Tag: North America

Mexico City to replace Columbus statue with indigenous woman statue

2 Comments


Gone but not forgotten…

A statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus situated in a prominent position in Mexico City is to be replaced with one of an indigenous woman…

The statue’s former position will be dedicated to a monument that delivers “social justice” regarding the historic role of women in Mexico, particularly those of indigenous origin, Ms Sheinbaum said.

“Of course we recognize Columbus. But there are two visions,” Ms Sheinbaum said, adding that one of these was the European vision of the “discovery of America,” even though civilisations had existed for centuries in Mexico…

At the time, authorities said the statue was removed for restoration work and to allow reflection about Columbus’s legacy.

Obviously, reflection led to decision. One worth endorsing.

A great variety of animals once populated our prairies — they can, again!

Leave a comment


Click to enlarge — Melanie Wynne

North America’s prairies stretch north from Mexico into Canada, and from the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains. Grasslands also exist in areas farther west, between the Rockies and Pacific coastal ranges.

When Thomas Jefferson approved the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1803, this territory was home to Native Americans and abundant wildlife. Vast, unbroken horizons of contiguous grasslands supported millions of prairie dogs, pronghorn, bison and elk, and thousands of bighorn sheep. Birds were also numerous, including greater prairie-chickens, multiple types of grouse and more than 3 billion passenger pigeons…

That changed as European immigrants moved west over the next hundred years. Market hunting was one cause, but settlers also tilled and poisoned, fertilized and fenced the land, drained aquifers and damaged soils…

Some parts of the North American prairies could support this kind of biodiversity again. The Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma, Nebraska’s Sandhills and Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front all retain areas that have never been plowed, ranging from 1 million to 4 million acres. Public agencies and nonprofit conservation groups are already working in these areas to promote conservation and support grassland ecosystems…

The U.S. has a history of protecting its majestic mountains and deserts. But in our view, it has undervalued its biologically rich grasslands. With more support for conservation on the prairies, wildlife of all sizes – big and small – could again thrive on America’s fruited plains.

RTFA – not only for details of how we got here; but, how we might move forward to restoration and a new life for our grasslands.

DNA Reveals Intricate Connections Between The First People of The Americas

6 Comments

Comparisons between two extraordinary sets of ancient American remains have added rich detail to the spread of ancient human populations through the New World more than 13,000 years ago. And it shows a surprising and far-reaching connection between native North, South, and Central Americans.

What started as a simple story of migration is quickly turning into an intricate web of movement and cross-pollination, revealing connections that stretch not just deep into South America, but perhaps around the world.

None of these movements replaced existing populations, but rather show a melting pot of migrations that ebbed and flowed.

Interesting stuff. Information growing from DNA studies proceeds in so many directions as different database projects grow and interchange information. Studies on the formation and intermingling of so many ethnicities are fascinating – confirming or denying myth, legend and early science.

Move the date back on the first humans in North America — another 10,000 years!

1 Comment


Click to enlarge — Bourgeon et al

❝ The timing of the first entry of humans into North America across the Bering Strait has now been set back 10,000 years.

This has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt by Ariane Burke, a professor in Université de Montréal’s Department of Anthropology, and her doctoral student Lauriane Bourgeon, with the contribution of Dr. Thomas Higham, Deputy Director of Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.

Their findings were published in early January in the open-access journal PLoS One.

❝ The earliest settlement date of North America, until now estimated at 14,000 years Before Present (BP) according to the earliest dated archaeological sites, is now estimated at 24,000 BP, at the height of the last ice age or Last Glacial Maximum.

❝ The researchers made their discovery using artifacts from the Bluefish Caves, located on the banks of the Bluefish River in northern Yukon near the Alaska border. The site was excavated by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars between 1977 and 1987. Based on radiocarbon dating of animal bones, the researcher made the bold hypothesis that human settlement in the region dated as far back as 30,000 BP…

To set the record straight, Bourgeon examined the approximate 36,000 bone fragments culled from the site and preserved at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau — an enormous undertaking that took her two years to complete. Comprehensive analysis of certain pieces at UdeM’s Ecomorphology and Paleoanthropology Laboratory revealed undeniable traces of human activity in 15 bones. Around 20 other fragments also showed probable traces of the same type of activity.

“Series of straight, V-shaped lines on the surface of the bones were made by stone tools used to skin animals,” said Burke. “These are indisputable cut-marks created by humans.”

❝ Bourgeon submitted the bones to further radiocarbon dating. The oldest fragment, a horse mandible showing the marks of a stone tool apparently used to remove the tongue, was radiocarbon-dated at 19,650 years, which is equivalent to between 23,000 and 24,000 cal BP (calibrated years Before Present).

“Our discovery confirms previous analyses and demonstrates that this is the earliest known site of human settlement in Canada,” said Burke. It shows that Eastern Beringia was inhabited during the last ice age.”…

The Beringians of Bluefish Caves were therefore among the ancestors of people who, at the end of the last ice age, colonized the entire continent along the coast to South America.

Bravo. If I was a young ‘un, again – this would be high on the list of work I’d love to be doing.

Profiling is profiling whether it’s Canada or the GOUSA

Leave a comment

❝Three men from Manchester caught up in a potential terror investigation in Canada have claimed Vancouver police racially profiled them because they had beards.

CCTV pictures of the trio in a Vancouver shopping mall were leaked to Canadian media last week after they were seen taking “suspicious” photographs.

❝Vancouver police…appealed for information about the “suspicious incident”, which they said involved three “Middle Eastern-looking men” who were spotted inside the Pacific Centre mall allegedly photographing the entrances and exits.

Yet the suspects turned out to be Mancunian tourists, two with poor sight – visiting Vancouver for eye surgery. Police later accepted they were taking so many photographs so they could zoom in close when they get home.

“These guys can’t even see! And you expect them to be pulling off something big,” said Mohammed Sharaz, a Briton of Pakistani origin. He said he was visiting Vancouver with his 14-year-old son, Salahuddin Sharaz, and friend, Mohammed Kareem, both of whom suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition that eventually causes blindness…

Of Kareem he said: “My friend, when he looks at anything head-on, he doesn’t see like me and you do. So he’ll take a picture or a movie and then later on when he gets back he zooms into it and he watches stuff. He takes pictures of anything and everything.”

❝The two are being treated at the Wellspring Clinic for Holistic Medicine by Dr Weidong Yu, CBC reported. Sharaz said the treatment is not available in the UK…

❝Vancouver police had put out an appeal for “Middle Eastern-looking men”, saying that while they had no evidence the men had committed a crime in the mall, they would like to speak to them about what they were doing…

Police said the CCTV photographs had been leaked to “a Vancouver news outlet via an unknown source, and were not intended or authorised to be shared with the general public. The information was part of an internal police bulletin circulated amongst police officers throughout the province of…British Columbia…”

Vancouver police say they were shocked, shocked I tell you…that someone would leak photos of suspects to the press.

Cripes, I need new rubber boots after that one.

Paleoindians in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico

1 Comment

El Fin del Mundo
El Fin del Mundo — Henry Wallace

Paleoindian research encompasses a number of broad questions of far-reaching significance. Who were the first peoples to reach the Americas? When did they arrive? What was the relationship between the makers of Clovis spear points and the extinction of megafauna, such as the horse, mammoth, dire wolf, and other animals? Although these issues have long been debated, no consensus has been achieved. Big questions can persist because of in- sufficient evidence or because re- searchers have not adequately or fully interpreted the available infor- mation. A few researchers have pro- posed dramatically new ideas— such as the possibility of a comet col- liding with the earth (page 18)— and others, like Joe Cramer, have decided that these questions will be resolved only by supporting many more researchers who will generate new data. Both approaches are ex- amined in this issue of Archaeology Southwest…

“The end of the last Ice Age in North America was a time of enormous change: mile-thick glaciers were retreating rapidly, the sea level was rising, and large mammals, such as mammoths, ground sloths, camels and dire wolves would soon disappear.” Although a convergence of climate change and Paleo-Indian hunters may be a cause of the great extinction, “researchers still do not know exactly what happened.”

My own vulgate opinion is not much better informed than the average American science buff – excepting the portion of that opinion formed during the comparatively brief time I lived in the Navajo Nation plus day-to-day experience working construction trades in northern New Mexico, sometimes within one or another Rio Grande or Northern Pueblo.

I agree with that school of thought that presumes Paleoindian hunters to be the primary cause of the great extinction of large mammals from North America. Not unusual when and where human beings are part of the equation. Regardless – RTFA. It is a lovely, in-depth examination of many of the questions of the Paleoindian period in North American history.

Look to the sky this weekend — the Camelopardalids meteor shower

2 Comments


Click for sky directions

Sky-watchers all across North America are in for a real treat in the early morning hours of May 24 – there’s a brand new meteor shower that may light up the night sky. Scientists aren’t sure yet how many shooting stars people may see, but the May Camelopardalids meteor shower could be at a dazzling one-per-minute rate.

This is the first time Earth will directly cross the dusty trails left behind by a recently discovered comet named Comet 209P/LINEAR. Discovered in 2004, this comet’s path has been slowly altered by Jupiter’s gravity over the last 200 years and the leftover dust will now cross Earth’s path. That’s good news for those in North America who – weather permitting – will have a front-row seat to see Mother Nature’s celestial display of fireworks. The meteors will appear from the northern constellation Camelopardalis…

“What’s really nice about this particular comet [209P/Linear] is that we’re going right smack in the middle of these dust trails and the meteors are going to be pretty slow,” Carl Hergenrother said. “They’re actually going to last maybe for a second or two. It’s going to look almost like slow moving fireworks instead of the usual shooting stars that we’re used to.”

The peak of the shower will be between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. EDT, but Hergenrother said sky-watchers will still see meteors for several hours before and after those times. The biggest advice he has for people is to find a dark, safe place to get cozy and watch the stars…

NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke will host a live web chat from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. EDT. To access the chat, log in and ask questions, go here. Enjoy.

Thanks, Mike

The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd nations – and may be too complex to enjoy

1 Comment

By now you’ve probably read about the paper which reports that there seem to have been three waves of humans migrating into the New World prior to the arrival of Europeans. A major aspect of this result is that it does not emerge out of a vacuum, but rather comes close to settling an old question in linguistics…

The late Joseph Greenberg generated a series of audacious phylogenies of languages of the world. Greenberg’s attempts received mixed reviews. It seems that there is little controversy about some of his classifications of African languages, but linguists of American native dialects rejected his division of the languages of the New World into three broad families, Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind…The linguistic trichotomy also lent itself to a narrative of three migrations…

Despite all this drama, the scientific isn’t too hard to understand. Aside from the nifty statistics one problem is that many of these native groups have European and African admixture, but there are workarounds to that (e.g., just pull out genomic segments which are indigenous, and use those)…

On a big picture note this puts the lie to the idea that before agriculture hunter-gatherer societies were subject purely to differentiation in situ. The Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene erupted into a settled landscape, and dispossessed the indigenous groups of their lands…The First Americans “struck back” in this case, shoving aside the pioneers of northern living who had likely originated more recently from the margins of eastern Asia. Of course, the Eskimo-Aleut and related peoples were not First Americans only, rather, it was the old (First American) and new (Asian) ganging up upon the not so old or new (Asian).

At which point I will leave it up to more diligent readers to wander through this article – and/or the slightly deeper stuff – to sort it out to your own satisfaction.

Coca-Cola soon to be sold in bottle-shaped plastic bags

5 Comments


 

Apparently in many parts of Central America, expensive soda drinks like Coca-Cola are served up in plastic Ziploc bags—instead of glass or plastic bottles—so they’re more affordable. And so the iconic and highly recognizable shape of the Coke bottle isn’t lost, the sugar water maker has created these Coca-Cola bags as a low-cost alternative to its traditional packaging.

Besides being cheaper to produce, and probably even cheaper to ship, the Coca-Cola bags are supposedly more eco-friendly than plastic bottles, and even glass bottles and cans which require quite a bit of energy to recycle.

What do you think? Would you drink Coke out of a plastic bag? There are many cola connoisseurs who claim that Coca-Cola just tastes better out of a glass bottle, and would probably turn their noses up at this idea. But if it’s better for the environment, maybe the company should start distributing these in North America as well.

Keep on rocking in the Free World!

I’m the wrong guy to ask, anyway. It’s been several years since my New Year’s Resolution was to stop drinking carbonated beverages. Never looked back.

Another snazzy new car we won’t get to buy in North America

1 Comment

With the cost of fuel hitting family budgets harder and harder, Ford of Europe has commenced production of its most fuel efficient (and lowest CO2 emissions) passenger car ever. The company’s new Fiesta ECOnetic Technology is powered by a 1.6-liter Duratorq TDCi diesel engine providing 205 Nm of torque that offers fuel economy figures of 71 mpg US…with CO2 emissions of 87 g/km.

In addition to the diesel engine that features bespoke calibration and optimized gear ratios, the car’s fuel-sipping specs come courtesy of a variety of ECOnetic technologies. These include Auto-Start-Stop, which shuts down the engine when the vehicle is at idle, Smart Regenerative Charging, which feeds back energy captured when braking to the vehicle’s battery, Eco mode, which provides the driver with feedback about their driving style, and a gear shift indicator in the instrument cluster that signals the optimum time to change gear…The company says half of all Ford cars sold in Europe will be ECOnetic Technology models by the end of the year, increasing to two-thirds in 2013.

North American motorists hoping ECOnetic Technology models will be showing up in showrooms across the pond seem to be out of luck with a 2009 article in Business Week saying Ford wouldn’t be able to sell enough of the vehicles at a cheap enough price, due to exchange rates. Additionally, upgrading its Mexico plant to produce diesel engines would cost more than US$350 million. The company doesn’t believe there is a sufficient market for diesel cars in North and South America to justify such an outlay.

Which is baloney – if they looked at what the Germans are doing. You can buy cars sized from the VW Golf to the Audi A8 and Mercedes E-class. Plus the Ultimo crowd at BMW. They all have waiting lists for diesel-power. That includes cars starting at under $23K with diesel engines.

These ain’t your father’s oil-burner Oldsmobile – and neither is the ECOnetic Ford Fiesta. Mullaley needs to get on board.