Neanderthals in Europe were killed off by the advance of modern humans thousands of years earlier than previously believed, losing a competition for food and shelter, according to a scientific study published Wednesday. The research uses advances in radiocarbon dating to revise understanding of early humans, suggesting they colonized Europe more rapidly and coexisted for a much shorter period with genetic ancestors. Paul Mellars, professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge and author of the study, said Neanderthals – the species of the Homo genus that lived in Europe and western Asia from around 230,000 years ago to around 29,000 years ago – succumbed much more readily to competition. ‘The two sides were competing for the same territories, the same animals and fuel supplies and occupying the same cave spaces. With that kind of competition, the Neanderthals were always going to come out as the losers,’ said Mellars, whose paper was published in the journal Nature. Modern humans – those anatomically the same as people today – were also better equipped to deal with a 6 degree Celsius (11 Fahrenheit) fall in temperatures around 40,000 years ago. ‘Because they had better […]
LONDON — Gladiators may have fought and died to entertain others in the brutality of the Roman arena, but they appear to have abided by a strict code of conduct that avoided savage violence, forensic scientists say. Tests on the remains of 67 gladiators found in tombs at Ephesus in Turkey, a center of power for ancient Rome’s eastern empire, show they stuck to well-defined rules of combat and avoided gory free-for-alls. Injuries to the front of each skull suggested that each opponent used just one type of weapon per bout of face-to-face contact, two Austrian researchers report in a paper to be published in Forensic Science International. Savage violence and mutilation, typical of battlefields 2,000 years ago, were out of order. And the losers appear to have died quickly. Despite the fact that most gladiators wore helmets, 10 of the remains showed the fighters had died of squarish hammerlike blows to the side of the head, possibly the work of a backstage executioner who finished off wounded losers after the fight. The report confirms the picture given of battles in the arena by Roman artwork, which suggests gladiators were well-matched and followed rules enforced by […]
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions. As part of the $6.8 billion purchase, state-owned Dubai Ports World agreed to reveal records on demand about “foreign operational direction” of its business at U.S. ports, the documents said. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment. The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries. “They’re not lax but they’re not draconian,” said James Lewis, a former U.S. official who worked on such agreements. If officials had predicted the firestorm of criticism over the deal, Lewis said, “they might have made them sound harder.” The conditions involving the sale of London-based […]
Afghanistan has “huge problems” and NATO troops will be in the country for “years and years”, the commander of Canada’s forces in Afghanistan told a British newspaper. Major General Michel Gauthier, whose Canadian Expeditionary Force Command has taken a lead role in the hostile south of the country, made the warning to The Guardian daily. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is due to increase by about 6,000 troops in the coming months to number 16,000 to deploy in southern Afghanistan, where a US-led coalition of about 20,000 soldiers has been leading counter-insurgency operations. The incoming soldiers will be charged with reconstruction and fighting the drug trade in Helmand province, where remnants of the former Taliban regime and fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terror network and opium growers persist. The build-up of NATO troops in southern Afghanistan over the coming months is the alliance’s “biggest operational, and perhaps strategic, challenge in years, if not decades,” Gauthier said. He said southern Afghanistan was an “unpermissive environment” and the country was facing “huge problems”. Asked if NATO troops would be in Afghanistan for decades, he replied: “For years and years”. A bomb fixed […]
ST. LOUIS – A person entering the workforce today in America might face a much longer career than Mom and Dad. Life expectancy in the United States is now around 78 years. But if anti-aging therapies prove to work as well for humans as they have for worms, flies, and mice in laboratories, by the year 2050 people might routinely reach the ripe old age of 120. That could place a tremendous burden on the economy if people continue retiring at 65 or earlier. The retirement age might have to be boosted to 85 to prevent economic collapse, figures Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University. Do the math There are 285 million people in the United States, with the median age around 36. Every two people over the age of 65 depend on money garnered from the wages of 10 working people age 20 to 65. If current trends continue, by 2050 the population will be 368 million, the median age will be 43, and there will be 3.6 people over 65 per 10 workers, Tuljapurkar explained here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Those are […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
