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Beringians vindicated! - The Unz Review - http://www.unz.com/gnxp...

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"Sometimes science turns out as you’d expect. It’s not revolutionary, but it solidifies what should already be a solid foundation basis for extending knowledge into new territories. The latest ancient genome paper, The genome of a Late Pleistocene human from a Clovis burial site in western Montana, does just that. As the media has correctly pointed out this is probably the end of the Solutrean hypothesis, and a host of other exotic explanations for the ethnogenesis of Native Americans. Rather, the truth is what we’d always assumed. On the order of ~15,000 years ago a small group of Siberians crossed over Berengia into the New World. Their descendants are the various indigenous populations of the Americas which span the expanse from the Canadian Arctic down to Patagonia." - maitani - -

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Literary Review - Felipe Fernández-Armesto on the Mythology of the Ark - http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/armesto...

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"Among the British Museum's prodigious collection of cuneiform tablets and fragments, strangely parallel experiences befell two scholars. First, in the 1870s, George Smith identified two pre-biblical accounts of a hero divinely commissioned to build an ark and so save the denizens of the world from a cosmic flood. Reading The Epic of Gilgamesh for the first time 'after more than 2,000 years of oblivion', he rushed around, tearing off his clothes in a state of ecstasy resembling St Francis's embrace of his vocation. Less demonstratively, over a hundred years later in 1985, Irving Finkel was 'more than taken aback' when he discovered a fragment of one of the earliest versions of the flood story among bric-a-brac gathered by an English airman in Iraq during the Second World War. Finkel, like Smith, has a beard worthy of a Victorian or perhaps a biblical patriarch. His book explores even stranger parallels between Noah and the much earlier Mesopotamian ark builders." - maitani - -

"Finkel's find, which dates from at least 1,200 years before the earliest supposed recording of the Noah story, contains two stunning revelations for biblical studies. Astonishingly, it includes a phrase (about the animals entering the ark) plausibly translatable as 'two by two'. So one of the striking features of the Bible story unanticipated in previously discovered Mesopotamian fragments turns out to be traceable to the same culture of origin. Moreover, Finkel's text refers to 'clean' animals - and therefore, by implication, to a distinction from 'unclean' ones. As far as I am aware, this is the first evidence that this Jewish form of fastidiousness was prefigured in earlier foibles or scruples. Three conclusions are irresistible. First, that the flood story generated extraordinarily tenacious traditions. Second, that the tale probably originated in a world of real observation in ancient Mesopotamia, where vast, destructive floods were frequent, and not - as archaeological sensationalists have claimed - in some supposed folk memory of the effects of global warming after the Younger Dryas (or the 'Big Freeze', a period of cold climatic conditions some 12,000 years ago). Finally, Finkel's tablet strengthens the already persuasive case that the Bible version derives from Mesopotamian archetypes. Finkel regards the issue as definitively resolved. Sceptics will wriggle their way round his evidence by clinging to the possibility of a fusion of Mesopotamian and Hebrew stories of independent origins; but I think reasonable critics will aver that he is right." - maitani - -

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AWOL - The Ancient World Online: Sumerian Resources from Pascal Attinger - http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.de/2011...

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Sumerian Resources from Pascal Attinger - maitani - -

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The Utter Silence of the Andalusian Refugee » 3:AM Magazine - http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am...

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"Religions make metaphysical claims about fundamental reality and skeptical arguments that treat them as alternative scientific arguments in the skeptical tradition misunderstand this. One of the consequences of accepting the metaphysical hypothesis of a religion is that it may be totally compatible with science and naturalism, both of which are usually presented as counterfactuals to religion by atheists." What's left but poetry in a religion compatible with naturalism? There can be no divine property deed, no ten commandments, no divine impregnation of virgins, no divine dictation of holy books, no karma, nowhere to retreat to after we die. No Theos, and I'm not convinced there's room for Deo either, as the prime mover is generally placed outside nature, which breaks with naturalism. I think I must be lacking the circuitry that "metaphysical reality" is supposed to run on :) ("If you doubt this then studying the Andalusian refugee Maimonides will be revealing and this terrific book by the philosopher Moshe Halbertal is a great place to begin." Yes, I will read the book :)) - maitani - -

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"Back in the twelfth century the Andalusian refugee Moshe ben Maimon aka Maimonides tried two things. Firstly, he took Jewish law and tried to make it unambiguous and transparent. Secondly, he attempted to change Jewish religious consciousness. There were three components to this shift. Firstly there was anthropomorphism. Maimonides attacked it as a kind of idolatry in the heart, worse than merely having a picture or statue of God, because it was something carried around in the very consciousness and mentality of the believer. The poetry of religious believers was a species of this idolatory as it betrayed the silence that was the highest expression of the unity and loftiness of God. Anthropomorphic adjectives betrayed the awesomeness of the unspeakable ultimate principle. The greater the effusions of praise the further from the truth the words became. Such utterances he states ‘ constitute an absolute denial of faith…other utterances contain such rubbish and perverse imaginings as to make men laugh when they hear them… it constitutes unintended obloquy and vituperation on the part of the multitude who listen to these utterances and on the part of the ignoramus who pronounces them.’" - maitani - -

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A short history of Polish Jewish tavernkeeping | OUPblog - http://blog.oup.com/2014...

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I wonder if they kept open on Friday nights. - maitani - -

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That would solve the problem in the eyes of G-d, I'm sure :) - maitani - -

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3quarksdaily: Ghazal, Sufism, and the Birth of a Language - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarks...

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"Urdu, a hybrid, hangs between its many “parent” languages, between the divergent cultures and histories of its speakers— the people of the Indian subcontinent; it hangs between the imperial past of Indian Muslims who ruled India for a millennium, and their unique partitions post-Raj (British rule: 1857-1947), their new identities in our times as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. As the state language of Pakistan, Urdu hangs between the educated and the unlettered, between regional culture and ruling culture, between serving the immediate function as a communication tool for people of different provinces (with their own linguistic traditions and literatures) and the civilizational function of tethering the heritage of a millennium-long imperial culture to Pakistan’s evolving identity. It hangs ready to pollinate new time with old time." - maitani - -

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I've heard that (some) Arabs can read Urdu, but they don't necessarily understand what they are reading. Same goes for Ottoman Turkish, native Urdu and Persian speakers can read it but not get the full meaning. - maitani - -

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Why Bach Moves Us by George B. Stauffer | The New York Review of Books - http://www.nybooks.com/article...

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"There was great lamenting at the memorial service that this talented young man had been snatched away in the midst of important work, with so much promise unfulfilled. The service began with Gabe’s recording of Salamone Rossi’s Hebrew setting of the Songs of Solomon, a gorgeous yet relatively unknown Venetian masterpiece. It continued with readings from the Torah, eulogies, and the Kaddish. But at the center of the service, at what proved to be the emotional high point, a countertenor sang the Agnus Dei from Bach’s Mass in B Minor." - maitani - -

"One of my most moving encounters with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach took place in the spring of 1997 in New York City’s Central Synagogue. I was there to pay last respects to Gabe Wiener, a talented young recording engineer who died of a brain aneurysm at age twenty-six. I had approached Gabe earlier in the year to see if his recording company, PGM Classics, would consider collaborating with the American Bach Society, which I led at the time, to produce a compact disc of previously unrecorded organ music from Bach’s circle. Gabe enthusiastically agreed to the proposal, and together we embarked on a project we called “The Uncommon Bach.” We had just settled on the repertory and the organ when I received word of his death." - maitani - -

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Pic of the Week: The Arctic Blanket - ImaGeo | DiscoverMagazine.com - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo...

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"Earlier this week I shared a visualization of the recent Arctic blast that swept across much of the United States. Today I thought I’d feature another extraordinary view — a weather satellite image from Jan. 28th showing much of the United States covered by an Arctic blanket of frigid air. The astonishing extent of the cold outbreak is evident in the image, extending from the very high north of Canada all the way down to the Southeastern United States. And underneath that thick band of clouds running from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up the East Coast is the hapless city of Atlanta. We all know now that countless people there suffered terribly from the unusual winter weather." - maitani - -

I find this image of Lake Michigan impressive. More satellite pictures of the Great Lakes ice: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://cimss.ssec.wisc.ed... ; title="http://cimss.ssec.wisc.ed... ; - maitani - -

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A Calendar Page for February 2014 - Medieval manuscripts blog - http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitis...

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"Our calendar pages for February contain two scenes of labourers trimming vines, one of the traditional labours for this unpleasant month. In the first scene, below the saints days for February, two men are at work in a wintry landscape, and appear to be appropriately bundled against the cold. The following folio continues the listing of feasts for this month. In the lower roundel, beneath two fish for the zodiac sign Pisces, another chilly-looking labourer is carrying a basket of trimmings through fields in which the remains of a snowstorm can be seen." - maitani - -

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BBC News - Alasitas: Bolivia's festival of miniatures - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...

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I am so delighted with miniatures of anything, and with stories where miniature beings appear (in their miniature worlds). - maitani - -

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"Imagine you could go to the market, buy everything you wanted in the year ahead for just a few dollars and carry it all home in one plastic bag. It might be a new house, a car, a husband or wife, or even a divorce. Or perhaps a suitcase stuffed with cash, a degree from a top university, a new job, a shiny laptop or all the food you can eat?" - maitani - -

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Scholars Discover New Poems from Ancient Greek Poetess Sappho - The Daily Beast - http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...

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"A chance inquiry by an unidentified collector has led to a spectacular literary discovery: Parts of two previously unknown poems by Sappho, the great Greek poetess of the 7th Century B.C. One of the poems is remarkably well preserved and adds greatly to what is known about Sappho and her poetic technique." - maitani - -

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"Only a few poems of the Greek poetess Sappho’s work have survived but thanks to a leading scholar’s investigation two new works have just been recovered—and gives experts hope to find more." - maitani - -

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Poemas del río Wang: A Bridge in Winter - http://riowang.blogspot.de/2014...

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"There were few tourists today, as it happens. January, by itself, keeps them at home; bad weather often keeps them indoors. Swans were paddling the cold brown waters of the Vltava and sea gulls floated effortlessly on the air, calling at each other with piercing squeals. The statues of the Charles Bridge, famous for their black and gold, had added white to their wardrobes." - maitani - -

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George Eliot's Superfan : The New Yorker - http://www.newyorker.com/online...

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"In the summer of 1871, while working on “Middlemarch,” George Eliot received a short letter from a young Scotsman called Alexander Main, who had a question: what was the correct pronunciation of “Romola”? Gratified by Main’s admiration of that novel, which had been published in 1863—he called its prologue “the sublimest piece of writing, thinking, and historical word-painting, all in one, that the pen of a human being has ever yet achieved in prose”—Eliot wrote back at some length, not only giving him the correct pronunciation (stress on the first o) but putting down some thoughts about Florentine literature and Sir Walter Scott. Main replied instantly with a longer letter, filled with impassioned praise. “You are doing a work in and upon this age such that future generations shall rejoice that you have lived,” he said." - maitani - -

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It's time for teachers to wake up to neuromyths | Neurobonkers | Big Think - http://bigthink.com/neurobo...

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"Earlier this month Sense about Science published a great list of neuromyths that have found their way into education and called on Ofsted (the UK regulatory body for schools) to stand up to the use of neuromyths in the classroom. The methods and ideas highlighted by Sense about Science include the assumption that children have fixed auditory, visual or kinetic learning styles; methods based on Gardner's discredited model of multiple intelligences and the teaching of left/right brain theory. We also saw the publication this month of an extensive review of educational approaches informed by neuroscience by the Education Endowment Foundation." - maitani - -

"Over recent years a new industry has exploded that sells educational interventions purportedly based on neuroscience to schools. In 2006 a paper published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience reported that teachers were receiving 70 emails per year marketing these tools and it seems the problem has only got worse. Unfortunately, neuroscience research simply doesn't even remotely back up a great many of the claims that are now being made." - maitani - -

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European hunter-gatherers, blue eyes and dark skin? - The Unz Review - http://www.unz.com/gnxp...

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"Ancient genomic sequences have started to reveal the origin and the demographic impact of farmers from the Neolithic period spreading into Europe…The adoption of farming, stock breeding and sedentary societies during the Neolithic may have resulted in adaptive changes in genes associated with immunity and diet4. However, the limited data available from earlier hunter-gatherers preclude an understanding of the selective processes associated with this crucial transition to agriculture in recent human evolution. Here we sequence an approximately 7,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton discovered at the La Braña-Arintero site in León, Spain, to retrieve a complete pre-agricultural European human genome. Analysis of this genome in the context of other ancient samples suggests the existence of a common ancient genomic signature across western and central Eurasia from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. The La Braña individual carries ancestral alleles in several skin pigmentation genes, suggesting that the light skin of modern Europeans was not yet ubiquitous in Mesolithic times. Moreover, we provide evidence that a significant number of derived, putatively adaptive variants associated with pathogen resistance in modern Europeans were already present in this hunter-gatherer." - maitani - -

Hunter-gatherer European had blue eyes and dark skin <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news... ; title="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news... ; - maitani - -

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300,000-year-old hearth found: Microscopic evidence shows repeated fire use in one spot over time -- ScienceDaily - http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

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"When did humans really begin to control fire and use it for their daily needs? Scientists discovered in the Qesem Cave, an archaeological site near present-day Rosh Ha'ayin, the earliest evidence -- dating to around 300,000 years ago -- of unequivocal repeated fire building over a continuous period. These findings help answer the question and hint that those prehistoric humans already had a highly advanced social structure and intellectual capacity." - maitani - -

"Excavations in Qesem Cave have been ongoing since 2000. The team is headed by Profs. Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University. Dr. Ruth Shahack-Gross of the Kimmel Center for Archeological Science at the Weizmann Institute has been involved in this archaeological research since excavations began, and she collects samples on-site for later detailed analysis in the lab. Shahack-Gross, whose expertise is in the identification of archaeological materials, identified a thick deposit of wood ash in the center of the cave. Using infrared spectroscopy, she and her colleagues were able to determine that mixed in with the ash were bits of bone and soil that had been heated to very high temperatures. This was conclusive proof that the area had been the site of a large hearth." - maitani - -

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Inside the world of modern day magicians, witches and evangelical Christians | Neurobonkers | Big Think - http://bigthink.com/neurobo...

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"In a fascinating interview Stanford University psychological anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann describes meeting modern day "witches", taking a "magic" course, experiencing bizarre (non-drug-induced) hallucinations and generally "hanging out in the magical world". Luhrmann also shares her thoughts on the biomedical model of psychiatry, her experiences spending time with evangelical Christians and the mechanism through which she believes individuals can enable themselves to have imagined conversations with God. She describes an example of a pastor telling her to pour herself a coffee and "a second cup of coffee for God" and how she believes there is a process where religious people learn to believe their thoughts are not "self authored" but rather they are "other authored". The discussion really starts to get interesting at about 17 minutes in:" - maitani - -

"Luhrmann's books “When God Talks Back” and "Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England" investigate how rational people come to believe and indeed experience the absurd." - maitani - -

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Psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

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See also <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ff.im/ZBWq0"&... ; - maitani - -

"Although infants use their memories to learn new information, few adults can remember events in their lives that happened prior to the age of three. Psychologists have now documented that age seven is when these earliest memories tend to fade into oblivion, a phenomenon known as "childhood amnesia." The study is the first empirical demonstration of the onset of childhood amnesia, and involved interviewing children about past events in their lives." - maitani - -

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Rainforests in Far East shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years - http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...

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"The rain forests of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Thailand and Vietnam were previously thought to have been largely unaffected by humans, but the latest research from Queen's Palaeoecologist Dr Chris Hunt suggests otherwise. A major analysis of vegetation histories across the three islands and the SE Asian mainland has revealed a pattern of repeated disturbance of vegetation since the end of the last ice age approximately 11,000 years ago." - maitani - -

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"New research from Queen's University Belfast shows that the tropical forests of South East Asia have been shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years." - maitani - -

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A Miniature Crystalline Forest - ImaGeo | DiscoverMagazine.com - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo...

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"If you’ve been reading ImaGeo lately you may know that I’m in Norway to report on Arctic climate issues and attend the Arctic Frontiers conference. I’m working on a bigger post about the issues I’ve learned about. But for now, I thought I would share some of the amazing things I’ve seen through my camera lens. First up: The extreme closeup above of ice crystals atop the snow cover here on the island of Tromsøya. In many places, the snow is covered with these crystals, each of which is about a half-inch to an inch high. As the sun returns to this place above the Arctic Circle, the miniature crystalline forest catches the light, forming a dazzling, glittering carpet." - maitani - -

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Pirates of the Mediterranean | res gerendae - http://resgerendae.wordpress.com/2014...

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Corsairs and the Ottoman Mediterranean (podcast ) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ottomanhistory... ; title="http://www.ottomanhistory... ; - maitani - -

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"Reeking of rum and tottering like the earth beneath his feet is inflatable, a salty cove approaches you on the quayside. But the quayside is in Cambridge and his eyepatch is made of tweed. The bandoliers slung athwart his chest are stuffed with Loebs, green and red cloth tattered and stained by wind and salt. You look down and see that the man has only one true leg. From the knee down his right has been replaced with one taken from a plaster-cast of the Aphrodite Kallipygos, shapely white curves gleaming in the sunlight.[1]" - maitani - -

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Wide Urban World: How ancient cities can help us understand modern cities - http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.de/2014...

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". How, exactly, are ancient cities be relevant to contemporary urbanization? I gave my take on this question in an earlier post,"Why are premodern cities important today?" (2011). To summarize here, there are two main arguments, that I call the urban trajectory argument and the sample size argument." - maitani - -

"A growing number of archaeologists, including me, believe that the results of our excavations at ancient cities can help us understand cities today. The problem is that the road from, say, a map of an ancient Mesopotamian city or the trash heap next to one of the Aztec urban houses I've excavated, to information relevant to modern cities, can be long and difficult. The popular press and university public relations offices are quick to draw facile modern connections for research on ancient cities. Mapping the huge city of Angkor revealed low-density settlement, so this helps us understand urban sprawl. Tell Brak, a much earlier city in Mesopotamia, also had low-density settlement, and the Environmental News Network reports that "Researchers [at Tell Brak] rewrite the origins of ancient urban sprawl" (for these and other examples, see Smith 2010, p. 229)." - maitani - -

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Coldest city in the world – in pictures | World news | theguardian.com - http://www.theguardian.com/world...

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I only know about Yakutsk because of the board game Risk. - maitani - -

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I remember reading about a small town thataway that kept kids inside for recess when it got below -40. Anything warmer, they played outside. - maitani - -

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Migrating Birds Use Precise Flight Formations to Maximize Energy Efficiency - Scientific American - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article...

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"Migratory birds coordinate their wing flaps with much more finesse than previously thought, so as to reap the best energy savings from flying in formation, suggests a new study." - maitani - -

"In 2011, as part of a reintroduction program, captive-bred ibises following an ultralight aircraft to their wintering grounds arranged themselves in the shape of a V. Data loggers on their backs captured every position and wing flap, yielding the most compelling experimental evidence yet that birds exploit the aerodynamics of the familiar formation to conserve energy." - maitani - -

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Welcome to the Silk Road Journal - http://www.silk-road.com/toc...

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3quarksdaily: Violence, Infectious Disease and Climate Change Contributed to Indus Civilization Collapse - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarks...

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"Archaeological research has demonstrated that Indus cities grew rapidly from 2200-1900 B.C., when they were largely abandoned. “The collapse of the Indus Civilization and the reorganization of its human population has been controversial for a long time,” lead author of the paper published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, Gwen Robbins Schug, explained. Robbins Schug is an associate professor of anthropology at Appalachian State University. Climate, economic, and social changes all played a role in the process of urbanization and collapse, but little was known about how these changes affected the human population." - maitani - -

"A new study on the human skeletal remains from the ancient Indus city of Harappa provides evidence that inter-personal violence and infectious diseases played a role in the demise of the Indus, or Harappan Civilization around 4,000 years ago. The Indus Civilization stretched over a million square kilometers of what is now Pakistan and India in the Third Millennium B.C. While contemporaneous civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotomia, are well-known, their Indus trading partners have remained more of a mystery." - maitani - -

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