Monthly Archives: June 2012

Seven Thousand Year Old African Dairy

ResearchBlogging.org

Pastoralism is the practice of keeping and herding animals such as cattle, goats and sheep, and using the products they produce, including meat, hide, bone, horn and of course, dairy. In the old days, armchair archaeologists thought that pastoralism would have been a phase of cultural adaptation following hunting and gathering and preceding horticulture (the growing of plant crops). Why did they think that? No really good reason, just a guess. However, over time evidence came along and ideas where altered and minds were changed and now it is generally thought that in Europe and West Asia horticulture cam along about 12,000 years ago and less (depending on where you are) and much later than that, pastoralism started to be practiced.

However, in Africa, things were different in two major ways. First, more so than Europe (though it happened there as well) we find mixed strategies going on side by side in Africa. This is true even today. Not only might we find foragers living near pastoral people living near tourist hotels, but people may move between these culturally and economically distinct lifestyles. N!xau, the actor who played the lead in “The Gods Must Be Crazy” was at the time the first movie was filmed living a forager living among one of the groups studied by anthropologists in the 1960s. I’ve heard that his father worked for pastoral farmers and a hotel, and the actor himself became a farmer after Gods II.

Historically we now think that pastoralism arose in many areas of Africa before horticulture. It is probably more complicated than that. The total number of relevant archaeological sties excavated in the entire region of the Sahara and Sub Saharan Africa (so, let’s not count the upper Nile and the Mediterranean coast because of the intensity of European based work there) is probably far less than the number of sites excavated in Israel, Lebanon Syria, the Sinai, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, yet these countries combined represent a tiny fraction of the land area of Africa. So, don’t be surprised if an agricultural hearth or two turn up in Africa predating the earliest pastoral manifestations. But at the moment, pastoralism is early in Africa and predated Horticulture.

But what about dairy specifically? There is a new study that shows that the use of milk in the Sahara emerges as early as 5,200 BC, which is quite early.

This work uses the occurrence of organic material found in pottery that can be extracted and characterized using gas chromatography-mass spectrommetry (C-MS) and chromotography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spec (CG-C-IRMS). Lipids, which are preserved for very long periods of time, can be characterized using these methods in ways that allow inference about their origins and the way they are processed.

Bottom line: Lipids are found in many pottery sample (a larger proportion than one usually finds) excavated from the Takarkori rock shelter located in the southwest Fezzan, Libyan Sahara. Early pottery has a range of lipids including non-domestic animals. However, lipids indicating the production of dairy products from cattle show up in the samples dated to the “Middle Pastoral” (5200-3800 bc).

From the paper:

Of the 29 animal fat residues selected for GC–C–IRMS analyses, 22 originate from Middle Pastoral levels, 3 from the Late Acacus, 2 from the Early Pastoral and the remaining 2 from the Late Pastoral period … The comparison of the ?13C values of the modern reference animal fats with those of the archaeological pottery residues from the Middle Pastoral period (approximately 5200–3800 BC) show that 50% of these plot within, or on the edge of, the isotopic ranges for dairy fats, with a further 33% falling within the range for ruminant adipose fats and the remainder corresponding to non-ruminant carcass fats … Notably, the residues originating from earlier periods do not contain dairy fats, and plot in the non-ruminant fat range, probably deriving from wild fauna found locally. The unambiguous conclusion is that the appearance of dairy fats in pottery correlates with the more abundant presence of cattle bones in the cave deposits, suggesting a full pastoral economy as the cattle were intensively exploited for their secondary products.

Our findings provide unequivocal evidence for extensive processing of dairy products in pottery vessels in the Libyan Sahara during the Middle Pastoral period (approximately 5200–3800 BC), confirming that milk played an important part in the diet of these prehistoric pastoral people.


Dunne, Julie, Evershed, Richard, Salque, Melanie, Cramp, Lucy, Bruni, Silvia, Ryan, Kathleen, Biagettti, Stefano, & di Lernia, Savino (2012). First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium bc Nature, 486, 390-394

Photo of cattle by angies

Is Michele Bachmann painting a target on President Obama?

Bill Prendergast makes the case:

President Obama “thinks he’s above the law,” he’s “ignoring the laws of the land,” he “threw the constitution out the window” (again)–and he is conducting “an autocratic reign.”
All of that’s nuts, entirely untrue, and unsupported by the facts. So you know the speaker must be Michele Bachmann.

When she says stuff like this, she’s putting a sniper bull’s eye on the back of a President–the President who’s already received the most death threats ever. By 2009, Obama was getting 30 death threats a day.

At the Minnesota Progressive Project

Wikipedia Wars

ResearchBlogging.orgThere is an item in PLoS ONE on one of my favorite topics: Wikipedea. This study examines the Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia

… we build up samples of controversial and peaceful articles and analyze the temporal characteristics of the activity in these samples. On short time scales, we show that there is a clear correspondence between conflict and burstiness of activity patterns, and that memory effects play an important role in controversies. On long time scales, we identify three distinct developmental patterns for the overall behavior of the articles. We are able to distinguish cases eventually leading to consensus from those cases where a compromise is far from achievable. Finally, we analyze discussion networks and conclude that edit wars are mainly fought by few editors only.

Sounds like trolls to me.

This is one of more interesting graphs produced by Science (the practice, not te magazine) to date this year:

Figure 4 from the article: Temporal Edit Patterns of Lady Gaga and Homosexuality. The horizontal axis is time, each vertical line represents a single edit. Despite the large differences in average time intervals between successive edits, the bursty editing pattern is common to both cases. Figure from OpenAccess Article at PLoS ONE.

Bottom line: Conflict and “editorial wars” are actually fairly uncommon, but those uncommon cases consume a large amount of editorial resource. The research shows that consensus is usually reached in a short amount of time (but the story is more complex … see the origination article for details).

What the article does NOT address is the quality of the article when the consensus is reached. I do not personally regard “consensus” as the ideal objective.


Yasseri, T., Sumi, R, Rung, A, Kornai, A, & Kertész, J (2102). Dynamics of conflicts in Wikipedia PLoS ONE, 7 (6) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0038869

Is science on the verge of curing retinal degenerative disease?

We can’t say how long the ‘verge’ is. Certainly years. But is it years-years or decades-years? Quite possibly sooner than many might have guessed just a few years ago. I like to be cautious about predicting breakthroughs that have not happened yet, but the results reported a few days ago at a major conference seem to have solved or significantly advanced solving some of the key problems in using stem cells to grown eye tissue.

There had been a lot of promising news over the last few years, and one of the most astonishing finds was reported from Japan just a few days ago at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Yokohama, Japan. Research Yoskiki Sasai has produced a proto eye from stem cells. This is different than previous stem cell results in three very important ways:

1) This is a three dimensional structure, mirroring normal eye structure, unlike earlier stem cell work which has produced a much less useful two dimensional structure;

2) The lab-grown biological structure is anatomically complete having both rods and cones in proto-form. Previous work only produced usable rods. This structure would, if it worked, produce an “eye” or a “retina” (or some transplantable thing) that would see color and see well.

3) Stem cell produced products seem to have latent stem cells embedded in them, often, which is one of the risk factors for cancer as an unintended side effect. According to the report provided a few days ago, this method should not have that problem.

Also of interest, the researchers have developed a way of packaging the grown retinal tissue for shipment and storage.

We should be impressed and we should be thankful that the Japanese have continued to fund and carry out research that was illegal in the US for so long. Had this work been funded at the levels that US based research tends to be funded, we’d probably have packaged up retina replacements ready to go in eye clinics by now. Depending on how politics works out in the US over the next few years, this produce will probably not be available here anyway. Retinal transplants will probably only be done overseas in countries without Republicans.

There is much more to the story than this, having to do with findings about how cells differentiate, which perhaps we can cover another time. Read all about it here in a reproduction of an article from Nature. The original report is cited below.

Main source: Cyranoski, David. 2012. Biologists grow human-eye precursor from stem cells: Achievement raises hopes for optic repair in the clinic. Nature. 15 June 2012.

See also: Restoring sight with wireless implants: A combination of video goggles and photovoltaic retinal implants could make vision restoration more practicable.

Music of the Birds. And more!

Music of the Birds by Lang Elliott is a classic book and CD combo well over 10 years old, that provided bird lovers with a chance to learn to identify and appreciate the songs of numerous species. Over the last decade or so many other CD-based bird song offerings have become available. More recently, Lang teamed up with Marie Read to produce an iBook (iAuthored) version of Music of the Birds which takes advantage of the iAuthored iBook format in many ways. This is my first review of an iAuthored book, and obviously the first one on this blog, so I want to use the opportunity to discuss what a iAuthored iBook does. Continue reading Music of the Birds. And more!

Maggie Koerth Baker, A writer’s writer on “The World’s Shittiest Secret Society”

Maggie Koerth Baker, whom I am so very happy to know and count as a friend and sort of neighbor, has written an essay that is clearly one of the the most important and powerful essays regarding the topics of miscarriage abortion that you will ever read.

Someone said the other day somewhere out there in the intertubual space, quoting someone, that “You know you’re a writer when you suffer a painful injury and think, ‘great, now I can write about pain from personal experience.'” At this very moment, the ink is still wet on Maggie’s essay which is meant to do exactly that, to discuss miscarriage and abortion and many of the things that go along with these things from a very personal perspective.

Holy crap, Maggie. I want to see you soon and give you a hug or something.

Everybody, give yourself a few minutes and click here.

Creationism News

Cringing in Kansas

The renewed complaints of a few members of the Kansas state board of education about evolution is making Kansans cringe, according to the editorial board of the Lawrence Journal-World (June 15, 2012). As NCSE previously reported, when the board heard a presentation about the current status of the Next Generation Science Standards on June 12, 2012, Ken Willard, a member of the board, distributed a letter arguing that the draft standards ” ignore evidence against evolution, don’t respect religious diversity, and promote secular humanism.”…

Read the rest here.

NCSE’s Newton on creationism and climate change denial

“What do creationists and climate change deniers have in common?” asks NCSE’s Steven Newton, writing in the May 2012 issue of the American Geoscience Institute’s magazine, Earth. “The answer to the riddle is that creationists and climate change deniers have a lot in common — most especially..

Read the rest here

The Rocks Don't Lie (geology and flood myths)

The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood by David Montgomery is new book on the Noachian flood. It is by a real life geologist and is not a creationist book. Might be a good gift for your annoying creationist relative.

Here is a write-up from the publisher:

In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating the world’s flood stories and—drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists—discovered the counterintuitive role Noah’s Flood played in the development of both geology and creationism. Steno, the grandfather of geology, even invoked the Flood in laying geology’s founding principles based on his observations of northern Italian landscapes. Centuries later, the founders of modern creationism based their irrational view of a global flood on a perceptive critique of geology. With an explorer’s eye and a refreshing approach to both faith and science, Montgomery takes readers on a journey across landscapes and cultures. In the process we discover the illusive nature of truth, whether viewed through the lens of science or religion, and how it changed through history and continues changing, even today.

… and here is a FREE COPY of a chapter of the book courtesy of the National Center for Science Education.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, it is not even close to true that “every culture has a flood myth.” But there is a falshood pertaining to that question: See “Every Culture Has A …

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Photo of the geology of Red Rock Canyon, Nevada by the author.

Many Duluth Zoo Animals Dead In Floods

Duluth, a second tier Minnesota city on Lake Superior, has been flooding. This is a little unusual; heavy rains following a period of saturation have caused a local river that is usually not even heard of to grow very large and cause flooding that a lot of people haven’t seen before.

The polar bear and the seal were able to leave their enclosures in the high water. The bear was darted and is safely put away somewhere, the seal is said to have taken a stroll around the neighborhood. But the barn animals, apparently including cattle, ovicaprids, and donkey have all perished in the flood.

This raises an interesting point. The flooding risk to a given piece of land is pretty much known in the US for everywhere. It seems like it would be a fairly easy task to determine if animal enclosures or other areas in a zoo are at risk of being flooded like this, and then to redesign to allow for animals to escape to somewhere. One would think that his would be a responsibility automatically addressed by Zoo managers. I’m fairly sure the federal governing body for Zoos is, at least in part, the USDA. Perhaps they have an opinion on this.

In this particular case, it seems (subject to revision) that a particular culvert had become blocked with debris, and thus water backed up into the zoo. Eventually, the culvert was totally washed out which presumably would have allowed flood water to recede. It is possible to re-engineer culverts to avoid this sort of thing from happening. An assessment of the likelihood of flooding here may well have led to such a fix prior to the incident.

Should existing zoos be assessed for future flood risk?

Here’s a local news story.

Yes, the animals were contained within the property, but not necessarily alive. My sense is that he already knows the state of the animals but is letting the Zoo folks handle the news.

And yes, the “Highway 61” mentioned in the news is, indeed this one:


Photo of bear by clairity