Stone Age Mass Graves Reveal Green Sahara 305
iminplaya sends along a New Scientist article that begins: "One of the driest deserts in the world, the Saharan Tenere Desert, hosted at least two flourishing lakeside populations during the Stone Age, a discovery of the largest graveyard from the era reveals. The archaeological site in Niger [is] called Gobero... It had been used as a burial site by two very different populations during the millennia when the Sahara was lush... 'The first people who used the Gobero cemetery were Kiffian, hunter-gatherers who grew up to two meters tall,' says Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy and one of the scientists on the team. The large stature of the Kiffian suggests that food was plentiful during their time in Gobero, 10,000 to 8,000 years ago... All traces of the Kiffian vanish abruptly around 8,000 years ago, when the Sahara became very dry for a thousand years. When the rains returned, a different population, the Tenerians, who were of a shorter and more gracile build, based themselves at this site... 'The most amazing find so far is a grave with a female and two children hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead,' says Garcea." The research article is at PLoS One.
Question: Sapiens or ??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:spiritual beliefs? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Athiesm" only refers to disbelief in the Christian God - believe it or not, an Athiest can still be a very spiritual person.
Re:Question: Sapiens or ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:spiritual beliefs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Viewing people as entities that are meaningful after their death (and thus are buried as a rite or ritual and not simply as a sanitary measure) is spirituality.
The Sahara and the Old Kingdom (Score:5, Interesting)
This article [sciencemag.org] in Science Magazine indicates that the Sahara was fully formed by 2300 BCE
To me, the timing between that and the rise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (~ 2600 BCE) is too close to be coincidental. I think we will find that people migrated from sites such Gobero to the Nile, and that precipitated the formation of political organization in Egypt.
Re:spiritual beliefs? (Score:3, Interesting)
My first thought was human sacrifice. Buried alive.
Terraforming Earth (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:spiritual beliefs? (Score:2, Interesting)
(emphasis mine)
Now, it seems to me that, intentional irony or not, someone who claims to be an atheist and uses the term "god forbid" loses some credibility. Those two words actually diluted your previous, quite insightful argument.
Re:plug for paul sereno (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've ever worked with binary trees, file systems, or any other type of tree data structure, you're working with tree models, which cladistics is the study of. Phylogenetics is the study of how to take observations of things, markup meta data, and then organize those observations into tree structures. Think when you take a bunch of digital photographs, add meta data to the images when you upload them to your computer, and then try to figure out which pictures should be sorted into which directories. That's a phylogenetic process. Cladistics is figuring out which directories you should have in the first place, which ones should be the root directories, and so forth. ie. Should
And then there's all the stuff about evolution, and learning about natural selection and mutation and extinction and stuff. I won't get into that.
But it was actually pretty useful stuff, and I've been surprised at the number of places that knowledge has come in useful. Particularly in the areas of data analysis, structure, and storage.
full retard (Score:3, Interesting)
Paul is a Libertarian, and therefore, by definition, in a constant state of "full retard".
I used to be a Fascist, then I became a Republican, then I became a Libertarian, now I am a full-blown Anarchist. It is not that I have gone "full retard" as much as my respect for "authority" and the "rule of law" has been continually eroded over time as I have become more and more aware of the futility and idiocy of trying to "solve" problems with government "systems" and "institutions". Forgive my liberal use of quotes, I just don't even respect these ideas anymore.
As well intentioned as people like you and the majority of other people are, you simply fail grasp your own lack of power and knowledge. You like to imagine that if you had more power, you cold solve your problems. You imagine that we can devise a "system" that will solve our problems for us. But the reality is that you don't know shit about anything, and all you will do is make things worse.
All you can really do is try to solve your own problems in your own life and hope for the best. In the mean time, please leave everyone else alone.
Re:full retard (Score:2, Interesting)
The leader/follower relationship is an inherently dysfunctional one. The leader engages in it because he believes it will earn him the love of his follower or because he wants to feel powerful. The follower engages in it because he wants someone else to take responsibility for his problems or because he is too afraid to stand up to the leader.
The leader is never a perfect leader, though the follower demands perfection from him and will secretly work to undermine him once his trust has been violated. The follower is never a perfect follower although the leader will demand perfect submission from him.
"Most people are followers, a few are leaders."
Most people resent whatever role in this disgusting system they fill. They are neither leaders for followers, but they have been pigeon-holed into those positions.
"Not one society in all our history has ever functioned on libertarian or anarchist principles. Not one."
Well, maybe it's about time someone tried. "Systems" that encourage freedom continually outperform other "systems" and yet the people in them always chose to push them more toward totalitarianism because of their desire for security. Cynical people like yourself promote fear and mistrust, and sell totalitarianism as a solution. It is a false hope, and these "systems" always end up failing to deliver on their promises. I don't think we need a system at all.
Re:This what happened. (Score:2, Interesting)
man made CO2 accounts for just 2.8% of global sources. the GP's argument is still perfectly valid because even at just 2.8% gore still makes a killing convincing people that it's really important and gets government to buy into insane rebate schemes, paying him $$ per ton for credits. this is a man who has made a FORTUNE out of global warming, if he was a corporation you'd all be screaming blue murder yet since he's managed to brand himself as an eco crusader you all stand up and applaud him like so many sheep.
so your argument sir, is rubbish.
Re:spiritual beliefs? (Score:5, Interesting)
His argument was incomplete and not well presented. And yet, you still haven't given a reason. That probably means that you really haven't thought about it.
Most people don't kill because they've been told repeatedly that it is a very, very bad thing to do. Personally, I think most people fit here. It becomes a matter of faith, even if it isn't a matter of spirituality. They never stop to think about why killing is bad, they just know that it is. They know that it is because people keep telling them that it is. Faith in established culture, if nothing else.
Some people don't kill because of the legal consequences. These people need to be watched, because they will probably hurt someone at some point.
Some people don't kill because they don't want to live in that type of society. They equate people who kill as people who destroy the freedom or civilization that they enjoy (or want to enjoy). By this definition, they don't want to be a bad person.
And some people don't kill because they fear eternal damnation.
I'm sure there are other reasons. What's yours?
Re:Water = civilization (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not discussing what plant is better at making oxygen.
I'm discussing where most of our current oxygen comes from. Phytoplankton may or may not be less efficient than other plants at producing Oxygen. That fact is irrelevant, since the sheer volume of phytoplankton provides MORE than half (my bad, not "about half" like I said earlier) of the Oxygen that is produced on Earth.
References?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton [wikipedia.org]
Nasa's take on the stuff
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Phytoplankton/ [nasa.gov]
This one claims two-thirds of the photosynthesis on the planet occurs within them
http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/factsheets/phytoplankton.html [uri.edu]
As a side note...
What started as a desire to create an Algae that would be the perfect fish tank decoration (one that fish would not eat, one that would flourish in a wide variety of waters and conditions, one that would proliferate easily) has turned into one of the world's greatest threats. One that could extinguish us.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/519228.html [uchicago.edu]
In a nutshell, we made the stuff in Germany, it was studied at the Jacque Cousteau Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, and it got out... as it was first discovered in the Mediterranean under this very building. It is extraordinarily hard to kill, and it drives off all other sea life in any area where it grows. It drive off and suffocates other sea plant life, which drives off the little fish that eat that stuff, which drives off the larger fish that eat the small fish.
Go ahead. Search for Killer Algae. See what it has taken to eradicate the outbreak in a lagoon in Australia... and the outbreak in Southern California (I hear it is threatening the Florida coast in some spots). If we destroy the ocean's ecology, we are soon to follow. And apparently our desire for the perfect fish tank may be our downfall.
Also, it is possible to desalinate salt water, making it into fresh water. So sorry, I'm not with you that protecting our fresh water is more important. We've got to get on the ball and protect that which sustains our oxygen production, and ocean life. Else we die with lots of fresh water.
Re:spiritual beliefs? (Score:3, Interesting)
And when I looked at the photo, I was struck by how they appeared to have been just tossed into a grave together, with the mother possibly still alive (appears to be reaching for the child).
But I've dug graves and buried large dogs, so I have perhaps a different perspective on how a corpse falls into a hole than does someone who has never done such work.
Re:Fuck shit piss cunt (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, let's blame me instead of the utterly broken moderating system that protects the lazy and the corrupt.