Prehistory. Ancient/Medieval History.
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine. How the Chicken Conquered the World. The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C.
The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: “Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other.” The tale does not describe what happened to the loser, nor explain why the soldiers found this display of instinctive aggression inspirational rather than pointless and depressing. First Americans: were they Iberian, not Siberian? - life - 05 March 2012. DID some of the first American settlers come from Europe rather than across the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska, as most people believe?
The controversial theory is advanced in the book Across Atlantic Ice, launched last week in the US. Co-authors Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter, UK, and Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC claim that glaciers and ice floes spanned much of the north Atlantic Ocean during the last ice age. This bridge lasted at least 2000 years. Between 18,000 and 25,000 years ago, Bradley and Stanford think that Solutrean people from northern Spain and France developed an Inuit-like lifestyle on the ice, and eventually reached America.
"We're using an analogy with Inuit, who expanded all across the Arctic with technologies no more sophisticated than those we know the Solutreans had," says Bradley. American tools Solutrean-style tools were not invented by the Asian people thought to have been the first Americans. Recommended by.
Humans Tamed Fire by 1 Million Years Ago. Image: matthewvenn via Flickr The ability to control fire marked a major milestone in human evolution, helping our ancestors stay warm in the cold, enhance the nutritional value of their food and keep predators at bay, among other uses.
But exactly when humans mastered flame has proved difficult to establish. The oldest signs of fire in association with human activity date to around 1.5 million years ago, but because they come from open-air settings (as opposed to caves), the possibility exists that they represent wild fires instead of anthropogenic ones. Did Humans Invent Music? - Gary Marcus & Geoffrey Miller - Entertainment. Did Neanderthals sing?
Is there a "music gene"? Two scientists debate whether our capacity to make and enjoy songs comes from biological evolution or from the advent of civilization. Music is everywhere, but it remains an evolutionary enigma. In recent years, archaeologists have dug up prehistoric instruments, neuroscientists have uncovered brain areas that are involved in improvisation, and geneticists have identified genes that might help in the learning of music. Yet basic questions persist: Is music a deep biological adaptation in its own right, or is it a cultural invention based mostly on our other capacities for language, learning, and emotion?
Here, scientists Gary Marcus and Geoffrey Miller debate these issues. Gary Marcus: We both love music and think it's important in modern human life, but we have different views about how music came to be. Marcus: "Ancient" seems like a bit of stretch to me. Marcus: I think it's deeper than that. Miller: I think so. Neanderthals were ancient mariners - life - 29 February 2012. IT LOOKS like Neanderthals may have beaten modern humans to the seas.
Growing evidence suggests our extinct cousins criss-crossed the Mediterranean in boats from 100,000 years ago - though not everyone is convinced they weren't just good swimmers. Neanderthals lived around the Mediterranean from 300,000 years ago. Their distinctive "Mousterian" stone tools are found on the Greek mainland and, intriguingly, have also been found on the Greek islands of Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos.
That could be explained in two ways: either the islands weren't islands at the time, or our distant cousins crossed the water somehow. Now, George Ferentinos of the University of Patras in Greece says we can rule out the former. Ferentinos compiled data that showed sea levels were 120 metres lower 100,000 years ago, because water was locked up in Earth's larger ice caps. Ferentinos thinks Neanderthals had a seafaring culture for tens of thousands of years. New Scientist Not just a website! Oldest Cave Paintings May Be Creations of Neandertals, Not Modern Humans. Hand stencils in El Castillo cave are older than previously thought.
Image: courtesy of Pedro Saura In a cave in northwestern Spain called El Castillo, ancient artists decorated a stretch of limestone wall with dozens of depictions of human hands. They seem to have made the images by pressing a hand to the wall and then blowing red pigment on it, creating a sort of stencil. Hand stencils are a common motif in the cave paintings of Spain and France, and like all cave art, they have long been considered to be the work of anatomically modern humans like us.