrated back into Africa. Neanderthal ancestry in these sub-Saharan populations ranged from 0 to 1.5%, and the highest levels were observed in the Amhara from Ethiopia and Fulani from Cameroon.
To try to understand whether carrying modern human DNA was helpful or harmful when introduced into the Neanderthal genome, the researchers also investigated where these chunks of modern human DNA were located. To try to understand whether carrying modern human DNA was helpful or harmful, the researchers also investigated where these chunks of modern human DNA were located within the Neanderthal genome. They found that most of the modern human DNA was in noncoding regions of the Neanderthal genome, indicating that modern human gene variants were being preferentially lost from coding sections of the genome, which suggests that having modern human genes in a Neanderthal background is detrimental to fitness. 

AR #81

The Fate of the Watchers

by Andrew Collins

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Pliosaur Carcass, the Oldest Sea Monster Yet Found

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The fossils of a 170-million-year-old ancient marine reptile from the Age of Dinosaurs have been identified as the oldest-known mega-predatory pliosaur – a group of ocean-dwelling reptiles closely related to the famous long-necked plesiosaurs. The findings are rare and add new knowledge to the evolution of plesiosaurs. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-43015-y).

The fossils were found 40 years ago in north-eastern France. An international team of palaeontologists have now analized them and identified them as a new pliosaur genus: Lorrainosaurus.
Pliosaurs were a type of plesiosaur with short necks and massive skulls. They appeared over 200 million years ago, but remained minor components of marine ecosystems until suddenly developing into enormous apex predators. The new study shows that this adaptive shift followed feeding niche differentiation and the global decline of other predatory marine reptiles over 170 million years ago.
Lorrainosaurus is the oldest large-bodied pliosaur represented by an associated skeleton. It had jaws over 1.3 m long with large conical teeth and a bulky ‘torpedo-shaped’ body propelled by four flipper-like limbs.
“Lorrainosaurus was one of the first truly huge pliosaurs. It gave rise to a dynasty of marine reptile mega-predators that ruled the oceans for around 80 million years,” explains Sven Sachs, a researcher at the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld, who led the study.
This giant reptile probably reached over 6 m from snout to tail, and lived during the early Middle Jurassic period. Intriguingly, very little is known about plesiosaurs from that time.
“Our identification of Lorrainosaurus as one of the earliest mega-predatory pliosaurs demonstrates that these creatures emerged immediately after a landmark restructuring of marine predator ecosystems across the Early-to-Middle Jurassic boundary, some 175 to 171 million years ago. This event profoundly affected many marine reptile groups and brought mega-predatory pliosaurids to dominance over ‘fish-like’ ichthyosaurs, ancient marine crocodile relatives, and other large-bodied predatory plesiosaurs”, adds Daniel Madzia from the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who co-led the study.
Pliosaurs were some of the most successful marine predators of their time. “Famous examples, such as Pliosaurus and Kronosaurus – some of the world’s largest pliosaurs – were absolutely enormous with body-lengths exceeding 10 m. They were ecological equivalents of today’s Killer whales and would have eaten a range of prey including squid-like cephalopods, large fish and other marine reptiles. These have all been found as preserved gut contents”, said senior co-author Benjamin Kear, Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Researcher in Palaeontology at The Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University.
The recovered bones and teeth of Lorrainosaurus represent remnants of what was once a complete skeleton that decomposed and was dispersed across the ancient sea floor by currents and scavengers.
“The remains were unearthed in 1983 from a road cutting near Metz in Lorraine, north-eastern France. Palaeontology enthusiasts from the Association minéralogique et paléontologique d’Hayange et des environs recognised the significance of their discovery and donated the fossils to the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg”, said co-author Ben Thuy, Curator at the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg.

AR #119

The Dragon Factor

by William B. Stoecker

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1918 Flu Pandemic Targeted the Poor After All

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New analysis of the remains of victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, contradicts the widespread belief the flu disproportionately impacted healthy young adults.

According to Konya News service, archaeologist Hasan Uguz, head of excavations of the Konya Museums Directorate, scientists have determined that “the local Christian people used the underground city in the 8th century to protect themselves from the raids that lasted for 150 years.” Yet while conventional archaeology may assign the city to the middle ages, the possibility that the structure may have been occupied during the Roman era, does little to explain just when the giant complex was actually designed and engineered. The builders were far more capable than Christian refugees of the Roman era are believed to be, and clearly had much greater resources at their disposal.
Elderly people who had lived in the area all their lives, says Uguz, played in the tunnels as children, and knew a very large underground city was nearby, but no one suspected just how enormous it was, and scientists did not believe the underground tunnels, corridors, and rooms could spread over such an extensive area. The human capacity and exact size of the complex is expected to become clear as the work progresses, but, for now, how people of Sarayini actually lived remains a mystery.
Since 2012, many astonishing subterranean sites in Turkey have drawn the attention of archaeologists from around the world. So far, over two hundred such cities have been reported, but most have not yet been adequately explored, and it seems certain that many more await discovery. Much of the recent digging has been guided by Semih Istanbulluoglu, an archaeologist from Ankara University. In December, 2015, Istanbulluoglu told Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News, that scientists believe, pending further laboratory work, at least some of the underground cities will date back to even before the Hittites in the second millennium BC.
To this day nobody really knows the true extent of the area’s underground cities, but they are certainly substantial. Celebrated Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, in a report for Atlantis Rising Magazine, (AR #95) described two of the cities, “Kaymakli consists of at least eight floors or underground stories (only four of which are currently accessible), each extending in a labyrinthine manner over a vast area. The city may have supported a population of 3,000 to 4,000 people plus farm animals and supplies, all housed underground. Derinkuyu, with an estimated twenty floors and extending an estimated 85 meters (280 feet) below the surface may have supported anywhere from a few thousand to 10,000 people plus their livestock and goods. And the underground cities may not have been entirely isolated from one another. Kaymakli and Derinkuyu are less than a dozen kilometers (seven and a half miles) from each other and there are reports of a tunnel that may connect them.”
Cappadocia’s astonishing underground cities, Schoch believes, though, in all probability, occupied many times since, were originally built around the end of the last ice age, twelve to thirteen thousand years ago.

AR #90

“The Paraffin Mold Experiments,”

by Michael E Tymn

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Another Enormous Underground City Unearthed in Turkey

Archaeologists Struggle to Explain Sarayini

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Covering at least 20,000 square meters, the newly discovered underground city of Sarayini, is one of the largest of its kind yet found in Central Anatolia. Included are large domestic areas with adjoining galleries, room-like living spaces, water wells, furnaces, workshops, chimneys, oil lamps for lighting, cellars, warehouses, ventilation, and many—as yet un-investigated—areas.

According to Konya News service, archaeologist Hasan Uguz, head of excavations of the Konya Museums Directorate, scientists have determined that “the local Christian people used the underground city in the 8th century to protect themselves from the raids that lasted for 150 years.” Yet while conventional archaeology may assign the city to the middle ages, the possibility that the structure may have been occupied during the Roman era, does little to explain just when the giant complex was actually designed and engineered. The builders were far more capable than Christian refugees of the Roman era are believed to be, and clearly had much greater resources at their disposal.
Elderly people who had lived in the area all their lives, says Uguz, played in the tunnels as children, and knew a very large underground city was nearby, but no one suspected just how enormous it was, and scientists did not believe the underground tunnels, corridors, and rooms could spread over such an extensive area. The human capacity and exact size of the complex is expected to become clear as the work progresses, but, for now, how people of Sarayini actually lived remains a mystery.
Since 2012, many astonishing subterranean sites in Turkey have drawn the attention of archaeologists from around the world. So far, over two hundred such cities have been reported, but most have not yet been adequately explored, and it seems certain that many more await discovery. Much of the recent digging has been guided by Semih Istanbulluoglu, an archaeologist from Ankara University. In December, 2015, Istanbulluoglu told Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News, that scientists believe, pending further laboratory work, at least some of the underground cities will date back to even before the Hittites in the second millennium BC.
To this day nobody really knows the true extent of the area’s underground cities, but they are certainly substantial. Celebrated Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, in a report for Atlantis Rising Magazine, (AR #95) described two of the cities, “Kaymakli consists of at least eight floors or underground stories (only four of which are currently accessible), each extending in a labyrinthine manner over a vast area. The city may have supported a population of 3,000 to 4,000 people plus farm animals and supplies, all housed underground. Derinkuyu, with an estimated twenty floors and extending an estimated 85 meters (280 feet) below the surface may have supported anywhere from a few thousand to 10,000 people plus their livestock and goods. And the underground cities may not have been entirely isolated from one another. Kaymakli and Derinkuyu are less than a dozen kilometers (seven and a half miles) from each other and there are reports of a tunnel that may connect them.”
Cappadocia’s astonishing underground cities, Schoch believes, though, in all probability, occupied many times since, were originally built around the end of the last ice age, twelve to thirteen thousand years ago.

AR #95

“The Ancient Subterranean Shelters of Cappadocia,”

by Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D.

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The Advanced Astronomy of Prehistoric Cave Art

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A ‘Lunar calendar’ found in the caves at Lascaux, France “may predate equivalent record-keeping systems by at least 10,000 years.” Hunter-gatherers from the ice age, it seems, had a primitive writing system which has now been uncovered by Ben Bacon, an amateur archaeologist, who concluded that the 20,000-year-old markings recorded the mating cycles of local animals.

Working with academic experts Bacon has published his research in a paper for the Cambridge Archaeological Journal (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0262407923000039?via%3Dihub).

Such special meaning in cave art symbols, however, has already been studied, and recently, as reported in Atlantis Rising Magazine. In 1996 at the Return to the Source conference at the University of Delaware, independent American researcher Frank Edge announced that he had identified certain celestial formations incorporated into cave drawings at Lascaux. Edge’s evidence including identification of the Pleiades and other stars in a series of black dots placed over the most prominent bull in the famed ‘Hall of the Bulls’ and was described by reporter Laura Lee in an article for Atlantis Rising in February of 1997. Then in 2000, the BBC also took notice of evidence for an ancient hidden language in the Lascaux designs, albeit without crediting the original discoverer.

Dr. David Whitehouse, BBC’s News Online science editor wrote at the time that “a prehistoric map of the night sky has been discovered on the walls of the famous painted caves at Lascaux in central France.” His story went on to describe the “map” thought to date back 16,500 years. Credited by the BBC with making the discovery, was Dr. Michael Rappenglueck, a German professor from the University of Munich, who argued that the map represented the three bright stars known as the summer triangle as well as the Pleiades. A similar pattern of stars was shown on a cave painting in Spain. The maps, said Rappenglueck show that our ancestors were more sophisticated than many believe, revealing that considerable scientific knowledge accompanied their legendary painting skill.

The significance of the art in the Lascaux caves may be greater than even the BBC suspects. More recent groundbreaking research on very ancient cave paintings in Lascaux and elsewhere, underscores the point that ancient people had a very advanced knowledge of astronomy.

A study produced in 2018 by researchers at the University of Edinburg, documents that artworks at sites across Europe, are not simply depictions of wild animals, as was previously supposed. Instead, analysis showed, the animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to represent dates and mark events such as comet strikes. They reveal that, perhaps as far back as 40,000 years ago, humans kept track of time using knowledge of how the position of the stars slowly changes over thousands of years. The findings suggest that long before the Greeks, ancient people understood a phenomenon known as the ‘precession of the equinoxes’. The ‘precession’ tracks in reverse order, the twelve 2150-year cycles, corresponding to the signs of the zodiac (i.e., the Age of Aquarius), also known as the “Great Year”.

The study was published in Athens Journal of History in 2018. “Early cave art shows,” said Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh, and the lead author, “that people had advanced knowledge of the night sky within the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly any different to us today.”

AR #101

Neanderthal & Civilization

by Martin Ruggles

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Miraculous “Dark Earth” Intentionally Created by Ancient Amazonians

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The Amazon river basin is known for its immense and lush tropical forests, so one might assume that the Amazon’s land is equally rich. In fact, the soils underlying the forested vegetation, particularly in the hilly uplands, are surprisingly infertile. Much of the Amazon’s soil is acidic and low in nutrients, making it notoriously difficult to farm.

But over the years, archaeologists have dug up mysteriously black and fertile patches of ancient soils in hundreds of sites across the Amazon. This “dark earth” has been found in and around human settlements dating back hundreds to thousands of years. And it has been a matter of some debate as to whether the super-rich soil was purposefully created or a coincidental byproduct of these ancient cultures.

Now, a study led by researchers at MIT, the University of Florida, and in Brazil aims to settle the debate over dark earth’s origins. The team has pieced together results from soil analyses, ethnographic observations, and interviews with modern Indigenous communities, to show that dark earth was intentionally produced by ancient Amazonians as a way to improve the soil and sustain large and complex societies.

“If you want to have large settlements, you need a nutritional base. But the soil in the Amazon is extensively leached of nutrients, and naturally poor for growing most crops,” says Taylor Perron, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. “We argue here that people played a role in creating dark earth, and intentionally modified the ancient environment to make it a better place for human populations.”

And as it turns out, dark earth contains huge amounts of stored carbon. As generations worked the soil, for instance by enriching it with scraps of food, charcoal, and waste, the earth accumulated the carbon-rich detritus and kept it locked up for hundreds to thousands of years. By purposely producing dark earth, then, early Amazonians may have also unintentionally created a powerful, carbon-sequestering soil.

“The ancient Amazonians put a lot of carbon in the soil, and a lot of that is still there today,” says co-author Samuel Goldberg, who performed the data analysis as a graduate student at MIT and is now an assistant professor at the University of Miami. “That’s exactly what we want for climate change mitigation efforts. Maybe we could adapt some of their indigenous strategies on a larger scale, to lock up carbon in soil, in ways that we now know would stay there for a long time.”

The study was just published in Science Advances. Other authors include former MIT postdoc and lead author Morgan Schmidt, anthropologist Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida, and collaborators from multiple institutions across Brazil. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh8499).

In their current study, the team synthesized observations and data that Schmidt, Heckenberger, and others had previously gathered, while working with Indigenous communities in the Amazon since the early 2000s,  with new data collected in 2018-19. The scientists focused their fieldwork in the Kuikuro Indigenous Territory in the Upper Xingu River basin in the southeastern Amazon. This region is home to modern Kuikuro villages as well as archaeological sites where the ancestors of the Kuikuro are thought to have lived. Over multiple visits to the region, Schmidt, then a graduate student at the University of Florida, was struck by the darker soil around some archaeological sites.
“When I saw this dark earth and how fertile it was, and started digging into what was known about it, I found it was a mysterious thing — no one really knew where it came from,” he says.

Schmidt and his colleagues began making observations of the modern Kuikuro’s practices of managing the soil. These practices include generating “middens” — piles of waste and food scraps, similar to compost heaps, that are maintained in certain locations around the center of a village. After some time, these waste piles decompose and mix with the soil to form a dark and fertile earth, that residents then use to plant crops. The researchers also observed that Kuikuro farmers spread organic waste and ash on farther fields, which also generates dark earth, where they can then grow more crops.

“We saw activities they did to modify the soil and increase the elements, like spreading ash on the ground, or spreading charcoal around the base of the tree, which were obviously intentional actions,” Schmidt says.
In addition to these observations, they also conducted interviews with villagers to document the Kuikuro’s beliefs and practices relating to dark earth. In some of these interviews, villagers referred to dark earth as “eegepe,” and described their daily practices in creating and cultivating the rich soil to improve its agricultural potential.

Based on these observations and interviews with the Kuikuro, it was clear that Indigenous communities today intentionally produce dark earth, through their practices to improve the soil.

AR #82

Ancient Cities in the Forest”

by William B. Stoecker

Posted on

AI Now Searching for Ancient Life on Mars and Other Planets

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Scientists have discovered a simple and reliable test for signs of past or present life on other planets — “the holy grail of astrobiology.”

In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers now report that, with 90% accuracy, their new artificial intelligence-based method distinguished modern and ancient biological samples from those of abiotic origin (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2307149120).

Most immediately, the new test could reveal the history of mysterious, ancient rocks on Earth, and possibly that of samples already collected by the Mars Curiosity rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. The latter tests could be conducted using an onboard analytical instrument nicknamed “SAM” (for Sample Analysis at Mars.
“We’ll need to tweak our method to match SAM’s protocols, but it’s possible that we already have data in hand to determine if there are molecules on Mars from an organic Martian biosphere.”

“The search for extraterrestrial life remains one of the most tantalizing endeavors in modern science,” says lead author Jim Cleaves of the Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC.

“The implications of this new research are many, but there are three big takeaways: First, at some deep level, biochemistry differs from abiotic organic chemistry; second, we can look at Mars and ancient Earth samples to tell if they were once alive; and third, it is likely this new method could distinguish alternative biospheres from those of Earth, with significant implications for future astrobiology missions.”

The innovative analytical method does not rely simply on identifying a specific molecule or group of compounds in a sample. Instead, the researchers demonstrated that AI can differentiate biotic from abiotic samples by detecting subtle differences within a sample’s molecular patterns as revealed by pyrolysis gas chromatography analysis (which separates and identifies a sample’s component parts), followed by mass spectrometry (which determines the molecular weights of those components).

Vast multidimensional data from the molecular analyses of 134 known abiotic or biotic carbon-rich samples were used to train AI to predict a new sample’s origin. With approximately 90% accuracy, AI successfully identified samples that had originated from:
• Living things, such as modern shells, teeth, bones, insects, leaves, rice, human hair, and cells preserved in fine-grained rock
• Remnants of ancient life altered by geological processing (e.g. coal, oil, amber, and carbon-rich fossils), or
• Samples with abiotic origins, such as pure laboratory chemicals (e.g., amino acids) and carbon-rich meteorites.
The authors add that until now the origins of many ancient carbon-bearing samples have been difficult to determine because collections of organic molecules, whether biotic or abiotic, tend to degrade over time.
Surprisingly, in spite of significant decay and alteration, the new analytical method detected signs of biology preserved in some instances over hundreds of millions of years.

AR #80

The Case for Life on Mars Gets Stronger