189 replies to this topic

[PainBrush]

I recall reading an article some time back , but don't remember exactly where - they stated that spongiform Encephalitis , or KjD & other diseases if it actually is 'others' that cause similar damage - in some study done in the past hundred years ( it's so gruesome -it may have been that long ago ) - it was reported that in something like 20 percent of patients who died insane in institutions & were autopsied there was that spongiform condition of the brain with all kinds of holes in them . Whenever it was -it had to be before the connections to S.E. or K.J.D. to those symtoms was common knowledge - but that's something to think about , it implies there's a lot more people walking around with Mad-Cow than we might realise ! That one link above mentioned that possibly 'all' of England & 'most' of Europe may have been exposed to some extent , scary stuff ! I remember first reading about K.J.D. in the mid-'80's in some weighlifting/bodybuilding articles - that was the first few years when bodybuilders were experimenting with 'roids & growth hormone . One bodybuilder got Kreutsfeld & died along with all those other folks who used H.G.H. -it was still manufactured from the pituitaries of human corpses then .After that epidemic -they synthesized it , now they grow the Growth Hormone in toxic poisonous bacteria ( I believe it's an E. Coli germ) - & isolate it from there - so it has an additional weird chain of amino-acid sequence that doesn't occur in any natural form of Growth Hormone of any animal known in the world . A similar Recombinant bovine-growth hormone is getting pumped into some beef-cattle by the gallons - & then also into 'us' ( you are what you eat) - who knows what kind of link that might have to mad-cow , with the extra chain of aminos/protein ?!? - We're all gonna go mad & die !! -Except for the vegetarians , now there's a weird-twist premise for a sci-fi book , the vegetarian Morlocks are killing off the meat-eater Eloi's with poisons in the meat so they can conquer the world ! eaagghh !

Edited by PAINBRUSH, 13 December 2006 - 03:37 AM.

[Xaltotun]

I suspect Cthulhu is behind all of this.

[Kortoso]

Blame the Scots:
Scots May Be Directly Descended from Neanderthal Man

FROM William Wallace to the goalposts at Wembley, Scots have a fearsome reputation for causing trouble.

Now, a team of scientists may have discovered the explanation-we inherited Neanderthal genes.

Experts in evolution from Oxford say the key lies in the red hair for which Celts are famous.

The team studied the origins of the gene which causes red hair and discovered it is older than the first Homo Sapien settlers to come to Europe from Africa around 30,000 years ago.

This strongly suggests the gene must have been present in Neanderthal man, who was living in Europe long before the arrival of Homo Sapiens. The Oxford team says this points to interbreeding between Neanderthals and the new settlers, an idea which has previously been dismissed. It was originally believed that Homo Sapiens, because they were more sophisticated, simply drove out the Neanderthals to the point where they became extinct. The conclusion the team draws is that the red hair, freckles and pale skin which characterise Scots are most likely the genetic legacy of a long-dead species, known for being hairy and having prominent brows and receding foreheads. Around 10% of Scots are redheads, while an additional 40% of the population with other hair colourings carry the gene responsible for red hair.

Dr Rosalind Harding, of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, calculated the age of the ginger version of the gene, known as the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R), by using a complex model that looked at its mutation rate.

She found that the gene was present 100,000 years ago-at least 70,000 years before Homo Sapiens' migration into Europe from Africa. Harding maintains that the gene could not have originated in the sweltering heat of Africa, because natural selection would not have allowed the survival of a trait that predisposes humans to skin cancer.

Studies have revealed that carriers of the gene are five times more sensitive to ultraviolet light than others and therefore far more likely to contract skin cancer. Given that the gene is so much older than the earliest anthropological records of Stone Age Homo Sapiens, who were responsible for the spectacular cave paintings produced around 30,000 years ago, Harding believes that MC1R must have originated in the Neanderthals.

"The gene is certainly older than 50,000 years and it could be as old as 100,000 years," she said. "An explanation is that it comes from the Neanderthals-the other people that were here before modern man came out of Africa."

Harding believes that the prevalence of the ginger gene in so many of today's population provides evidence that early Homo sapiens bred with the Neanderthals and that many of today's humans are descended from unions between the two species.

So does that mean it is possible that Scottish redheads are directly descended from the Neanderthals? "It seems to be the logical conclusion to what I am saying," said Harding. "But I don't know if people are going to like me for saying that."

[budgie]

Interesting how that was written by an Englishman

My wifes a redhead (though nearer the brown end, her sisters are more ginger).. that explains her temper

The red hairs definately more prominent in the North of Scotland than any other area.. Its interesting to note thats also the last known area of the Picts too.. I wonder if theres a connection..

Talking of scientific discovery etc Im tempted to put some cash up for this - http://www.scotroots...dna-testing.htm - Its DNA testing to find out if your ancestry is Pictish, Irish or Norse roots.. a simple test and one that can be done by post too.
It is expensive at ?130 UK or $250 US..

Budgie

[PainBrush]

I was actually thinking about taking one of those D.N.A. tests a while back to see if I can find out where exactly my ancestors came from , the family trees pretty well established to about 1200 to 1300 years ago - but around the 8th century back in Norse-land the name disappears ( not like there were too many people who could read & write &/or put the family members names in the cover of the family Bible hahahah ) I was wanting to find out if my Norse family line was of typical Germanic viking or if there's an older bloodline from the ancient tribes who lived way up there before the Euro's migrated north to Scandinavia because my original family name is old tribal 'Ga De' ( waaay earlier than the typical Germanic Scandinavian family names ) I also wanted to see if I had any other American indian Iroquois tribal bloodlines beside the Cherokee I know of . But reading all that above & having Scot/Irish blood also - I think I'll wait a few months more to take the test for that one scientist to finish mapping out the neanderthal D.N.A. gene-code stuff & see if I'm part caveman too ! What if Howard had it right on the dot all along & the 'real' Picts were in fact a more primitive species of man ?! - Kooky stuff .

[Ironhand]

Skull suggests human-Neanderthal link
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A skull found in a cave in Romania includes features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, possibly suggesting that the two may have interbred thousands of years ago.

Neanderthals were replaced by early modern humans. Researchers have long debated whether the two groups mixed together, though most doubt it. The last evidence for Neanderthals dates from at least 24,000 years ago.

The skull bearing both older and modern characteristics is discussed in a paper by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. The report appears in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The skull was found in Pestera cu Oase ? the Cave with Bones ? in southwestern Romania, along with other human remains. Radiocarbon dating indicates it is at least 35,000 years old and may be more than 40,000 years old.

The researchers said the skull had the same proportions as a modern human head and lacked the large brow ridge commonly associated with Neanderthals. However, there were also features that are unusual in modern humans, such as frontal flattening, a fairly large bone behind the ear and exceptionally large upper molars, which are seen among Neanderthals and other early hominids.

"Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans," said co-author Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol, England.

It could reflect a case in which ancient traits reappear in a modern human, or it could indicate a mixture of populations, Zilhao said. Or it simply may be that science hasn't been able to study enough early modern people to understand their diversity.

Dr. Richard Potts of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History noted that the skull represents the earliest modern human ever found in Europe.

It's a big deal in that sense, he said, but the combination of characteristics don't necessarily indicate interbreeding between populations.

Overall there is no strong evidence for mixing of Neanderthal and modern human populations and "this doesn't add any," said Potts, who wasn't part of the research team.

None of the features cited as unusual in modern humans is exclusively Neanderthal, Potts said. Rather, they could be features passed down from earlier populations in Africa.

The field work that uncovered the skull was conducted in 2004 and 2005.

Meanwhile, a research team led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is trying to map the Neanderthal genome in hopes of better understanding any possible relationship to modern people.

Edited by Ironhand, 16 January 2007 - 08:16 AM.

[Ironhand]

Ancient chimps 'used stone tools'

The tools are 4,300 years old, say researchers
Chimpanzees in West Africa used stone tools to crack nuts 4,300 years ago.
The discovery represents the oldest evidence of tool use by our closest evolutionary relative.

The skill could have been inherited from a common ancestor of chimps and humans, the authors say, or learnt from humans by imitation.

Alternatively, humans and chimps may have developed tool use independently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal reports.

Chimpanzees were first observed using stone tools in the 19th century.

Julio Mercader and colleagues found stone tools at the Noulo site in Ivory Coast, the only known prehistoric chimpanzee settlement.

Nut crunch

The excavated stones showed the hallmarks of use as tools for smashing nuts when compared with ancient human or modern chimpanzee stone tools.

The use of stone tools may have a deep evolutionary origin
Also, several types of starch grains were found on the stones, which the researchers say is residue derived from cracking local nuts.

"Chimpanzee material culture has a long prehistory whose deep roots are only beginning to be uncovered," write the researchers in Proceedings.

The tools were found to be 4,300 years old, which, in human terms, corresponds to the later Stone Age, before the advent of agriculture in the area.

The age of the tools was determined by subjecting charcoal from the same ground layers to the technique of radiocarbon dating.

[Ironhand]

Archaeologists Find Signs of Early Chimps? Tool Use

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: February 13, 2007
In the rain forest of the Ivory Coast 4,300 years ago, chimpanzees gathered in groups and cracked nuts the best they could, the Stone Age way. Place the nut on a hard, flat rock. Take a heavy hammer rock, and pound the nut. The chimps must have feasted well and often there under the trees by a black-water river.

Stones excavated from a forest in the Ivory Coast, at 4,300 years old, have use patterns consistent with what is seen in modern chimp sites.
Archaeologists digging in Tai National Park in Ivory Coast reported yesterday the discovery of several sites where such nut-cracking chimps long ago left broken and discarded stones that were used as natural tools. Starch residues from nuts were lodged in crevices of the stones.

This was the earliest strong evidence of chimpanzee tool use, researchers say in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery team included scientists from Canada, Britain, Germany and the United States.

Chimps in the wild were first observed using stone tools in the early 19th century, and earlier remains of their material culture are scant. No artifacts have come to light showing that chimps have ever deliberately made stone tools by chipping, flaking and other methods, as prehuman species were doing as early as 2.6 million years ago.

The archaeologists, led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Canada, said the findings in Ivory Coast, in West Africa, indicated that these chimps developed the nut-cracking behavior without human influence. The stones are unlike any food-processing implements used by humans in the region today, and they have use and wear patterns consistent with what is seen in modern chimp sites. The sizes and shapes of the stones appear to be more suited to the large, strong hands of chimps than to human hands.

The remains at the sites, moreover, are virtually identical to what today?s tool-using chimps leave behind. The material was buried as much as three feet deep and mixed with charcoal from natural forest fires. Radiocarbon analysis of the charcoal determined the age of the site.

So if chimps 4,300 years ago were not mimicking humans, the research group suggested that their capacity for tool use could have been inherited from the last ancestor that the chimp and human lineages have in common. In interviews, Dr. Mercader and John W. K. Harris of Rutgers University, another team member, contended that the new findings gave substance to that hypothesis.

Other experts in early stone tool technology said the analysis of the chimpanzee tool-use sites appeared to be sound, but they had reservations about the interpretations linking the behavior to common ancestors.

Dr. Mercader said extreme care was taken to separate pieces of stone that had been modified through use as a nutcracker from those that are naturally fractured stones often found in streams. He said independent experts, including Dr. Harris, were called in for blind tests, and they scored about 95 percent correct in recognizing the stones the chimps had used as tools.

In any case, other archaeologists agreed with the research team?s concluding observation: ?That nut-cracking behavior in the Tai forest has been transmitted over the course of more than 200 generations, and that chimpanzee material culture has a long history whose deep roots are only beginning to be uncovered.?

[Ironhand]

Science/Nature

Friday, 24 May, 2002, 12:42 GMT 13:42 UK
Smart chimps get their reward

Chimps' use of tools has been recognised for some time

The way chimpanzees in West Africa use stone tools to crack open nuts for food and pass on the trick to their offspring has been revealed in an intriguing study published in the journal Science.

[The nut-cracking] is a very difficult task to do and it takes the chimpanzees about seven years to learn

Dr Melissa Panger
Researchers from Germany and the United States dug up piles of nutshells and stone flakes at a decades-old nut processing site in the Tai rainforest in Ivory Coast.

The chimps are using precise techniques to obtain their food that take years to learn, say the scientists.

The research team believes its work could tell us something about the way early human-like creatures used stone tools.

Big meal

The Ivory Coast chimps have special processing stations where they crack their nuts. These are stumps of hardwood trees.

The animals collect the panda nuts from up to 300 metres away and bring them to the wooden "anvils" to bash them with stone "hammers" to get at the nutritious flesh inside.

During the nut-smashing season, some chimps spend two or three hours a day opening as many as 100 panda nuts. A chimp can gain up to three thousand calories a day this way.

One of the lead researchers on the study was Melissa Panger, who told the BBC that nut-cracking was far from easy.

Old tools

"The chimps have to use fairly large stones, up to about 15 kilogrammes," the George Washington University scientist said. "It's a very difficult task to do and it takes the chimpanzees about seven years to learn.

"It's not like cracking into a snack nut or an almond; they have to hit the nut hard enough to crack it. But if they hit it too hard, it obliterates the nut and they can't get at the kernel.

"The chimps have to learn to control the force of the stone and hit the nut just right."

Dr Panger said the hammer stones had to be of a certain size and shape. "Some of these hammers have been used so many times that they have deep pits, suggesting that they have been used for many generations, over and over again."

Local behaviour

Mothers teach their children to bang on nuts and some young chimps have been seen hitting nuts with smaller stones, going through the motions learned from their parent.

Around some of the tree-stumps, Dr Panger and colleagues found huge piles of nutshells and stone flakes, indicating that the same site has been used to crack nuts for over a century.

Although it has been known for many years that chimps and other animals do use tools, this is the first time that researchers have observed such complex learned behaviour.

Moreover, it is behaviour not found in chimps in other parts of Africa.

Improved tools

During their expedition to the Tai Forest last year, the scientists recovered 479 stone pieces, chips of granite, laterite, feldspar and quartz broken from the hammers.

Another lead researcher, Dr Julio Mercader, also from George Washington University, said the study could help us better understand the behaviour of human-like species from several million years ago.

"We do not say that [old hominid] sites look like our chimp sites. What we do say is some of the flakes we found in some of the pieces of shatter resemble those found at some of the technologically simplest [hominid] sites in East Africa," he said.

"The implication is that older hominids practised nut-cracking link the chimps."

It is likely our ancestors learned how to improve on what nature provides by making tools of different shapes and sizes - a trick which chimps have yet to master.

[Ironhand]

"Watch closely, my daughter. This is Gorbog's Hammerstone of Munificent Nut-crunching. You can't trust other chimps. You can't trust baboons. And especially, you can't trust those weird hairless chimps that live on the other side of the rift. But this (brandishes rock), this you can trust!"

[PainBrush]

The age of the tools was determined by subjecting charcoal from the same ground layers to the technique of radiocarbon dating.

Archaeologists Find Signs of Early Chimps? Tool Use

The remains at the sites, moreover, are virtually identical to what today?s tool-using chimps leave behind. The material was buried as much as three feet deep and mixed with charcoal from natural forest fires. Radiocarbon analysis of the charcoal determined the age of the site.

No way !! It's a government cover-up , it's the Illuminati conspiracy , it's Templars - they just don't want to reveal to the general public that ancient Chimp people were in fact very adept barbecue chefs , then the Scientologists got here from the planet Zenu & lasered the Chimp-men back to their current primitive state so they could one day enslave all the Hollywood celebrities without the chimps interfereing . Ask Tom Cruise or Chef from South Park - they'll tell ya !!

The chimps only bang their nuts with rocks for a hobby , - when they're hungry they just throw a few shrimp on the barbie ! Just like Australians !

[Ironhand]

All that nut-banging has to be terribly painful. It just goes to show how dedicated the chimps are to maintaining their culture.

[Kortoso]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007 022201007.html

For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting

Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

[PainBrush]

As long as Charleton Hestons still alive we'll be safe !

[budgie]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007 022201007.html

For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting

Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

The BBC news ran an article on this too, fascinating stuff, huh..

Budgie

[Carlos]

This is too eerie! Anyone read David Brin's Uplift series? I think the chimps are probably ready for some uplifting. If these chimps can produce spears, imagine how clever the Sasquatch (if it exists) are going to turn out to be if they ever decide to contact us. Imagine a creature that 2-3 times the size of a large chimp with more brains. If they've been observing us for 20-40,000 years since modern man appeared in Americas, they watched us finish off such monsters as the short-faced bear, the mammoth and the North American Lion. They probably learned to avoid us like the plague very early on. I wonder if these particular chimps will start using spears against their competing non spear wielding chimps or perhaps some of their natural enemies like like leopards and pythons?

[Ironhand]

Read the article. These chimps may not even think of their spears as weapons. You take a little stick, and poke it into a termite mound, and you get termites on a stick. You take a big stick, and poke it in a tree, and you get bush baby on a stick. All I'm saying is, you have to be careful you're not reading more into the data than is actually there.

Edited by Ironhand, 25 February 2007 - 09:28 AM.

[Kortoso]

Read the article. These chimps may not even think of their spears as weapons. You take a little stick, and poke it into a termite mound, and you get termites on a stick. You take a big stick, and poke it in a tree, and you get bush baby on a stick. All I'm saying is, you have to be careful you're not reading more into the data than is actually there.

It's gotta start somewhere. Next step is anthropologists on a stick??!

[PainBrush]

You take a big stick, and poke it in a tree, and you get bush baby on a stick. All I'm saying is, you have to be careful you're not reading more into the data than is actually there.

[Ironhand]

The only thing that's missing is a picture of a couple of chimps eating corn dogs.

Edited by Ironhand, 26 February 2007 - 11:06 AM.