"Fossil animal droppings, charcoal from ancient fires and bone fragments litter the ground of one of the world's most important human evolution sites, new research reveals. A team of scientists have used modern geoarchaeological techniques to unearth new details of day-to-day life in the famous Denisova Cave complex in Siberia's Altai Mountains." Source: Science Daily.
"...The latest evidence from southern Siberia shows that large cave-dwelling carnivores once dominated the landscape, competing for more than 300,000 years with ancient tribes for prime space in cave shelters."
"Despite the façade of modernity and a world under technical human control, being alone in the dark far from others can show us a different side of humanity. Alone in unfamiliar places we quickly become more cautious, more observant and sometimes even fearful. The genes that helped us survive a much more savage world still whisper to us the truth in the dark; we were prey before we were top predators." Source: Earth.com.
"The Lucy specimen is an early australopithecine and is dated to about 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of non-hominin apes, plus evidence of a walking-gait that was bipedal and upright, akin to that of humans (and other hominins); this combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size. A 2016 study proposes that Australopithecus afarensis was also to a large extent tree-dwelling, though the extent of this is debated." Source: Wikipedia.
Lucy is commonly considered to be a distant human ancestor and some sources, like the video above, call her the "Mother of Man." But a 2016 study shows that there were a lot of other human ancestors living around her at the same time:
"If 'Lucy' wasn't alone, who else was in her neighborhood? Key fossil discoveries over the last few decades in Africa indicate that multiple early human ancestor species lived at the same time more than 3 million years ago. A new review of fossil evidence from the last few decades examines four identified hominin species that co-existed between 3.8 and 3.3 million years ago during the middle Pliocene." (Science Daily, 2016).
Note: According to Science Daily, "Scientists have long argued that there was only one pre-human species at any given time before 3 million years ago that gave rise to another new species through time in a linear manner." This is no longer true. The discovery of these other very ancient human ancestors complicates the picture considerably, something to keep in mind the next time you see an oversimplified presentation of the human evolutionary tree.
A lot of different animals can walk on two feet but they usually don't qualify as true bipeds unless they habitually get around that way. Bipedalism itself evolved millions of years ago:
The evolution of true bipedalism in human ancestors required a convergence of changes in skeletal and muscle structure that is truly mind-boggling, especially when you consider the transformations in the brain and nervous system that had to take place to make walking on two feet possible.
The idea that bipedalism evolved through a more or less random process of " mutation, genetic recombination and other sources of genetic variation" (Wikipedia) seems kind of unlikely, to say the least. And don't forget that bipedalism has evolved independently several times in several different species. The odds against bipedalism emerging by chance in just one species must be astronomical, but in multiple species? I think it's safe to say that that just couldn't happen. Something else is going on here that nobody understands yet.
Bison kill site near Elk City, Oklahoma. Video from 2011.
"Between 200 B.C. and A.D. 500 American Indian hunters killed hundreds of bison in a canyon near present Elk City, Oklahoma. During the 1990s the site became a focus of a major research project by the Oklahoma Archeological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. The people who made the kills were part of the Late Archaic (circa 2500 B.C. to A.D.1) groups that survived through hunting and gathering and did not practice horticulture. The site is in a large canyon, one of the deepest of many in the area. The canyon has a number of side branches, some of which are flushed nearly clean of fill. Others are still largely filled with sediments and are visually undetectable on the surface. These deposit remnants contain bone beds and other evidence of bison kills and butchering." Source: Oklahoma Historical Society.
Hudson-Meng bison kill site in Nebraska.(2017)
"Bill Hudson and Albert Meng were local [Nebraska] ranchers who are credited with discovering the bonebed in 1954 while digging for a pond. Originally excavated by Dr. Larry Agenbroad in the 1970s, the dig was over 400 square meters and was considered the largest Alberta Culture [1]bison kill site ever discovered. The bison found are not the same species as the bison that currently live in the United States (Bison bison), but are an animal transitional in evolution between the extinct Bison antiquus and the modern species." (Wikipedia)
[1] I might be wrong about this, but I think "Alberta Culture" refers to an Archaic Period paleo-indian culture which was located in the general area of Alberta, Canada and the northern Great Plains in the US.
Note: "For approximately 6,000 years, between about 8,000 and 2,000 years ago, the Archaic period in the Great Plains was a time of human adjustment to changing ecological conditions. Paleo-Indian bison hunting decreased markedly after about 9,000 years ago, due to a steady deterioration of ecological conditions. Subsequently there were several late Paleo- Indian groups ... which were beginning to shift toward the use of small animal and plant resources. By about 8,000 years ago, both bison and human populations in the Great Plains had decreased significantly. Some groups may have moved into the foothills and mountains to the west and others into the prairies on the east. The Plains was not abandoned during the Archaic period, but ecological conditions made it a much less desirable place." (Encyclopedia of the Great Plains)
"[Christopher Stringer] is one of the leading proponents of the recent African origin hypothesis or 'Out of Africa' theory, which hypothesizes that modern humans originated in Africa over 100,000 years ago and replaced, in some way, the world's archaic humans, such as Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals, after migrating within and then out of Africa to the non-African world within the last 50,000 to 100,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.
It now appears that Stringer is rethinking the Out of Africa theory, at least to some extent:
"I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the 'Out of Africa' model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin." Source: Edge (2011?).
Stringer apparently still believes that modern humans evolved in Africa, but "the exact processes involved in our African origin are still unclear. We don't know exactly when it happened, we don't know exactly where it happened" and "our picture is still limited in terms of the sites that have been excavated and the information we've got from them."
The most interesting thing about this article is that Stringer seems to believe that there are different types of modern humans. These variations can be traced back to the probable interbreeding of modern humans with human ancestors like the Neanderthals. According to Stringer, "this means that in a sense some modern humans have got more archaic genes than others. [Emphasis added] That does seem to be so. So it leads us on to ask again: what is a modern human?" (1)
Stringer argues that "our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin," but the recent [2017] analysis of Graecopithecus frebergifossils discovered in Greece and Bulgaria have called this into question. According to this new study "the birthplace of modern human beings may have been the eastern Mediterranean and not Africa..." (Ancient Origins) It's still too early to know whether this study is accurate, though, and some sources are already saying that there's not enough evidence to back the claim. Whatever the case, it's starting to look like the Out of Africa Theory is oversimplified, if not completely inaccurate.
(1) Stringer's conjecture that some modern humans have more archaic genes than others is a dangerous thing to say in today's toxic environment of political correctness. The idea that people aren't genetically identical is blasphemous. As for the Out of Africa Theory, the current orthodoxy regarding human origins is so mixed up with modern identity politics that a lot of people will resist the idea that it could be wrong no matter how much evidence is produced in the future.
Fox hunting in England has a deep history. According to Wikipedia, "many Greek- and Roman- influenced countries have long traditions of hunting with hounds. Hunting with Agassaei hounds was popular in Celtic Britain, even before the Romans arrived, introducing the Castorian and Fulpine hound breeds which they used to hunt.Norman hunting traditions were brought to Britain when William the Conqueror arrived, along with the Gascon and Talbot hounds."
Next video shows the different stages of an English fox hunt. The robotic voice is horrible, but the scenes are beautiful.
"...it is believed that the custom for a fox to be tracked, chased and often killed by trained hunting hounds (generally those with the keenest sense of smell known as ‘scent hounds’) and followed by the Master of the Foxhounds and his team on foot and horseback, originated from a Norfolk farmer’s attempt to catch a fox using farm dogs in 1534." (Historic UK)
"Hunting of wild mammals in the traditional style is banned by the Hunting Act 2004." (Wikipedia) Oddly, the Hunting Act permits the use of dogs to flush out a fox to be shot or killed by a bird of prey. I don't really understand why blowing a fox away with a shotgun or dispatching it with a falcon or hawk is considered to be less brutal than using dogs, but never mind that. The act includes other oddities as well:
"The Act makes it an offence to hunt a mouse with a dog but not a rat, you can legally hunt a rabbit but not a hare. You can flush a fox to guns with two dogs legally but if you use three it's an offence. You can flush a fox to a bird of prey with as many dogs as you like." (Wikipedia)
I'm not sure where these exemptions stand as of 2019. Modern hunts frequently follow previously laid-out scent trails in order to comply with the law (showing that the hunts are about more than just hunting). In drag tracking, an artificial scent is laid down before the hunt begins, but the dogs sometimes come across the scent of an actual fox with inevitable results. This blurs the line between legal and illegal hunts.
I was hardly aware of fox-hunting until recently, but the sight of a pack of trained hunting dogs bounding across the English countryside while the hunters follow on horseback, jumping hedges and stone fences and pausing for refreshments in old rural villages, is incredibly stirring. Maybe it's because I'm half-English and half-Scottish. Who knows? This is an English thing -- a connection to the real England which still survives in the countryside, worlds apart from the decaying multicultural cities of the modern UK.
Traditional fox hunts followed a ritualized pattern:
"A day’s hunting begins with a meet, at which the followers join the hounds, acknowledge the master, and are frequently offered hospitality by one of their number who acts as host for the occasion. On the command of the master, hounds move off to draw (search) the covert, which may be a woodland, a patch of gorse, or a field in which it is suspected that a fox may be hiding. When the fox is found—the fact being signaled by the cry of hounds, notes of the horn, and the shout “Tally-ho”—the hunt begins and ordinarily proceeds to the stage at which the fox is viewed, a moment signaled by a high-pitched “Holloa.” Traditionally, if a kill follows, the brush (tail), mask (head), and pads (feet) of the fox may be given as trophies by the master to any followers whom he or she considers to deserve the honour. The body of the fox is then thrown to the hounds." (Encyclopedia Britannica)
There is a sporadic, low-intensity conflict taking place in the English countryside. The fight here isn't really over the welfare of foxes or the culling of pest animals. The hunts are about a lot more than hunting; that's obvious. The protests against fox-hunting are part of the war against traditional culture which has been taking place all over the western world and it warms my heart to see these handwringing hunt saboteurs get a taste of the riding crop when they trespass and interfere with the horses.
This magnificent woman wasn't charged, which is only right and proper.
Fox-hunting has been called a "barbaric blood-sport," but the same thing could be said about any form of hunting. Still, these hunts in their traditional form are barbaric:
"The iconic ritual of smearing ceremonial blood on the cheeks of a new member of a clan or society which is depicted in many books and films also has its roots in the sport, whose act of ‘Blooding’ was introduced by King James I in the sixteenth century and involved the Huntsmaster rubbing the blood of the prey onto the cheeks of newly initiated member of the hunt." (Historic UK)
This undercurrent of aristocratic barbarism in fox-hunting is one of the things I like about it. The real England has a deep barbaric streak. It can be seen not only in the violent history of the country, but in everything from the dark humor of great English writers like Roald Dahl and Jonathan Swift to modern comedians like Jimmy Carr and Monty Python, not to mention the popularity of shows like Game of Thrones. If this spirit dies, it will mean that England no longer exists. Luckily, though, fox-hunting shows no sign of disappearing:
"... despite the ban, hunts have seen an increase in membership and the Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA) currently represents 176 active foxhound packs in England and Wales and 10 in Scotland." (Historic UK)
"Domestic dogs come in all shapes and sizes, but the animals we now regard as man's best friend may have originated from just two populations of wolves, research suggests. The findings, along with studies on other domesticated animals, are providing new insights into how our ancestors' lives and movements transformed these creatures forever." Source: Archaeology News Network.
Did the Neanderthals actually hunt mammoths by driving them off cliffs? It would be an effective technique and I wouldn't be surprised if it actually happened. Evidence has been uncovered, for instance, that Native Americans killed buffalo this way, so the Neanderthals may have done the same thing. The picture is still pretty murky, though, and in at least one case researchers have been able to show that it probably didn't happen.
"Popular lore has it that skilled Neanderthal hunters once herded mammoths off cliffs to a rocky doom. There is one site in Jersey, a British island off of France's northern coast, where mammoth bones marked with prehistoric stone knife marks were found in broken heaps. Because Neanderthals frequented the area, researchers thought this finding meant that the Neanderthals were systematically driving the animals over the edge of cliffs for an easy kill. And this idea has spread widely, through documentaries and media stories ... Now, new evidence emerges that this was probably not the case." Source: The Smithsonian (2014).
According to The Guardian, "[t]he piles of bones are a major feature at La Cotte de St Brelade on Jersey, one of the most spectacular Neanderthal sites in Europe. But the claim that they mark the remains of mass slaughter has been all but ruled out by a fresh investigation.
"Researchers have found that the plateau that ends at the cliff edge was so rocky and uneven that mammoths and other weighty beasts would never have ventured up there. Even if the creatures had clambered so high, the Neanderthals would have had to chase them down a steep dip and back up the other side long before the animals reached the cliff edge and plunged to their doom."
These findings only relate to the Jersey site, however. I'm not sure if there are other sites with evidence for this kind of Neanderthal hunting activity.
"One hundred ritually sacrificed guinea pigs dressed up in jewellery have been discovered at an Inca archaeological site in Peru. The rodents were found to have been adorned with earrings and necklaces, and some of them wrapped up in tiny rugs—the first time such a find has been made." Source: Archaeology News Network.