ethnoscientists

Two Middle Eastern populations independently developed farming and then spread the technology to Europe, Africa and Asia, according to the genomes of 44 people who lived thousands of years ago in present-day Armenia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Iran.

Posted on 17 June on the bioRxiv preprint server, the research supports archaeological evidence about the multiple origins of farming, and represents the first detailed look at the ancestry of the individuals behind one of the most important periods in human history — the Neolithic revolution.

I thought this was really good, so I wanted to share. Some of the images were missing, so I did my best to substitute based on the description.

Since the ancient Maya have been added to the Key Stage 2 national curriculum for History (non-European Study), there’s been a ‘mushrooming’ of online resources covering the topic. Most of which are downright awful!

After the recent flawed news story about a teenager finding a Maya site, I thought it an apt moment to let both teachers who are teaching the Maya as well as the general public know what they need to be looking out for to confirm a resource’s unreliability

Beware!

Here are 10 tell-tale signs that expose unknowledgeable sources

1. The term ‘Mayan’ is used instead of ‘Maya’

The term ‘Mayan’ is ubiquitously used by ill-informed sources: ‘Mayan people’, ‘Mayan pyramids’, ‘Mayan civilisation’…

All Maya specialists -and, for that matter, all non-specialists who’ve read a book or two on the ancient Maya- know that the right word is Maya.

Their calendar is called the ‘Maya calendar’, their civilisation is called the ‘Maya civilisation’, their art is called ‘Maya art’…

The only time you should use the adjective ‘Mayan’ is when you are talking about their languages, the ‘Mayan languages’.

So, if you see ‘Mayan people’, ‘Mayan pyramids, ‘Mayan art’, ‘Mayan civilisation’, etc, on a publication (website or magazine), you can be sure the person who wrote the article doesn’t know a thing about the ancient Maya.

2. The image of the Aztec calendar stone is presented as the Maya calendar

Unscrupulous sources will use the ‘Sun Stone’ to illustrate texts about the Maya calendar.

Unfortunately, the famous sculpture is Aztec. Not Maya.

Using the ‘Sun Stone’ to talk about Maya calendar system is like using photos of theElizabeth Tower at Westminster (AKA ‘Big Ben’), which was completed in 1859, to illustrate time keeping in ancient Rome!

And yes I have even seen this image adorning the front cover of books on the Maya! Beware! Which leads nicely onto point 3-

3. The Maya are identified as the Aztecs

This confusion is very common but the truth is the Aztecs were very different to the Maya. They spoke a different language and had a different writing system.

Also the Maya civilisation began at least 1500 before the Aztecs.

The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan is as far away from the great Maya site of Tikal as London is from Milan, Italy!

Stating the Maya were the same as the Aztecs, is basically saying that all Europeans are the same, having the same language, culture and beliefs…

Would you like to see an image of Stonehenge on the front cover of a book on the French? I think not!

Then we get the Egyptians….

4. Maya pyramids are said to be similar to Egyptian pyramids

I am afraid not!

Firstly, the ancient Maya and ancient Egyptians lived during different time periods. The time of pyramid building in Egypt was around 2000 years earlier than the earliest Maya pyramid.

Secondly, Egyptian pyramids have a different shape and use to those of the Maya.

Maya pyramids are not actually pyramidal! They have a polygonal base, but their four faces do not meet at a common point like Egyptian pyramids. Maya pyramids were flat and often had a small room built on top.

Pyramids in Egypt were used as tombs for the dead rulers, for the Maya, though the pyramids were mainly used for ceremonies carried out on top and watched from below.

Lastly, they were built differently. Maya pyramids were built in layers; each generation would build a bigger structure over the previous one. Egyptian pyramids, on the other hand, were designed and built as a single edifice.

5. It is claimed that the Maya mysteriously disappeared in the 10th century AD

Uninformed sources talk about the ‘mysterious’ disappearance of the ancient Maya around the 10th century AD., which mislead people to think that the Maya disappeared forever….

Firstly, the Maya did not disappear. Around 8 million Maya are still living today in various countries of Central America (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras); in fact half of the population of Guatemala is Maya.

Although they do not build pyramids like the ancient Maya did, modern Maya still wear similar dress, follow similar rituals and some use the ancient Maya calendar. I am sure they would all like to assure you that they have definitely not disappeared!

We know now that what is called ‘Classic Maya Collapse’  was actually a slow breakdown, followed by a reconstruction, of a number of political, economical and cultural structures in the Maya society.

Archaeologists see cities being abandoned over the course of the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, and people travelling north into the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) building new great cities such as Mayapan, which was occupied up until the 15th century.

Secondly, there was nothing mysterious about it! A number of associated factors were at play.

There was a severe drought in the rainforest area that lasted decades, so people moved north where water sources were more easily available. The competition between waring factions and cities for natural resources led to increased warfare. Which, in turn, led to the breakdown of trade networks.

All this was likely exacerbated by political and economical changes in Central Mexico.

So, very much like the French did not disappear after the French Revolution -although they stopped building castles and some big political, economical and cultural changes occurred in the French society- the Maya did not mysteriously disappear around the 10th century.

6. The Maya are portrayed as blood-thirsty sacrifice-loving psychos

The Maya are often portrayed in the media and popular culture as blood-thirsty (see for example Mel Gibson’s 2006 Apocalypto), so the commonly accepted -and oft-repeated- idea is that the Maya carried out lots of sacrifices.

Actually, there is barely any trace of sacrifice in the archaeological record of the Maya area. The rare evidence comes from pictorial representations on ceramics and sculpture.

Warfare amongst the Maya was actually much less bloody than ours and no, they did not use a real skull as a ball in their ballgame! And no the loser was not put to death!

In warfare, they did capture and kill opponents, but it was on a small-scale. Rulers boasted of being “He of five captives” or “He of the three captives”.

The heart sacrifices that were recorded by the Spanish chroniclers were those of the Aztecs.

It is also important to keep in mind that the Spanish Conquistadors had lots of incentives to describe the indigenous people of the Americas as blood-thirsty savages.

It made conquest and enslavement easier to justify (see the Valladolid Debate) so lots of stories were exaggerated.

And who are we to judge when we used to have public spectacles of people being hanged or having their heads chopped off and placed on spikes on London Bridge!

7. The ancient Maya predicted that the world would end on 21 December 2012

The 2012 phenomenon was a range of beliefs that cataclysmic events would trigger then end of our world on December 21st.

This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar and it was said that the ancient Maya had prophesied the event.

This is not true and all Maya people today and Maya specialists know this!

Very much like a century and a millennium ended in the Christian calendar on December 31st 1999, a great cycle of the Maya Long Count -the 13th b’ak’tun– was to end on 21 December 2012.

In Maya time-keeping, a b’ak’tun is a period of roughly 5,125 years.

Only two Maya monuments –Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 12– mention the end of the 13th b’ak’tun. None of them contains any speculation or prophecy as to what would happen at that time.

While the end of the 13th b’ak’tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration, the next day the Maya believed that a new cycle -the 14th b’ak’tun- would begin; much like our New Year’s Eve.

In fact, in the temple of Inscriptions at Palenque, where we find the tomb of King Pakal, it was written that in AD 4772 the people would be celebrating the anniversary of the coronation of their new King Pakal!

8. The Maya are described as primitive people

The Maya created an incredible civilization in the rainforest where it is extremely humid, with lots of bugs and dangerous animals and little water.

There they built spectacular temples, pyramids and palaces without the use of metal tools, the wheel, or any pack animals, such as the donkey, ox or elephant.

The Maya were the only civilization in the whole of the Americas to develop a complete writing system like ours.

They were only one of two cultures in the world to develop the zero in their number system and so were able to make advanced calculations and became great astronomers.

The Maya were extremely advanced in painting and making sculptures, they played the earliest team sport in the world and most importantly, for me anyway, is that we have the ancient Maya to thank for chocolate!

So no, they were definitely not primitive!

The problem with this view of the ancient Maya is that their achievements are then explained by the help of Extra-terrestrial beings or other civilisations.

9. The great achievements of the Maya are in thanks to the Olmecs

The Olmec civilisation is an earlier culture located along the Gulf coast of Mexico.

This myth of the Olmecs being a ‘mother culture’ to the Maya and other cultures in Mesoamerica had been questioned over 20 years ago and has been long put to rest.

Excavations have shown that they were many other cultures, other than the Olmec living in Mesoamerica before the Maya and that rather than a ‘mother culture’ we should be looking at ‘sister cultures’ all influencing each other.

Furthermore, Maya achievements in hieroglyphic writing and calendrics which no other culture in Mesoamerica had seen or used, indicate that they were much more innovators than adopters.

So, if the resource mentions the above, then it is obvious that they are not specialists and are using redundant information written over 20 years ago.

10. Chichen Itza is used as the quintessential Maya site

Chichen Itza was inhabited quite late during the Maya time period, about 1400 years after the first Maya city and is not purely Maya.

The city was quite cosmopolitan and was greatly influenced by Central Mexico, particularly the Toltecs, who may have lived there.

Therefore, its architecture and art -such as the ‘chacmools‘ or the ‘tzompantli‘ (AKA ‘skull-racks’) actually are Central Mexican, and not Maya, features.

A much better example of a typical Maya city would be Tikal, which was occupied for more than 1500 years.

Let’s delve a little into the archaeology of the wine country. 5 minutes or less, speed archaeology for your hump day.

Spoilers: this post includes dolmens, and that is very exciting.

SANJIAZI (AFP).- It was the language of China’s last imperial dynasty which ruled a vast kingdom for nearly three centuries. But 71-year-old Ji Jinlu is among only a handful of native Manchu speakers left.

Traders and farmers from what are now the borders of China and Korea, the Manchus took advantage of a crumbling Ming state and swept south in the 1600s to establish their own Qing Dynasty.

Manchu became the court language, its angular, alphabetic script used in millions of documents produced by one of the world’s preeminent powers.

A really interesting study combining linguistics and anthropology: 

Here’s how it worked: Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might), for example, chances are the story can be traced back to the “last common ancestor.” That would be the Proto-Western-Indo-Europeans from whom both lineages split at least 6800 years ago (see image). The approach mirrors how an evolutionary biologist might conclude that two species came from a common ancestor if their genes both contain the same mutation not found in other modern animals.

But it’s not quite so simple. Unlike genes, which are almost exclusively transmitted “vertically”—from parent to offspring—fairy tales can also spread horizontally when one culture intermingles with another. Accordingly, much of the authors’ study focuses on recognizing and removing tales that seem to have spread horizontally. When the pruning was done, the team was left with a total of 76 fairy tales.

Today’s topic: Southern Italian Dialects. Ehh yes, I know, again. But just like you can take the girl out of Texas, but you cannot take Texas out of the girl, the same applies to me. So, Southern Italian Dialects are distributed as follows:

(Source: Enciclopedia Treccani)

The area covered by Southern Italian Dialects (area meridionale - the yellow one in the map) goes from south Umbria and Marche, to Abruzzi, parts of Latium (Rome’s region), and then Molise, Apulia, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily.

This area roughly corresponds to what once was the Kingdom of Naples, or, more precisely, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies:

(German map of the 19th Century, public dominion. I know, I know, it is an old map, but I like it. You can find a more modern and tidy one here)

The regions under the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were Campania, Abruzzi, Molise, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily. Its capital city was Naples. So, you will think: a kingdom with a unique language? Far from that. The crown of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was born from the unification of the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples. So, in Sicily the predominant language was Sicilian, in Campania Neapolitan, and as for other regions like Calabria and Apulia, they spoke (and still do, like the other regions) their own language derived from Vulgar Latin, but a different, regional one. From that we now have Calabrese and Apulian. Other languages were Italian (for the cultivated ones), Greek, Albanian and Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, and Occitan. Greek was  (and it still is, in Calabria and Apulia, in a modern form called Griko) spoken because of the Byzantine presence in Italy from 330 to 1453 AC. Albanian was (and still is, in its modern form called Arbëresh) present because of the presence, since the 15th century, of Albanian refugees fleeing  the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans.The same Ottoman invasion brought to Italy refugees from Dalmatia who were Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian speakers, who then settled in Molise. Their language evolved into what we now know as the Slavomolisano Dialect. Arbëreshë speakers settled in Southern Italy in the Abruzzi, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Apulia and Sicily. On the presence of Occitan speakers, De Salvio (1908) notes that “… from the remains of the Angevine Registers in the Grand Archives of Naples, it is known that from 1269 to 1277 Charles of Anjou conferred lands and estates in Apulia on Provençal nobles and other vassals”. Nowadays, Occitan (along with its Provençal variety) is still spoken in Apulia, in some Piedmontese valleys, and Calabria.

As for the other dialects, they came directly from the variety of Vulgar Latin that was spoken in that area. Very often, these dialects, also show the presence of the various non-Italic population that invaded (or tried to), occupied, migrated to Italy. The Lombards, the Arabs, the Spanish, the French, the Greeks, the Byzantines… all converge in this marvelous cornucopia of tongues and colors, pride and abandon that we call Southern Italy. So, now, tongues in music: Garganic (Apulia)

Neapolitan

Salentino (Apulia) - this is not a popular song (you can find plenty, though, but instead a song written in salentino by Ludovico Einaudi in 2015 )

Sicilian

Daunic (Apulia)

Barese (Apulia), begins with a monologue in Barese, then the song starts at 1.29

New Research Identifies Drivers of Rich Bird Diversity in Neotropics

An international team of researchers is challenging a commonly held view that explains how so many species of birds came to inhabit the Neotropics, an area rich in rain forest that extends from Mexico to the southernmost tip of South America. The new research, published today in the journal Nature and co-led by Brian Smith, an assistant curator in the Museum’s Division of Vertebrate Zoology, suggests that tropical bird speciation is not directly linked to geological and climate changes, as traditionally thought. Instead, it is driven by movements of birds across physical barriers such as mountains and rivers that occur long after those landscapes’ geological origins.

“The Neotropic zone has more species of birds than any other region on Earth,” said Smith, who started this work as a postdoctoral researcher at Louisiana State University. “The unanswered question has been—how did this extraordinary bird diversity originate?”

The Juno spacecraft has been traveling toward its destination since its launch in 2011, and is set to insert Jupiter’s orbit on July 4. Jupiter is by far the largest planet in the solar system. Humans have been studying it for hundreds of years, yet still many basic questions about the gas world remain.

The primary goal of the Juno spacecraft is to reveal the story of the formation and evolution of the planet Jupiter. Understanding the origin and evolution of Jupiter can provide the knowledge needed to help us understand the origin of our solar system and planetary systems around other stars.

Have We Visited Jupiter Before? Yes! In 1995, our Galileo mission (artist illustration above) made the voyage to Jupiter. One of its jobs was to drop a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The data showed us that the composition was different than scientists thought, indicating that our theories of planetary formation were wrong.

What’s Different About This Visit? The Juno spacecraft will, for the first time, see below Jupiter’s dense clover of clouds. [Bonus Fact: This is why the mission was named after the Roman goddess, who was Jupiter’s wife, and who could also see through the clouds.]

Unlocking Jupiter’s Secrets

Specifically, Juno will…

Determine how much water is in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which helps determine which planet formation theory is correct (or if new theories are needed)

Look deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere to measure composition, temperature, cloud motions and other properties

Map Jupiter’s magnetic and gravity fields, revealing the planet’s deep structure

Explore and study Jupiter’s magnetosphere near the planet’s poles, especially the auroras – Jupiter’s northern and southern lights – providing new insights about how the planet’s enormous

Juno will let us take a giant step forward in our understanding of how giant planets form and the role these titans played in putting together the rest of the solar system.

For updates on the Juno mission, follow the spacecraft on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr.