I await the inevitable Nature paper that tells us the carpark skeleton was just another fucking lemur. #RememberIda
— Ed Yong(@edyong209) February 4, 2013
- Thanks for reminder, Jen. [↩]
the king’s name is a tower of strength
February 4th, 2013 by badgerquantum biology
February 4th, 2013 by badgerAnyone feel daring enough to make a fool of himself, to venture a guess that anything we recognize as psychic phenomenon (by that, I mean the things which aren’t total bullshit to begin with) and the soul might come out of the research in quantum biology? The New Age quacks will be all over this, building elaborate systems out of these fragments of information that will rival any role playing game. However, simple universal mechanism isn’t going to work for explaining every biological system much longer.
And honestly, I look forward to the weird mess that results.
I apologize for the newest interruption
February 4th, 2013 by badgerOnce I finally give a damn about the blog again, the computer decided to die. It’s now rebuilt, but still temperamental, with some conflicting drivers driving it to suicide, but it can probably be talked down. If OQ goes quiet again, it’s likely technical difficulties again or a currently unscheduled move to the new house, rather than a fit of crippling ennui.
Peking Man using clothes?
January 6th, 2013 by badgerHomo erectus using fire is old news now, but possible evidence of Peking Man using leather as clothing is new to me.
archaic humans of Central Narmada?
January 6th, 2013 by badgerI honestly don’t know what’s going on here. Two PDFs of research articles are floating about, but i’m too fuzzy-brained and undereducated to muddle through them.
The fossils date to the mid-Pleistocene to a river basin in northwestern India. They aren’t sure if they are modern humans or archaic hominids. One researcher was insisting on their being ancestors to modern pygmies, which is weird and almost certainly wrong.
I’m leaning on the usual wild guess… another archaic human branch that wound up in modern human DNA through admixture, possibly only in South Asians or probably only Austronesians. They’ll be distinct from both Neandertals and Denisovans.
Update 0.1.29.13: As noted in comments, the article seems to read differently than it did originally. There is a noted correction at the suggestion of Dr. A. R. Sankhyan on January 21st. It’s likely changing the wording to mean more specifically pygmies of South Asia and the article now seems far, far more plausible. The reason why I get nervous about the possibility of anyone even hinting about westward migration that early, back into Africa, is because there is all kinds of dubious research that has bubled up through my years of combing through these news stories proposing human evolved in China that reeks of nationalism. Thankfully, with this correction, this research isn’t one of them.
The Red Book
January 6th, 2013 by badgerAfter reading this Fortean Times article “The Occult World of Carl Jung“, i winced at knowing that I’ll probably never be able to read the legendary Red Book.
I had no clue that it was published in 2009.
Golem (Stanislaw Lem adaptation)
January 6th, 2013 by badgerPeter Cook’s birthday
November 17th, 2012 by badger
“You fill me with inertia.”
Scythians!
November 17th, 2012 by badgerBow and arrow technology pushed back to 71,000 years ago
November 17th, 2012 by badgerOnce again, the find is out of South Africa. To quote the article, “But whether this flickering pattern in the archaeological record is real or merely an artifact of the small number of sites excavated has been unclear.” My vote is on the latter, based on just stubborn belief…. unscientific, yes, but it also doesn’t seem rational humans raced across the planet then refined these hunting technologies very quickly. They brought these more refined technologies with them, possibly why they spread so far and rapidly.