| |
| |
|
Science Information |
|
|
|
Hobbits and Lice
HOBBITS AND LICE: In late 2004 the media was all agog with the small hominids found on Flores Island where I had written about artifacts showing sea travel technology must have existed. I had argued with many people about the issue and their argument had some merit in that we had no proof of a connection to humans or the nearby Mungo Man. However, once we found these creatures which some researchers even think could be part chimpanzee the issue became clearly in my favor. I think the divergence of human lice proven through DNA technology going back 1.18 to 1.8 million years ago is even more telling and I look forward to the further research on pubic lice that might prove hominids cross-breeding. Here is one source for further review. "It was astonishing and exciting enough to have discovered a new - and wholly unexpected - hominid species last week. The discovery of the partial skeletons of three-foot tall "hobbits" on the Indonesian island of Flores would have been front page news however old they were. But what made them really extraordinary was their age. They weren't fossils. These were bones rotted to the consistency of blotting paper, less than 18,000 years old; and there are grounds for hoping that the creatures lived on into historical times. Some might even be alive in sufficiently remote island jungles today. The native legends about "Ebu Gogo" suggest that contact between Homo sapiens and Homo floresiensis took place within the last century on Flores. The idea that our ancestors had contact with other human species is a profound and disturbing one. The whole term "human species" begs the question. If they are other species, can they really be what we mean by "human"? Human is a moral category as much as a biological one. That's why it is such a useful weapon word in the debates about abortion. To call someone or something human is generally meant as praise, and implies that they should be treated as we treat ourselves. This interpretation of "humanity" is not, of course, a necessarily human trait. It's certainly not encoded in our genes. Most cultures, in most of history, have had no trouble in treating other human beings as domesticated animals or very much worse. But we, who speak English, call this process "dehumanisation". The skeletal fragments, and the legends from local people, make this story far more vivid than the other evidence for human encounters with other humanoid species. That shouldn't obscure the fact that this is the second such story this autumn, and the first one is far more chilling. The evidence there came from lice. As the parents of almost any school age girl will know, human lice are extraordinarily tenacious and well adapted to life on our scalps. They don't survive for more than a few hours away from human flesh. The war between lice and their hosts has continued for billions of years - there are species of louse adapted to almost every sort of primate and many species of birds. In humans, they infest our head, our clothes, and our bodily hair. Curiously, the body lice are the same species as head lice - although they behave quite differently, living in clothes, and coming in to feed on skin once or twice a day. Head lice live in hair and feed more often. But it turns out that DNA analysis shows there are two distinct sub-species of head lice in humans. All over the world, except in western North America, they are the same. But there is a population of lice along the Pacific coast of North America which have been evolving separately from the rest of the world for about 1.8m years. The only way to make sense of this is to assume that their separate development took place on Homo erectus, who also split off from our hominid ancestors about that time ago. So how could these lice have reached their present, wholly human hosts? It seems to me that this could only have happened through some act of primal genocide when Homo erectus met Homo sapiens somewhere in eastern Siberia. Lice can only travel between living bodies, or very freshly dead ones. If the transmission had been from living bodies, we would expect the same pattern in bodily lice. It isn't there. Nor is there any trace of Homo erectus in our DNA. So the lice must have come from very fresh corpses and it is hard to suppose that they had died peacefully just before the intruders turned up. The story of "Ebu Gogo" sounds more improving. According to local villagers, these creatures were around until about a century ago: three feet tall, hairy, and speechless, though they could imitate human speech, like parrots. The villagers tolerated them and even fed them, though they would only eat raw food, until they stole and ate a baby. They drove them from their cave with blazing bales of grass. Shortly thereafter, the villagers themselves moved off and western settlers arrived. The cave where the Ebu Gogo lived has not been found. But if it is - and scientists are looking - it might yield some extraordinary remains. These wouldn't be technological. Perhaps the saddest aspect of the whole story is the slow loss of technology it implies. Ebu Gogo seems to have been a descendent of Homo erectus, also known as Java man, who reached the island about 840,000 years ago. This was almost certainly something that required boats, which seem a pretty human-level technology." (1) Author of Diverse Druids Columnist for The ES Press Magazine Soon to be featured with Philip Gardiner
MORE RESOURCES:
Science - Google News |
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How I Became Interested In Looking At The Moon Like a lot of kids, my folks gave me a 60mm telescope for Christmas one year. The scope was a typical department-store brand - not very good - but to a 12-year old kid it opened up the universe. Surround Panoramic Night Vision is Possible Modern night vision equipment is state of the art for infantry and Special Forces. After the most recent assault on the International Terrorists and insurgents in Falluja, Iraq the United States Military and the US Trained Iraqi Security Forces put to good use the methods of Urban Combat. Droughts and Salt Water Canals Random Thoughts We need solutions to our drought crisis in this country. There are simple but expensive solutions; for instance; Desalination, salt water rivers and conservation strategies. Enemy UAV Defense is under consideration Unmanned Aerial Vehicles should be shot down from the air rather than the ground because if they are flown tele-robotically the operator who is looking down and forward will not know where the anti-aircraft device is. If the enemy uses Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to draw fire, which is a smart move for them, then once fired upon the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle whether it is shot down or not has now located our weaponry and troops. Planet Hugging Tree hugging is a thing of the past. It is not just about the trees anymore. The Debate About Cloning There are two types of cloning. One involves harvesting stem cells from embryos ("therapeutic cloning"). The Valuable Individual How can we, as individuals, participate in waste management? Because some of us are so overwhelmed with Earth's problems, we feel that our contributions have no real consequence in the end. For others, social barriers can be an issue. Energy Aware and Waste Wise Constantly bombarded with negative information about the environment, finances and natural resources? Feeling overwhelmed? Each and every one of us can do something to help our world - starting right where we are, right now. Though not everyone can afford to donate cash or time to a cause, there are endless tactics that will decrease an individual's contribution to the landfill and their resource consumption. Mars Surface Exploration and AFF As we study more and more about Mars we know there is life. Unfortunately in many regions of the planet it is not so evident. Ancient Navigation and Mapping DR. SENTIEL ROMMEL:As part of the research team that sought to know how advanced the ancient navigational equipment and computers or astrolabes were, this man deserves credit he has not received; although it might be that credit would come in the form of ridicule such as was directed at Barraclough Fell. The Impact of Efficient Epistemologies on Algorithms In recent years, much research has been devoted to the refinement of gigabit switches; nevertheless, few have constructed the synthesis of neural networks. The notion that cryptographers connect with large-scale theory is generally considered appropriate. An Immortal Horse Egyptian scholars know there is little other than fiction that can be written about the civilization that lived on the banks of the Nile in far more recent times than the beginning of the 'Old Copper Culture'. All these things are related and the old fictions are replaceable with the story of a worldwide culture with trading posts in each and every part of the world. Acoustic Transducers and Light Waves for VSTOL, a Concept Is it possible to use many acoustic transducers underneath an aircraft in a crisscross fashion to make the air much thicker. Almost like a platform that a VSTOL aircraft using low pressure could use to push off of? Although the amount of energy to be required to do this might be substantial; it seems to be possible. Conspiring to Create Our Weather Some say the weather is totally random and does not exist in any pattern. Even some academia wonder kids show us kaleidoscope pictures of randomness and say see; this is why we cannot predict the weather. Electromagnetic Energy in Meteorites - Theory I have some friends who have the largest private meteor collection on Earth. He and his son 14 years old and a candidate for this idea; Now then in conversations, they explained all the cataloged meteor findings and found that each US state has 500 (there is an encyclopedia of such no doubt?) or so findings and confirmed by tests such as cross cut section, material grain patterns, density not found on Earth, etc, etc. How Satellite TV Systems Originated What we know as satellite tv actually had its origins in the space race which began with the launching of the satellite Sputnik by the Russians in 1957. The first communication satellite was developed and launched by a consortium of business and government entities in 1963. Micro Blimps Cleaning the Air in Buildings to Eliminate Anthrax spores Presently mini-blimps are being deployed in government leadership buildings as sensor units to identify biological threats in the air. We believe this new technology being deployed in this way is a most excellent use of such technology. Mystical Physicists INSPIRATIONAL COMMENTS:"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation. - Herbert Spencer"Albert Einstein - "We are seeking for the simplest possible scheme of thought that will bind together the observed facts. Archaeology When the Egypt Exploration Fund was created they had memoranda and articles of incorporation that directed the funding for site excavations which showed promise of being outside the Bible Narrative - should not be researched! This troublesome kind of bias is beyond reproach because sites like Memphis have been built over and for all intents and purposes destroyed. In the efforts of people like Schliemann (Troy) and Evans (Crete) to uncover their dreams that led from the 'myths' of Homer they also confused and made horrible mistakes that allow debunking science to discredit artifacts that would have proven valuable. Why Dont Moths Fly to the Moon? Surely, in the days before man invented artificial light, moths would have been attracted to the only light source at night - the moon. Wouldn't they have just kept on flying until they dropped from exhaustion? In fact does this not happen today in sparsely populated areas, where the moon is still the only night-light available?Navigation Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no concrete answer - only theories.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2007 |
