Saturday, September 17th, 2011
BRUNO WATERFIELD, - The Telegraph (U.K.)
Stephan: Reading this, I immediately began planning a trip to trace these ancient Roman routes. Click through to see the actual map.
THE NETHERLANDS — Routes are based on the Tabula Peutingeriana, a one of a kind chart, which shows an imperial Roman road network, or curses public’s, that stretches from Britain to the river Ganges that flows through India and Bangladesh.
The huge map, last updated in the third or fourth century, shows 2,760 towns with lists of distances and destinations on the Roman roads connecting them, all set out on a scroll of parchment almost 23 feet long.
The original version of the Roman route tables was prepared two thousand years ago under the direction of Marcus Agrippa, the statesman, general and son-in-law of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.
Placed on the Unesco World Heritage List in 2007, the tabula is kept in the collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna but cannot be viewed by the public.
René Voorburg, a Dutch historian, has used recent research, including by British academics, to bring the tabula back to life on a website, omnesviae.org.
‘Scientists have recently mapped all locations mentioned on the Tabula Peutingeriana,’ he said. ‘So I went and took a look which towns I would pass on a trip from A to B in the Roman Empire.’
According to the planner, a journey to […]
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Saturday, September 17th, 2011
DANIEL STOLTE, - University of Arizona
Stephan: It wasn't just Neanderthals that mixed with modern humans. Our ancient lineage is much more complex than anyone thought. In the past decade our family tree has acquired a number of new branches.
Anatomically modern humans interbred with more archaic hominin forms even before they migrated out of Africa, a UA-led team of researchers has found.
It is now widely accepted that anatomically modern humans of the species Homo sapiens originated in Africa and eventually spread throughout the world. Ancient DNA recovered from fossil Neanderthal bones suggests they interbred with more archaic hominin forms once they had left their evolutionary cradle for the cooler climates of Eurasia, but whether they exchanged genetic material with other, now extinct archaic hominin varieties in Africa remained unclear.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, a team led by Michael Hammer, an associate professor and research scientist with the UA’s Arizona Research Labs, provides evidence that anatomically modern humans were not so unique that they remained separate.
‘We found evidence for hybridization between modern humans and archaic forms in Africa. It looks like our lineage has always exchanged genes with their more morphologically diverged neighbors,’ said Hammer, who also holds appointments in the UA’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, the school of anthropology, the BIO5 Institute and the Arizona Cancer Center.
The team reports that contemporary African populations contain a small proportion […]
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Saturday, September 17th, 2011
Stephan: It seems almost every month another dark corner of our human past is brought into the light. It is a wonderful story, so much richer and intriguing than the pale Creationist story.
New descriptions of Australopithecus sediba fossils have added to debates about the species’ place in the human lineage. Five papers published today in Science describe the skull, pelvis, hands and feet of the ancient hominin unearthed three years ago in South Africa.
The papers reveal a curious mix of traits, some found in apes and earlier Australopithecus fossils, and others thought to be unique to Homo erectus–the tall, thin-boned hominin that emerged around 2 million years ago in eastern Africa and colonized Europe and Asia–and its descendants, including modern humans.
This mix of features has left palaeoanthropologists unsure of how A. sediba relates to other ancient human relatives. Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose team discovered A. sediba, proposes that A. sediba may have evolved into H. erectus, but many other researchers are sceptical of that claim.
Au-spicious beginnings
Berger’s 9-year-old son Matthew happened on the first A. sediba fossil in August 2008, while the two were exploring Malapa, a collapsed cave system not far from the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans sites, which have also yielded a wealth of ancient human remains. The fossil turned out to be a collar bone. The team went on to find […]
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Friday, September 16th, 2011
DANIEL STONE, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: One of the big lies of the Randian Right is that government cannot create jobs or foster innovation. It has been repeated so many times that like all big lies repeated often enough, it is now believed by a large percentage of the population. That belief does not make it any less of a lie, as the public statements of these mega CEOs and other business leaders make clear.
As Washington debates the country’s economic future, America’s top CEOs say the government needs to get serious about finding the next big idea in energy-by providing money for long-term research.
Bill Gates and several of his closest friends-CEOs and top executives from Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, and Kleiner Perkins-are in Washington discussing their latest uphill battle.
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Friday, September 16th, 2011
ALEX VEIGA, Real Estate Writer - The Associated Press
Stephan: The basis of middle class wealth is owning one's home. That dream continues to slip away. It's not in the news everyday as it once was, but the riptide of foreclosure is still washing across the land. Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations has effectively addressed the foreclosure trend.
LOS ANGELES — Banks have stepped up their actions against homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments, setting the stage for a fresh wave of foreclosures.
The number of U.S. homes that received an initial default notice — the first step in the foreclosure process — jumped 33 percent in August from July, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
The increase represents a nine-month high and the biggest monthly gain in four years. The spike signals banks are starting to take swifter action against homeowners, nearly a year after processing issues led to a sharp slowdown in foreclosures.
‘This is really the first time we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of new foreclosure actions,’ said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. ‘It’s still possible this is a blip, but I think it’s much more likely we’re seeing the beginning of a trend here.’
Foreclosure activity began to slow last fall after problems surfaced with the way many lenders were handling foreclosure paperwork, namely shoddy mortgage paperwork comprising several shortcuts known collectively as robo-signing.
Many of the nation’s largest banks reacted by temporarily ceasing all foreclosures, re-filing previously filed foreclosure cases and revisiting pending cases to prevent errors.
Other […]
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