Here's what fruits and vegetables looked like before we domesticated them Next time you bite into a slice of watermelon or a cob of corn, consider this: these familiar fruits and veggies didn't always look and taste this way. Genetically modified foods, or GMOs, inspire strong reactions nowadays, but humans have been tweaking the genetics of our favourite produce for millennia. While GMOs may involve splicing genes from other organisms (such as bacteria) to give plants desired traits – like resistance to pests, selective breeding is a slower process whereby farmers select and grow crops with those traits over time. From bananas to eggplant, here are some of the foods that looked totally different before humans first started growing them for food. Wild watermelon Alvaro/Wikimedia Commons This 17th-century painting by Giovanni Stanchi depicts a watermelon that looks strikingly different from modern melons, as Vox points out. Modern watermelon Scott Ehardt/Wikimedia Wild banana Genetic Literacy Project Modern banana Domiriel/Flickr Creative Commons Wild eggplant Wild carrot
Ancient song recreated from 3,400-year-old cuneiform tablets Scholars from the University of California at Berkeley have brought to life the ancient sounds of Mesopotamia following the decryption and study of a set of ancient cuneiform texts that date back 3,400 years, according to a report on WFMU. The result is the recreation of a piece of music unheard for thousands of years, and the CD titled ‘Sounds from Silence’ is now available to the public, and an alternative interpretation can be listened to here. Known as the lexical texts, the corpus of ancient cuneiform tablets, which range in time from the third millennium to the first century BC, were first discovered in the early 1950s in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit. Before this time, virtually nothing was known about Sumero-Babylonian music, aside from the type of musical instruments they used, as deducted from carved pictures and archaeological finds. Entrance to the royal palace at Ugarit, where the Hurrian songs were found. I will (bring x?) By April Holloway
Alexander the Great: Was he a Unifier or a Subjugator? Interpreted by many historians as proof of a vision for the unison of man, much of Alexander’s dealings in Persia have come to be attributed with a policy of racial fusion. Accordingly, echoed in numerous sources is an idealistic image of Alexander as a Christ-like humanitarian destined to be the saviour and unifier of mankind, while the Alexander whose entire existence orbited strategy and bloodshed is often outshone by this romantic ideal. According to classical scholar Ernst Badian, the Alexander who dreamt of a unity of mankind is nothing but an illusory figure concocted in the mind of scholar Sir William Tarn who conceived Alexander as an agent of the brotherhood of man, and I equally doubt that Alexander was ever inspired by some philanthropic desire to federate humanity. Several pivotal occurrences of Alexander’s short career have frequently been judged as confirmation of his so called visionary policy of racial fusion.
This video shows what Ancient Rome actually looked like It's impossible for anyone to see what ancient Rome looked like in all of its splendor, since we've failed to invent a time machine. But the above video, which shows a 3D rendering of Rome in 320 AD, is about as close as we can get. The video was created by Rome Reborn, an academic research project whose central mission is to create a full model of Rome at its greatest heights, working in conjunction with the Khan Academy. The goal is to take historical depictions of the city and create a true-to-life model of every period of Roman development, ranging from 1000 BC to 552 AD. This isn't just a cool pastime; it's useful for everyone from historians to filmmakers looking to capture what the city actually looked like. In the video, Indiana University professor Bernard Frischer (who leads the Rome Reborn project) explains that they chose to use 320 AD for this visualization because it was "the peak of Rome's urban development."
Sumerian Ancient Origins seeks to uncover, what we believe, is one of the most important pieces of knowledge we can acquire as human beings – our beginnings. While many believe that we already hold such knowledge, our view is that there still exists a multitude of anomalies and mysteries in humanity's past that deserve further examination. We therefore wish to foster an open community that is dedicated to investigating, understanding and explaining the origins of our species on planet earth. Our aim is to move beyond theories and to present a thorough examination of current research and evidence and to offer alternative viewpoints and explanations to those currently held by mainstream science and archaeology. Come with us on a journey to explore lost civilisations, sacred writings, ancient places, unexplained artefacts and scientific mysteries while we seek to reconstruct and retell the story of our beginnings.
Rome Reborn Humanity's forgotten return to Africa revealed in DNA Not so isolated: Khoisan tribes have European DNA (Image: Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Alamy) Call it humanity’s unexpected U-turn. One of the biggest events in the history of our species is the exodus out of Africa some 65,000 years ago, the start of Homo sapiens‘ long march across the world. According to conventional thinking, the Khoisan tribes of southern Africa, have lived in near-isolation from the rest of humanity for thousands of years. Because Eurasian people also carry traces of Neanderthal DNA, the finding also shows – for the first time – that genetic material from our extinct cousin may be widespread in African populations. Advertisement The Khoisan tribes of southern Africa are hunter-gatherers and pastoralists who speak unique click languages. Ancient lineages “These are very special, isolated populations, carrying what are probably the most ancient lineages in human populations today,” says David Reich of Harvard University. Khoe-Kwadi tribes Twist in tale That made sense.
Neurology and psychiatry in Babylon How rapidly does medical knowledge advance? Very quickly if you read modern newspapers, but rather slowly if you study history. Nowhere is this more true than in the fields of neurology and psychiatry. It was believed that studies of common disorders of the nervous system began with Greco-Roman Medicine, for example, epilepsy, “The sacred disease” (Hippocrates) or “melancholia”, now called depression. Our studies have now revealed remarkable Babylonian descriptions of common neuropsychiatric disorders a millennium earlier. There were several Babylonian Dynasties with their capital at Babylon on the River Euphrates. The Babylonians made important contributions to mathematics, astronomy, law and medicine conveyed in the cuneiform script, impressed into clay tablets with reeds, the earliest form of writing which began in Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium BC. The Babylonians were remarkably acute and objective observers of medical disorders and human behaviour.
Les Gaulois en Orient How Fruit And Vegetables Have Changed Over Human History If someone handed you a wild banana from 7,000 years ago, you would barely recognize it from its modern-day ancestor. Fruit and vegetables have changed a lot since humans have domesticated them over the past few thousand years. They’ve undergone a transformation from selective breeding that has tailored them to suit our picky tastes and conveniences. More recently, fruit and veg have been molded by genetic engineering, allowing us to pick ‘n’ mix the best genes from desirable plants. This video from Business Insider gives you a small sample of the make-overs much of our fruit and vegetables have undergone. Main image credit: John Mason/Flickr.
Back to Babylonia By: Jane Moon Fig. 1: Map of Southern Mesopotamia The cities of Babylonia, Ur and Uruk, Larsa and Lagash, the very heart of Babylon itself, are the warp-threads of our understanding of ancient Near Eastern civilization. International fieldwork in this seminal area of Southern Iraq petered out the early 1990s, and in the Ur region, no major excavation had taken place since the 1940s. The Kurdish region in the north-eastern corner of Iraq is alive with archaeological activity, but the rest of the country, including Babylonia, struggles desperately. Fig. 2: The Ziggurat at Ur. The Ur region was explored extensively in the past, most famously by the excavations from 1922 to 1934 directed by Sir Leonard Woolley at the site of Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar) itself. Fig. 3: Tell Khaiber from space and at ground level. The buildings at the relatively flat site of Tell Khaiber were clear enough from space, but how much survived on the ground? Fig. 4: Surface collection at Tell Khaiber.
Les statues honorifiques entre texte et image J’ai plaisir à remercier Jean-Marc Luce pour son invitation à présenter ces réflexions qui ont été enrichies grâce aux communications et aux discussions du colloque de janvier 2012. 1Un portrait peut avoir différentes fonctions : il peut être cultuel, en fonction d’agalma, ou honorifique. Quand l’effigie est cultuelle, elle s’inscrit dans le panthéon des divinités de la cité ou est intégrée dans les cérémonies du gymnase. 2L’honneur qui consiste à élever la statue d’un homme se répand à l’époque hellénistique : des textes très nombreux, décrets honorifiques et inscriptions sur les bases, font connaître la signification du portrait comme médium social, différencié suivant les contextes d’exposition ; les portraits honorifiques, exposés à l’air libre dans l’espace public, étaient normalement en bronze et ils ont le plus souvent disparu, même s’il subsiste pour certains des copies en marbre d’époque impériale quand ils représentaient des personnages célèbres. 1. 1. 1. 2. 1. 3. Fig. 1.
Olenko sittenkin rasisti? – Kuusi kysymystä rodusta Ihmisten alkuperästä puhutaan nyt enemmän kuin aikoihin. Lähi-idästä tulevat turvapaikanhakijat niputetaan terroristeiksi ja raiskaajiksi, Suomessa syntyneet tummaihoiset joutuvat rasismin kohteiksi netissä ja kaduilla. Rotuajattelu nostaa vahvasti päätään. Viime elokuussa Suomen Kuvalehti selvitti suomalaisten rasistisuutta ja suhtautumista maahanmuuttoon. Tulos oli yllättävä, koska tieteen näkökulmasta asia on selvä: biologisia rotuja ei ole. Lähdimme tutkimaan ihmisen geneettistä taustaa tekemällä dna-testin kolmelle helsinkiläiselle, eri puolilta maailmaa kotoisin olevalle miehelle. Hänen, Alan Salehzadehin ja Abdirahim ”Husu” Husseinin suvuista, dna:sta ja geneettisestä taustasta kerrotaan videoiden, karttojen ja tarinoiden avulla. Kun katselee maailman ihmisiä, rotu vaikuttaa käyttökelpoiselta käsitteeltä. Kysyimme kolmelta tutkijalta rodusta. 1. Rotu on hankala sana, koska sillä ei ole tarkkaa merkitystä. ”Silloin käsite on ongelmallinen”, Laura Huttunen sanoo. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Science/Nature | Gilgamesh tomb believed found Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest "book" in history. The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name. Now, a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King. "I don't want to say definitely it was the grave of King Gilgamesh, but it looks very similar to that described in the epic," Jorg Fassbinder, of the Bavarian department of Historical Monuments in Munich, told the BBC World Service's Science in Action programme. Magnetic In the book - actually a set of inscribed clay tablets - Gilgamesh was described as having been buried under the Euphrates, in a tomb apparently constructed when the waters of the ancient river parted following his death.