Author: Irina.Slav
Live Science that the ancient city was marked by a so-called ceremonial route, running from west to east, with only a 3-degree deviation from true east, a remarkable accuracy. This ceremonial route, a perfectly straight line, was lined by as many as 15 flat-topped pyramids which would have stood as tall as 100 feet. Each had a temple on top, which people reached by steps in the pyramids. At the easternmost end of the route there was a structure including three main pyramids along with some other buildings, arranged to face each other. Such triadic structures have been found in other Maya cities as well. In the northern and southern parts of the city were residential areas, again conforming to the overall grid design, Pugh said, and the whole area was encircled by a stone wall for protection. Apparently, Nixtun-Ch’ich was a beautiful, “shiny” city at its height, based on evidence of white plaster that may have been used for the buildings. However, for the people living in it, this design may not have been the most pleasant one due to its strictness, imposing a sense of constant control. This conclusion is based on the atmosphere of early European grid-design cities that started being built during the early Renaissance. Compared to Nixtun-Ch’ich, other ancient Maya cities were more “relaxed” in terms of design, with more open spaces. There is one other city on the land of the former Maya empire, Teotihuacan, which was also built according to a grid design but that city was inhabited by another civilisation about which little is known. Pugh’s research was actually focused on a community building and artefacts dating to a much later period, about the fourteenth century CE. The building was probably the place where the local Maya heirs, the Chakan Itza, held meetings, performed religious ceremonies, and generally conducted matters of state. There were two altars with turtle sculptures in the building, as well as figures of parrots and snakes along the walls. The building, Pugh says, was probably used for about two centuries. The Maya civilisation has been the subject of extensive study since the nineteenth century but the reasons for its decline, which occurred sometime around 900 CE, are still unclear. This was the first geographically focused empire in the region, which at its height spanned the Yucatan Peninsula, Tabasco and Chiapas in what is today Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador. The first evidence of Maya culture dates back to 1800 BCE but the golden age, the Classic Period of the civilisation, is considered to have lasted from 250 to 900 CE. Among its hallmarks are the stone pyramids where the Maya worshiped their gods, and the Maya calendar, whose accuracy is still a mystery for modern science. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: joiseyshowaa]]>
scansoriopterygids, characterised by their long hands, that lived 160 million years ago. All fossilised remains from this group come from China and none of them have such a bone connected to their wrists. This, coupled with the fact that bats and flying squirrels have similar bones on their hands, led the scientists to the suggestion that the dinosaur had wings made from skin, not feathers. The team, including Xu Xing and Corwin Sullivan from the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, and Zheng Xiaoting from Linyi University, named the creature Yi qi, meaning “strange wing”. They explained that at this stage it is impossible to determine whether the wings were used for flapping or gliding but in any case no other dinosaurs that have been discovered in this group of species had anything like them. Zheng said that Yi qi must have been a flight pioneer, given that it lived in the Jurassic era, long before feathered dinosaurs took to the air. However, the evidence is scarce, so it is likely that the publication detailing the find and the scientists’ conclusions will cause controversy. Although it has been long suspected that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs, until recently there was no hard evidence proving the link. Just last year, paleontologists completed a comprehensive family tree of a group of carnivorous dinosaurs from which birds are thought to have evolved. The tree reveals that, unlike with humans, this evolutionary process was gradual, with no “missing links”. Simply put, 150 million years ago a group of small dinosaurs started changing, acquiring bird-like skeletons, beaks and feathers. This process took tens of millions of years, accelerating over time. This, paleontologists explain, is because once the bird skeleton was in place, it greatly increased the potential for further evolution and diversity. For the sceptics, bird DNA has also been linked to dinosaur DNA, including that of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. In 2007, US researchers managed to extract collagen, a protein from the soft tissue of a bone, from the remains of a Tyrannosaurus that had lived 68 million years ago. The closest collagen type found in a modern animal was that in chicken bones. This discovery helped add more weight to the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: H. Raab]]>
Live Science points out, between 1.5% and 2.1% of the DNA of all present-day people outside Africa is Neanderthal DNA. Another thing that has been established is that the Neanderthals declined and died out very quickly. The reasons for this decline, however, remain a subject of dispute. Some of the theories put forward have to do with climatic changes that deprived these pre-humans of their main food and habitat. These changes may have been caused by volcanic eruptions, some researchers believe. Yet a lot of work has been focusing on the possible role of modern humans: whether they rose in numbers and spread across the continent so quickly that they literally displaced the Neanderthals, or whether their superior evolutionary level equipped them with skills that made them better at surviving. The most recent research in this respect hypothesised that it was the mastery of fire that gave modern humans the upper hand, allowing them to cook their food, and thus being able to extract more nutrients than is possible from raw meat and vegetables. At the same time, studies are continually shedding new light on the Neanderthals themselves, prompting a rethink of the long-held belief that they were an extremely primitive species. One such study discovered that the Neanderthals had a surprisingly well developed aesthetic sense, made and wore jewellery, and another has revealed they were no strangers to herbs as part of their diet. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: AquilaGib]]>