"A chunk of a Denisovan skull has been identified for the first time—a dramatic contribution to the handful of known samples from one of the most obscure branches of the hominin family tree." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Very little is known about the Denisovans, an extinct branch of hominins that was a sister group to Neanderthals. Only four individual Denisovans had been identified previously, all from one cave in Siberia. The first Denisovan was described in 2010 from the fragment of a pinky finger bone, and three more were identified from teeth. This skull piece, excavated about three years ago in that same Siberian cave, represents a fifth individual."
Note: The Denisovans living in this Siberian cave may have cohabited and mated with Neanderthals and even modern humans:
"The Neanderthals and Denisovans — both relatives of modern humans — were roommates, literally, for thousands of years in a remote Siberian cave, two new studies find." Source: Live Science (Jan. 2019).
"Back in ancient times, this cave would have been a real estate agent's paradise; it's the only place in the world that Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly even modern humans lived in together throughout history, the researchers found."
"Containing six lines of cuneiform script, and roughly the size of an adult thumb, [this tablet] was donated to the [Cambridge] University Library in 1921 but then lost to sight for many years before its rediscovery in 2016, during research for the Curious Objects exhibition, held as part of the University Library’s 600th anniversary." Source: Cambridge University Library.
"The full translation of the laconic text runs as follows: 18 jars of pig fat – Balli. 4 jars of pig fat – Nimgir-ab-lah. Fat dispensed (at ?) the city of Zabala. Ab-kid-kid, the scribe. 4th year 10th month."
Note: The words Balli, Nimgir-ab-lah, etc., are thought to be personal names. According to Cambridge, "[t]he man named Balli turns up regularly in other texts from the same area during the same period of history, and seems to be an official in charge of a wide range of oils: from pig fat and butter to sesame oil and almond oil."
This clay tablet is apparently the oldest written object held at Cambridge. A 3D animation and more information about the tablet can be found here.
"A multidisciplinary study has found evidence for humans hunting small mammals in the forests of Sri Lanka at least 45,000 years ago. The researchers discovered the remains of small mammals, including primates, with evidence of cut marks and burning at the oldest archaeological site occupied by humans in Sri Lanka, alongside sophisticated bone and stone tools. The hunting of such animals is an example of the uniquely human adaptability that allowed H. sapiens to rapidly colonize a series of extreme environments apparently untouched by its hominin relatives." Source: Phys.org.
Note: Prehistoric human settlements at least 125,000 years old have been discovered on Sri Lanka. (The prehistory of the island may go back as far as 500,000 years ago.) Human burials unearthed in the Pahiyangala cave, aka the Fa Hien Cave, mainly consist of "microlith stone tools [and] remnants of prehistoric fireplaces and organic material, such as floral and human remains. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the cave had been occupied from about 33,000 years ago, the Late Pleistocene and Mesolithic to 4,750 years ago, the Neolithic in the Middle Holocene." (Wikipedia)
"The Batadombalena archaeological site contains evidence of habitation from as early as 8,000 years BCE and is one of the sites whose discoveries support the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis [1], according to Professor Paul Mellars, a Cambridge University archaeologist. Among the evidence of Balangoda Man he unearthed at the site were stone tools that are interpreted as arrow - or spearheads and carefully shaped and perforated beads made from ostrich eggshell fragments. One particular piece of an ostrich eggshell, incised with a distinctive criss-cross motif, has also been discovered." Source: Wikipedia.
[1] Similarities between the artifacts found in South Africa, Tanzania, the United Arab Emirates, India, Sri Lanka, Borneo and Australia provide support for the Southern Dispersal Route Hypothesis, the theory that "an early group of modern human beings left Africa between 130,000–70,000 years ago. They moved eastward, following the coastlines of Africa, Arabia, and India, arriving in Australia and Melanesia at least as early as 45,000 years ago. It is one of what appears now to have been multiple migration paths that our ancestors took as they left out of Africa." Source: The Thought Company.
"The Himalayan foothills of the Indian sub-continent have yielded evidence humans having lived there around two million years ago. Although the earliest known dates for hominids in peninsular India are ca. 600,000 years before the present (BP), it is very likely that future research will indicate an age comparable to that of the Himalayan foothills, since there do not appear to have been any physical barriers to prevent humans from being present in southern India contemporaneously with their occurrence in the northern part of the sub-continent. Meanwhile, it is apparent that Sri Lanka was, more often than not, linked to southern India by a land bridge during this period [emphasis added]. It is estimated that the sea level would have dropped sufficiently for creating such a connection on at least 17 occasions within the last 700,000 years. This phenomenon would have been caused by the rise and fall of the sea level due to cold/warm fluctuations in the global climate. The last separation from India would have occurred at about 7,000 BP." Source: Sri Lanka - Lanka Library (date unknown).
"It is therefore possible that humans were present in Sri Lanka from at least as early as one million years ago [emphasis added]. There are ancient coastal sands in the north and southeast of the island which could be as old as 250,000 BP or even 700,000-500,000 BP. These deposits may contain evidence of human habitation, a prime research objective for the future. Another group of sediments that could yield remains of early hominids in Sri Lanka are the gem-bearing alluvial gravels of the Ratnapura District. These ’Ratnapura Beds’ are of different ages and have yet to be plotted and dated accurately. But they do contain remains of an Upper Pleistocene fauna, notably a hippopotamus with six incisor teeth, a rhinoceros which has been dated from elsewhere (Lunugala gem gravel) to ca. 80,000 BP and a lion. Associated with this fauna are stone artefacts comprising, typically, large choppers and flakes of quartz and chert, which have been assigned to the ’Ratnapura Industry’. However, apart from a human calotte [top of the skull?] of indeterminate age from a gem pit near Ellawala, no hominid remains have been forthcoming from the Ratnapura Beds. The faunal remains, which come to light in the search for precious stones could well include hominids and closer scrutiny could well be a rewarding exercise. Until future chronological resolution is achieved one could only affirm that the ’Ratnapura Industry’ composes elements that could be of Upper Pleistocene or earlier age, whereas others could be much more recent."
"Located in the Palk Strait off the Southeastern edge of India is a chain of limestone shoals. A shoal or sandbar is characterized by a long and narrow strip of land typically composed of sand, silt and small pebbles that have been deposited over time. This strip of land was once believed to be a natural formation, however, images taken by a NASA satellite has shown this land formation to be a long broken bridge under the ocean's surface. Now called 'Adam's Bridge', it extends 18 miles from mainland India to modern day Sri Lanka." Source: Ancient Origins.
Note: I have no idea what to make of this. The legend that a bridge connected Sri Lanka and India can be traced back to the Ramayana, the Hindu epic, which describes how "the bridge was created by Rama and Lakshmana with the assistance of Hanuman and the Vanara army to reach Lanka to find Rama's wife Sita who had been kidnapped by Ravana." (Wikipedia) "Certain historical inscriptions, old travel guides, old dictionary references and some old maps have been cited to support a religious and geographical belief that this is an ancient man-made bridge."
The "bridge" is around 30 miles long, so if it's an artificial construction it would have been an amazing feat. Still, it seems more likely that this is some kind of geological formation:
"Considerable diversity of opinion and confusion exists about the nature and origin of this structure. In the 19th century, two major theories were prominent in explaining the structure. One considered it to be formed by the process of accretion and rising of the land, while the other surmised that it was established by the breaking away of Sri Lanka from the Indian mainland. The friable calcareous ridges later broke into large rectangular blocks, which perhaps gave rise to the belief that the causeway is an artificial construction." (Wikipedia)
Next video shows some footage of the small islands, corals and sandbanks that make up the formation.
"The origins of the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean cultures have puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. We have assembled genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete, Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, and their eastern neighbours from southwestern Anatolia. Here we show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, having at least three-quarters of their ancestry from the first Neolithic farmers of western Anatolia and the Aegean, and most of the remainder from ancient populations related to those of the Caucasus and Iran." Source: Nature (2017).
"The Minoan civilization flourished in the middle Bronze Age on the Mediterranean island of Crete from ca. 2000 BCE until ca. 1500 BCE and, with their unique art and architecture, the Minoans made a significant contribution to the development of Western European civilization as it is known today." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
"The Mycenaeans [Bronze Age, 15th - 13th cent. BC] were influenced by the earlier Minoan civilization which had spread from its origins at Knossos, Crete to include the wider Aegean. Architecture, art and religious practices were assimilated and adapted to better express the perhaps more militaristic and austere Mycenaean culture." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
This new genetic study confirms that the Minoans and Mycenaeans were Indo-Europeans. Back in 2017 another DNA study showed that the ancient Egyptians were also Indo-European. All of these fantastic civilizations evolved from populations of Neolithic farmers who spread out of Anatolia and the regions around the Black Sea and settled along the coast of the Mediterranean. In other words, they spread west out of Eurasia, not north out of sub-Saharan Africa as the Afrocentrists claim.
Note: The next video (Feb. 2017) doesn't show the spread of the Indo-Europeans into Egypt, probably because this discovery is so recent.
Modern humans are thought to have evolved in Africa a couple hundred thousand years ago. The Proto-Indo-Europeans date back to around 4000 - 8000 BC, depending on which theory you accept, while the Minoans and Mycenaeans flourished during the 2nd - 3rd millenniums BC. That's pretty recent by evolutionary standards, but the picture that's emerging here suggests that modern humans or at least one type of modern human may have first evolved somewhere in Asia rather than Africa. This is the Out of Asia theory, which has now been merged with the multiregional hypothesis of human origins.
Personally, I won't be surprised if the multiregional hypothesis turns out to be true.
"... The Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers. They likely use bows and arrows to hunt terrestrial wildlife and more rudimentary methods to catch local seafood, such as mud crabs and molluscan shells. Some of their practices have not evolved beyond those of the Stone Age; they are not known to engage in agriculture. It is unclear whether they have any knowledge of making fire though investigations have shown they use fire [started by lightning strikes, etc]."
Despite their description as an "uncontacted people," the Sentinelese have been contacted, in one way or another, eleven times since their fires were first observed by an East India Company ship which passed the island in 1771. In 2018, for example, an American missionary traveled illegally to the island in a stupid attempt to convert the savages, who ended up killing him.
It's hard to believe that the Sentinelese don't know how to make fire. According to Survival International, "[t]hey are thought to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 55,000 years." If they have really been around for that long and never learned how to make fire they must be in an state of near-total mental stasis or arrested development.
The biography of Jesus is so sketchy that it leaves a lot of room for speculation about where he spent his missing years. For instance, according to one theory he not only studied in Japan before he began his ministry, but actually died there as an old man decades after his supposed crucifixion.
"Most Christians believe that Jesus was born and died in the Middle East. However, there is a small group of people in Japan who believe a completely different story." Source: Ancient Origins.
"Some Japanese researchers think that Jesus’ history is different from what is generally believed. This alternative version of Christ’s story was forgotten until 1935, when Kiyomaro Takeuchi (Takenouchi) reportedly discovered an ancient document in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. The text of the manuscript presented a shocking tale. It says that Jesus was buried in Herai Village in the Aomori district in Japan."
According to this theory, Jesus wasn't actually crucified. When he was in his twenties, he traveled to Japan, studied there for 12 years or so, then returned to the Middle East and started preaching as described in the New Testament. When he was sentenced to be crucified, however, his brother took his place on the cross, something that the Roman and Jewish authorities didn't notice for some reason. Maybe Jesus and his brother were twins; I'm not really sure. At any rate, Jesus then went back to Japan and eventually died there -- for real this time -- at the age of 106.
This story seems unlikely on the face of it, but I guess it's no more unbelievable than the idea that Jesus could control the weather, walk on water, heal the sick, turn water into wine, drive out demons, raise the dead or come back from the dead himself. If the story's true, though, it would mean that Jesus must've spent years on the road, crossing entire continents back in a time when travel was not only slow, but extremely hazardous.
The people who believe that Jesus went to Japan never seem to consider what that would involve. If Jesus traveled to Japan to study, came back to Israel, then returned to Japan after his "crucifixion," he would've had to cross (and recross) a huge amount of territory. According to DistanceFromTo, the air-travel distance from Israel to Japan is 5,656 miles. Using that as a minimum, this means that Jesus must've covered at least 16,968 miles in all his travels between east and west.
Was such an incredible journey even possible back then? As it turns out, it was -- at least in theory.
According to The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, "[l]ong-distance trade played a major role in the cultural, religious, and artistic exchanges that took place between the major centers of civilization in Europe and Asia during antiquity. Some of these trade routes had been in use for centuries, but by the beginning of the first century A.D., merchants, diplomats, and travelers could (in theory) cross the ancient world from Britain and Spain in the west to China and Japan in the east."
Technically, a journey like this would've been possible in the first century when Jesus supposedly lived. He could have traveled by land or sea, or maybe both, following the silk, spice and incense routes. This would've been a grueling, dangerous and time-consuming journey, to say the least, and according to the theory that Jesus died in Japan, he would've had to have made the trip three times,something that seems almost as miraculous as the rest of the New Testament stories combined.
Hoabinhian chopper of Xóm Trại cave, Hoa Binh, Vietnam. Video from 2016.
"Current evidence suggests that Southeast Asia was occupied by Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers until about 4000 years ago, but the human occupation history thereafter with farming economies remains unsettled. By sequencing 26 ancient human genomes (25 Southeast Asians, 1 Japanese Jomon), the history is shown to be more complex than previously thought; both Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers and East Asian farmers contributed to current Southeast Asian diversity. The results help resolve one of the long-standing controversies in Southeast Asian prehistory." Source: Science Daily (2018).