[davenotdead]

Fidel Castro owes me blood money.

[nicfit]

I love my new avatar, but it's a bit dark...

[jon boy]

i have some really big decisions to make.

[jon boy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm9TACrDoG8

[sellouteater]

yawn

[nicfit]

Half Life 2 is amazing.

[sellouteater]

i post halfbaked threads that are usaly as bad as my spelling

[hune.prut]

I'm sitting on a chair...

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

 

[nicfit]

 

can't find the hot girls thread.

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Ole Guadelpupe Ole!

Guadeloupe Keeps Making History

[Hip Priest]

Well done them.

[Hip Priest]

NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the Neanderthals were up to.

This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and as modern humans replaced Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago.

Terry Hopkinson of the University of Leicester, UK, has now challenged this view, showing that Neanderthals were far from behaviourally static. They incorporated different forms of tool construction into a single technique, and learned to cope with the ecological challenges posed by habitats in eastern Europe.

"There has been a consensus that the modern human mind turned on like a light switch about 50,000 years ago, only in Africa," says Hopkinson. But the putatively modern traits accompanying the change, such as abstract art, the use of grindstones and elongated stone blades, and big game hunting began to accumulate in Africa from 300,000 years ago, he says. "It was the same in Europe with Neanderthals, there was a gradual accumulation of technology." If Homo sapiens developed human traits gradually, then why not Neanderthals?
“As with Homo sapiens in Africa, Neanderthals gradually accumulated technology and developed human traits”

Archaeological finds from across Europe show that the Neanderthals fused two forms of toolmaking, the façonnage and the débitage techniques. In the former a stone core is shaped by chipping off flakes of flint, the latter involves producing sharp-edged flakes from a core. In the Lower Palaeolithic, more than 300,000 years ago, the two techniques were practised separately, but Hopkinson argues that during the Middle Palaeolithic they were fused into a single method, the Levallois reduction technique (Antiquity, vol 81, p 294).

At the same time as this was occurring, excavations show that Neanderthals spread into central and eastern Europe, regions where they and their forebears, Homo heidelbergensis, had hitherto been unable to settle. In western Europe, the influence of the Atlantic ameliorates the extreme seasonality of the continent, but away from this, the environment was too harsh for them to cope. "The eastern expansion shows that the Neanderthals became capable of managing their lives and their landscapes in strongly seasonal environments," says Hopkinson.

This period is commonly thought to be characterised by long periods of little change in technological and perhaps also cognitive development, says Katerina Harvati of the department of human evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "This analysis highlights important aspects of Neanderthal cultural and cognitive evolution which are not always emphasised," she says.

Neanderthals have typically been thought of as incapable of innovation, as it was assumed to be something unique to Homo sapiens, says Hopkinson. "With this evidence of innovation it becomes difficult to exclude Neanderthals from the concept of humanity."

From issue 2608 of New Scientist magazine, 13 June 2007, page 12

[Пятхъдесят Шест]

Yes. It is remarkable, but its not doing much for the image of CONCACAF, a tiny island making a mockery of the region in a way.

To think, if they win it all (long shot, but who knows?) they would be participating in the Confederations Cup in 2009. Amazing.

[Hip Priest]

It does a lot of good to see teams like that succeed. Reminds me of Greece being European champions.



I like this story:

Researchers in Brazil are claiming to have established as a scientific fact that the Amazon is the longest river in the world.

The Amazon is recognised as the world's largest river by volume, but has generally been regarded as second in length to the River Nile.

The claim follows an expedition to Peru that is said to have established a new starting point further south.

It puts the Amazon at 6,800km (4,250 miles) compared to the Nile's 6,695km.

The precise length of a river is not easy to calculate and depends on correctly identifying the source and the mouth.

The new claim in Brazil follows an expedition by scientists which is said to have discovered a new source for the Amazon in the south of Peru and not the north of the country as had been thought for many years.

While the exact location has yet to be confirmed from two choices, scientists say either would make the river the longest in the world.

Guido Gelli, director of science at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, told the Brazilian network TV Globo that today it could already be considered as a fact that the Amazon was the longest river in the world.

The Amazon is now said to begin in an ice-covered mountain in southern Peru called Mismi.

Researchers travelled for 14 days, sometimes in freezing temperatures, to establish the location at an altitude of 5,000m.

The research was co-ordinated by the National Geographical Institute of Peru, with the help of their colleagues in Brazil.

There has been a healthy academic debate over the world's longest river for some years and the claim from Brazil may not go unchallenged.

 

Rude Food
A gourmet guide to bananas, cream, peaches, cherries and everything else that's rude about food. Beautifully shot in a classic mid seventies (erm 1981) advertising fashion (I believe the book was an advertising idea anyway), this is an exceptional example of utterly useless publishing in every respect, but it sure has its horny moments. This is car boot fodder these days, and definitely worth investing in.
http://www.trunkrecords.com/kitchen/books.shtml

 

[pantophobia]

 

actually my desktop for now

[floatingslowly]

 

[davenotdead]

i am lazy, yet my mind is active and ambitious....therefore, im a dreamer.

[king_buzzo]

When in doubt, cite