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Medical first: Elizabeth Blackwell

Meet the 19th-century woman who broke down a critical barrier.

Credit: Bettmann / Contributor

We’re just a few days away from the 200^th anniversary of Elizabeth Blackwell’s birth: she was born in Bristol, England, on 3 February 1821 – early in the reign of King George IV and a few months before Napoleon Bonaparte died. During her lifetime she changed the practice of medicine in the Western world.

In January 1849, she became the first woman to be awarded a medical degree in the United States. A decade later she became the first woman to have her name entered into the British General Medical Council’s medical register, which was formed under the 1858 Medical Act “to take charge of registration and medical education across the UK”.

Blackwell’s father, Samuel, owned a sugar-refining business in Bristol, but in 1832 his main mill was destroyed by fire and he moved the family to the United States, living first in New York before eventually settling in Ohio.

“A short biography of Elizabeth Blackwell”, published by the University of Bristol’s Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research, says the source of Blackwell’s determination to become a physician came to her “when a family friend became terminally ill and claimed she would have received more considerate treatment from a female doctor”.

Prevented from attending medical school because of her gender, Blackwell sought out doctors who were willing to tutor her, including anatomical studies in the private school of “Dr Allen”. In her 1895 autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, she says Dr Allen “enabled me to overcome the natural repulsion to these studies generally felt at the outset”, and that he gave her, “as my first lesson in practical anatomy, a demonstration of the human wrist”. 

“The beauty of the tendons and exquisite arrangements of this part of the body struck my artistic sense, and appealed to the sentiment of reverence with which this anatomical branch of study was ever afterwards invested in my mind.” 

A profile of Blackwell on the Changing the Face of Medicine website says she “applied to all the medical schools in New York and Philadelphia. She also applied to 12 more schools in the northeast states.”

After so many rejections, some of Blackwell’s friends suggested she go to France to study, or disguise herself as a man in order to break through the gender bias in the US. But she refused, explaining that: “It was to my mind a moral crusade on which I had entered, a course of justice and common sense, and it must be pursued in the light of day, and with a public sanction, in order to accomplish its end.”

Finally, in 1847, she was accepted by tiny Geneva Medical College (which today is known as Hobart and William Smith Colleges) in western New York state. Reportedly, the Geneva faculty thought that its all-male student cohort wouldn’t agree to a woman student, and allowed a vote on Blackwell’s admission: the result was “yes” – as a joke, apparently.

Although Blackwell says she “soon felt perfectly at home among my fellow students”, she later learned that in the town, “I had so shocked Geneva propriety that the theory was fully established either that I was a bad woman, whose designs would gradually become evident, or that, being insane, an outbreak of insanity would soon be apparent.”

In 1849 Blackwell was awarded her Doctor of Medicine degree.

Having reached her initial goal, she travelled to Europe and continued her studies in clinics in London and Paris. There she trained in midwifery and contracted the infectious eye disease purulent ophthalmia, which cost her the sight in her right eye and put an end to her hopes becoming of becoming “the first lady surgeon in the world”, as she says in her autobiography.

Returning to the US in 1851, Blackwell established a medical practice in New York, and in 1857 opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in collaboration with her sister Emily, who had also qualified as a doctor. In 1869 Blackwell returned home to Britain, where set up in private practice in 1870. 

She founded the National Health Society in 1871, which aimed to educate people about the benefits of hygiene and healthy lifestyles, with the credo that prevention is better than cure. The society tried to educate the public about health and ways people could help prevent disease spreading.

By 1890 Blackwell had stopped practising medicine. She was a deeply religious person, strongly conservative in her opinions, but continued to advocate for women’s rights for the remainder of her life.

“It has become clear to me that our medical profession has not yet fully realised the special and weighty responsibility which rests upon it to watch over the cradle of the race; to see that human beings are well-born, well-nourished, and well educated,” she wrote in her autobiography.

“The study of human nature by women as well as men commences that new and hopeful era of the intelligent co-operation of the sexes through which alone real progress can be attained and secured.”

Blackwell died on 31 May 1910 in Hastings, East Sussex.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/medical-first-elizabeth-blackwell/

 

Edited January 30, 2021 by CaaC (John)

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Israeli archaeologists find 'Biblical royal purple dye'

A purple dye dating back to the purported reign of the Biblical King David has been identified on a piece of fabric by Israeli archaeologists.

The dye is said to have been more valuable than gold and was associated with royalty.

It is the first time textile from that period with the colour has been found in the region.

Israel Antiquities Authority expert Dr Naama Sukenik called it a "very exciting and important discovery".

The fragment was unearthed during excavations at a site in Timna, about 220km (137 miles) south of Jerusalem.

"In antiquity, purple attire was associated with the nobility, with priests, and of course with royalty," said Dr Sukenik.

"The gorgeous shade of the purple, the fact that it does not fade, and the difficulty in producing the dye, which is found in minute quantities in the body of molluscs, all made it the most highly valued of the dyes, which often cost more than gold."

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Purple is mentioned in the Jewish and Christian Bibles, including in garments worn by King David, King Solomon and Jesus.

The material containing the dye was found during a dig at a site known as Slaves' Hill.

"The colour immediately attracted our attention, but we found it hard to believe that we had found true purple from such an ancient period," said Prof Erez Ben-Yosef from Tel Aviv University's Archaeology Department.

Until now, the colour had been found on mollusc shells and fragments of pottery, but not on dyed fabrics.

Carbon-dating of the fragment found it came from about 1,000 BC, around the time when King David is said to have reigned, followed by his son, Solomon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-55815820

 

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Dinosaurs take a hike

Drops in carbon dioxide levels may have allowed herbivorous dinosaurs to get to Greenland.

A new paper pinpoints the date that a large group of dinosaurs made it to Greenland, suggesting that climatic changes may have determined dinosaur migration patterns.

It was previously known that sauropodomorphs – a clade of herbivorous dinosaurs that later evolved into Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus, among others – first emerged in modern-day South America and then migrated north between 225 and 205 million years ago.

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Key research points

• There was previously a broad window for when sauropodomorphs arrived in the Northern Hemisphere
• New research narrows the date of arrival to 214 million years ago
• This timing coincides with a massive dip in CO₂ levels
• There may have been a change in climate that allowed them to move

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This research narrows that dinosaur migration estimate down to 214 million years ago. The work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers analysed the magnetism patterns in ancient rock layers at fossil sites all across the Americas and Europe, which let them identify when the dinosaurs first appeared in Greenland.

But this discovery gave rise to another mystery: why did it take so long for the dinosaurs to get to the Northern Hemisphere? The sauropodomorphs first appeared in Argentina and Brazil 230 million years ago, and Earth’s land at the time was still mostly connected up into the supercontinent Pangaea.

“In principle, the dinosaurs could have walked from almost one pole to the other,” says Dennis Kent, an author on the study. “There was no ocean in between. There were no big mountains. And yet it took 15 million years. It’s as if snails could have done it faster.”

But the new migration date does line up with another dramatic planetary change: a drop in carbon dioxide levels from 4,000 to 2,000 parts per million (or 10–5 times the amount of today’s levels). This would have caused a significant change in climate, which could have allowed the dinosaurs to move through previously uninhabitable areas.

“We know that with higher CO₂, the dry gets drier and the wet gets wetter,” says Kent. He thinks it’s plausible the milder levels opened up passageways through the hot and humid equatorial zone, although the timing may just be a coincidence.

The sauropodomorphs were well-suited to the warmer climate of Greenland at the time. “Once they arrived in Greenland, it looked like they settled in,” says Kent. “They hung around as a long fossil record after that.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/dinosaurs-take-a-hike/

 

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Percy Julian makes history

World-renowned African-American chemist battled racism to succeed.

February is Black History Month in the United States, set aside as a time to recognise achievements by African Americans and to learn about the roles they have played in the country’s history.

Percy Lavon Julian was “a pathbreaking synthetic chemist, a successful industrial research director, and a wealthy businessman”, according to an article the American Chemical Society (ACS) published in 1999 to commemorate the publication of “Percy L. Julian and the Synthesis of Physostigmine”. The ACS calls the booklet a“national historic chemical landmark”.

Julian was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on 11 April 1899. His father’s parents had been slaves.

In order to achieve all that he did in his education and employment, Julian had to overcome crushing racial bigotry. Even after earning recognition for his work – in 1950 he was named “Chicago’s Man of the Year” in a poll by the Sun‐Times newspaper – he received death threats. The house he’d bought in an all‐white suburban neighbourhood was firebombed by what the New York Times called “hoodlums”.

An article published by DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, where Julian received much of his secondary education and performed important research, describes how he graduated from the school in 1920 with a BA degree and as the highest-ranked student of his class.

Despite his academic success, however, he was not offered a place in a graduate program, so he took a position teaching chemistry at Fisk University, an all-Black school in Nashville, Tennessee.

After two years at Fisk, the DePauw article says, he won a fellowship to Harvard University, earning a master’s degree in 1923. But again, “despite his strong academic and research record, no job offer was forthcoming, other than from Black institutions. Julian taught at West Virginia State College and Howard University, where he was appointed head of the chemistry department.”

In 1929, stymied in his pursuit of doctoral studies in the US, he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study in Austria, at the University of Vienna, where he earned a doctorate in 1931.

In 1933 he returned to DePauw. The ACS article says that as a research fellow from 1932 to 1935, Julian, working with his colleague from Vienna, Josef Pikl, and several DePauw students, “produced a phenomenal number of high-quality research papers”.

In 1935, it says, he first synthesised the drug physostigmine, “previously only available from its natural source, the Calabar bean. His pioneering research led to the process that made physostigmine readily available for the treatment of glaucoma. It was the first of Julian’s lifetime of achievements in the chemical synthesis of commercially important natural products.”

The ACS says that “publication of this work established Julian’s reputation as a world-renowned chemist at the age of 36”.

Despite this success, Julian wasn’t offered a teaching position at DePauw and so he turned to industry. In 1936 he went to work for the Glidden Company, a prominent maker of paints and varnishes, as assistant director of research in the soya products division, where he spent 18 years and, according to the DePauw University article, “built a great research facility”.

Among the patents and successful products he produced for Glidden were a commercial process for isolating and preparing soya bean protein, which could be used to coat and size paper, to create cold-water paints and to size textiles. 

During World War II, he helped develop Aero-Foam, a hydrolyzate of isolated soy protein that was used by the US Navy to smother oil and gasoline fires on aircraft carriers.

He synthesised the female and male hormones progesterone and testosterone, by extracting sterols from soybean oil, and his research “made it possible to synthetically produce large quantities of cortisone for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. His synthesis of cortisone reduced the price from hundreds of dollars per drop for natural cortisone to a few cents per gram.”

In 1953 he left Glidden and founded Julian Laboratories. He later established the non-profit Julian Research Institute, where he worked until his death from liver cancer on 19 April 1975.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemistry/percy-julian-makes-history/

 

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Medieval tipples

New research finds evidence of winemaking in Islamic Sicily.

Chemical residue from grapes has been found inside medieval containers from Islamic Sicily, suggesting there was wine production on the island.

A study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, examined amphorae from the 9^th to 11^thcenturies and found evidence that the containers had been used to store wine. 

The researchers extracted and measured organic compounds from the interiors of the medieval jars. They also filled some replica pots with commercial wine and buried them for twelve months to let the wine degrade. They then compared the residue from the modern jars to the medieval containers.

Most of the organic compounds that appear in wine also appear in fresh fruit and berries, so it can be difficult to tell what the original source of the compounds was. The researchers solved this problem by comparing the ratio of different compounds in the jars – specifically, the ratio of tartaric acid to malic acid. The acid ratio in wine is very different from the ratio in fresh fruit.

They found that the acid ratios in the amphorae matched the ratios from the experimental, wine-containing jars. This means that the medieval amphorae very likely had wine in them.

“We had to develop some new chemical analysis techniques in order to determine that it was grape traces we were seeing and not some other type of fruit,” says Léa Drieu, a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of York, UK. “But the tell-tale organic residues found in the amphorae in Sicily, Palermo and elsewhere showed the content was almost certainly wine.”

Amphorae were traditionally used for transporting wine across the ancient world, but it’s unusual to see evidence of winemaking and trade in an Islamic community. Prior to Islamic occupation in the 9^th century, the wine was traded in Sicily but not widely produced. This research suggests the Islamic community began to produce and export wine, to further boost their agricultural trade.

“Alcohol did not – and still does not – play a major role in the cultural life of Islamic society, so we were very interested in the question of how this medieval community had thrived in a wine-dominated region,” says Martin Carver, a professor from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology.

“Not only did they thrive, but built a solid economic foundation that gave them a very promising future, with the wine industry one of the core elements of their success.”

There’s no indication that members of the community drank the wine they made. There may never be enough evidence to determine the beverage of choice for Islamic Sicily. Historical records from the period are limited, and alcohol degrades quickly once consumed, making it difficult to study on an archaeological scale. 

“The equation between the transportation of wine and the rise of Islam is likely to be far from simple,” says the paper.

Whether or not it was drunk in Sicily, the wine was certainly being bought and consumed elsewhere. The amphorae were also found in Sardinia and Pisa.

“Now that we have a quick and reliable test for grape products in ceramic containers, it will be interesting to investigate the deeper history, and even prehistory, of wine production and trade in the Mediterranean,” says Oliver Craig, a professor at the BioArCh centre where the analysis was done.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/culture/medieval-tipples/

 

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Pompeii of prehistoric plants

Excavating the ancestors of seed-bearing plants.

Nearly 300 million years ago, a volcanic eruption in northern China smothered a nearby swamp under half a metre of ash. Though cataclysmic for the plants living there, it was a boon for palaeontologists, who uncovered the exquisitely preserved specimens millions of years later in 2006.

Now, a new analysis of these spectacular fossils has yielded evolutionary insights, revealing that some of the preserved trees – called Noeggerathiales – are the ancestors of the seed-bearing plants that dominate the Earth today.

Noeggerathiales was a peat-forming order of plants that lived from 325 to 251 million years ago, before the rise of the dinosaurs and while the Earth’s lands were arranged into the supercontinent Pangea. Specimens were first discovered in the 1930s, but a dearth of well-preserved fossils prevented scientists from accurately placing them in the plant kingdom; some even considered the plants to be an evolutionary dead-end.

But not anymore.

“Thanks to this slice of life preserved in volcanic ash, we were able to reconstruct a new species of Noeggerathiales that finally settles the group’s affinity and evolutionary importance,” says co-author Jason Hilton, from the University of Birmingham, UK.

Hilton was part of an international research team led by palaeontologists at the University of Birmingham and the Nanjing Institute of Geology in China.

In their paper in the journal PNAS, the team describe how they studied a completeNoeggerathiales fossil preserved in a bed of volcanic ash 66 cm thick, formed 298 million years ago. This unique preservation – with ash covering a large expanse of forest and swamp in just a few days – provides a snapshot of a moment in time, just as the excavation of Pompeii provided a glimpse of ancient Roman life.

The team found that Noeggerathiales are more closely related to seed plants than to other fern groups, even though they appear fern-like, with complex cone-like structures evolved from modified leaves.

They also deduced that the ancestral lineage of seed plants diversified during the Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods (approximately 419–252 million years ago), and didn’t die out as previously thought.

The order of Noeggerathiales, however, went extinct around 251 million years ago when massive environmental changes swept across the globe during the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

“The fate of the Noeggerathiales is a stark reminder of what can happen when even very advanced life forms are faced with rapid environmental change,” Hilton notes.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/pompeii-of-prehistoric-plants/

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by CaaC (John)

[Tommy]

I didn't know where to post this. So there you go. Moving. 

[Viva la FCB+]

15 minutes ago, Tommy said:

I didn't know where to post this. So there you go. Moving. 

Powerful stuff. I couldnt imagine being in such a situation. I often wish I had the chance to talk to my Opa about the war as he was a flight instructor before he and my Oma fled. Extenuating circumstances I didnt get to meet them until later in life and I didnt have alot of time with him in particular. I always find this stuff fascinating anyways. 

[Devil-Dick Willie]

My Hungarian grandfather fucking loved the war and killing Russians. Hated the jewish. He never spoke of killing like this. He never said it was fun or sporting, he was more "it was our duty" type of guy. 

On the English/Australian side of the family, it was much the same. Killing Japs in Kokoda or Koreans in the Korean war was always a non philosophical discussion.  

[Spike]

1 hour ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

My Hungarian grandfather fucking loved the war and killing Russians. Hated the jewish. He never spoke of killing like this. He never said it was fun or sporting, he was more "it was our duty" type of guy. 

On the English/Australian side of the family, it was much the same. Killing Japs in Kokoda or Koreans in the Korean war was always a non philosophical discussion.  

my grandfather’s uncle was a decorated war hero, pow, and fucking wanker that ran a crooked bookie and cheated at the horses. he also bragged that when he was a pow and forced to cook for the japanese, he’d piss and shit in their food.

[Spike]

1 hour ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

My Hungarian grandfather fucking loved the war and killing Russians. Hated the jewish. He never spoke of killing like this. He never said it was fun or sporting, he was more "it was our duty" type of guy. 

On the English/Australian side of the family, it was much the same. Killing Japs in Kokoda or Koreans in the Korean war was always a non philosophical discussion.  

also ww1 was kind of pointless, the difference between between the two kids killing each other in ww1 and a hungarian murdering a commie invader is very different. commies burnt down villages, forced hungarians to learn a new language

 

everyone was an antisemite, throughout history. imagine people come into your little european village, speak a strange language as well as your own, practise an exclusive religion that is sort of like yours, go into the usury business (and other dodgy practises) because their social standing forbids them from most honest professions, and to top it off they betrayed and murdered your god. you wouldnt be inviting them to local beerhouse, would ya? not that it justifies it or anything like that but you are an ignorant villager whose greatest dilemma is potato food, or potato alcohol?. feel bad for the poor bastards, outsiders no matter where they go

Edited March 24, 2021 by Spike

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The giant mihirung Dromornis stirtoni. Credit: Artist's impression by Peter Trusler.

Prehistoric giant bird had a tiny brain

The largest flightless bird to ever have walked the Earth had a disproportionately small brain, according to new research.

The prehistoric birds of the clade Dromornithidae roamed north-west Queensland for millions of years before going extinct along with many other species of megafauna 50,000 years ago. The largest species, Dromornis stirtoni, stood up to three metres tall, weighed in at a whopping 600kg, and had a head about half a metre long.

But that huge skull only held a small brain, squeezed and flattened to fit, according to a new study published in the journal Diversity.

The researchers led by Flinders University examined the brain structures of four Dromornis species using a CT scanner. This allowed them to make internal models and show that there wasn’t much space in the skull for brain matter.

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Bronze Age stone slab discovered in France is the oldest map in Europe, say, archaeologists

FRAMES 1/4

A Bronze Age slab which was excavated in France in 1900 but forgotten for more than a century may be the oldest known map in Europe, archaeologists have said.

The intricately carved stone is thought to date from 2150-1600 BCE and uses 3D topographical carvings to map out the valley of the River Odet in western Brittany.

French and British researchers identified the slab, which had been stored in the cellar of a nearby castle, as the oldest cartographical representation of a known territory in Europe.

They said the 4,000-year-old piece, which measured 2.2m long, 1.53m wide and 16cm thick, was likely to be a symbol of the political power of a principality that existed in the early Bronze Age. Despite its age, the stone showed no sign of weathering, suggesting it was buried soon after its construction.

Experts from Bournemouth University, the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of Western Brittany examined the carved slab and found repeated circular, square and cup shapes and adjoining lines apparently depicting the river network as well as roads, settlements, fields and a burial mound.

The slab shows an area of about 21km by 30km and motifs that were interpreted as signifying a settlement, suggesting the centre of the territory lay at the confluence of three river springs – the Odet, the Isole, and the Stêr Laër.

Archaeologists leading the study, which is published in the French journal Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française, said the map was likely to have been made at a similar time to the Nebra sky disk found in Germany – the oldest known concrete depiction of the cosmos.

They said the two stone pieces highlighted the cartographic knowledge of prehistoric societies.

The so-called Saint-Bélec slab was re-used in a burial to form one of the walls of a stone cist – a small coffin-like box used to hold the bodies of the dead – towards the end of the early Bronze Age, around 1900-1640 BCE.

The slab was acquired by a private museum in 1900 before France’s Museum of National Antiquities bought it in 1924. It was stored in a chateau moat until the 1990s, and then in 2014, it was found in a cellar of the castle.

Researchers only discovered the significance of the carvings after conducting high-resolution 3D scans of the slab in 2017.

“This is probably the oldest map of a territory that has been identified,” Dr Clément Nicolas from Bournemouth University, one of the study's authors, told the BBC.

“There are several such maps carved in stone all over the world. Generally, they are just interpretations. But this is the first time a map has depicted an area on a specific scale.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/bronze-age-stone-slab-discovered-in-france-is-oldest-map-in-europe-say-archaeologists/ar-BB1foeCb?li=AAnZ9Ug#image=1

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by CaaC (John)

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The Great Dying was longer on land

Earth’s biggest mass extinction took ten times longer on land than in oceans.

New research published in the journal PNAS has found that, while life in the ocean rapidly disappeared during the Great Dying at the end-Permian mass extinction, the loss of life on land was a much more drawn-out affair.

The Earth has suffered five mass extinction events throughout its history, each permanently altering life’s evolutionary trajectory. But the most devastating was the end-Permian event, 252 million years ago.

Nicknamed the “Great Dying”, it is thought to have been triggered by catastrophic volcanic eruptions, resulting in dramatic environmental changes – including a runaway greenhouse effect and ocean acidification – that wiped out 95% of both land and ocean species.

A great deal of what scientists know about this event comes from the ancient oceans because the fossil record is much more abundant in marine environments: when an animal dies, its body is rapidly covered with sediment and thus is more likely to be preserved.

The marine fossil record tells us that when the end-Permian event hit, it took a mere 100,000 years for more than 85% of ocean species to disappear.

But the Great Dying on land followed a different pattern, says lead author Pia Viglietti, from Chicago’s Field Museum in the US: “We found that the marine extinction may actually be a punctuation to a longer, more drawn-out event on land.”

To reach this conclusion, Viglietti and colleagues from the US, UK and South Africa created a database from the fossils of nearly 600 four-legged vertebrate animals found in the region of South Africa’s Karoo Basin. The fossils spanned four million years, but the study separated them by age and grouped them into 300,000-year intervals. Applying statistics-based algorithms revealed the bigger picture of when certain species appeared or disappeared.

The results showed that a high rate of extinction persisted for around a million years on land – ten times longer than in the oceans.

One key species the team traced through time was the Lystrosaurus, a plant-eating mammal relative. It is what paelaeontologists call a “disaster taxon” – it proliferated while most other life disappeared.

Researchers had assumed the Lystrosaurus thrived only in the aftermath of the extinction, but this new research suggests otherwise.

“We see Lystrosaurus appearing before the extinction even got started – it was already abundant,” Viglietti explains.

The team hypothesise that Lystrosaurus was able to better adapt to the environmental changes that caused the extinction of other species.

Comparing the abundance of Lystrosaurus with the disappearance of other species helped the team quantify extinction rates and show that the entire event dragged out over a million years on land.

The reasons for this drawn-out extinction are still unclear but may be related to how changes to the Earth’s climate are cumulative over time, building up slowly until they hit a sudden point of collapse – analogous to the tipping points we face today.

“In today’s climate crisis, the oceans can absorb a lot of carbon dioxide or rise in temperature without people realising, and then all of a sudden you get sudden ecosystem breakdowns like ocean acidification and coral bleaching,” Viglietti explains.

The researchers argue that the same may have been true for the oceans, 252 million years ago.

Studying such events provides a powerful analogue to the mass extinction humans are driving today.

“The environmental changes that we are causing and the impacts we are having on animal and plant species are getting to the point where the scale is such that there isn’t really anything in human history that is comparable,” warns co-author Ken Angielczyk, curator of vertebrate paeleontology at the Field Museum.

“The fossil record can give us some idea of what massive biodiversity crises are like and how they proceed.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/the-great-dying-was-longer-on-land/

 

 

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How scientists are using cosmic radiation to peek inside the pyramids

Muon tomography is a non-invasive investigation technique made possible by particles travelling through space at almost the speed of light. And it’s revealing secrets buried deep inside ancient pyramids and volcanoes.

By 13 October 2016, Mehdi Tayoubi already knew his ScanPyramids project was on the right track. That was the day Tayoubi and his team met with a committee of Egyptologists to tell them about the small, previously unknown cavity they’d found in the north face of the Pyramid of Khufu, also known as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The ScanPyramids project had begun just 12 months earlier but was already yielding promising results.

Then later, in 2017, it struck gold: a huge void was detected deep within the 4,500-year-old pyramid. Although the void’s precise orientation was unknown, Tayoubi’s team was able to confirm that it was about 30 metres long and situated above the Grand Gallery – the corridor linking the Queen’s chamber to the chamber containing Pharaoh Khufu’s sarcophagus. It was the first major new structure discovered in the pyramid since the 19th Century.

“We don’t know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined. We don’t know if this void is made by one structure or several successive structures. What we are sure about is that this big void is there, that it is impressive, and that it was not expected – as far as I know – by any sort of theory,” said Tayoubi when the news broke in November 2017.

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Disappearing ancient Indonesian rock art

Cave weathering is accelerating in pace with climate change, study finds.

Some of the world’s earliest known cave art in Indonesia is “weathering at an alarming rate”, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Researchers suggest the disappearing Indonesian rock art is correlated with volatile weather patterns caused by anthropogenic climate change.

Local archaeologists and site keepers for the ancient artworks of Maros-Pangkep in Sulawesi, including intergenerational custodians, told the scientists that the rock art “is disappearing now faster than any other time in living memory,” says lead author Jillian Huntley from Griffith University, Australia.

The paintings are dated up to at least 44,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene era. Rivalling European cave art, the illustrations of hunting scenes and mystical beings are thought to be the oldest evidence of figurative art and artistic creativity on the planet.

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Bronze Age migrations changed the genomics and culture of ancient Italians

Pontic-Caspian Steppe culture and genes found in Italian burial sites.

Ancient DNA has told the story of how Bronze Age Italians interacted with people from Eastern Europe.

Many ancient humans around Eurasia migrated and mixed with people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a steppe-land located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, but until recently, the genetic component of ancient Italian Steppe-related ancestry was unexplored. 

In a paper published in Current Biology, researchers led by Tina Saupe of the Institute of Genomics at the University of Tartu, Estonia, showed that the two populations began sharing genes around 3,600 years ago in Central Italy.

This genetic admixture also happened at a similar time to when burial practises and kinship structures changed, suggesting the populations shared culture as well as genes.

The team analysed the DNA of individuals from archaeological sites from Northeastern and Central Italy dated to the Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age, and Bronze Age.

“We were able to generate the first genome-wide shotgun data of ancient Italians dated to the Bronze Age period and study the arrival of the Steppe-related ancestry component in the Italian Peninsula,” says Saupe.

The team found that the genetics of ancient individuals from the Italian Peninsula were more like Early Neolithic farmers in Eastern Europe than to farmers from Western Europe, despite the geographic divide.

“Because of the geographical distribution of the archaeological sites of published and newly generated genomes, we were able to date the arrival of the Steppe-related ancestry component to at least ~4,000 years ago in Northern Italy and ~3,600 years ago in Central Italy,” says co-author Luca Pagani at the University of Padova, Italy

“We did not find the component in individuals dated to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, but in individuals dated to the Early Bronze Age and increasing through time in the individuals dated to the Bronze Age.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/civilisations/bronze-age-migrations-changed-the-genomics-and-culture-of-ancient-italians/

 

[nudge+]

Thought this was cool... The oldest existing piece of literature.

 

 

 

[Stan]

I love when finds occur like this, even more when it's my home town 

 

 

 

[Eco]

Did anybody hear about this? Pretty crazy

Quote

The New Genealogical Tree of the Da Vinci Family for Leonardo’s DNA. Ancestors and descendants in direct male line down to the present XXI generation

Abstract

This research demonstrates in a documented manner the continuity in the direct male line, from father to son, of the Da Vinci family starting with Michele (XIV century) to fourteen living descendants through twenty-one generations and four different branches, which from the XV generation (Tommaso), in turn generate other line branches. Such results are eagerly awaited from an historical viewpoint, with the correction of the previous Da Vinci trees (especially Uzielli, 1872, and Smiraglia Scognamiglio, 1900) which reached down to and hinted at the XVI generation (with several errors and omissions), and an update on the living.
Like the surname, male heredity connects the history of registry records with biological history along separate lineages. Because of this, the present genealogy, which spans almost seven hundred years, can be used to verify, by means of the most innovative technologies of molecular biology, the unbroken transmission of the Y chromosome (through the living descendants and ancient tombs, even if with some small variations due to time) with a view to confirming the recovery of Leonardo’s Y marker. This will make available useful elements to scientifically explore the roots of his genius, to find information on his physical prowess and on his possibly precocious ageing, on his being left-handed and his health and possible hereditary sicknesses, and to explain certain peculiar sensory perceptions, like his extraordinary visual quality and synesthesia.

 

https://pontecorbolipress.com/journals/index.php/he/article/view/133

[nudge+]

Wasn't sure where to post this, but this is such a powerful monument...

[Azeem]

The earliest known international agreement, a piece treaty agreed between the Ancient Egyptians and the Hittites after the Battle of Kadesh. Kadesh is also the oldest record of a tactical battle with formations largely preserved. It was a war of superpowers of its time, 6,000+ Egyptian chariots were there. Most probably ended in a stalemate

After Kadesh the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II had a political problem since he had already made peace with his greatest enemy he could no longer sell the savior of Egypt tag to consolidate his power like even today politicians wag wars, create tensions to win elections. He solved this dilemma by using religion, proclaiming his divinity. As a living God who ought to be worshiped not as an oracle or something, this was an unprecedented but genius move that worked. He ruled for 66-67 years more than almost all Pharaohs.

[CaaC (John)+]

Ancient conch shells make music for the first time in 17,000 years.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/civillisations/conch-shell-tones/

 

Edited July 23, 2021 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)+]

[CaaC (John)+]

In ref, to @nudge post above, tried to quote but can't with a picture in so below is to do with the above.

Gilgamesh tablet: US authorities take ownership of artefact

 

A federal court has ordered that a rare ancient artefact, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, must be surrendered to authorities.

The 3,500-year-old tablet, from what is now Iraq, bears text from the Epic of Gilgamesh - one of the world's oldest works of literature.

Officials say it was illegally imported before being purchased by the Christian-owned brand Hobby Lobby.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57992957