A View From My Disjointed Laptop - Issue #95
Welcome to my newsletter for a dash of history and science.
A Glimpse of History
Threads cross-posted onto my Wordpress blog
#252
A once powerful nation was divided into many parts for many centuries.
And then a thousand marched to reunite the country.
#253
A city caught between an empire and an emergent nation.
A state of cities begins its journey to freedom.
Links
[Aeon] How one modest shrub entrapped humans in its service - To consider how a landscape might domesticate humans, we must journey into deep time to tell two stories. First, a story of how Neolithic people transformed Early Holocene forests into domesticated heathlands. Then, a second story of how heathlands transformed and ‘domesticated’ Neolithic people. Among the first forest clearings, we see early humans engaging in a new form of worldmaking, unaware that in some distant future this changed landscape would lock its domesticators into trajectories of care and maintenance from which it will become almost impossible to escape.
[Science Daily] Discovery of 119-million-year-old selfish genes in yeast potentially alters our understanding of how parasitic DNA impacts genome evolution - Present in the genomes of nearly all species, including humans, they unfairly transfer their genetic material to more than half of their offspring, sometimes leading to infertility, and decreased organism health. Because of their parasitic potential, their longevity over evolutionary time is believed to be short-lived, until now.
[BBC Future] The power of your garden's hidden half - Hetherington and his colleagues made several breakthrough discoveries about roots thanks to their studies of the Rhynie chert, an exceptionally well-preserved 407-million-year-old deposit of fossils found near the village of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. There are no completely evolved roots in that fossilised ecosystem. But one plant in the chert, Asteroxylon mackiei, has a kind of work-in-progress root, something midway between a branch and a root. It grows downwards, but doesn't yet have the root cap that protects the tips of modern roots. From the days of the Rhynie chert, about 407 million years ago, "we go forward maybe 20 million years or so, to about 380, 390 million years ago, and suddenly, we've got forests and trees.
[Science Daily] Brain evolution is linked to competition, study in fish suggests: Biologists find correlation between competitive environments and larger brain size - During a 30-day experiment near Arima, Trinidad, the researchers determined that when a fish is transplanted from a low- to a high-competition environment, there is a strong relationship between larger brain size and faster growth. That growth demonstrates increased ability to forage for food, giving killifish a greater chance at survival.
[Science Daily] Now we know how plants steer clear of salt - Salt in agricultural land is an accelerating global problem, partly due to climate change, which increases the salinity of soil whenever floods sweep coastal zones. Typically, this lowers crop yields.
[The Guardian] The real paleo diet: researchers find traces of world’s oldest meal in 550m-year-old fossil - Fossils of a slug-like creature known as Kimberella contained compounds suggesting it ate algae and bacteria from the ocean floor – not exactly a hearty meal, but a sign the animal had a mouth and a gut, and digested food the same way some modern invertebrates do
[Discover] What Species Today Are Descendants of Dinosaurs? - Birds are classified as theropod dinosaurs — the same clade that includes species like T. rex and Velociraptor. The earliest ancestors of modern birds appeared in the Jurassic Period from a clade of theropods called Paraves. Crocodiles are more closely related to birds than they are to lizards and snakes, Gold says.
[The Conversation] The real Paleo diet: new archaeological evidence changes what we thought about how ancient humans prepared food - In Shanidar Cave (Zagros, Iraqi Kurdistan), associated with early modern humans around 40,000 years ago and Neanderthals around 70,000 years ago, we also found ancient food fragments. This included wild mustard and terebinth (wild pistachio) mixed into foods. We discovered wild grass seeds mixed with pulses in the charred remains from the Neanderthal layers. Previous studies at Shanidar found traces of grass seeds in the tartar on Neanderthal teeth. Archaeological evidence from South Africa as early as 100,000 years ago indicates Homo sapiens used crushed wild grass seeds.
[Discover] Granted, the food that archaeologists find is nothing you’d want to eat. Often, it isn’t even recognizable as a foodstuff. Yet these morsels of history can still shed surprising light on just how far back humans have made some form of the dishes and beverages we still enjoy today. Here, then, is a four-course meal of some of the oldest edibles ever found. Bon appetit! - The Discovery of 7,200-Year-Old Cheese and Other Ancient Food and Drink
[Archaeology] Genetic Study Suggests Neolithic Mesopotamia Was a Melting Pot - The study suggests that two men, five women, two boys, and three girls from between 8500 and 7500 B.C., when people began to transition from hunting and gathering to farming, had ancestors from the South Levant, Central Anatolia, and Central Zagros.
[Smithsonian] Why Prehistoric Herders Didn't Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds - The genome reveals the seeds belonged to a 6,000-year-old wild watermelon, which probably had sickeningly bitter pulp. It seems Saharans first consumed watermelon seeds, long before the fruit evolved into the sweet, domesticated crop grown today on farms worldwide.
[Live Science] Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies, new exhibit reveals - It's long been believed that ancient Egyptians used mummification as a way to preserve a body after death. However, an upcoming museum exhibition indicates that was never the case, and instead the elaborate burial technique was actually a way to guide the deceased toward divinity.
[Live Science] Hundreds of mummies and pyramid of an unknown queen unearthed near King Tut's tomb - If discovering the coffins wasn't astonishing enough, when the researchers lifted the coffins' lids they were surprised to find the mummies in good condition, even after all these centuries. "This shows that mummification reached its peak in the New Kingdom," Hawass said.
[Live Science] Ancient Etruscans prayed at sacred hot springs, stunning statues reveal - Some of the statues also contain Etruscan and Latin inscriptions, according to a translated statement. (The Etruscan written language uses the Latin alphabet, but researchers haven't been able to decipher the words.) The artifacts date to the end of the Etruscan civilization, roughly between the middle of the third century B.C. and 90 B.C
[BBC] Gold coin proves 'fake' Roman emperor was real - The coin at the centre of the story was among a small hoard discovered in 1713. It was thought to have been a genuine Roman coin until the mid-19th century, when experts suspected that they might have been produced by forgers of the time, because of their crude design. The researchers believe that he was a military commander who was forced to crown himself as emperor of Dacia, which was cut off from the empire around 260 CE.
[Ars Technica] Lost 8th-century Japanese medical text by Buddhist monk has been found - Despite being blind, Jianzhen could still rely on smell, taste, and touch to identify the various medicines. And he taught many Japanese how to collect and make those medicines, too.
[Medievalists] New Zealand was first settled in the 13th century, study finds - “This study has narrowed that down and shown that early Māori settlement happened in the North Island between AD 1250 and AD 1275.”
[Medievalists] Medieval Gold Coin discovered in Canada - Henry VI quarter noble, minted in London between 1422 and 1427 - The coin would have been a sizeable amount of money in the 1400s, valued at 1 shilling 8 pence. Exactly how the gold quarter noble coin made its way to Newfoundland and Labrador is a mystery.
[The Guardian] Emperor Charles V's secret code cracked after five centuries - In painstaking work backed by computers, Pierrot found “distinct families” of about 120 symbols used by Charles V. “Whole words are encrypted with a single symbol” and the emperor replaced vowels coming after consonants with marks, she said, an inspiration probably coming from Arabic. In another obstacle, he used meaningless symbols to mislead any adversary trying to decipher the message.
[Atlas Obscura] Sicanje, an Ancient Balkan Tattoo Tradition, Draws a New Generation - In written histories and on vases and other artwork, ancient Greeks depicted Balkan people with tattoos, and archaeologists working in the region have discovered bronze tattooing needles in 3,000-year-old graves. Some of the ancient designs appear universal, such as the kolo circle, representing family and unity; it shares a name with a traditional dance still performed at weddings and family reunions. Other tattoos, such as a particular combination of motifs, appear to signify a specific village or tribe.
Notes
The history threads are part of an ongoing thread cluster from October 2020. It has been collated with added context. The added contexts for this week’s threads are given below:
Giuseppe Garibaldi – His contributions were crucial towards the reunification of Italy after 13 centuries of division.
Adrian von Bubenberg, Schultheiss of Bern (1468-1469, 1473-1474, 1477-1479), Lord of Spiez (1464-1479) – The Swiss victories over Burgundians in 1477 was a crucial step towards an independent Switzerland.