Did humans wipe out the Pleistocene megafauna? This is a question that can be asked separately for each area of the world colonized by Homo sapiens. It is also a question that engenders sometimes heated debate. A new paper coming out in the Journal of Human Evolution concludes that many Pleistocene megafauna managed to go extinct by themselves, but that humans were not entirely uninvolved.
Tag Archives: Archaeology
Deep Sea Evidence of Major Volcanic Eruptions
Pumice is rock that is ejected from a volcano, and has so much gas trapped in it that it can float. So when a pumice-ejecting volcano (not all volcanoes produce pumice) goes off near a body of water, you can get a raft of rock floating around for quite some time. By and by, water replaces the gas within the rock and it sinks. Like a rock. So, you can get layers of pumice on the bed of lakes, seas and oceans. A forthcoming paper in Deep Sea Research I describes two such pumice deposits of “Drift Pumice” in the Indian Ocean. Continue reading Deep Sea Evidence of Major Volcanic Eruptions
National Geographic’s Top Ten Archaeology Stories of 2007
No, not here, this is not the National Geographic Blog. Here, at the National Geographic Blog…But wait, don’t go there yet, I want to make a quick comment… Continue reading National Geographic’s Top Ten Archaeology Stories of 2007
The Bahamas Yield Amazing Fossil Finds
Plant and animal fossils recently discovered from an island in the Bahamas tell a story of habitat change and human involvement in local extinction. Continue reading The Bahamas Yield Amazing Fossil Finds
Science News: Ancient Climate Change and Modern Macroevolution
I’m putting this bit of human biogeography under the “species coming and going” category:
Greenland DNA could hold key to migration mysteries: researchers from PhysOrg.com
Danish researchers are to sieve through human and skeletal remains on Greenland in a quest to explain an enduring enigma over the island’s settlement over thousands of years, one of the scientists said Tuesday.[…]
This is a very large change in diet over a very short period of time. I call Macro Evolution!
Study links success of invasive Argentine ants to diet shifts from PhysOrg.com
The ability of Argentine ants to change from carnivorous insect eaters to plant sap-loving creatures has helped these invasive social insects rapidly spread throughout coastal California, according to a new study, displacing many native insects and creating ant infestations familiar to most coastal residents.[…]
Neanderthal Childhood. Did it happen?
Every few years a paper comes out “explaining” short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano et al.
From the abstract:
1699 Captain Kidd Shipwreck Discovered
From Indiana University’s Press Room:
Resting in less than 10 feet of Caribbean seawater, the wreckage of Quedagh Merchant, the ship abandoned by the scandalous 17th century pirate Captain William Kidd as he raced to New York in an ill-fated attempt to clear his name, has escaped discovery — until now.
Debate Emerging on Origin of Giant’s Causeway
The rock formation depicted here is believed to have been built by the giant Fin McCool (a.k.a. Fionn Mac Cumhaill) as a causeway to Scotland allowing the giant Benandonner to cross over so the two could engage in a competition of strength. However, a newly formed group called the “Causeway Creation Committee” now asserts that the rock formation is the result of the Noachian Flood.From the Causeway Creation Committee’s web site: Continue reading Debate Emerging on Origin of Giant’s Causeway
Archaeological Remains and Global Warming
Scientists studying ancient fish bones in Scandinavia have discovered that warm-water species like anchovies and black sea bream that once thrived in Danish waters during a prehistoric warm period are now returning. Some cold-water species, such as cod, were also abundant during this period, having benefited from a lower fishing effort.[source]
Ronco Facts Shunned
Archaeologists know that a “Roncofact” is an artifact that you find, and realize (or speculate) that it had multiple functions.”It slices, it dices, it makes Julian Fries….”A recent study claims that humans, in fact, shun Roncofacts. But wait, there’s more.. Continue reading Ronco Facts Shunned
Human Evolutionary Rate Study
There seems to be some interesting things going on with the recently reported study of rates of evolution in humans. We are getting reports of a wide range of rather startling conclusions being touted by the researchers who wrote this paper. These conclusions typically come from press releases, and then are regurgitated by press outlets, then read and reported by bloggers, and so on. Here is, in toto, the press release from the University of Wisconsin, where John Hawks, one of the authors of the study, works. I reproduce the press release here without further comment. Continue reading Human Evolutionary Rate Study
Study Suggests Increased Rate of Human Adaptive Evolution
There is a new paper, just coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that explores the idea that humans have undergone an increased rate of evolution over the last several tens of thousands of years. Continue reading Study Suggests Increased Rate of Human Adaptive Evolution
Creationists Can be So Funny
There was a time, not so long ago, when you could “Google” the terms “Greg Laden” and “Idiot” and get, well, besides the several thousand hits about me being an idiot and stuff, an Amazon.com page for “The Idiot’s Guide to Human Prehistory by Greg Laden”This is a book I never wrote. But the publishers wanted me to. However, there were complications. The first complication was that I found out (from an excellent source) that the owner of the company had “a problem” with evolution, and I came to believe it was likely that certain things would be changed prior to publication. In particular, the word “evolution” was not going to appear in the title. And so on…. Continue reading Creationists Can be So Funny
Blood from Stones
Certain ceremonial objects from the Dogon and other cultures of West Africa are known for their dark patina. There is plenty of ethnological evidence that the thick coating on these wood sculptures, which are often in human or animal shapes, contains blood from animals sacrificed as part of the ceremonies. But the presence of blood had not been proved through chemical analysis.
Now, don’t get too excited yet … I’ve seen this a half dozen times before. The indicators of blood are everywhere in the environment. It is almost impossible to chemically test an artifact and not find evidence of blood on it (if you use the right test). So, let’s see what this new find, just reported in the New York Times, may turn out to be…. Continue reading Blood from Stones
Research on The Origins of Maize (Corn)
Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across the New World, its diversification, its effects on Native American lifeways, and so on.How do you tell if corn was grown in a particular area? There are several possibilities, including looking for pollen in swamps and lakes or at archaeological sites, finding macro-fossils (don’t be fooled by the name .. macrofossils are tiny, like individual corn grains) or by examining phyotliths on sites, in cores, or stuck to cooking pots. Phytoliths are silica bodies that form in many plants and that typically have shapes that can be used to identify the plant to some level of taxonomic certainty (depending on the plant species and the state of research on phyotoliths for that species).This post reports on a new paper in PNAS on the problem of distinguishing between wild teosinte and domesticated corn in areas where the two may be expected to have overlapped. Continue reading Research on The Origins of Maize (Corn)