Ancient World Review

Scientists Retrieve Oldest Human Genetic Material Ever Discovered

Video from 2014. "Mauricio Anton is a paleoartist and illustrator specializing in the reconstruction of ancient life." (Wikipedia)

"Genetic information from an 800,000-year-old human fossil has been retrieved for the first time. The results from the University of Copenhagen shed light on one of the branching points in the human family tree, reaching much further back in time than previously possible." Source: Science Daily.

"An important advancement in human evolution studies has been achieved after scientists retrieved the oldest human genetic data set from an 800,000-year-old tooth belonging to the hominin species Homo antecessor."

Video from 2017. Black screen lasts for the first 42s.

Note: "The only known fossils of H. antecessor were found at two sites in the Sierra de Atapuerca region of northern Spain (Gran Dolina and Sima del Elefante). In 1994 and 1995, a total of 80 fossils of six individuals who may have belonged to the species were found ... Evidence of early human presence in England and France has later been tentatively associated with H. antecessor purely on chronological grounds and not based on anatomical evidence." (Wikipedia)

According to Science Daily, this new genetic material was discovered in "in 1994 in stratigraphic level TD6 from the Gran Dolina cave site, one of the archaeological and paleontological sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain."

"The Gran Dolina (also Trinchera Dolina, En: Dolina trench) site is a huge cavern, which is being excavated [sic] since September 1981." (Wikipedia) Next video (2007) shows archaeologists working the site back in 1988. No English version available.

There's a hypothesis that Homo antecessor was the common ancestor of both Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans, and this new finding tends to support the idea. According to one of the co-directors of the excavation, "The features shared by Homo antecessor with these hominins clearly appeared much earlier than previously thought. Homo antecessor would therefore be a basal species of the emerging humanity formed by Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans..." (Science Daily)

These conclusions, based on paleoproteomics -- the study of prehistoric proteins -- are still kind of shaky:

"While protein analysis allows researchers to look much further into the past than other genetic-sequencing methods, the findings are still limited by the quality and number of specimens available to study. Because the present research is based only on a single tooth from a single H. antecessor individual, the results provide only a 'best guess' as to where the species lands on the human evolutionary tree, the authors wrote. Different types of cells produce many different kinds of proteins, so this enamel proteome is far from a complete genetic profile. More fossil evidence is needed to flesh out these results." Source: Live Science.

Note: Evidence of cannibalism has been discovered in this cave and other sites in the region:

"Most of the faunal and human fossil bones from the Aurora Stratum [part of the stratigraphic level TD6 where this genetic material was discovered] have human induced damage. Stone tool cutmarks are frequent, and peeling (a type of fracture similar to bending a fresh twig between the hands) provides a specific breakage pattern together with percussion marks and chopmarks. Both nonhuman and human remains show similar intensive exploitation. Slight differences, however, have been observed between fauna and humans (e.g., peeling frequent in humans, rare in fauna), that appear related to different musculature, weight, and bone structure. The characteristics of this fossil assemblage suggest that it is solely the result of consumptive activities as there is no evidence of ritual or other intention." Source: Journal of Human Evolution (1999).

Blood On The Deltoids: Conan The Barbarian

In the interests of improving my mind, I just watched Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer again, plus I've been reading the original Robert E. Howard stories, the later books by Robert Jordan, and the Dark Horse collections of the Savage Sword of Conan comics. This is all great stuff, even the second movie, which is generally panned as campy and too light for serious barbarian action. The Destroyer has its dopey moments, true -- quite a few of them, in fact -- but I've always been a sucker for stories about evil queens who try to bring ancient gods back to life so they can take over the world. Something always goes wrong, naturally, and they end up releasing monsters which turn on them and run amok. This same general plot was also used by Robert Jordan in his excellent novel "Conan the Triumphant," by the way. It never gets old.

If you really want to get into the Conan saga, however, you need to read the original Howard stories, now available in three volumes from Del Rey: "The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian", "The Bloody Crown of Conan" and "The Conquering Sword of Conan" (the best of the three, in my opinion.) And, if you can find it at an affordable price, I highly recommend the 928-page Gollancz hardback collection The Complete Chronicles of Conan. This is the only one-volume "collected" Conan I'm aware of that actually includes all of the stories and other Conan-related material that Howard wrote. It's the Bible for hardcore Conan fanatics.

Note: Excellent audiobook versions of the Del Rey Conan books can be found at Audible along with many of Howard's other works. There are several Conan collections for Kindle as well, some of them better than others. The Kindle versions are kind of hit and miss. Some of them have formatting problems and others, advertised as being complete, aren't actually complete. The three volumes of the Del Rey collection are apparently available on Kindle now, but they're kind of expensive.

The original Howard stories are all fantastic and some of them, like "Red Nails," "Beyond The Black River," "The Black Stranger," "Queen of the Black Coast," and "The Hour of the Dragon" (Howard's only novel) are masterpieces of high adventure and incredibly luminous writing. Beneath the surface, Howard was writing about the clash between barbarism and civilization and his prognosis for civilization wasn't very bright:

"'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'" -- Beyond The Black River.

Howard was an inspired, prolific writer who is often credited with creating the swords and sorcery genre, aka heroic fantasy, though stories like this can be traced all the way back to Homer and the Norse sagas. He was also lucky enough to live during a time when fiction writers could actually make a living writing for pulps like Weird Tales.  His writing's vivid and energetic, if sometimes florid, but always absorbing and entertaining. He was a friend of H.P. Lovecraft, another favorite of mine, and the great fantasist Clark Ashton Smith, and the three writers included references to each other's work in their own books in order to spread the word about Hyperborea and the Cthulhu Mythos, an interesting example of literary cross-pollination. Howard and Lovecraft corresponded regularly, producing a huge number of interesting letters collected in the two-volume set A Means To Freedom, edited by the Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi.

"For stark, living fear...what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?" --H.P. Lovecraft.

The late fantasy writer Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series, continued the Conan saga at a high level. He wrote six or seven Conan novels,  three of which are collected in "The Further Chronicles of Conan," and he also wrote the novelization for Conan the Destroyer. I'm reading "Conan the Triumphant" right now and it's excellent:

"In the fabled kingdom of Ophir, Conan and his Free-Company of mercenaries enter the service of the voluptuous, dark-eyed Lady Synelle, unaware that she is secretly High Priestess of Al'Kiir, the sharp-horned, multi-fanged demon god whose worship is almost forgotten in the kingdom." --Fantastic Fiction UK

Now that's what I call high literature, but enjoying it involves an obsolete skill, namely reading. If you're a product of the modern school system and you've already seen the flicks, you can always get a good dose of Conan through the comic books (though some reading is still required). The ones I've seen are top rate. For instance, I just got volume one of The Savage Sword of Conan (Dark Horse), which includes a faithful version of the Howard classic, Red Nails. The art work in these old comics was top notch (though nothing beats the original Magnus Robot Fighter series, in my opinion) and the writing is a testament to the good old days when kids weren't protected from the real thing by the all-knowing Nanny State.

As for the movies, the first one, Conan the Barbarian, is generally considered the best. Arnold Schwarzenegger was still in condition at the time, the supreme Iron Rat and perfect for the role of the semi-articulate Cimmerian (Howard's Conan was anything but inarticulate, but never mind that). The second movie, Conan the Destroyer, is almost universally mocked as kid stuff by serious fans, but I've always liked it. Both movies are quests. In the first one, Conan's sent to recover a king's daughter who has fallen under the spell of the evil Thulsa Doom, the leader of an apocalyptic snake cult. In the second movie, he's dispatched by an evil queen to help a beautiful young princess (destined to be sacrificed, naturally) recover a supernatural treasure which the queen plans to use to bring the god Dagoth back so life so she can rule the world. During the process, heads roll "with more thwacks and less facts, more pecs and less sex...with Arnold the Barbarian getting blood on his deltoids in every scene..." according to the legendary drive-in movie critic, Joe Bob Briggs. Neither movie is faithful to the far superior Howard creation, but that's the way it goes. I'm not holding my breath waiting for someone in the movie industry to do justice to Conan (the 2011 Conan the Barbarian was a typical Hollywood CGI schlockfest and I'm sorry I even mentioned it). 

Robert E. Howard is sitting at the right hand of Crom these days, but he should be proud of himself. Conan has become a cultural icon and the character Howard created has spawned a huge industry of movies, books, comic books, video games, role-playing games, you name it. Regardless of the format, however, they all have one thing in common. The world presented in the Conan saga is harsh, cruel, violent and, well, barbaric, but it's also more elemental, which I think is the big attraction these stories have for the modern mind cut off from nature in the barrack cities of so-called advanced civilization.

Note: I wrote this article several years ago. I've been reposting it on a regular basis because I want to do what I can to publicize the work of this great American writer.

What The Plague Of Athens Can Teach Us Now

"The coronavirus is concentrating our minds on the fragility of human existence in the face of a deadly disease. Words like 'epidemic' and 'pandemic' (and 'panic'!) have become part of our daily discourse." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"These words are Greek in origin, and they point to the fact that the Greeks of antiquity thought a lot about disease, both in its purely medical sense, and as a metaphor for the broader conduct of human affairs. What the Greeks called the 'plague' (loimos) features in some memorable passages in Greek literature."

Note: "The Plague of Athens ... was an epidemic that devastated the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece during the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BC) when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach. The plague killed an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people and is believed to have entered Athens main city through Piraeus, the city's port and sole source of food and supplies. Much of the eastern Mediterranean also saw an outbreak of the disease, albeit with less impact. The plague had serious effects on Athens' society, resulting in a lack of adherence to laws and religious belief; in response laws became stricter, resulting in the punishment of non-citizens claiming to be Athenian. The plague returned twice more, in 429 BC and in the winter of 427/426 BC. Some 30 pathogens have been suggested as having caused the plague." (Wikipedia)

Currency & The Collapse Of The Roman Empire

Comment: This is an interesting lecture. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but there's no doubt that "coin debasement and inflation helped lead to the demise of the western Roman empire," to quote from The Money Project. Rome's economic problems led to the debasement of its currency and the resulting inflation led to shortages, decreased trade, increased taxation, widespread poverty and the depopulation of once productive parts of the empire in the west. These problems, in turn, seriously weakened the frontier which was eventually overrun by Germanic tribes.

If nothing else, the history of inflation in ancient Rome proves that any unit of exchange can be debased. These days, a lot of people think we could solve our monetary problems by switching to a gold and silver based currency. According to this view, precious metals have "intrinsic value" which makes them immune or at least resistant to inflation. Unfortunately, the idea that gold and silver currencies hold their value as opposed to fiat currencies is flat-out wrong. You can see this by looking at historical gold and silver prices, then comparing them to a chart of the historical value of the dollar. The "value" of gold and silver varies over time just like the value of our fiat currency, so where is the "intrinsic value" in these metals?

The main problem with the Roman monetary system is that it was controlled by the emperors themselves. Faced with finite gold and silver reserves, they turned to "clipping" or reducing the metal content of their coins in order to pay the army and fund all their other projects:

"By decreasing the purity of their coinage, [emperors] were able to make more 'silver' coins with the same face value. With more coins in circulation, the government could spend more. And so, the content of silver dropped over the years." -- "Currency and the Collapse of the Roman Empire," The Money Project.

The Money Project has an interesting series of graphics illustrating the correlation between the deaths of Roman emperors and the debasement of the coinage. The record shows a steady decline in the silver content of Roman coins over the centuries until there wasn't much left except "a negligible coating of silver" by around 300 AD. This correlation doesn't imply that the debasement of the coinage had any direct bearing on the deaths of all these emperors or vice versa, but it does show the steady economic decline of the empire as its leaders desperately tried to cope with the problem:

"By the time of Marcus Aurelius, the denarius was only about 75% silver. Caracalla tried a different method of debasement. He introduced the 'double denarius', which was worth 2x the denarius in face value. However, it had only the weight of 1.5 denarii. By the time of Gallienus, the coins had barely 5% silver. Each coin was a bronze core with a thin coating of silver. The shine quickly wore off to reveal the poor quality underneath."

Gallienus (218-268 AD) ruled during The Crisis of the Third Century, "a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression," according to Wikipedia. Rome never developed a stable political  system or a stable economic system and the shine was wearing off the empire as well as the denarius.

Related: Taxes Brought Down The Roman Empire, And They'll Do The Same To America. This is an interesting article, but taxes alone didn't bring down the empire.

Christianity Is Becoming A Third-World Religion (Updated)

1,707 years after Galerius's Edict of Toleration ended the persecution of Christians which started under Diocletian, the religion that once exercised absolute dominion over the West is rapidly disappearing from Europe. That's not very surprising, though. Even the United States is becoming less religious and Christianity as an institution has been in decline for a very long time now.

The history of Christianity has been one of schisms and fragmentation, a long process of disintegration caused by theological disputes, administrative squabbles and church corruption. When the Catholic church lost its monopoly during the Protestant Reformation, Christianity as a unified institution (1) ceased to exist. Protestantism itself went through a long chain-reaction of schisms with the result that there are now hundreds of Christian denominations in the world.

(1) Early Christianity wasn't a single movement with a unified belief system -- just the opposite, in fact -- but this gradually changed after Catholicism became the official religion of Rome and the church began its centuries-long process of stamping out "heretical movements." Very roughly speaking, and taking into consideration the fact that the eastern and western churches of the time had distinct differences, Christianity survived as a near-monolithic religious institution for about a thousand years before it started to fall apart.

Video from 2016.

The rise of science and the spread of secularism accelerated the decline of Christianity in the West. Some denominations have attempted to "adapt to the times" by dropping or "reinterpreting" their theology and transforming themselves into little more than progressive social-work institutions, but these congregations are in rapid decline. Conservative churches which preach a defiant fundamentalism are thriving in the United States and Christianity is apparently exploding in the Third World.

According to Chuck Colson, "the percentage of the world's population that is, at least by name [emphasis added], Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.

"But at that point, only one-fifth of the worlds Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. The typical Christian will be a woman living in a Nigerian village or in a Brazilian shantytown."

After almost 2,000 years, the historical trajectory of the rise and fall of Christianity is becoming clear. The religion originated in the Near East, spread into the Roman empire, rose to the height of its power in medieval Europe, then began to fragment and decline. This decline has been a long, complex process that started centuries ago and it has accelerated dramatically during the last hundred years or so in the western, developed world:

"The decline of Christianity is a widespread, ongoing phenomenon that has affected the Western world, developed countries and denominations in the post-World War II era, which have shifted towards a post-Christian, secular, globalized, multicultural, and multireligious society. Infant baptism has declined in many nations. Thousands of churches have had to close or merge and mainline Protestant denominations in the United States lost many members of their congregations." (Wikipedia)

Christianity has been struggling to survive the transition to the so-called postmodern world, itself a symptom of the overall decline of the West. The religion has been under attack for a long time now, but the biggest problem is that religion in general is no longer believable to most educated people. In Europe, even the church's own leaders don't seem to believe its teachings anymore, a sure sign that the religion is in its last stages in countries like Britain, where many churches are being closed, turned into historical museums or converted into mosques. As a result, Christianity is dying off in the West and thriving in the Third World. It will survive in the form of die-hard fundamentalist sects and the various syncretic mixtures of Christianity and native religions now spreading through places like South America, Asia and Africa.

Video from 2010.

Christianity is finished in Europe and declining in the United States, but it will continue to thrive in its original form as a prescientific, preliterate religion in the Third World. "In 1900, 80 percent of Christians lived in Europe and North America. In 2000, 60 percent lived in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with many in developing countries." (Facts and Details) By 2050, if present trends continue, "four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa" and "the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world." (Pew Research Center (2015))

Related:

Why There Is No Way Back For Religion In The West.

Is Religion Dying Out?

Where Churches Have Become Temples of Cheese, Fitness and Eroticism

What Happened On Easter Island?

Anakena - One of the sites used in this study.

"Analysis of remains found on Rapa Nui, Chile (Easter Island) provides evidence contrary to the widely-held belief that the ancient civilization recklessly destroyed its environment [see below], according to new research co-conducted by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York." Source: Science Daily (2017).

Next video has some good views of Ahu Tepeu on Easter Island, another site used in this study, but the voice-over is inaudible.

Analyzing "human, faunal and botanical remains from the archaeological sites Anakena and Ahu Tepeu on Rapa Nui, dating from c. 1400 AD to the historic period, and modern reference material," the team determined that the Easter Islanders "had extensive knowledge of how to overcome poor soil fertility, improve environmental conditions, and create a sustainable food supply. These activities demonstrate considerable adaptation and resilience to environmental challenges -- a finding that is inconsistent with an 'ecocide' narrative."

The Easter Island ecocide theory.

Comment: According to the ecocide theory, the population on Easter Island collapsed because deforestation (1) led to the erosion of fertile soil which in turn led to starvation, warfare and cannibalism. If this new research is accurate, however, it would appear that the Easter Islanders had a plentiful marine food supply and a system for sustainable agriculture even after the loss of their trees.

(1) According to Wikipedia, "By that time [the arrival of the Dutch in 1722], 21 species of trees and all species of land birds became extinct through some combination of overharvesting/overhunting, rat predation, and climate change. The island was largely deforested, and it did not have any trees more than 3 metres (10 feet) tall. Loss of large trees meant that residents were no longer able to build seaworthy vessels, significantly diminishing their fishing abilities."

The collapse of the Easter Island population is central to all of these different theories about what happened. According to the traditional story, their population declined from somewhere around 20,000 to the few thousand who were still living there when the Dutch arrived. Some believe that the islanders were decimated by diseases brought by the Europeans, which may have happened but doesn't explain the population loss before the European arrival. Others argue that "[t]he downfall of Easter Island may have had more to do with preexisting environmental conditions than degradation by humans." (Live Science (2015).

Just to complicate matters, it's possible that the population collapse never occurred at all. According to Ars Technica (2016), "new evidence from archaeological investigations has overturned a popular myth about the demise of the Rapa Nui civilization on the island. For centuries, observers believed that the Rapa Nui suffered a catastrophic population crash. But there is no scientific evidence to support this idea, say a group of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. That story about environmental collapse and warfare you read about in Jared Diamond's bestseller Collapse? Totally wrong."

At this point, I'm not sure what to believe. According to this new study, the people of Rapa Nui were better at managing their environment than previously believed, but as far as I can tell no one is disputing the fact that they deforested their island. Chopping down all their trees to build canoes and rollers for their giant stone heads doesn't seem to fit with the claim that they "had extensive knowledge of how to overcome poor soil fertility, improve environmental conditions, and create a sustainable food supply." On the other hand, it's probably unrealistic to expect that they had any knowledge of soil erosion and forest management.

I'm no expert on the history of Easter Island, but the "facts" about what happened seem to be all over the place. Did the population actually collapse? Who knows? The estimates I've found for the size of the original population range from 10,000 to 20,000 and I'm not sure what they're based on. If the population didn't collapse, then all these theories about why it collapsed are rendered instantly moot.

Life on Rapa Nui wasn't a peaceful utopia, at least during certain periods. That seems clear enough. The toppled stone heads are cited as evidence that warfare occurred on the island, but the idea that the islanders destroyed themselves by warfare has been called into question and one source I've found even claims that they deliberately made sure their weapons were nonlethal. That seems kind of unlikely, but it doesn't really matter. One way or another, the real history is still obscure.

Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands in the world. It only covers about 64 square miles and even at its height (assuming the estimates are correct) it was home to only around 20,000 people. For all practical purposes, it was a closed system with limited resources. A culture like this would have been extremely vulnerable to climate changes such as low rainfall or anything that would effect fishing or the availability of other food sources. Periods of abundance would lead to population growth which would in turn put increased strain on available resources, leading to inevitable internecine conflict and population decline. Even under the best of circumstances, I would expect a population in this situation to stagnate and decline over time. Perhaps the question isn't why (or if) the culture on Easter Island collapsed, but how it managed to survive at all.

Related: Easter Island statues "walking theory" challenges ecocide story.

How Were Easter Island Statues Carved?

Video from 2014.

"Using basalt stone picks, the Easter Island Moai were carved from the solidified volcanic ash of Rano Raraku volcano. They are all monolithic; the carvings are created in one piece and an average weight of 20 tons and measuring 20 feet tall or more. One unfinished statue is 69 feet tall, estimated to weigh 270 tons. But why was this Moai, representing the pinnacle so far of the statue culture, unfinished? Was it simply too large to move? Had ambition over-taken reality? Or had something else happened? Once completed, the statues were then moved from the quarry to their intended site and erected on an 'ahu'." Source: The Bradshaw Foundation.

Note: I'm not sure about this, but I think the unfinished statue mentioned above is the same one shown in the video.

According to Wikipedia, "It is not known exactly which group in the communities were responsible for carving statues. Oral traditions suggest that the moai were carved either by a distinguished class of professional carvers who were comparable in status to high-ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds, or, alternatively, by members of each clan. The oral histories show that the Rano Raraku quarry was subdivided into different territories for each clan."

Runaway Truck Destroys Easter Island Statue

"A resident of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island, a Polynesian territory of Chile) was arrested last week for damaging one of the island's sacred moai statues with his pickup truck, Chilean news site Cooperativa reported." Source: Live Science.

"Local police said the truck likely rolled down a hill and struck the statue's ceremonial platform, or 'ahu,' after being left unattended. The man left the truck with only a rock wedged under its front tire to compensate for a broken parking brake."

Polynesians Didn't Beat Columbus To South America After All?

Video from 2010. Much of the evidence presented in this video has apparently been disproven by later research.

The theory that the ancient Polynesians reached South America before Columbus is based, in part, on chickens and sweet potatoes.

"Among the intriguing indications that contact might have been made between Polynesians and the native peoples of South America was the supposed pre-Columbian presence of non-native chickens, allegedly introduced to the continent by seafarers from South Pacific islands. More evidence comes from the ubiquity of the sweet potato, a South American native, in the South Pacific — it was already widespread throughout the islands by the time James Cook sailed into the region in 1770." Source: National Geographic 2014.

Since this National Geographic article was written, DNA research has apparently disproved the idea that the chickens studied in South America provided a link with Polynesia:

"Researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA from 22 chicken bones found at Polynesian archaeological sites and 122 feathers from modern chickens living on islands across the South Pacific. They used an enzyme to remove any contamination by modern DNA that may have clouded the results of earlier studies. When the team compared the 'cleaned-up' DNA of Polynesian chickens with that of ancient and modern South American chickens, they found the two groups were genetically distinct." (National Geographic)

As for the sweet-potato connection, it doesn't hold up, either. According to Science Daily (2018), "New evidence shows that sweet potatoes arose before there were any humans around to eat them. The findings also suggest that the sweet potato crossed the ocean from America to Polynesia without any help from people. The discovery raises doubts about the existence of pre-Columbian contacts between Polynesia and the American continent."

Video from 2014. Whether they got there before Columbus or not, the Polynesians definitely had the capability to reach South America.

Comment: The "chickens and sweet potatoes" evidence may not hold up, but it still seems hard to believe that a seafaring people like the ancient Polynesians didn't have some contact with Pre-Columbian America. There seems to be a lot of plant evidence for early transoceanic contact and some studies have also found genetic links between Native Americans and Polynesia (Christian Science Monitor 2015).

According to a 2014 Science Magazine article, "Polynesians from Easter Island and natives of South America met and mingled long before Europeans voyaged the Pacific, according to a new genetic study of living Easter Islanders."

A later (2017) study, however, found that the people living on Easter Island before Columbus were genetically isolated:

"A study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology found only evidence of Polynesian DNA in human remains on the island that predate European contact in 1722." Source: New York Times (2017). According to the study, "We found no Native American admixture in pre- and post-European-contact individuals."

What's the truth? Who knows? The two DNA studies involving Easter Island directly contradict each other, so it would appear that DNA results aren't as conclusive as we've been led to believe. Whatever the case, though, it still seems highly likely, at least to me, that Polynesians reached the New World a long time ago. Considering their ability to make long sea voyages and spread from island to island across the ocean, I'd be amazed if some of them didn't make it all the way to South America. What kind of impact they had is another question.

"Stay Safe" Message Beamed On Great Pyramid

"Egypt's famed Great Pyramid was emblazoned Monday evening with messages of unity and solidarity with those battling the novel coronavirus the world over." Source: AFP.

"'Stay safe'", 'Stay at home' and 'Thank you to those keeping us safe,' flashed in blue and green lights across the towering structure at the Giza plateau, southwest of the capital Cairo.

"Egypt has so far registered 656 COVID-19 cases, including 41 deaths. Of the total infected, 150 reportedly recovered."

Meanwhile, in New York City, the Empire State Building has been fitted with a red, rotating ambulance beacon.

This sinister display was apparently intended to honor emergency workers, but I can't think of anything more likely to make everybody even more paranoid than they already are.

Strange days.