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Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Obsidian tools used for brain surgery a long LONG time ago. I'm surprised that they would be able to diagnose a brain hemorrhage.
I ordered two of these little credit card survival tools. Made of steel and have as many as three usable tools (out of 11 advertised), this may be a handy addition to my Altoid Survival Kit. The bottle opener and can opener will be handy in non-life-and-death situations, and who knows, maybe you're lost in the woods with a bottle of import beer? It has a knife blade which one review described as "sharp." We'll see about that. It will probably be sharp enough to make a fuzz stick, and the steel will be ... steely ... enough to strike sparks off a ferrocerium bar.
Archaeologists find evidence of feasting 10,000 years ago. Guess where! That's right, it's Israel. Anyhoo, in this case the occasion seems to be a wake held after the death of a shaman-lady. Archaeologists speculate that she was important and so they had a big feast in honor of her passing. Here's another idea: maybe she was suspected of witchcraft and they had a big feast to celebrate her death. Ding dong the witch is dead, eh?
More on the Natufians.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Field and Stream Magazine: Survival Kits. Starting at the Altoid tin level.
Things like this fascinate me. I might build my own Altoid tin survival kit. My kit will focus on the extreme basics: water, shelter, fire. Thirst and exposure will kill you much faster than hunger. Lots of kits contain fishing line, but I think this is a lot of foolish and unproven optimism. Maybe if you know how to build and maintain a trot-line... I think you're better off knowing which plants to eat.
These kits also frequently contain a compass. If you need the kit because you're lost, then you need to sit tight, not head off cross-country with your trusty button compass. If you know where you are and have a map, then you probably also have a grownup compass. But this is an altoid tin survival kit, so you're probably lost without any of your other gear. So sit tight. You will burn precious calories bushwhacking cross country, and you will also sweat into your only clothes, even if it's cold.
My kit will contain:
Esbit Tabs
Waterproof matches
An Oven Bag
A Magnesium Fire Starter
Antiseptic Wipes
Antibiotic Ointment Packet
Duct Tape wrapped around a pencil
Razor Blade (ideally with some kind of handle/holder, but that depends on space)
Mason Twine
The two things missing that I feel are critical: a poncho and an emergency blanket. These are too big for an Altoids tin. In face, either item takes up about the same amount of space as an Altoids tin. They can go in your other pockets, or you can rubber band them to the tin.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Archaeologists find new clues why the Maya left. That's the title for this article. It's an interesting article, but not one clue is actually revealed. Just lots of evidence that the Maya left this site in a hurry.
Oetzi, the iceman may have been ceremonially buried. I think he was a thief, was wounded while thieving, and escaped here after the theft before dying from his wounds. I'm not worried about the pollen. There's probably pollen in my house from April, but that doesn't mean that it's still April now.
On the topic of global warming: we've been through a lot worse, and everything turned out fine for all we know. Although a miniature Ice Age at the end of the Medieval era may have killed off the Greenlanders.
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Norse Settlement in Greenland. There are a number of theories that attempt to explain its failure. Another article about the same. I think all the theories are pretty much true. There were a small number of Norse settlers to begin with, they failed to adopt indigenous clothing or lifestyles (like all Europeans), they were attempting to farm in an inhospitable environment, they were poorly armed and subject to depredation by anyone. The Eastern Settlement is now occupied by the tiny village of Qassiarsuk.
Photos from the Scott Expedition hut at Cape Evans. Someday I would like to go see that hut.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
More on the illegal artifact trade.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
A Civil War POW camp has been located in Georgia. Called Camp Lawton, the Confederate Army filled this site with overflow Union prisoners from Andersonville.
The article touches on what seems like an emerging trend in archaeology news: looting of relics by for-profit artifact hunters. I haven't followed this line of news for very long, but I keep seeing these articles. Maybe it was always a dominant theme. Even the ancient Egyptians had trouble with this.
I've seen a few articles about local yokels arrested while sneaking onto an Indian reservation to grab arrowheads. Contrast that with this.
Here's the central question. If the party with rights to the items makes no effort to find or recover those items, is that party still entitled to them? If not, how does a third party archaeologist get those rights transferred to him? This is more clear cut on land, but the SS Central America shows just how murky and litigious rights oceanic salvage can be.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
A 1000 year old fish trap was found in Wales, and partially investigated using Google Earth. Neat!
The oldest house in Great Britain is 11,500 years old. Back then, Great Britain was still part of mainland Europe. Also, evidence of domesticated dogs. It's easy to think of these ancient Britons as someone else's ancestors, but they could just as easily be mine. After all, my ancestors came from Great Britain, too.
Saturday, August 07, 2010
HMS Investigator found after a 15 minute search. This is one of the ships sent to search for Franklin's failed expedition. Wikipedia has a neat description of the ship itself. Dan Simmons has some interesting trivia to report about the Franklin expedition. The filthy Canadians who found the Investigator will search for the Erebus and Terror next.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
The arrested robber from the St. Louis heist crashed his car the other day. Police found a trunk full of cash and a gun in the car. If I were one of his accomplices, I would be running as far and as fast as I could. But given the way this has gone so far, what are the odds that they're still in the area?
The shipwreck lab I wrote about the other day is also involved in the excavation of a ship believed to be the USS Scorpion, scuttled during the War of 1812. It was part of the Mosquito Fleet our fledgling nation's impoverished Navy. Unfortunately, our swarms of small gunboats and barges and scows were no match for British Ships of the Line.
The HMS Victory site has a neat tour of the ship.
A more successful Mosquito Fleet scoured pirates from the Caribbean.
The Carib people probably were cannibals, but not because they were hungry.
I once read that the Delaware Indians practiced cannibalism. Here is a book reference that half supports this.
Now I think maybe I actually read that about Tonkawas after the Battle of Plum Creek.
On two different sites I found a reference to Tonkawas still living secretly around Bastrop. I wonder what that's all about.
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Artifacts looted from Syria by a German archaeologist, then destroyed by Allied incendiary bombing during WW II, have now been reassembled by a team of people who miraculously make a living doing this. If you would like to see these Syrian artifacts, you still have to go to Germany.
The WTC ship is now at the same lab working on Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge. Staff members say they haven't gotten a lot of attention from Blackbeard's ship, but this random boat used as fill on Long Island has all kinds of media interest.
The oldest known domestic dog may only be 14,000 years old. Researchers have previously identified remains which appeared to be from a 31,000 year old dog, but that dog's domesticity is in doubt. I think we've had dogs much longer than 14,000 years. The 14K remains are distinctly domestic; this indicates that they were the result of a lengthy evolutionary process that began with wolves. How long were companion canines interchangeable with wild populations? If you died, your dog joins a wolf pack, and if your dog dies, you get a wolf pup, etc. And before that, how long did humans and wolves live in proximal symbiotic relationships? I suspect that before we had true companions, wolf packs probably scavenged human waste and at the same time kept other predators at bay. It would have taken a long time for someone to selectively breed domestic wolves, and it would have taken a change from hunter-gatherer mode to village life for domestic wolves to evolve on their own to be the smaller version found in the article.
I am invested in the ideas that A Man Should Have a Dog, and that Dogs Were With Us Before We Were a Sure Thing.
Also, back in 1999 when we got Gracie and Charlie from the Austin pound, they had a giant white wolf also up for adoption. Like this, not like this. I saw the people who adopted it, and they were weird. Also, Austin, TX may not be the ideal location for an Arctic Wolf. But what do I know?
In crime news, police may have captured one of the robbers from the ATM heist I wrote about yesterday. Here's a thought: If you steal several million dollars in one city, why not go to any other city on the face of the earth for a while? I read about one bank robber who would hit a bank, switch vehicles once or twice during his escape, then hide in the trunk of a car for 12-24 hours. After that, he would take the fastest route out of town. Seems like a smart plan.
In other crime news, someone stole my son's hot-wheels from our carport. Add that to the critically important leaf blower that was also stolen from our car port. I checked, and it's illegal to shoot strangers in North Carolina, even if they come on your property. I didn't see anything about booby-traps. Here's a good trick I could but won't do: Buy a non-working DeWalt cordless drill on eBay. Cut the end off an extension cord, the strip the insulation off the wires for about 12". Tape the bare wires about 1/2" apart running up the handle and lengthwise down the shaft of the drill. Drill a hole through the work bench in the carport, and run the wires through the hole so that they're not visible to the would-be thief. Set the drill on the work bench, wire-side down, and leave the case right next to it. Thief comes into carport and BAM! Shocked thief. If I wanted to add a low-tech alarm, I could grab a used UPS and put it on the same circuit as the drill, so that the UPS would start beeping if the breaker tripped. And then I could go out and shoot the thief.
Because you know what? It is shitty to steal a kid's hot wheels. Or a man's leaf blower, but especially the hot wheels, which Grandma and Grandpa just gave him for his 5th birthday in May. Sonofabitch I'm angry about that.
Monday, August 02, 2010
$4.5 million stolen by 4 persons from a Missouri armored transport service. Not unlike the old Brinks Heist, not to be confused with the the Brinks Mat heist in the UK.
I'm in the wrong line of work.
1.9 million year old skull found. The remains of this 9 year old boy are thought to be evidence of a new missing-link species. Does one partial set of remains indicate a new species? Why not just an anomaly? I sort of talked about this earlier when I linked to the pinky finger that indicated another species over in Asia somewhere.
And speaking of What Does This Really Mean, human remains dated to 67,000 years old in the Philippines. But possibly not fully human. And possibly evidence of speciation, which on Luzon would indicate that humans were evolving separately in different geographic locations.
For a long time I have heard scientists say there is no scientific basis for Race--that while Asians may look different from Africans, there are no clear biological lines to be drawn. I always thought this was a little fishy, given sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs Disease and Pygmies and whatnot. This article gives good perspective. Here is my current understanding: Homo Sapiens hit the streets at least 200,000 years ago. We immediately started spreading all over the place. Once settled, our little populations were small enough and distant enough from one another that we began to diverge genetically (some people got or lost melatonin, some people developed small nostrils to cope with the cold, some people got real big or real small, etc). As the populations grew, they began to bump into each other and share their special qualities. This mixing sort of tied us all back together, and is happening now more than ever. Given the current mobility of individuals, you could imagine a pretty homogeneous human species in another 10,000 years. If there still is one.
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