Month: May 2015

Categories
Editorial

May History News Round-up

Adam's Illustrated Panorama of History

The Americas Researchers from New York Queens College have found that the Ancient Maya city Nixtun-Ch’ich, in Northern Guatamala, was built with a grid pattern design, something not seen in other cities from that time and region. Thought to have thrived between 600 and 300 BCE, the city featured a ceremonial route lined with up to 15 flat top pyramids which were each up to 100 feet tall. Running from west to east, the route only had a 3-degree variation from true east. Other Maya cities tended to be much more ‘relaxed’ in design and the researchers, led by Timothy Pugh from Queens College, have suggested that Nixtun-Ch’ich’s strict design may have given a sense of being constantly controlled for the people living there. A study by Jack Williams and Samuel Munoz has looked at the largest pre-colonial settlement north of Mexico, the city of Cahokia, located on the flood plain of the Mississippi River. By studying 2000 years old sediment cores from the flood plain, Munoz and Williams have shown that major flood events could have been linked to the rise and fall of the city. Correlating the history of the city with the record of floods, it was found that the rise of Cahokia took place between 600 and 1200 CE, a relatively flood free period. A major flood hit the area after 1200 CE, around the same time that the city entered a period of decline culminating in its complete abandonment in 1400 CE. The study could be hugely important for other studies of early agricultural societies as it has highlighted the importance of flood as a possible cause of decline, as well as shedding new light on a rarely studied period of North American history. Human Origins and Development Several studies published in May about our prehistoric origins have the potential to cause a major rethink about our distant past. Grasping the connectivity of such developments can be difficult. Below, several of the most important news stories from this month are presented in chronological order of the periods of which they relate to. An international team of scientists has just announced the discovery of a new human ancestor species which they have called Australopithecus deyiremeda. The scientists believe that this species inhabited the Afar region of Ethiopia around 3.3 million to 3.5 million years ago. This is hugely significant as it means Australopithecus deyiremeda lived in the region at the same time as Australopithecus afarensis (whose most famous representative is Lucy). The study has the potential to question the hitherto dominant theory that only one human ancestor species inhabited the earth at any time during the Pliocene period. Jumping forward three million years, a study from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge used genetic sequencing to understand the path of human migration through Africa. Based on a study of the DNA of 100 Egyptians and 125 Ethiopians, the team observed that the DNA of the Egyptians was closer to that of Eurasians. From this, they concluded that the divergence from Egyptians to Eurasians occurred around 10,000 years later than that from Ethiopians to Eurasians. Based on these conclusions, the team believes that the bulk of the human migration from Africa went through Egypt rather than Ethiopia. Other studies have looked at the development of early culture and societies. Genevieve von Petzinger, an anthropologist from the University of Victoria, has looked at the origins of written communication. It is generally believed that the use of written symbols as a source of communication first emerged in Sumer around 3,000 BCE. After examining 52 caves around Europe where ancient humans had lived, von Petzinger believes that written symbols were intentionally used as a way to convey information over 40,000 years ago. These written symbols are clearly not as sophisticated as a modern written language, but if von Petzinger is correct, they would suggest that human cultural development actually started much earlier than previously thought – possibly before the migration out of Africa. Finally, a study by Pontus Skoglund from Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute, and Love Dalén from the Swedish Museum of Natural History, has suggested that the relationship between humans and dogs may have formed much earlier than previously thought. Scientists generally argue that the domestication of dogs occurred around 16,000 years ago, but this new study argues it actually took place as far back as 35,000 years ago. The conclusions are based on research into the dates that modern dogs diverged from wolves in Siberia (Scientists consider the divergence between dogs and wolves to have been a consequence of human domestication of the animals). ]]>

Categories
Breaking News

Environmental History of Second World War Explored

Destruction of Koln 1945

www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Martin Kraft ]]>

Categories
Breaking News

Epigenetics Provides Glimpse Into Ancient Lifestyles

Genes

Categories
Breaking News

The History of Haiti, Revolution and Independence

Leclerc's veterans storm Ravine-a-Couleuvre (Snake Gully) in 1802

History Compass. The post-Revolution crash, Taber argues, does not necessarily reflect the policies of an independent Haiti. The expansion of Haiti’s plantation economy in the mid-eighteenth century and the importation of hundreds of thousands of slaves explains the colony’s economic productivity explosion. “It is probable that soil exhaustion and deforestation would have diminished Saint- Domingue’s economic role even without the revolution,” Taber writes. Taber argues that most slaves, who initially had little property, probably saw their living standards increase following the Haitian Revolution. Later scholarship, Taber writes, influenced by “Algerian independence from France, the USA civil rights movement, and general de-colonization coupled with the emergence of social history generated new interest around the Atlantic in the Haitian experience and its significance for understanding decolonization, black liberation, and structural racism.” There is still heated debate around the political ideas of Haitian slaves and the possible influence of Enlightenment ideas on their thinking. Taber notes that historians such as Laurent Dubois have argued that slaves further radicalised Enlightenment ideas as they adopted them. “In contrast, Geggus, Thornton, and Ogle show that most slaves followed a type of royalism that allowed an appeal to an authority higher than the planters,” Taber wrote. Most of the Haitian Revolution does not fit into easy narratives of racial solidarity or universal liberation. Numerous historians have argued over what caused the Revolution, with little concession. It is tempting, Taber writes, “to describe Saint-Domingue simply as the abyss of 18th-century slavery and colonialism and the Haitian Revolution as the universal triumph of human rights, but such easy narratives do a disservice to the women and men involved and mask Haiti’s complexity.” His conclusion is that further work needs to be done. Taber’s summary of Haitian history is impressive in scope and offers a wonderful synopsis for anyone wanting to understand Haiti’s complicated and nuanced past. For more information: www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ]]>

Categories
Breaking News

Eurasians Probably Left Africa Through Egypt

Satellite Image of Africa

Live Science, the lead author Luca Pagani said that what is most exciting for the team is shedding light on an important stage of the evolution of all European and Asian peoples. This will deepen the understanding of billions of people of their “biological history”. Another of the authors, Toomas Kivisild from the University of Cambridge, told media that the results give a clear map of how modern humans moved out of Africa, even though they do not account for all the aspects of the process or give it any precise timing. One additional benefit of the study is that science has gained a neat genomic database of the genetic diversity present in Ethiopia and Egypt, which can be used as reference in other studies, Phys.org notes. Some questions related to this major exodus in the evolution of humans are still waiting to be answered however, says co-author Chris Tyler-Smith from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. One such question is whether the route through Egypt was the only mass migration of that period, or were there other groups that left the continent without their genetic makeup surviving to the modern day? This question could be answered by the examination of ancient genomes from the areas through which such a migration would have passed. It has been established that the route through Ethiopia was indeed used, but probably by fewer people who did not go beyond the Arabian peninsula and whose genetic makeup has left no trace in the modern day, Pagani told Live Science. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: NASA]]>

Categories
Breaking News

Oldest Murder Victim Discovered

A Neanderthal skull discovered in the Sima de los Huesos cave in Spain

PLOS ONE journal. What makes the find particularly interesting is the fact that it is the earliest known example of murder, taking place much earlier than the appearance of the Homo genus on the world scene. The proof that the Neanderthal’s death was the result of deliberate injury can be seen in the presence of two nearly identical fractures to the frontal skull bone of the individual. Examination of the fractures revealed that they had been inflicted with one weapon and the trajectory that could be inferred from their shape and size told scientists that this weapon had been used in a close, face-to-face, conflict. Moreover, the authors say, the fact that there is more than one fracture, given that the severity of each of them would have been lethal, suggests “an intention to kill.” The major conclusion of the analysis was that intentional killings were part of our ancestors’ lives, something for which there has not been abundant evidence from this period of pre-human history. According to the authors, any insight into early hominin violence is of interest because it sheds light on the relations within communities and between different communities with regard to resources and their distribution, the density of the population, and the distribution of land. The authors also note in their paper that up until now there has been no evidence of “direct traumatic injury” in hominins from the Middle Pleistocene, although there has been previous evidence of non-fatal injuries and cannibalism. There is also abundant evidence from the Middle and Upper Pleistocene of skull trauma, although the sufferers survived in the majority of cases. In fact, only two fossils have been discovered that could be said to have belonged to people who died violent deaths, but not with a high degree of certainty, the PLOS ONE paper authors write. One of these two fossils has a lesion on one of the ribs but the shape of the bone actually suggests he lived for a few weeks after the injury was inflicted, so it cannot be established whether the lesion was the real, or only, cause of death. The other fossil shows signs of severe trauma to the first thoracic vertebra, which has been taken as the cause of this individual’s death, but it is unclear whether this trauma was caused by the deliberate actions of another hominin or was the result of an accident, while hunting, for example. It is the scarcity of fossils bearing the clear marks of an intentional death that makes the Spanish find so precious for the scientific community. It might also provide clues as to why there were so many people in this cave, which, at the time, could only be accessed through a 13-metre high chimney. Two of the hypothesis put forward so far have been ruled out, namely predators or geological activity dragging the bodies there. The two remaining hypotheses have to do with accidental falls and intentional killings. These latest findings could support the latter hypothesis. For more information: www.journals.plos.org Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Jose-Manuel Benito]]>

Categories
Breaking News

New Human Ancestor Raises Questions About Our Origins

Australopithecus afarensis paleoanthropological sites in East Africa

Australopithecus deyiremeda, as the new human ancestor has been named, lived in the Afar region of Ethiopia some 3.3 million to 3.5 million years ago. This means it would have lived alongside Australopithecus afarensis, another hominin species from the Afar region whose most famous representative, “Lucy”, was discovered in 1974. A. afarensis lived in what is now Ethiopia, between 2.9 million and 3.8 million years ago. “The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia during the middle Pliocene”, said Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropolgy at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the project team leader of the study, in a press release. The fossil specimens were found on 4th March, 2011, in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Project study area, situated in the centre of the Afar region, about 325 miles north east of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, and just 22 miles north of the site where Lucy’s remains were unearthed. Differences in jaw bone mark the two species apart. A. deyiremeda had thick enamel teeth of a different shape and size to Lucy, and a more robust lower jaw. The anterior teeth were also comparatively smaller in A. deyiremeda, suggesting it had a different diet. A. deyiremeda‘s discovery adds to the increasing ambiguity about the process of human evolution. For much of the twentieth century the general consensus among scientists, based on available sources, was that during the Pliocene period only one human ancestor species existed at any time. In 1995, a hominin species called Australopithecus bahrelghazali was discovered in Chad, and in 1999 another called Kenyanthropus platyops was discovered in Kenya. Both of these species were reported to have lived at the same time as Lucy, although this assertion was met with skepticism from the scientific community over whether they really were separate species or simply another example of A. afarensis. Skeptics in the scientific community may still need to be convinced that A. deyiremeda is indeed a distinct species but its discovery adds further weight to the idea that the evolution of homo sapiens was not just a straight line from A. afarensis. “Some of our colleagues are going to be skeptical about this new species, which is not unusual. However, I think it is time that we look into the earlier phases of our evolution with an open mind and carefully examine the currently available fossil evidence rather than immediately dismissing the fossils that do not fit our long-held hypotheses”, said Haile-Selassie. For more information: www.cmnh.org Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Chartep]]>

Categories
News

The Fall Of Constantinople

Fall of Constantinople

Categories
Breaking News

Rumours Are A Useful Historical Source

Girl whispering into woman's ear

www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Flickr upload bot]]>

Categories
Book Reviews

Dracula

Bram Stoker

Dracula. First released in English bookshops in 1897, the book remains for many the classic vampire novel. The book’s author, Bram Stoker, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847. A sickly child, Stoker was forced to spend much of his youth confined at home. His mother, a charity worker and writer, entertained him with fantastic stories. Stoker became healthier as he grew older, and went on to study Mathematics at Trinity College, graduating in 1867. Stoker worked as a civil servant in Dublin while also writing theatre reviews for the Dublin Mail newspaper. He met the famous actor Sir Henry Irving, who hired Stoker as his manager, forging a working relationship which would last for the best part of the next three decades. The new job saw Stoker move to London, where he began his writing career and started to move in the city’s literary circles alongside the likes of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Easily Stoker’s most well known novel, Dracula is composed of a collection of diary entries, letters and telegrams between several key characters. This narrative technique was intended to give the story a more unnerving sense of reality, as though the narrators are relaying simple fact rather than consciously telling a story. It also lends the book a distinct style: lacking a fixed narrator, the story is told from several first person perspectives. A central theme in the book is the relationship between science and tradition, a key concern of the late Victorian era. Industrialisation and scientific advances had led to an increasing detachment from rural traditions, while works such as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had called into question religious belief systems as a means to understand the universe. Count Dracula however, is something beyond science, a supernatural being whose weaknesses can only be found through traditional means. It is only Van Helsing, a doctor trained in both scientific and non-scientific knowledge, who can identify the threat Count Dracula poses and stop it. Female sexuality is another central issue in Dracula, and in many ways the depiction of women in the book is a reminder of the patriarchal society in which it was written. Many critics argue that the novel was intended to stimulate the imaginations of Victorian men, with Dracula’s female victims metaphors for lust. Many of the female characters are portrayed in a very flat, one dimensional way, often serving as mere objects in the development of the story rather than active subjects. Count Dracula’s attacks lead to his victims breaking from ideals of Victorian womanhood, as seen in his first victim Lucy, or the seductive female vampires in his castle. Throughout, women are either victims or temptresses, their characters are never developed beyond these very basic allegorical roles. It is important to remember that Dracula was not the first vampire story written. Stoker’s work in fact drew on ancient folk stories of the blood sucking undead who attacked their victims at night. Nevertheless, it is the basis for most modern vampire stories, providing an image of vampires that is influential to this day and serving as a reflection of the late Victorian world in which it was written.

Related Books

Dracula book

Dracula
by Bram Stoker

[gap height=”20″] ]]>