Let us begin with the Eastern side of the map. Looking at Europe, in particular the Iberian peninsula, which had been occupied by Muslims for several hundred years, this is poorly depicted, as several rivers appear to have been confused, in particular, the Duoro and Tagus, and the area around the Middle East is inaccurately drawn, with grunchloads of rivers and lakes in the Sahara that never existed at any point in its history, even the Ice Age. The reason for this is relatively simple: Even if it were possible to flood the Sahara enough to put Khartoum right on the West coast of Africa, you couldn’t do it enough to cause the Niger River exceed its drainage divide and cause it to pour into the Atlantic, mainly because the Sahara is some of the highest ground for over a thousand kilometers. There’s also a logical issue with this: Taking the nonacademic, practical mindset of a typical 16th century sailor whose vessel frequents the coasts along desert regions, I don’t give a flippin’ crap about where sources of fresh water were thousands of years ago, I want to know where they are NOW! As for the portion of sub-Saharan Africa that appears on the map, its shape is accurate, but too large even taking the projection into account, which has been claimed to be azimuthal, but which, like most maps of the time, doesn’t really conform to any systematic attempt of scale and proportion. At closest, it really looks more like cylindrical equidistant projection, but that’s neither here nor there. Taking a peek to the Atlantic, even taking distortions of its apparent projection into account, it is too narrow, several land masses, such as Greenland, are absent, there is a big island in the middle of the ocean, and the Caribbean is poorly drafted. Now lets take a gander at the Western side of the map. As for North America: WTF!? This is complete fantasy, though South America doesn’t look too bad until you get down past southern Brazil, where it becomes a total pipe-dream, veering thousands of kilometers off latitude eastward. Antarctica, much less as it was before the Ice Age, isn’t shown at all, as the over 900 kilometer Drake Passage is not shown, nor are the islands in the Wedell Sea. All in all, this map does not depict Earth as seen from space at any point in its history, save the most contrived, ad hoc attempts to match the map to the real thing. This does not seem to bode well for the claims of “ancient, superior knowledge” so space-gods and lost civilizations simply need not apply.

There is only one species of human being with several sub-species -- or would be if we classified ourselves the same way we do leopards. It is politically incorrect -- deeply offensive to most -- to use the word sub-species, probably because "sub" has residual connotations of the 19th century "sub-human," coined at a time when, in their ignorance, otherwise intellectually discerning men sincerely but mistakenly believed in a hierarchy of worth among races. But the differences between Norwegians, Japanese and Zulus would be enough, if we were leopards, for taxonomists to label them sub-species. Modern zoologists list nine sub-species of leopard.

It is important to remember that a sub-species is not nature's basic unit. That is the species, defined as individuals that can breed and raise fertile offspring. All nine sub-species of leopard can readily interbreed (though they don't, because they are geographically isolated), as can all races of human. If you cross two closely related species -- the horse and the donkey, for example -- you get a mule, but it that animal, while it has useful qualities (or used to) is always infertile since its chromosomes don't match up for pairing. Lion-tiger crosses are infertile curiosities in some zoos (above).

Taxonomists even recognize six sub-species of cheetah, a mammal with so little genetic variability that they are more like clones than normal individuals. Cheetahs look almost identical, right down to the markings on their faces, because they went through a genetic "bottle-neck" ±10,000 years ago, when numbers were reduced to a tiny handful and the gene pool compromised. Tissue can be transplanted between individuals without rejection, as proved by Maryland cancer research scientist Stephen O'Brien et al. in 1985. Cheetahs have an extremely low sperm count

While there is only one species of people now, that wasn't always the case. If we exclude other hominids (Australopithicus, for example) and confine ourselves to the genus Homo, we know of H. habilis, H. erectus and H. neanderthalus in addition to ourselves, Homo sapiens. There were probably many more. Some were long gone before others "speciated." Some co-existed. Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man (us) certainly lived in Europe at the same time 40,000 years ago. If they ever mated, their offspring could not themselves have successfully bred, since with parents of different species (Neanderthal skull, right) they would have been infertile. The notion that modern people "evolved" from Neanderthals has now been abandoned by all but a handful of paleoanthropologists.

There used to be as many theories of how modern man came to populate the planet as their were inventive minds to think about it. But recent genetic analysis has made the picture much clearer. Mitochondrial DNA (the part of our heritage not in the nucleus of a cell created by male-female mating) is passed on only by females (it goes to both her sons and daughters, but only the daughters then pass it to the next generation). This and Y-chromosome DNA, which only males possess and pass only to their sons without mixing in the mother's genes, have changed perceptions radically. Which is not to say that all mysteries have been solved. Both mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome DNA, barring mutations, go on unchanged through hundreds of generations.

Geneticists are now certain that Homo sapiens speciated in Africa perhaps 180,000 years ago but stayed put for the next 120,000 years. All humans can be traced to "Mitochondrial Eve," a single female who lived about 120,000 years ago in Africa. There were other females, both contemporary with Eve and thousands of years older, but all other lines of descent died out. All people living today descended from one man (Y-chromosomal Adam) who lived 60,000 years ago, shortly before the migration out of Africa. Obviously Eve had a mate and obviously there had been human males on the savanna for 30 millennia before Adam but all lines earlier than his are extinct.

The reason genetic scientists can be fairly sure about these dates is that changes in mitochondrial and Y-chomosome DNA can only occur by mutation and the rate of mutation ("genetic drift") is known with a certain degree of accuracy and provides a kind of evolutionary clock with the little hand measuring in millennia and the big one in centuries. Perhaps Adam (this is sheer speculation) had a mutation that made him so much cleverer and more adventurous than his contemporaries that it caused his smart male descendants to move on to greener pastures. The "Out of Africa" migrations commenced at just that time. Perhaps the clever mutation enabled him to gather a huge harem and sire many children, who passed the mutation on to their sons (but not their daughters).

That is entirely fanciful, but it is known for sure that about 60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens reached the Middle East. We got to India 50,000 years ago and to Australia 40,000 years ago. If you look at an atlas, it seems odd that Australia was peopled before Europe. But taking climate into consideration, perhaps it is not so strange. A little later, modern people appeared in China and Japan. Not until about 14,000 years ago (maximum current widely accepted estimate) were the Americas reached. Once humans crossed into Alaska, in a very short time, a couple of thousand years at the most, they were at the southern tip of what we call today Argentina. Madagascar was populated only 1,600 years ago and New Zealand only eight hundred years ago.

Certainly in the Middle East and Europe, and perhaps in south and east Asia, we encountered other species of human and quickly polished them off. Sentimentalists, with their retroactive bleeding hearts, have come up with a hundred alternatives for the disappearance of the Neanderthals of Europe rather than face the obvious. This “bush meat” was an easy-to-catch source of protein, so Neanderthals became extinct sooner than the mammoth and its formidable weapons of defense. It wasn’t cannibalism since they were a different species. More like those Africans who today enjoy chimpanzee steaks.

Once we got out of Africa, very large mammals, birds and reptiles didn't stand a chance. We ate them, every last one of many, many species. These are called the megafauna. In Africa, where a stable symbiosis of human and large mammal had clearly developed, there is no fossil evidence of extinct megafauna. Indeed, we can see the huge creatures there today from the window of a plane landing at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Megafauna in Africa today include the elephant, the giraffe, the hippopotamus, two species of rhinoceros, and large numbers of big ruminants including the cape buffalo, three species of zebra, the wildebeest (gnu) and numerous large antelopes. There is also a very large carnivore, the lion.

But everywhere else it was a different story. Here it is a matter of counting the few megafauna that survived, not the ones that went extinct. The Asian elephant and Indian rhino are examples. The yak, Asian forest ox and crocodile are others. Bison and moose in North America. But the fossil record lists far more numerous species of large creatures that are no longer with us. Indeed, wherever our ancestors went, they wiped out the megafauna in the blink of an evolutionary eye.

In Europe during the Pleistocene (a recent geological epoch that included the Ice Ages), the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave bear (pictured), the cave lion, the Irish elk, and the aurochs (a giant ox) all quickly vanished down the gullets of this new arrival. Cro-Magnon Man (that’s us) appeared on the scene with his flaked points of flint, his sharpened sticks, managed brushfires and ability to cooperate in hunting packs as cleverly as wolves -- and goodbye mammoth. In the interests of fairness, it must be reported that there are paleoanthrologists who cling to the notion that it was climate change or volcanic activity or something else, definitely not us, that caused the megafauna extinctions. Oh, and let’s not forget Neanderthal man.

It does seem counterintuitive that we reached Australia before Europe, but fossils don’t lie. They can hide and pretend to be something else, but sooner or later they get dug up and expose their secrets. In Australia, early humans killed off the 10-foot giant kangaroo, the two-ton marsupial wombat, a giant koala, a marsupial lion, a large flightless meat-scavenging bird called a dromornis with a beak like a hyena’s jaws (below), a cousin of the Komodo dragon three times the size, an egg-laying creature that looked like a hedgehog but was as big as a goat. And many more.

Man reached the Americas very much later, but when he did, it was barbecue time, everyone invited, bring the kids. In no time most of the really big terrestrial animals of North America were dead meat. These included mammoths, mastodons (another member of the elephant family, pictured as imagined trapped in the La Brea tar pits, below), giant ground sloths, one species of bear, two of tapir, a seven foot camel, three kinds of horse (which had to wait 12,000 years to return on Spanish galleons), the saber-toothed tiger, two species of bison and the giant beaver. The few big mammals that survived the feast included the bison, elk and grizzly bear.

In South America, the Patagonian bigneck was quickly roasted into extinction, as were the unbelievably large toxodons and megatheriums and mastadons (left) and the eight-foot carnivorous terror bird. But the closest we can get to proof positive of mankind killing off the megafauna is in New Zealand. When the Maoris arrived about AD 1250, there were fifteen species of moa, giant flightless birds as much as 12 feet high (reconstructed fossil pictured, below). Within 200 years they were all gone and today heaps of sub-fossils survive with millions of bones or bone fragments. This had the effect of making extinct the world’s largest eagle, the only predator of the moa. It is amazing that even in the face of this evidence, some people assiduously search for other reasons for the extinctions.

But in the past 500 years there has been very little of this sort of thing. Man-made extinctions largelystopped millennia ago, despite what the conservationists are daily baying in the popular press about another extinction every half hour. There are very few extinctions that can be laid at the feet of modern man, and most of those are on islands, habitats in such delicate ecological balance that they simply cannot deal with intruders, especially man and the other species he brings in tow: the rat and the cat to eat the eggs and young of native fauna and the goat to crop the meadows where native species grazed and the pig, which like us can and will eat anything nutritious.

The extinction of the dodo of Mauritius and the 10-foot elephant birds of Madagascar (both 16th century) can be blamed on modern man. In 1768, less than 30 years after it was discovered by naturalists, Steller’s sea cow, a 26-foot manatee that lived in the cold coastal waters off Alaska, had been wiped out for its blubber. The celebrated passenger pigeon of North America is not the tragic loss it is cracked up to be. It was an anomaly, a rara avis that grew from inconspicuousness to a population of 5 billion only after Europeans arrived. The last one died in Cincinnati in 1914. While it certainly represented a gigantic biomass, its extinction was not an unmitigated tragedy for biodiversity. There are 319 other species in the order of pigeons.

The only other really notable notable casualty of recent centuries is the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a large dog-like marsupial predator. It was not merely a species, nor even a genus, but the sole representative of its family. So it really was a major loss for biodiversity. But the sheep it killed were more important. The last one died in a zoo in Hobart in 1936 (pictured, above). Attempts have been made to isolate its DNA from cells in museum specimens but this work has been put aside until science makes more breakthroughs in genetic technology. The same procedure may some day see the revival of the sea cow and the dodo. A suitable host(ess) womb or egg of a related species would have to be found.

The passenger pigeon was unusual both in its exploding numbers and absolute decline. But extinctions are quite natural and necessary. Without them evolution would come to a stop. Usually, as a changing climate makes a creature less viable, a better adapted sub-species will occupy its ecological niche and then speciate, or a closely related species will move in. This is not only normal, but is the very mechanism by which natural selection works. It is why 99% of all species that have ever inhabited this planet are extinct. It is also how we evolved to be masters of the biosphere.

A single really bad mistake in the past 200 years (the thylacine) isn’t so bad. The New Zealanders nearly made a worse mistake. The tuatara, a long-living, slow-maturing reptile, is now safe on 32 offshore islands entirely cleared of introduced rodents and feral cats that once ate its eggs and hatchlings. Had the tuatara gone the way of the dodo it would have been much worse. With the loss of the dodo an entire family in the the order of pigeons vanished. The tuatara (above) is the sole member of one of the four orders of reptile (the other three are crocodiles, turtles and snakes & lizards). Though it looks superficially like an iguana, is is anatomically quite different and has a celebrated rudimentary “third eye.”

All reptiles are easy to preserve since you only have to save their eggs and protect hatchlings from predators until they are big enough to fend for themselves. The Siamese crocodile, probably extinct in the wild, is bred by the tens of thousands on farms. Same with the Yangtze alligator. The Yangtze river dolphin was last year declared functionally extinct, but its cells, both gamete (reproductive) and somatic (the rest) are preserved so that some day it may be incubated in the womb of a captive Indus river dolphin. Besides, it was only a genus (certainly worse for biodiversity loss than a species) but there are four other genera in its family.

Indeed, most domestic animals are today either totally extinct in the wild (camels, donkeys, llamas, alpaca, ferrets, rabbit, guinea pigs, silkworm, goldfish) or are so changed from the original wild form as to be scarcely recognizable (cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, dogs). Some of these -- the camel in Australia and the rabbit in England are a good example -- have escaped or been released and formed "wild" populations. The camel was already extinct in the wild when the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians invented writing 5,000+ years ago. Some animals exist in the wild but are outnumbered in captivity thousands of times over (water buffalo, yak, reindeer, horse, some crocodiles). Yet others have become extinct in the wild and saved solely as zoo specimens (Père David's deer, Arabian oryx, California condor, Chatham Islands robin, New Zealand kakapo ground parrot) with a view to reintroduction to their native habitat.

People have a tendency, possibly innate, to be captivated by “charismatic species.” Very few of us are charmed by sewer rats, snakes or spiders, but certain other animals, usually mammals but also some birds, are much loved, possibly due to a genetically encoded impulse to find them appealing. They are considered cute (pandas, koalas, parakeets), “intelligent” (dolphins, elephants, chimps), majestic (tigers, polar bears, humpback whales), man’s friends (dogs, cats) and so on. Nobody cares about sparrows or cockroaches because we have no inherited tendency to be charmed by them.

Almost nobody gives a thought to the billion or so pigs bred for the slaughterhouse, from which they make their way to ham sandwiches, bacon breakfasts and spareribs. Provided we don’t have to watch what happens in the abattoirs, we don’t give a hoot about the 1.3 billion cattle and 1.7 billion sheep and goats that annually get killed in such places. It makes no logical sense to be indifferent to the slaughter of a million cows on Monday and deeply mourn the loss of one polar bear on Tuesday. To be upset about a spotted owl chick that falls out of its nest and not care about the 70 million chickens who get their necks wrung or throats slit the same day defies all laws of logical thinking.

It seems to have occurred simultaneously to several microbiologists working on the spread of communicable diseases, and to entomologists working with epidemiologists studying human pathogens, to consider actually engineering extinctions. There are about 2,700 species of mosquito, of which 400 belong to the genus Anopheles. Of these about 40 are capable of spreading malaria. The Aedes mosquito carries dengue fever, and Culex West Nile fever. The tsetse fly spreads deadly sleeping sickness in Africa. Who would miss these insects? Or certain disease carrying ticks and mites? Sometimes a loss of biodiversity is a good thing.

A lot of research has been done on this by teams in many laboratories around the world. Apparently, it is now feasible to introduce genetic mutations that would spread naturally through normal breeding and the organism would die out in a relatively short time. Obviously, it wouldn't be as simple as it sounds, but one study estimated that the engineered extinction of about 30 species would wipe out many diseases for which there is no cure, and save millions of human lives. Every year malaria kills about two million people. But wouldn't you know it? Some people are appalled at the idea of interfering with nature and diminishing biodiversity in this way. One supposes they wish the smallpox virus back.

Indeed, other than the genetic predisposition argument, it is hard to explain why people care deeply about one species of mammal and not at all about another. If logic were the only guide, a rat would be as dear to us as a guinea pig. And if logic alone ruled, the best way to save the endangered charismatic species would be to eat them. Take the tiger. They breed readily in captivity. There are too many of them (more than 10,000 according to some estimates) pacing cages in zoos, private collections and circuses — and only about 2,000 or so living in the wild. Tigers are easy to farm.

The Leipzig Zoo keeps a stud book listing the pedigrees of breeding individual tigers worldwide. There are plenty for a viable gene pool - enough even for zoologists anxious to preserve sub-species. Tiger farms could supply the worldwide Chinese “medicine” market with all the bones, gall bladders, penises and eyeballs it needed. In no time the domestic tiger would be an important economic resource and poaching would be about as profitable as hunting in the jungle for hen eggs. Yet the idea of slaughter-houses for tigers is abhorrent to most people.

A common misconception is that tigers in the wild need vast territories. But if a goat is tethered to the same forest tree three times a week, the territories will become so small that the beasts will tolerate the presence of others of their kind nearby. They are still solitary, but like the domestic cat will ignore each other, chasing away only the strangers that jump over the garden wall (encroach on a private territory with a personal food source.) So even in national parks, a bit of imaginative management could double the numbers of wild tigers and end much wringing of hands.

Demand for bones and other bits of the tiger is not likely to disappear. The beast itself is. So why not breed tigers for slaughter like minks or foxes? In the early 1990s, China asked CITES (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to endorse an international trade in products from tiger farms. It said the income would be spent on conservation in the wild, while a controlled legal supply would reduce poaching. The Cat Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union would have nothing to do with the idea: “It would be a cover for an illegal trade that could wipe out the world’s tigers.” Which is a bit like saying it would be easier to go out into the woods with a shotgun than to buy a turkey at the supermarket.

Someday, if Mother Nature has her way, Homo sapiens will pass from the scene, and others will have their turn at the top — perhaps including a very large orange-and-black striped descendant of Felis domesticus. But during our season of dominance, other species will have to move on and make room. Our own population passed the 6.7 billion mark last month. Nothing will stop us reaching 9 billion and, with our food animals, taking up a lot more of the planet's capacity to support biomass.

All this will be rank heresy to the strident fringe of the conservationist movement. Animal-rights activists will have fits of indignation over their pork chops. And the sentiment is no doubt unacceptable, too, to the thoughtful mainstream of Western environmental opinion. Nature’s ways are too cruel for people who don’t have to wrest a living from them. The more zealous sects of the environmentalist religion refuse to countenance any scientific opinion that does not support their own. Fate is too laid-back to be taken lying down by people who experience frissons of delicious indignation at every prediction of declining numbers.

Related Posts in This Blog:
Evolution Won't Be Denied
We Must Kill More Elephants
Climate Change, a Semi-Skeptic's View
The Rarest Bird in the World

External Links
Cheetahs

Anyways, this post is about a PLoS Biology paper. PLoS Biology is an open access journal that has just published a paper which investigates woolly mammoth extinction. The authors of the paper, "Climate Change, Humans, and the Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth," ultimately conclude that both climate change and human hunting were critical factors in woolly mammoth extinction. Not a really Earth shattering conclusion, I know... but there has been some discussion whether or not climate change or human hunting was more impactful.

Right before the Holocene, the global climate was warming up. And most woolly mammoths died out during this time, the end of the Pleistocene (12,000 years ago). That's what got many people to consider that warm temperatures may have driven the extinction of this cold-adapted species. But, the species had survived previous warming periods, and in places like St. Paul Island, Alaska and Wrangel Island they lasted up until 3,700 years ago. This is what got other people to think that the extinction of the woolly mammoth was due to the effects of human population expansion.

From the author's summary,

"In this study, we combined paleo-climate simulations, climate envelope models (which describe the climate associated with the known distribution of a species—its envelope—and estimate that envelope's position under different climate change scenarios), and a population model that includes an explicit treatment of woolly mammoth–human interactions to measure the extent to which climate changes, increased human pressures, or a combination of both factors might have been responsible. Results show a dramatic decline in suitable climate conditions for the mammoth between the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene, with hospitable areas in the mid-Holocene being restricted mainly to Arctic Siberia, where the latest records of woolly mammoths in continental Asia have been found. The population model results also support the view that the collapse of the climatically suitable area caused a significant drop in mammoth population size, making the animals more vulnerable to increasing hunting pressure from expanding human populations. The coincidence of the collapse of climatically suitable areas and the increase in anthropogenic impacts in the Holocene are most likely to have been the “coup de grâce,” which set the place and time for the extinction of the woolly mammoth."

I'm really not clear about how the authors established their population models. I'll do my best to review them, though. The authors compared and contrasted the population sizes to the climatic conditions. Curiously, their results differ as they increase the n, but they were able to calculate,

"that the most suitable geographic area available to woolly mammoths increased by 7.7 million km² from the last interglacial, 126 ky BP, to 42 ky BP (from 0.3 to 8.1 million km²). There was a 0.5 million km² decrease in the most suitable area between 42 ky BP and 30 ky BP periods, and then a 3.7 million km² decrease between 30 ky BP and 21 ky BP (from 7.5 to 3.8 million km²). Finally, between 21 ky BP and 6 ky BP, there was a 2.9 million km² decrease. By the 6 ky BP period, only 0.8 million km² of the most suitable climatic conditions remained."

This shows that with time, the available suitable habitats for the species reduced and did thus contributed to a reduction in woolly mammoth population sizes. Now the authors didn't directly test the zooarchaeological record to directly correlate if human hunting or the side effects of human population expansion affected mammoth populations. But they did infer that their results of the incremental decrease in population sizes over time showed a "synergy" to the northward increase in human population densities during the Holocene.

So what about the mammoth groups in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean that persisted late after all the others died off? Their results actually show that these areas were largely unchanged by both climate and human impact. In fact, that climate change and human impacts were focused on mammoths in the northernmost land masses of Arctic Siberia and some arctic islands, "leaving them with nowhere to run away from extinction."

Nogués-Bravo, D., Rodríguez, J., Hortal, J., Batra, P., Araújo, M.B. (2008). Climate Change, Humans, and the Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth. PLoS Biology, 6(4), e79. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060079

With the exception of the Eskimo-Aleut family that straddles the Bering Strait and Aleutian Islands, this is "the first successful demonstration of any connection between a New World language and an Old World language," Nichols said.

Vajda has not yet published his findings, so the extent of his linguistic claims is not yet clear. However, based on Roach's summary of his discussion, there are two major points of controversy. First, Roach states that Vajda found "several dozen" cognates. Whether or not the comparative method for linguistic reconstruction was used remains to be seen. Regardless, a cognate list under 50 seems a bit thin to solidify a connection at all, let alone begin reconstruction. Furthermore, the public at this point has no access to the words to assess their status as true cognates. Without a doubt, a consistent and corresponding element of grammatical structure is a strong argument for a common ancestor, but we must consider the systems of linguistic change, particularly sound change (which requires cognates), as a central factor.

A second point of controversy is the matter of depth: how long ago does the proposed connection date back? Vajda makes no direct claims, but states that this would be the oldest known language link if it corresponds to the late Pleistocene migrations evident in the archaeological record. Unfortunately, the field of linguistics currently has no reliable absolute dating techniques, and relative dating such as glottochronology, has been widely discredited. In this case, it seems the lack of cognates would help secure this relationship as an old one. If that were indeed the case, a volume of cognates would become evident in the reconstructions of Proto-Yeniseic and Proto-Na-Dene. Whether or not Vajda has taken this into consideration remains to be seen. At any rate, Nichols is not convinced of a 10,000 year-old connection:

"I don't think there is any reason to assume the connection is [10,000 years] old … this must surely be one late episode in a much longer and more complicated history of settlement," she said.

At this point it is very difficult to make any generalizations. Vajda has not yet published his findings, but merely opened the door to discussion on the topic. Until he does, the foundation of our support or criticism is unknown.

Why does whisky produced on the Scottish island of Islay have a maritime taste? Often described by connoisseurs as being somewhat akin to iodine, could the pungent aroma of the Lagavulin and Laphroaig brands owe a little something to sea breezes caressing the whisky casks, as some aficionados suggest?  Is this sufficient explanation?  During his tenure at the Laphroaig distillery, ex-manager Iain Henderson gave marvellous talks to visitors that further addressed this very issue.  And according to Mr Henderson, additional forces are at play.  Islay peat is cut from land that was, until relatively recently, submerged beneath the sea (at Laphroaig and other Islay distilleries, local peat is burned to dry the malted barley used to make whisky).  A significant part of the island, in common with the rest of coastal Ayrshire and the Hebrides, was underwater for much of the last 10,000 years - emerging only comparatively recently due to a process geologists term "isostatic rebound".   

Peat cutting on Islay

In northern Europe, large areas of the earth’s crust were depressed by the weight of overlying ice during the Pleistocene Glaciation.  Little by little, the land has been rising ever since the ice melted – much like a cushion re-inflating after a person’s weight has been removed (even as you read this, Islay is expanding upwards at 4mm a year).  As a result, traces of seaweed, salt grass and crystals of sea-salt will most likely be present in lower strata of island peat - because sea-water once covered the land from which the cuttings are taken.  Unmistakable aromas of the sea are infused into the malted barley when this peat is burned.  A likely tale?  Perhaps – but one other thing is certain.  Sea-level rises due to climate change may be non-apparent on Islay, even if the worst predictions are proved true. Continued isostatic up-lift of the land will most likely keep pace with rising water levels, thereby bringing the net change in sea-level for this region to zero (from an islander’s perspective).  With dry land in abundance and a guaranteed supply of world-beating whisky, Islay must surely become a future stand-out destination for climate change refugees.

Tuberculosis is a deadly infectious disease caused by multiple strains of mycobacteria. Because the mycobacteria have lost numerous coding and non-coding regions in its genome, it is hard to retrace the genetic differences that would tell us of the origins, relationships, and movement of the disease causing pathogen. But through analyzing relatively modern human skeletal remains (I'm talking thousands of years modern) from Egypt and Peru, we know that tuberculosis was taking a big toll on humans relatively recently in our evolutionary history.

If this Homo erectus really did have tuberculosis, then that means he probably, and other hominids, got sick because his body produced less vitamin D due to darker skin and had a less vigilant immune system, hundreds of thousands of years ago. From what's reported in the press release, I don't buy it. And neither does John Hawks. I think it is over analyzed and sensationalized science to make big headlines.

I really don't understand why a Homo erectus from Turkey isn't enough of a killer headline. To my knowledge this is the first hominid found in Turkey and it fills a big spatial gap in understanding human evolution. Of course, I really don't know enough about the tuberculosis evidence in this individual to make a solid judgment... we'll have to wait until we get the paper...

Speaking of which, paper should be out anytime soon in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, so the entire details of the fossil aren't known to us until the AJPA decides to give the green light and publish the paper. I have, however, discussed this press release with several colleagues and they are all skeptical.

The first thing they are curious about is the date. We speculate that dating was established using faunal evidence. The problem with that is the faunal composition of Turkey during the Pleistocene isn't well known. Sure, the late Miocene is, and that's cause there are a lot of Miocene sites... but at 500,000 years ago it is hard to correlate a date to what organisms were around at the time.

I also got word that John Kappelman, and his team damaged the fossil. I don't know if it was during excavation, transportation, or curation/research, but having rumors run around that your team damaged the first ever Turkish hominid isn't something the bolsters ones reputation in the field. But again, take this with a grain of salt... it is a rumor. There aren't any official reports that his team actually broke the fossil, and if Kappelman's not really liked, I can see how people will start up these things. Physical anthropologists are a catty bunch. But to be really honest, I can't help but think the tuberculosis is a smokescreen to distract attention from this broken specimen.

Anyways, just reporting on this new paleoanthropology paper... be sure to keep checking the AJPA for the paper, and check out Razib's post as well.

A breeding program begun in 1977 has released about 500 Aplomados in Northern Mexico and southern Texas and southern New Mexico. The remaining natural grasslands of the Chihuahuan Desert are natural habitat for them. One of the many good things Ted Turner has done with his life is make available one of his New Mexico ranches for a release program. This ranch is just south of the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico and at least one of the falcons has made its way there. We saw it day before yesterday and here are photos. It is a juvenile and it was making the acquaintance of a raven. Given the intelligence of Ravens, we wondered if the Raven knew how rare Aplomados are and just wanted to look at one "up close and personal." We’re sorry the birds are so small in the photo but they were a long way away and the adapter which fits the camera to our spotting scope was even further so this is the best we got. We’ll return again soon and try again, hopefully before this bird grows out of its juvenile coloring.

Currently, the site has yielded over 4,000 very diverse fossils including, gazelles, wolves, wild boar, lynx, sabretoothed cats, giraffes and zebras... as well as hyenas.

The official date hasn't come back yet, but Fonelas P-1 is thought to be about 1.8 million years old. No hominins have been found yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they do find one. With such a diverse and abundant list of fauna, Fonelas P-1 would have been the perfect place to attract hominins. Also, there are many similar fauna represented in Fonelas collection and those found early tool making sites in East Africa.

So keep your eyes out for Fonelas P-1. It should be a really interesting European site for paleoanthropology and paleontology.

Altruism--benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself--and parochialism--hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group--are common to human nature, but we don't immediately think of them as working together hand in hand. In fact the unexpected combination of these two behaviors may have enabled the survival of each trait according to Bowles and Choi.

They show that the two behaviors--which they term "parochial altruism"-- may have in fact coevolved. On the face of it joining parochialism to altruism is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because both behaviors reduce one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by avoiding them.

Aggression consumes resources and risks death; altruism, particularly toward those with whom we have no direct relationship, has the effect of helping other genes advance at our expense. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to the success of these conflicts.

Using game theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations Bowles and Choi show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans neither parochialsim nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

"But even if a parochial form of altruism may be our legacy," said Bowles, "it need not be our fate." He pointed to the many examples of contemporary altruism extending beyond group boundaries, and the fact that hostility toward outsiders is often redirected or eliminated entirely in a matter of years.

Science. 2007 Oct 26;318(5850):636-640.

The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War.

Choi JK, Bowles S.

School of Economics and Trade, Kyungpook National University, 1370 Sankyuk-dong, Buk-gu, Daegu 702-701, Korea.

Altruism-benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself-and parochialism-hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group-are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two-which we term "parochial altruism"-is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because altruistic or parochial behavior reduces one's payoffs by comparison to what one would gain by eschewing these behaviors. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to success in these conflicts. Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly.

see also:

Altruistic Rats: First Evidence For Generalized Reciprocal Cooperation In Non-humans

 

Memoir:

Kathmandu Valley Legend (Satis Shroff)

"I have a strong interest in the legend of Manjushri," said Fumio Yonechi, a geo-morphologist from Yamagata city, when I met him in Kathmandu a long time ago. We were talking about the origin of Kathmandu Valley, which is located in the lap of the Himalayas.

"I have heard similar popular legends in Kashmir, Tibet and in Khotang," he said.

Basically it is always the same, that is, a holy person cuts a path across the grilling mountains and draws out the water, resulting in the appearance of a new and fertile land from the bed of the lake. And Kathmandu Valley is not only the heartland of Nepal but also the most developed area in the Himalayas, due primarily to its physical setting. The Kathmandu Valley is a basin, and has a mild climate and fertile land. It is an amphitheatre in shape about 24km across, around the headwaters of the Bagmati River. Most of the rivers of Nepal have their origin in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, and they cut deep gorges through the Midland Region. But the Bagmati is an exception, rising in the Midland itself and having higher valley flow.

"I'm studying similar basins in Japan and Nepal, that is, low lying areas surrounded by mountains," said Fumio Yonechi. "My hometown Yamagata Valley is a basin much like your Kathmandu Valley. And I find that once upon a time, the north-eastern lakes of Japan were drained of their water and became small fertile plains. These lakes are known to have existed 50,000 to 10,000 years ago during the latter part of the Pleistocene often referred to as the Wulm Ice Age," he said.

"In Japan we have the same kind of legend centred around a Buddhist who is known to have cut a mountain and drained out the water, leaving a rich land behind. Personally, I feel that our ancestors in Japan could have made that legend as they had not seen real lakes at all, because the Pleistocene lakes were too old, for in those days there were only marshes in Japan. So it is probable that our Japanese ancestors made legends out of these existing marshes "he said.

"When I first came to Nepal I heard about the legend behind the Chovar Gorge and I developed a great interest and wanted to find out the facts behind the legend." According to the Nepalese legend, once the place where Kathmandu Valley now stands there was a vast lake called Nagahrad, which was then drained by Manjushri, a Buddhist missionary ,and then the bottom of the lake dried up. However, deposits of the former lake were identified as Pleistocene through paleontological evidence. To confirm the Pleistocene age of given to Kathmandu Valley's fertile soil, Fumio Yonechi sampled peaty clay from lacustrine deposits at the road cutting near Khajal hamlet, located in the vicinity of Budanilkantha, which was found to be 33,200 years old. The age was determined by using radiocarbon measurement carried out by K. Kigoshi of Gakushin University, Tokyo. It is a well known fact that most sediments in the Kathmandu basin are lacustrine, and peat layers are exposed at many places.

"I surveyed Kathmandu Valley and found many peat layers," said Mr.Yonechi.

"From the peat sample, we found many pollens of tall grasses that are normally specific to Steppe types of grassland. From that bit of information we deduced that Kathmandu Valley then was not a stable lake, but that it changed seasonally from lake to dry grassland. At that time, the climate of Kathmandu Valley was far more clearer than now: dry and rainy. Since all this took in the last Ice Age, the temperature must have been very low as compared to nowadays."

In 1966 two Nepalese geologists discovered the jaw of a fossilised elephant: Stegodon ganesha. In order to qualify as a fossil, the remains of a dead animal or plant have to be at least 10,000 years old. Perhaps in the hoary past there were elephants in Kathmandu Valley itself, even though they are confined to the lowland (Terai) area of Chitwan today. Perhaps they roamed and fed in the grasslands of Kathmandu Valley during the dry season and went in the rainy season to other areas because the Valley would then have been flooded with water. Mr.Yonechi went on to say, "In Japan too, fossil records indicate that in the Ice Age there were elephants in existence, but now there are no elephants in our country. Archeologists have made several important excavations of prehistoric sites, and it is my dream that in future we may be able to get more information on the pre-history of Kathmandu Valley and Japan."

The drainage pattern of the Kathmandu Valley is the most typical instance of centripetal system, according to the geologist Arthur Holmes. The Bagmati River has many tributaries from every direction: Vishnumati from the north, Manohara and Upper Bagmati from the south-east, small tributaries from the east, Godaravi from the north-east, small tributaries from the west and Nakhu from the south. Nakhu is the only river in the entire Kingdom that flows from south to north. And the Bagmati River leaves Kathmandu Valley through the 500 meter long Chovar Gorge.

The Chovar Hill is composed of limestone and there's a cement factory also located there.

Mr.Yonechi said, "The Chovar Hill resisted the erosion by the river and dammed up the water of a big lake once upon a time on the northern side of the hill. And gradually over a span of time, the groundwater must have made a kind of karst tunnel under the Chovar Hill. A part of the water was drained through this tunnel. By and by, the roof of the cave fell and formed the gorge.

Nepal was not Nepal then. We only know about the pre-historical periode which was 200 BC, the Licchavi dynasty from 200 till 750 BC, the Thakuri dynasty from 750BC, the early Malla dynasty from 1200 till 1482, the later Mallas from 1482 till 1768 and the recent Shah dynasty since 1768 till 2007. The human history of modern Nepal began towards the end of the 18^th century with the Gorkha conquests, even though the fertile, culturally rich Kathmandu Valley was the object of conquests at all times in its past and they had a tough time thwarting the marauding people from the craggy mountains. Even after the establishment of the monarchy and later democracy, the old saying that ‘Kathmandu is Nepal’ still holds, for the country is still centralised. Will the future governments bring more decentralisation to the people of this land-locked country? It would be only in the interest of the Nepalese people to do so.

Time will tell us.

Archaeologists have known about the paleontological fossil site at the north end of Edisto Island at Jeremy Inlet since at least the 1960s. The Charleston Museum has fossils from this place dating back to at least the 1820s and possibly earlier. I became aware of this place in 1978 when I first vacationed at the Edisto Island State Park with my colleague Jean H. McPherson. Over the course of the next 30 years, I made numerous visits to that place and surface collected fossils. As a casual visitor, I managed to accumulate a sizable collection of fossils from this site. I have also observed other finds made by friends and acquaintances.

The fossil deposit has yielded a rich assortment of Pliocene and Pleistocene fossils. These include both land and marine creatures both big and small. The land animals include mammoth, mastadon, giant sloth, bison, horse, camel, capybara, deer, elk, large cats, various turtles, and numerous small mammals. The marine animals include whales, dolphins, manatees, many species of sharks and rays, drum fish, and numerous other species.

Jeremy Inlet also contains an impressive assortment of prehistoric pottery and a few chipped stone tools. The pottery dates to several periods from the Terminal Archaic (Stallings Series and Thoms Creek Series), Early-Middle Woodland (Deptford Series) to various complicated stamped and cord marked types (untyped but probably Middle Woodland through Late Mississippian). The stone tools that I have observed included stemmed and triangular projectile points of Late Archaic through Late Woodland age. The area on both sides of Jeremy Inlet also has a thin veneer of historic artifacts from the late 18th through late 19th centuries, including brick, ceramics, glass, nails, and other metal items, which are mostly the remains of the village of Eddington--a settlement that was destroyed by hurricanes in the 1890s.

H.S. Ladd (1939) provides an important discussion of the Edisto fossil deposits in a National Park Service publication. He provides a partial list and several black and white photographs of terrestrial species found as fossils at Edisto by CCC workers in the 1930s. He also offers some interpretations as to the source and taphonomy of this fossil bed.

A state park employee reported finding a human long bone on the beach at Edisto Island in the 1970s. The report of this find was published in a brief article in a South Carolina archaeology journal. The current whereabouts of this very important fossil find is unknown to me.

In the late 1970s Paleontologist (and sometimes archaeologist) Janet Roth excavated a small test unit in the marsh at Edisto Island for her M.S. thesis (See Roth and Laerm 1980). My friend and archaeologist Greg Paulk assisted Ms. Roth in this undertaking. Sanders (2002) contains further discussion of the finds at Edisto Island by Roth and her colleagues.

Fossil collectors have been particularly busy at Edisto over the past three decades. Many fossils have been removed from the beach by collectors (including myself) and the ultimate disposition of most of these collections is unknown. Steps need to be taken to compensate for this steady drain on the resource base. The South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology has maintained a hobby diver program for several decades and this program partially addresses this issue. Under this program divers who scour the murky bottoms of the numerous blackwater rivers and streams that drain the South Carolina coastal plain are registered with the state.

Two recent fossil finds at Jeremy Inlet warrant special mention. The first is a small fossilized (black) fragment of a rib from an unidentified large mammal, which exhibits a "bullet-shaped" drill hole in cross-section. The artifacts has two or more striations, which are oriented perpendicular to the long axis of the drill hole. These striations probably represent marks left by the drill bit as the drill was removed and the drilling residue removed and the drill bit then reinserted into the hole. This artifact was found by Dan Elliott in April, 2008. It was found on the beach surface on the south side of Scott's Branch at Jeremy Inlet, approximately 50 meters below the high-water dune margin. Two photographs of this object are shown below (on metric graph paper).

The other important find was a section of cranium (skull cap) of what appears to be a Homo Sapien Sapien. This item has been fossilized and is light chocolate brown to medium brown in color. It contains several parallel cut marks on its surface, which may be intentional. While this skull is petrified, it is not as discolored as most of the fossil bones from Edisto Island. This artifact was found by a local resident of Edisto Island, who has been actively collecting fossils and artifacts from Jeremy Inlet for the past five years. Her collection was briefly examined by Dan Elliott in May, 2008. This collection also contains many Stallings and Thoms Creek pottery sherds, as well as later wares.

References

Ladd, 1939, Land Animals from the Sea, The Regional Review III(3): (NPS), http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/regional_review/vol3-3b.htm

Roth, Janet A., and Josh Laerm, 1980, A Late Pleistocene Vertebrate Assemblage from Edisto Island, South Carolina. Brimleyana 3:1-29.

Sanders, Albert E., 2002, Additions to the Pleistocene Mammal Faunas of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Relevant Links:

Lennon, Gered, 1996, Living with the South Carolina Coast, Nature, pp 108-110, http://books.google.com

Paleo Direct, 2008, Land Mammal Fossils, http://www.paleodirect.com/mammalfossils.htm

Paleontological Research Institution, 2008, Beachcombing for Fossils, http://www.priweb.org/ed/earthtrips/Edisto/jeremy.html

Sport Diver Archaeology Management Program, Maritime Research Division, FAQ, S.C. I.A.A., 2008, http://www.cas.sc.edu/SCIAA/mrd/sdamp_hdl_faqs.html

The Paleobiology Database, http://paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?action=displayCollectionDetails&collection_no=65405

Pour obtenir pareil résultat, les scientifiques ont analysé le contenu isotopique des carottes de glace ramenées de l'Antarctique et de l'Arctique. Et plus particuliérement les isotopoes 12 et 13 du carbone ainsi que que le rapport deutérieum (isotope de l'hydrogène)/hydrogène. Il existe plusieurs causes possible de ce rejet massif de méthane. La plus médiatisé est sans doute les feux de forêt mais n'auraient joué que pour 6 millions de tonnes/an pour la période étudiée. Une des autres causes serait la fonte du pergélisol/permafrost (terre continuellement englacée sous plusieurs mètre d'épaisseur). L'équipe de chercheur a déterminé que les gaz viendraient des marécages tropicaux. Ils auraient rejeté plus de 55 millions de tonne/an.

Il est intéressant à noter que le méthane, à quantité égale avec le dioxyde de carbone, est 25 fois plus actif dans l'atmosphère pour provoquer l'effet de serre bien connu. Je n'ai pas encore vérifier cette information mais d'après certaines sources, le GIEC (groupe intergouvernementale sur l'évolution du climat) ne prendrait pas en compte dans ses modèles le méthane. Ce qui, au vue de cette nouvelle découverte, revient à ignorer un gaz à effet de serre très puissant mais cependant présent en quantité moindre dans l'atmosphère.

And how 'bout this: did you know that cheetahs aren't doing so well-there are fewer and fewer of them. In fact, Scientists estimate that there are between 12,000 and 15,000 cheetahs in Africa today-that's down from 100,000 across Asia and Africa just a hundred years ago.

This isn't the first time cheetahs have gone through tough times. At the end of the last Ice Age-close to 10,000 years ago-three quarters of all mammals in North America died off (similar extinctions happened in Europe and Australia close to 40,000 years ago). This is called the Pleistocene-Holocene Extinction event, and researchers believe that cheetahs barely survived (unlike woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers that went extinct).

At one point in time, cheetahs ranged across North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. After the P-H Extinction event, the only ones left were in Africa and parts of Asia. Because so many cheetahs died off, the genetic diversity of cheetahs worldwide was reduced to the genes of only a few. This is referred to as a "genetic bottleneck," where only the genes of a small number of individuals are passed on to the next generation. (Think of a big bottle filled with marbles. When the bottle is turned upside-down, only a few marbles make it out of the narrow neck.)

What is genetic diversity? It is a measure of how many different versions of the same gene exist in a population (just think of hair color and skin color for example). Not only can these different versions result in dramatically different physical appearance (like in the case of albinos), but they can account for differences between fast and slow metabolisms or even resistance to certain diseases as well. For instance, humans with two normal copies of the hemoglobin (red blood cell) gene are susceptible to malaria, whereas those with one normal copy and one "sickle" version of the gene are immune to the disease. Those unfortunate enough to have two copies of the "sickle" version of the gene often die of another disease called Sickle Cell Anemia.

A healthy population includes many versions of different genes (high diversity), which helps to ensure that some individuals of the species can adapt to new conditions. If a particular version imparts a benefit to an individual, he or she will have a better chance of surviving than other individuals with other versions of the gene. They will then be more likely to pass on that version to future generations. That's how evolution works.

So when a population loses its genetic diversity it becomes increasingly vulnerable to change because all of the individuals have the same versions of genes. If a new disease crops up in a population with low genetic diversity, the chances that a particular version will be able to save the day are not good. So while modern-day cheetahs aren't facing immediate threats (other than the standard habitat loss and random poaching events), they are one bad disease or one climate shift away from extinction, thanks to their low genetic diversity.