A research team from the University of Bordeaux has discovered a set of 270 ostrich eggshell fragments from a cave in South Africa depicting what appear to be man-made symbols and patterns.
Headed by Pierre-Jean Texier, the team unearthed the fragments, which represent at least 25 different eggs, from a subterranean location in Howieson Poort Shelter in South Africa. The find’s excitement stems from the richness of what appears to be evidence for abstract thinking in early man; the shells date to 60,000 years ago. Texier is treating the diverse patterns as an “artistic movement” as opposed to potentially written language, studying the limited number of motifs that seem to have been used by the many different people who etched the shells found.
Modern hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari still collect and use ostrich eggs as food, containers and decoration, leading some familiar with the find to speculate that an entire artistic tradition is seem in its barest form in the 270 fragments. The idea that the patterns denote some form of language, such as ownership, also seems to me to be an avenue worth exploring.
As of this past Sunday the world’s largest particle accelerator is back online and ready to do science according to a spokeswoman from the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The agency, known as CERN in Europe, successfully sent low energy proton beams around the 27-kilometer collider over the weekend, marking the first such successful test run since mid-December when the facility was shut down for improvements and internal testing.
Scientists will begin sending much higher-energy beams by the end of this month with particle collisions expected to easily break the current record set by researchers at the Tevatron at Fermilab in the United States. By shattering subatomic particles, CERN scientists hope to learn more about the nature of antimatter and dark matter in their quest for a better understanding of the universe, and its beginnings, as a whole.
Knowledge of genetic diversity has taken a leap forward with the results of testing being done in southern Africa released last week with a surprise finding related to the ancestry of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In a study of local tribes and their DNA, Stephan Schuster and his team from Pennsylvania State University found more than 1.3 million new genetic variations not previously known in human DNA and came to the conclusion via genome study that two African bushmen who spoke different languages differentiated more between each other, genetically speaking, then do European and Asian populations.
If we really want to understand human diversity, we need to go to [southern] Africa and we need to study those people; we are all very, very similar to one another.
Stephan Schuster of Pennsylvania State University
In there continued search for a better understanding of genetic differences in homo sapiens, the research team focused on the entire human genome. Aiming at better understanding recent genetic history in southern Africa, the genomes of two men were studied; one man represented the Kalahari Desert bushmen while Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu represented people of Bantu history.
One of the studies surprises was the discovery that Tutu had the lineage of at least one bushman woman; Tutu called the finding a blessing and expressed great joy at finding that he was genetically related to those “wise people.”
NASA released stunning new photos taken of the hotly-debated object at the edge of the solar system called Pluto, revealing the hazy atmosphere of the dwarf planet for the first time.
At a distance of 39 AU and only 2,300 kilometers in diameter, Pluto has proven to be a very difficult object to photograph by traditional Earth-bound methods and even the orbiting Hubble telescope has very few opportunities to image the dwarf planet. It was Hubble, though, that was able to snap these stunning images, revealing the planet it the highest level of clarity ever achieved.
With NASA’s New Horizons probe speeding towards the outer edge of our solar system, Pluto will come to life before our eyes in only five short years, obtaining images and data that have been beyond our reach since its discovery in 1930. Until then, delight yourself in Hubble’s victory.
NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavor and its six-person crew rocketed into orbit this morning with its payload of a new add-on room and observation desk to be delivered to the International Space Station.
After uncooperative weather forced yesterday’s planned launch to be delayed, Endeavor launched this morning just before sunrise; this launch marked the fifth last launch before the retirement of the space shuttle.
The crew aboard the shuttle and the five astronauts already in orbit about the International Space Station will install an addition to the living area dubbed Tranquility, a unit that will house life-support units, exercise equipment and an additional toilet. An additional seven-windowed dome will be installed to act as an observation deck.
A year after the country launched its first domestically built telecommunications satellite into space, Iran is reporting success this morning in launching a three-meter research rocket into space. The rocket, carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms, is being cited by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as proof that Iran can compete with western nations where technology is concerned.
Iran announced Wednesday it has successfully launched a three-metre-long research rocket carrying a mouse, two turtles and worms into space — a feat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said showed Iran could defeat the West in the battle of technology.
Other than that, details are sparse. Iran has not revealed the launch site or exact goals of the research rocket and media is privy to the rocket’s biological contents only via video released by the Iranian government showing the creatures being loaded on-board prior to launch.
This latest launch rocket, dubbed Kavoshgar-3 (kavoshgar translates to explorer in Farsi) is the third launch by Iran of this type of rocket, prompting fears among Western leaders that the same technology could be used to launch warheads, though Iran has suggested no such thing.
An archeological survey in a Polish cave has turned up three Neanderthal teeth, giving Mikaolaj Urbanowski and his team from Poland’s Szczecin University the opportunity to learn more about our extinct cousins.
The teeth were discovered in the Stajnia Cave, north of the Carpathian Mountains, in the southern part of the country and represent the first bodily remains of Neanderthal found in Poland. Flint tools and discarded bones of woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, both also extinct species, were found alongside the teeth. The findings were rounded out by a hammer made of reindeer antler and bones of several cave bears sporting cut marks, indicating that they served as nourishment for the Neanderthal people who lived there.
Testing is currently being done on all items but one tooth has received the most scrutiny, proving to be the molar of a Neanderthal man about 20 years old and dating to 80,000-100,000 years ago. Researchers hope that the unexpected locale and evidence of cave bear hunting will help to prove that the fellow hominids were more efficient and intelligent hunters and wanderers then they currently receive popular credit for.
The findings were reported by the German science journal Naturwissenschaften in an online article dated January 28, 2010.
Late news, but enjoyable nonetheless: a first edition copy of Charles Darwin’s scientific masterpiece On the Origin of Species is making its way to the auction block after being found unattended in the guest washroom of a home in Oxford, England. Upon its discovery by a guest, the owner recalled that the book had originally been purchased over 40 years go for less than $1; the expected price at auction is $100,000.
Dating from November of last year, this is obviously not the most exciting random news but fitting given that 2009 marked the 150th year since the publication of the book that outlined the beginning of evolutionary theory and practically all of modern biology.
A newly uncovered Mayan tomb dating back about 1,100 years is being studied by Mexican archeologists in the hopes of learning more about the eventual fall of the famous civilization.
The team currently studying the find, lead by archeologist Juan Yadeun, hope that the tomb will and its contents will give them some indication of who occupied the Matan site on Tonina during the twilight years of the once mighty civilization. While popular ideas point to internal conflict or environmental degradation as the likely cause of the fall of the Mayans in about 800 CE, the artifacts from this most recently found tomb dates to around 850-900 CE.
It is clear that this is a new wave of occupation, the people who built this grave of the Toltec type. This is very interesting, because we are going to see from the bones who these people are, after the Maya empire.
archeologist Juan Yadeun
The Toltec people, who originated in Mexico’s central highlands, are believed to have expanded their influence into southern Mexico, dominating the land from the capital city of Tula in between the 10th and 12th centuries CE, before the people known as the Aztecs established themselves.
Archaeologists not associated with the find are cautioning researchers to not draw too many conclusions from the site until further study is conducted.
It has been three years since the International Astronomical Union issued a press release stating that they no longer considered Pluto one of the nine planets of the solar system and that they thought the whole world should follow suit in its thinking. That announcement has gone down in history as one of the least popular decisions made in the history of science and many people began asking an important question – who was the IAU to make such a decision?
I’m personally a big supporter of Pluto’s planethood and a big hater of headline grabbing science articles looking to gain attention for the sake of attention. So IAU, you think Pluto is just some random rock? Perhaps we should be hoping not.
A research team from the University of Bordeaux has discovered a set of 270 ostrich eggshell fragments from a cave in South Africa depicting what appear to be man-made symbols and patterns.
