Deluge of Atlantis

Deluge of Atlantis
Deluge of Atlantis

Monday, January 26, 2015

Tonal languages require humidity

Public Release: 
                   Tonal languages require humidity
Languages with a wide range of tone pitches have primarily developed in regions with high levels of humidity   Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 

IMAGE: Languages in humid regions of the Earth (light circles) are more often tonal languages (red) than in dry regions. view more
Credit: MPI f. Psycholinguistics/ Roberts
This news release is available in German.
The tone pitch is a key element of communication in all languages, but more so in some than others. German or English, for example, still remain comprehensible even if all words are intonated evenly by a robot. In Mandarin Chinese, however, the pitch tone can completely change the meaning of a word. "Ma" with a level pitch means "mother," while "ma" with a falling then rising pitch would mean "horse". "Only those who hit the tone pitch correctly can express themselves in tonal languages," explains Seán G. Roberts, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.
However, the climate can become a problem for the speakers of tonal languages, as the vocal folds in the larynx - commonly known as the voice box - suffer as a result. Even a temporary increase in humidity impacts upon the vocal folds: The humidity keeps the mucous membranes moist and makes them more elastic. It also changes the ion balance within the mucous membranes of the vocal folds. With good humidity, the vocal folds can oscillate sufficiently and produce the right tone.
The scientists therefore suspect that tonal languages are less common in dry regions as the wide range of tonal pitches is difficult to produce under these conditions and are more likely to result in misunderstanding. "Modern databases enable us to analyse the properties of thousands of languages. But this also brings problems because languages can also inherit their complex pitches from another language," says Damián E. Blasi, who conducts research at the Max Planck Institutes for Mathematics in the Sciences and for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. In their study, the scientists have now shown that these effects can be disentangled from the effects of climate.
Climate apparently shapes the role of pitch tone in a language and therefore how information is exchanged. Even small effects may be amplified over the generations to produce a global pattern. The climate thus determines the development of languages. "If the UK had been a humid jungle, English may also have developed into a tonal language," explains Roberts.
Original publication Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots
Caleb Everett,Damián E. Blasi, and Seán G. Roberts
PNAS, published online before print January 20, 2015, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1417413112

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Paracas Skulls and DNA

This is a story that is currenntly being heavily promoted. It is not only highly misleading, the conclusions being touted as definitive are not only not reliable, they are almost certainly false:

DNA Analysis of the Paracas Skulls Proves They Are Not Human

On the southern coast of Peru lies the desert peninsula of Paracas. This barren landscape is where Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello made an astounding discovery in 1928. His efforts uncovered a massive and complex graveyard buried under the sand and rocks.
In these tombs Tello found some of the most controversial human(?) remains in history. The bodies had the largest elongated skulls in the world and have since been called the Paracas skulls. Tello found a total of more than 300 skulls and they have been dated at around 3,000 years old. A recent DNA analysis performed on some of those skulls has presented amazing results that could challenge the current perspective of the human evolutionary tree.

Several other cultures have practiced skull elongation or deformation but the techniques they used produced different results. Certain South American tribes used to bind infants’ skulls in order to change their shape. Binding the head between pieces of wood modified the appearance of skulls by applying constant pressure over a long period of time. This type of cranial deformation changed the shape but it did not alter the size, weight or cranial volume; these are all standard characteristics of a regular human skull.
The Paracas skulls are different. Their craniums are 25% larger and 60% heavier than regular human skulls [this claim has been shown to be erroneous, it does not compare averages, it takes extreme measures of the Paracas crania and measures against the average, which is a loaded and fallacious comparison] which led researchers to believe they couldn’t have been modified through binding. They are also structurally different and only have one parietal plate as opposed to the two normally found in human skulls.[This statement is completely false and displays ignorance not only of how human skulls normally grow but even of the standard terminology that should have been used] These differences have deepened the decade-old mystery around the Paracas skulls and researchers haven’t been able to explain their origins.
The director of the Paracas History Museum has sent samples from 5 skulls to undergo genetic testing. The samples consisted of hair, skin, teeth and fragments of skull bones. The genetic laboratory was not informed about the samples’ origins in order to avoid biased or influenced results. The results were fascinating.
The mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother) presented mutations unknown to any man, primate or any other animal. The mutations suggested we are dealing with a completely new human-like being, very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals or Denisovans. The Paracas individuals were so biologically different from humans they wouldn’t have been able to interbreed. “I am not sure it will even fit into the known evolutionary tree”, one ["One and the same"] geneticist added.
The implications of this discovery are huge. Who were the mysterious Paracas people? Did they evolve here on Earth on a path so different from us that they ended up looking drastically different? If not, where did they come from? Are any of them left?
This breakthrough brings up more questions than it answers but counts as another piece of evidence suggesting that we are not alone.

OK, we have a situation here: the Anthropologists cited are not qualified to make the remarks attributed to them, the Anatomists cited are not qualified to make the claims attributed to them and the Geneticist cited is not qualified to make the claims attributed to them.
Human skull bones are not automatically fully formed as the baby comes out of the womb, the skull is made up of a number of smaller disjointed pieces which grow around the edges as the child develops. Some of these separate pieces fuse together as part of the normal process and form single bones from more than one original piece. Fusion of the skull bones is normal to some degree and some skulls can continue the fusion as an adult until the suture lines are grown over by bone. The argument that "There is only one parietal bone" is not only wrong and misleading, it is actually an absurd and ridiculous claim.

The lab which was given the samples knew what they were testing and had already pre-determined what their results would be before the tests were even run. The statements about the DNA test results were made by another source that was in charge of the DNA analysis. I have a Facebook Friend who was formerly associated with the lab and who was closely and personally connected to its director, and the director is the person that issued comments about the DNA not matching anything else. The former associate told me "I really doubt if they ran any tests at all, they already knew the outcome they wanted to announce." The director of this DNA lab has a long long history of not doing the work that was given to them, making misrepresentations about fraudulent business practices and claiming results from DNA tests not actually performed by the lab, and of making exaggerated claims that go against what is already known to be true about how DNA works which have never been verified by anyone else. In this case they are showing their ignorance when they claim that new mutations prove an alien origin: mutations are different from the ancestral DNA anyway, that is why they are mutations. There is no way that you can go from there to say they mean the mutations came from an otherworldly source and you basically have to test the DNA against all other known DNA in order to make the claim that "This DNA does not match anything known on Earth."  We already know this was NOT done and in fact we can take it as a given that there was no way they could have either the time or the resources to even begin to do such a thing.

These are some reconstructions that were done on a  Paracas skull for the National Geographic feature. They are very well done, reliable and authentic, unlike the claims being made about the DNA by the persons cited in the article and the video. I should emphasize here that the unusual claims are originating in only two or three individuals who are merely very vocal in advancing their claims.

Friday, January 16, 2015

70000 Year Old African Settlements


70,000 year-old African settlement unearthed

During ongoing excavations in northern Sudan, Polish archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology in Poznań, have discovered the remains of a settlement estimated to 70,000 years old. This find, according to the researchers, seems to contradict the previously held belief that the construction of permanent structures was associated with the so-called Great Exodus from Africa and occupation of the colder regions of Europe and Asia.
The site known as Affad 23, is currently the only one recorded in the Nile Valley which shows that early Homo sapiens built sizeable permanent structures, and had adapted well to the wetland environment.
This new evidence points to a much more advanced level of human development and adaptation in Africa during the Middle Palaeolithic.
Remnants of the Palaeolithic settlements in Affad. Image: M. Osypińska

Locating the “village”

Discoveries in Affad are unique for the Middle Palaeolithic. Last season, we came across a few traces of light wooden structures. However, during the current research we were able to precisely locate the village and identify additional utility areas: a large flint workshop, and a space for cutting hunted animal carcasses, located at a distance” – explained project director Dr. Marta Osypińska.
The researchers are also working on a list of animal species that these early humans hunted. Despite the relatively simple flint tools produced using the Levallois technique, these humans were able to hunt both large, dangerous mammals such as hippos, elephants and buffalo, as well as small, nimble monkeys and cane rats (large rodents that inhabited the wetlands).

Palaeolithic hunters

This year, the researchers intended to precisely date the time period in which the Palaeolithic hunters lived here, using optically stimulated luminescence.
At this stage we know that the Middle Palaeolithic settlement episode in Affad occurred at the end of the wet period, as indicated by environmental data, including the list of hunted animal species. But in the distant past of the land such ecological conditions occurred at least twice” about 75 millennia and about 25 millennia ago. Determining the time when people inhabited the river bank near today’s Affad is the most important objective of our project “- said prehistory expert Piotr Osypiński.
The Polish team is working with scientists from Oxford Brookes University, who are helping to analyse the geological history of the area. The results will help determine climatic and environmental conditions that prevailed in the Central Nile Valley during the late Pleistocene and hope to identify factors that contributed to the excellent state of preservation at the Affad 23 site.
Source: PAP

These were definitely in place before the post-Toba Out of Africa movement

Possible Direct Evidence for the Atlantis Invasion

I had this map prepared to illustrate the results of the Atlantis Empire invasion that Plato was talking about, but while I had it in storage the text was lost. However these are the two sites that are marked with an asterisk and which seem to indicate the results of a violent invasion at the end of the Ice Age. In the New World the effects are less obvious archaeologically but there are clear signs that the male side of the descendants came from a transatlantic R Y-DNA group that replaced whatever older males that might have been present in the older populations.

The middle aged Sicilian woman was struck by arrows from the side
 about 10000 years ago during the Epipaleolithic (reconstruction at the local museum)

Skeletons-from-Jebel-Sahaba-Sahara,  two victims of the massacre of at least 24 people at the same time in a conflict between two distinct ethnic groups and which resulted in the introduction of a new farming and herding economy at the end of the last Ice Age

Two late Paleolithic (Epigravettian at ca 11000 BC) bodies of this kind are known from Italy. One, from San Teodoro cave in Sicily, was a woman with a flint point in her right iliac crest. This artifact was designed as a triangle and was most probably an arrow point. The other was a child with a flint in its thoracic vertebra, found in late Epigravettian layers of the Grotta dei Fanciulli (the famous Grotte des Enfants) at Balzi-Rossi / Grimaldi, on the LIgurian Italian / French border.
The most remarkable discovery of late Paleolithic Age comes from Jebel Sahaba, a few kilometers north of Wadi Halfa on the east bank of the Nile. A graveyard (ca 10000 BC) containing 59 burials was located on a hill overlooking the Nile. Twenty-four skeletons had flint projectile points that were either embedded in the bones or found within the grave fill in positions which indicated they had penetrated the bodies. The excavator of the site, Fred Wendorf (The prehistory of Nubia, II p. 991) wrote: ” The most impressive feature is the high frequency of unretouched flakes and chips. In a normal assemblage all of these would be classified as debitage or debris and none would considered tools. Yet many of these pieces were recovered from positions where their use as parts of weapons were irrefutable”. joteIn total, more than 40% of the men, woman and children in the commentary had died by violence.  Fred Wendorf, suggested that environmental pressure and vanishing resources on the end of the Pleistocene were the causes of violence, but this remains only one hypothesis. A detailed analysis of the skeletons with nowadays methods (dna-analysis, stable isotopes) is missing till now. If war is defined as organized aggression between autonomous social units, the archaeological record at Jebel Sahaba may indeed indicate the presence of an early war.
Coming back to the European Record, at Ofnet cave in Bavaria two pits contained the skulls and vertebrae of thirty-eight individuals, all stained with red ochre, dating to around 8-9000 BC (Orschiedt 1998). The Ofnet finding most probably represents a massacre, which wiped out a whole community and was followed by the ceremonial burial of skulls. Most of the victims of deadly attacks were children; two-thirds of the adults were females, which led to the suggestion, that a temporary absence of males may have been the precipitating cause of the attack. Half the individuals were wounded before death by blunt mace-like weapons, with males and females and children all injured, but males having the most wounds.
(The dates are not all the same but they are all in the same ballpark
 and they all do represent the same cultural level-DD)

And at least in the Sudan we know what their boats looked like (from Wikipedia but Charles Berlitz also mentions the situation)

Tiwanucu (Tiahuanaco)

Some materials about Tiwanucu (Tiahuanaco) that had been in storage on the blog. I am releasing them now but the text that went with the pictures has been lost

Two examples of Mesoamerican polished black zoomorphic pottery


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