Ancient World Review

Could Early Humans Hibernate?

"According to a report in The Guardian, an international team of researchers suggests that Neanderthals and other early hominins may have had the ability to hibernate. Juan-Luis Arsuaga of Complutense University of Madrid and Antonis Bartsiokas of Democritus University of Thrace say that lesions on 400,000-year-old Neanderthal fossils recovered from Atapuerca’s Sima de los Huesos cave resemble those seen on the remains of hibernating mammals. Such lesions are caused by disruptions in bone development brought on by limited food and reduced metabolic states." Source: Archaeology.

Comment:The argument here assumes that mammals couldn't have survived the winters in this region at the time. If that's true, however, it seems more likely that early humans would have simply migrated to an area with a more moderate climate where game was available. Needless to say, the idea that they went into hibernation seems like pure speculation and other experts have argued that the lesions in the skeletal remains could have a number of causes.

The suggestion that early hominins could hibernate is original, though. I'll give the researchers that. These days, of course, the concept of human hibernation is mostly used in science fiction to get around the problem of space travel. Being able to hibernate would be useful in other ways, too. Considering the way 2020 played out, I would have gladly gone into hibernation for the whole year if that had been possible.

Why Did Humans Lose Their Fur?

"Millions of modern humans ask themselves the same question every morning while looking in the mirror: Why am I so hairy? As a society, we spend millions of dollars per year on lip waxing, eyebrow threading, laser hair removal, and face and leg shaving, not to mention the cash we hand over to Supercuts or the neighborhood salon. But it turns out we are asking the wrong question—at least according to scientists who study human genetics and evolution. For them, the big mystery is why we are so hairless." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.

Nobody has the slightest idea why humans lost their fur. Of course this question is only a mystery if you assume that humans were actually covered with fur in the first place. Nevertheless, if we did evolve (like the modern apes) from some "fruit-eating, slow-climbing primate that resembled a baby gibbon," then presumably at one time Homo Sapiens was just as furry as the gibbons of today.

I don't buy any of the explanations given in the top video. According to the new research described in the Smithsonian article, we may have lost our fur because of a genetic mutation which could also be responsible for baldness:

"A researcher studying the plantar region of rabbits noticed that an inhibitor protein, called Dickkopf 2 or Dkk2, was not present in high levels, giving the team the fist clue that Dkk2 may be fundamental to hair growth. When the team looked at the hairless plantar region of mice, they found that there were high levels of Dkk2, suggesting the protein might keep bits of skin hairless by blocking a signaling pathway called WNT, which is known to control hair growth."

According to this still speculative theory, something happened early in human evolution which led to an increase in Dkk2, which in turn inhibited the growth of hair. It's still unclear, at least to me, why a genetic mutation like this could effect an entire species, but these mutations can apparently spread very quickly.

People Who Inherited A Special Ion Channel From Neanderthals Experience More Pain

The DOL is a unit to measure pain. See note below.

"Pain is mediated through specialized nerve cells that are activated when potentially harmful things affect various parts of our bodies. These nerve cells have a special ion channel that has a key role in starting the electrical impulse that signals pain and is sent to the brain. According to a new study, people who inherited the Neanderthal variant of this ion channel experience more pain." Source: Science Daily (7/23/20).

"...By using data from a huge population study in the UK, the authors show that people in the UK who carry the Neanderthal variant of the ion channel experience more pain ... On a molecular level, the Neanderthal ion channel is more easily activated which may explain why people who inherited it have a lowered pain threshold."

Your pain threshold goes down naturally as you get older and this Neanderthal ion channel makes it seem like you're around eight years older than you really are. This doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the Neanderthals themselves felt pain more intensely than we do because other parts of the brain and spinal cord are involved. It just means that "their threshold for initiating pain impulses was lower than in most present-day humans." In other words, they felt pain more easily than we do (assuming any of this is accurate).

Note: This has nothing to do with the story, but the DOL scale used in the top video to compare different levels of pain was invented back in the Forties by a bunch of crazy Ivy League physicians who burned their students and pregnant women who were giving birth:

"In the 1940s, a group of doctors at the University of Cornell set out to create a unit of pain intensity. Using the 'dol' as a unit, the physicians created a 21-point quantitative scale, but through unusual means — testing pain reactions on medical students and women in labor between contractions. They did this by burning their subjects." Source: Gizmodo.

In the next clip from The Walking Dead (Season 7 Episode 7), the great and glorious Negan applies 22 dols (hot iron on skin) to a guy who broke the rules. It's unclear whether this poor slob inherited the Neanderthal ion channel, but when you reach a certain level on the dol scale I guess it doesn't really matter.

First Concert Held At Notre Dame Cathedral Since 2019 Fire

"The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris hosted its first concert on Saturday [12/19/20?] since the devastating fire that damaged the building nearly 18 months ago." Source: The Hill (Dec. 24, 2020).

"The concert, which was recorded, featured 20 singers, a soprano soloist, a violinist and a rented organ," was broadcast on Christmas Eve and can still be viewed in its entirety on YouTube.

Comment: This was a beautiful concert, but kind of surrealistic with everybody wearing jumpsuits and hard hats while "social distancing" in the wreckage of the cathedral. The hard hats were necessary because of the danger of falling debris, but I'm not sure why they were wearing jumpsuits like construction workers. The social distancing, of course, was absolutely essential for scientific medical reasons. As everybody knows, the coronavirus -- an ultra-deadly disease with a 90% (or higher) survival rate -- can only travel six feet or so before the the viruses simply stop in mid-air. I'm surprised the performers weren't forced to wear face diapers or full BSL 4 protective suits, but I guess they got a special dispensation from the Pope, who recently took a break from calling for LGBTQ civil unions to assure the faithful that the new coronavirus vaccine is morally acceptable even though it was developed using cells from aborted babies.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the cause of the Notre Dame fire appears to have stalled (if it hasn't been abandoned altogether). The attacks on churches in France continue, however, with no end in sight, but I'm sure the two things aren't related.

William Tyndale & The War For The English Bible

The execution of the Protestant scholar, William Tyndale, who was condemned for heresy then strangled to death and burned at the stake in 1536 AD, tells me everything I need to know about the nature of the early Catholic church. It was a sadistic, totalitarian organization that maintained its grip on its flock through terror and mystification.

Tyndale, a leader in the Protestant Reformation, was condemned partly because he was the first to translate the Bible into English from the Greek and Hebrew texts. The King James Bible drew heavily on Tyndale's [partial?] translation. "One estimate suggests that the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the Old Testament 76%," according to Wikipedia.

Translating the Bible into English was something the Catholic church couldn't permit. If ordinary people could read the Bible for themselves Rome would lose its monopoly on the faith, not to mention a lot of its secular power, so the church had to make sure it controlled the message.

Translations of the Bible had to be carefully restricted and regulated. Latin versions were OK because only the churchmen and elites could read Latin, but the last thing the church wanted was an English version that the plebs might actually be able to understand and interpret for themselves. The first English translations of the New Testament had to be printed overseas and were apparently smuggled into England in bales of cotton. At the time, these were probably the most dangerous books in the world to possess. Note: Even possessing a Bible is still dangerous in some places.

The Daring Mission of William Tyndale, Steven J. Lawson (2014)

During Tyndale's lifetime, Rome didn't want people being able to think for themselves. As far as the church was concerned, the best way to fleece the sheep was to keep them in a state of illiteracy, ignorance and passive obedience. It was a particularly insidious form of social control reinforced with bloody punishments for "heresy." Imagine living under a regime where you have to obey laws written in a language you can't understand. That's what the situation was like, but in the case of the medieval church lawbreakers not only faced burning at the stake but eternal damnation.

The church's policy was a form of mushroom management. It's no wonder that the peasants eventually revolted. The war for the English Bible was similar in some ways to Prohibition in America where high-quality booze -- the "real stuff" -- had to be smuggled into the country from Canada and the Caribbean. The church didn't have any more chance of containing the thirst for knowledge during the Reformation than the US government had of containing the thirst for liquor during Prohibition, and the democratization of knowledge exploded with the invention of the printing press:

"In the early days of the Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took princes and papacy alike by surprise. In the period from 1518 to 1524, the publication of books in Germany alone skyrocketed sevenfold; between 1518 and 1520, Luther's tracts were distributed in 300,000 printed copies." (Wikipedia)

William Tyndale was a key figure in the war for the English Bible. The eventual publication of the King James Bible, based partly on Tyndale's work and authorized by the Church of England, itself a reaction against Catholic corruption, was a victory for free thought.

Johannes Gutenberg And The Printing Press

Johannes Gutenberg (1400 - 1468 AD) is famous for his invention of the printing press, the most revolutionary technological development in the history of the world. As it turns out, though, Gutenberg's press wasn't actually the first. The Chinese beat him to it by several centuries:

"The world's first movable type printing press technology for printing paper books was made of ceramic porcelain china materials and invented in ancient China around A.D 1040 by the Han Chinese innovator Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). In 1377, currently the oldest extant movable metal print book, Jikji, was printed in Korea. The diffusion of both movable-type systems was, however, limited. They were expensive, and required a high amount of labor involved in manipulating the thousands of ceramic tablets or metal tablets, required for scripts based on the ancient Chinese writing script, which has thousands of characters." Source: Wikipedia.

Gutenberg's innovations were a major step forward, however. It also helped that European languages didn't include as many characters as found in the Chinese script.

Gutenberg is best known, perhaps, for printing the Gutenberg Bible, a Vulgate Latin edition "valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities as well as its historic significance." (Wikipedia) But he also produced other, more commercial books and texts in his workshop, the first publishing house in the West, so to speak.

"Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Hof Humbrecht, a property belonging to a distant relative. It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this he borrowed another 800 guilders from [Johann Fust, a moneylender who had financed some of Gutenberg's earlier projects], and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there may have been two presses, one for the pedestrian texts, and one for the Bible. One of the profit-making enterprises of the new press was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454 to 1455." (Wikipedia)

Comment: I've always loved old books. They're beautiful, for one thing, and they were made to last, unlike today's throwaway books which are mass-produced in quantities that Gutenberg could never have dreamed of. And old books have an atmosphere about them that's hard to describe. I've probably been influenced too much by H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and movies like The Ninth Gate, but these books always look like they contain ancient, secret and possibly dangerous information.

Related: The Machine That Made Us (Gutenberg Printing Press Documentary)

How A Gutenberg Printing Press Works

How Gutenberg Made Moveable Type

Remote Sensing Discovers 66 New Roman Army Sites On Iberian Peninsula

Video from 2016.

"The discovery of dozens of new Roman Army sites thanks to remote sensing technology has revealed more about one of the empire's most infamous conflicts." Source: Science Daily.

"Analysis of the 66 camps shows the Roman army had a larger presence in the region than previously thought during the 200-year battle to conquer the Iberian Peninsula."

Background: "In 218 BC, during the Second Punic War against the Carthaginians, the first Roman troops occupied the Iberian Peninsula; however, it was not until the reign of Augustus that it was annexed after 200 years of war with the Celts and Iberians. The result was the creation of the province of Hispania. It was divided into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior during the late Roman Republic, and during the Roman Empire, it was divided into Hispania Tarraconensis in the northeast, Hispania Baetica in the south and Lusitania in the southwest." (Wikipedia)

Related: Roman Conquest of Hispania: Native Resistance.

The Romans under the famous Scipio Africanus drove Carthage out of the Iberian Peninsula in 206 BC. After that victory, two provinces were formally created on the peninsula:  Hispania Citerior along the eastern coast, and Hispania Ulterior along the southeastern coast and in the valley of the Guadalquivir River, the largest navigable river in Spain.

The Romans used these provinces to expand their power on the peninsula, but the conquest wasn't easy or fast. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), "both provinces were gradually extended inland in rapacious and reactive campaigns against native peoples and tribes bordering the provinces, culminating in the Lusitanian (155-139 BC) and Celtiberian (153-133 BC) wars."

These were destructive campaigns. For instance, the Celtiberians suffered something like 22,000 casualties in just one battle, according to Wikipedia. And guerilla warfare was apparently common. Next video tells the story of Viriathus, an important leader of the Lusitanian resistance against the Romans.

The resistance dragged on for a long time, but it was ultimately futile. After almost two centuries of conflict under several different emperors, Augustus completed the conquest of Iberia in the Cantabrian Wars (26-19 BC) and the Romans consolidated their new territory of Hispania in a process that involved not only military force but a strategy of cultural Romanization:

"The new Augustan conquest required three legions in northwest Tarraconensis; by the time of Vespasian they had been reduced to VII Gemina only. Twenty-two colonies were founded, and a large number of municipia created, under Caesar and Augustus, forming the basis for a Roman urban network within juridicial conventus in each province. Following the development of a municipal imperial cult at Tarraco (AD 15), there soon followed the establishment of a conventual (Tarraconensis) and provincial imperial cult (under the Flavians)." (OCD)

The Roman Military Triplex Acies

"The historical successes of the ancient Roman army had always intrinsically pertained to their ability to adopt and ‘learn’ from their enemies. One of these evolutionary measures related to the adoption of the manipular formations, circa 4th century BC. In essence, this brought forth the famed Triplex Acies, a standard combat formation of the Roman legions that entailed three lines of maniples – with the field army spread in a quincunx (checkerboard) pattern." Source: Realm of History.

The Triplex Acies was much more effective than the phalanx introduced by the Greeks or a standard single line of formation. "The Romans in particular developed their own unique take on [the single line of formation], the triplex acies ('triple line'). Actually, they copied it from the Samnite peoples of Italy with whom Rome fought a series of deadly wars over the fourth century B.C. (prior, they had used Greek style phalanxes). However, though they didn't invent it, they certainly perfected it, as this was the classic tactic that the Romans famously used against Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and so many others. This was, in effect, the formation that won Rome the Mediterranean!" Source: Deviant Art.

Related: How did the Romans swap units around mid-battle?

Roman battle tactics

The Evolution Of Roman Battle Tactics

The history of the development of the Roman army and its fighting tactics is too long and detailed to get into here. For more information, see Wikipedia's article on the Structural History of the Roman Military.

An excellent (and massive) resource for information on the legions of the empire is Legions of Rome: The Definitive History of Every Imperial Legion by Stephen Dando-Collins.

Dando-Collins, a prolific military historian and the author of the fantastic book The Great Fire of Rome, has also written a series of books which provide more in-depth information on the history of particular legions. Highly recommended.

The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

"Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a 2010 3D documentary film by Werner Herzog about the Chauvet Cave in southern France, which contains some of the oldest human-painted images yet discovered. Some of them were crafted around 32,000 years ago. The film premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and consists of images from inside the cave as well as of interviews with various scientists and historians. The film also includes footage of the nearby Pont d'Arc natural bridge." (Wikipedia)

Related: The Shamistic-Visionary Experience.