Is Mycelium the Connective Tissue of Nature's Global Communication Network?

The Wood Wide Web

Botanists and mycologists have understood this grand symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants for over a century.

Are humans on the precipice of having scientific confirmation of "mushroom intelligence"? Such vetted research does not exist presently. But new research by Andrew Adamatzky, a computer scientist at the Unconventional Computing Laboratory of the University of the West of England, is provocative in raising a series of questions about intelligent life in the world of fungi.

The Woodwide Web

Indications of 'Earth's natural internet' date back to the 1885 when the German botanist and mycologist Albert Bernhard Frank coined the term "mycorrhiza". The mycorrhizae [plural of a single cell mycorrhiza] exist as miniscule, amost microscopic threads called hyphae. These hyphae branch into a complicated web or patchwork called mycelium.

In the words of The National Forest Foundation: "Taken together, myecelium composes what’s called a “mycorrhizal network,” which connects individual plants together to transfer water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals. German forester Peter Wohlleben dubbed this symbiotic network affecting about 90 percent of plant life on the planet -- including trees -- the “woodwide web.” It is through the mycelium that trees 'communicate.'

Botanists and mycologists have understood this grand symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants for over a century. But positing the existence of a linguistic communication system founded on 'intelligence' is another subject entirely.

"The Secret Life of Plants"

Almost 50 years ago, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird published in 1973 their mindbending book "The Secret Life of Plants", described as "a fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man."

Reissued and updated in March, 1989, the title -- called "beloved" 16 years after its initial publication date -- cast fresh eyes on the "rich psychic universe of plants", as it explored plants' responses to human care and nurturing, plants' surprising reaction to music, their lie-detection abilities, their creative powers and much more.

"The Secret Life of Plants" affirmed the deep ties that humanity has with nature -- even when we disregard its importance in our lives through our actions. Most humans take the natural world for granted, as if it will always exist at our disposal to inspire our senses, grow food for our stomachs, and regulate temperatures on earth.

We do not consider this relationship tenuous, inspiring us to act with care with plants and their own lives, so that we do not perish as a species.

Decades of research, since Tompkins and Bird shared their account of the special relationship between humans and plants, has confirmed their central thesis about interactions between humans and plants.

Prince Charles, Champion of Plant Communications

In 1986 England's Prince Charles explained how talking to his plants helped them grow. Ridiculed, the prince held his ground, affirming his private conversations in 2010, saying "I happily talk to plants and trees and listen to them. I think it's absolutely crucial."

In a spring 2022 BBC1 'The Green Planet' series about the plant world, Sir David Attenborough says that Charles will feel "pretty vindicated because he was ahead of the game." The landmark series shows how plants can think and communicate with each other -- and also respond to human interaction as well.

In one episode, viewers see trees in British forests communicating using fungi networks which connect to their roots.

Prince Charles hunts mushrooms

. . . walking miles for chanterelles instead of shooting grouse.

Stella McCartney Gives Fungi the Fashion and Also Spiritual Spotlight

Fungi have been front and center in spring 2022, thanks to fashion designer Stella McCartney. A decades-long vegetarian and animal welfare activist, McCartney's interest and knowledge competency about the world of mycelium, has grown far beyond her initial interest in developing a vegan alternative to leather.

Stella McCartney has delved deeply into the world of mycelium in her development and commercial work with Bolt Threads Mylo sustainable leather.

As Stella's own mushroom knowledge grew far beyond its original boundaries, the designer not only inspired us to study the world of fungi and mycelium. A McCartney and not a Medici, Stella nevertheless became a Renaissance-style patron of fungi education and learning.

With each new discovery, Stella's own eyes opened wider in amazement, and she has shared this knowledge with the entire world, helping to create a mushroom frenzy that is only taking shape after decades of neglect, misinformed derision and bad laws.

Andrew Adamtzky's Research

Within this quest for more scientific knowledge about fungi, Andrew Adamatzky employed tiny electrodes to record the rhythmic electrical impulses transmitted across the mycelium of four different species of fungi.

These impulses created measurable patterns of amplitude, frequency and duration that when diagrammed bore a striking resemblence to mathematical schematics of human speech. Adamatzky believes that he may have discovered the foundation of a fungal language of about 50 words that are also organized into sentences.

The complexity of the possible 'language' used by different fungi species varied, with the split gill fungus [Schizophyllum commune] using the most complicated communication of those tested.

The possibility that fungi have their own electrical language to communicate information about both opportunity and resources nearby, and also danger, could signal a vast underground intelligence network that covers much of the globe.

Prior research has shown that when one plant is under attack with disease, it communicates to nearby plants about the problem. In some studies, it appears that plants, including trees, can transfer carbon-based compounds such as sugars to their neighbors.

Exactly how these communication networks work, and the role of fungal mycelia in creating a transmission system is not understood. Adamatsky and partner researchers concluded: "What we can take from the research is that electrical spikes are, potentially, a new mechanism for transmitting information across fungal mycelia, with important implications for our understanding of the role and significance of fungi in ecosystems."

Mushrooms, Fungi and the Circular Economy

What we know for certain is that -- language or no language -- fungi are have always been active in promoting a circular economy. All around us fungi that include molds and yeasts are collectively responsible for the decomposition of many complex plant polymers in soil and compost. In composting, fungi are critically important because they break down tough debris, so that bacteria are able continue the decomposition process, even if most of the cellulose has been exhausted.

If you query google "can fungi eat fabrics", answers awaits you.

Humans take this entire fungi-life-generating-process for granted, having little grasp on the active maze of cellular activity operating around us. It's no different than humans thoughtlessly throwing our clothes away after one wearing -- or sometimes not at all -- with the expectation that it will somehow be disposed of at zero damage to our planet.

We humans have a lot to learn about life on our planet -- and fungi seem eager to teach us. Today's young people do not appreciate speaking of mushrooms as having female identity. They seek a world free of gender -- a world full of human-only potential.

For better or worse, mushrooms historically are associated with witchcraft and the occult; with living in darkness; with liberating the oceanic, great-mother unconscious. The lives of fungi are earthbound and metaphorically female.

In a world that remains patriarchal and is reasserting itself again aggressively against women in many nations including America, the idea of the dark unseen world of an underground mycelium network that is 'female' and capable of saving the world has substantial appeal.

We take up this next chapter of an ever-evolving, totally-fascinating story of life with magic mushrooms next.

Dior Cruise 2022 Campaign in Athens Touches on Women's History, Rise of Patriarchy

Dior’s spectacular June Cruise 2022 show took place at the home of the modern Olympics, the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens. Now we have images from the campaign featuring Chai Maximus, Maryel Uchida, Selena Forrest and Steinberg. Elin Svahn styles the campaign. Fabien Baron provides art direction with photography by Julia Hetta.

Also known as Kallimármaro, the stadium is the only one in the world made entirely of marble. Originally built as a racecourse around 330 B.C., Kallimármaro fell into a state of disrepair before being renovated to host the modern Olympics in 1896. The sheer scale of the Panathenaic Stadium makes it visible from many points throughout Athens.

Fast-forwarding to Dior Creative Director for Women Maria Grazia Chiuri, her inspiration for her 2022 cruise show came during lockdown, when she rearranged furniture in her Paris apartment to accommodate a pilates machine.

“Sport is movement, sport is freedom. During lockdown, you would walk around your building just to get a sense of moving your body. That became our idea of freedom,” Chiuri said on press calls around the show.

Women in Athens were not permitted to participate in the Olympic games, unlike women in Sparta who had more rights and greater autonomy than the Athenian women. There were other events for women’s sports in Athens, but the Olympics were men-only, and they were required to compete naked to avoid any females crashing the games.

The rise of patriarchal power in fifth century B.C. Athens accelerated the dramatic decline of women’s freedoms in a compressed time period.

[Note that AOC will use traditional norms to speak about men and women in Greek life during this period. We assume that most readers know that various arrangements of homosexual relationships and also lesbian relationships were a common expression of sexuality at the same time that women’s general status in Greek life was declining.]

Maria Grazia Chiuri regularly tells women’s history in her fashion shows. In her cruise 2022 show, Chiuri bridged the technical properties of the sport with the couture-informed craftsmanship normally viewed as its polar opposite. This unlikely synergy is symbolic of women’s lives in Athens in the ancient period. Translated for the runway, the designer gave a sporty spin to beautiful draped goddess gowns — known as ‘peplos’ — pairing them with chunky Nike trainers.

“It gives this idea that they are not statues, but are active in the world,” creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri told WWD of the inspiration behind the gowns. “It’s really something absolutely contemporary: all the things that are under the dress are technical things that you can use also to run.”

“The peplos also is an element that allows the body to move freely, that evokes women in movement, and no one more than an athlete moves their body in a really active way,” she added. “So my idea was to culminate all these elements inside the show.”

Called the mother of all dresses, Chiuri loves the peplos. “I come from Roma, don’t forget. Around me, the reference of Greece is everywhere, on every statue. It’s my background,” she said, as an explanation for why her focus on functionality, movement and comfort translate easily into her Greek stadium inspiration.

Enjoy the campaign video.

Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA

Photographer Rocio Ramos [IG] captures unadulterated-red, fashion passion in the October pages of Marie Claire Mexico and Latin America. Model Dalianah Arekion poses in primal, earth-goddesses elegance styled by Abraham Gutiérrez.

Most fashion media will promote the color red as symbolizing new energy and interest in living with the latest seasonal wardrobe. The message is consumption-oriented — which is understandable, especially if we are looking at the latest, earth-loving sustainable fashion buys.

We doubt that is the case here — that we are looking at sustainable fashion. But there are even higher principles at play in these images. AOC knows for a fact that artist and photographer Rocio Ramos is on our wave-length, and she likes the writing her images inspire.

So we will move out on red, into the fast lane.

Red Symbolism

The color red is most often associated with a passion for living and an embrace of love, but also carnal pleasures. Red is known as an emotionally-intense color that enhances human metabolism and increases respiration rate, while raising blood pressure. The impact of the color red on the human body has been seriously studied.

Culturally-speaking we are in a red-alert moment that transcends fashion runways and embraces the duality of competing narratives about our very humanity.

Red is the color of fire and blood, one often associated with energy, war, power and danger. Red is considered to be aggressive and fierce, but also grounding. In the world of 7 chakras, red is the root chakra, and while it’s easy enough to dismiss red as primitive with its positioning on the chakra chart, it is also responsible for our sense of security and stability.

When apes first stood tall and began walking into humanity, their root chakra was in high gear — literally. Rocks and caves were homes to humanity before we created mobile structures made of mammoth tusks. The setting for Rocio Ramos’ fashion story is perfect, because it embraces the necessities of security, survival and being rooted as the very foundation of our lives.

Seizing the Color of Cardinals

Red is also unifying as the color of blood. Surely you’ve heard the expression “we all bleed the same color red” as a statement of our common humanity.

From this AOC perspective, women who wear red are dangerous in many ways, because we often challenge fundamental, but politically-created beliefs that humanity does NOT bleed the same color blood.

In seizing the color of cardinals for our own bodies, we are transgressors against the status quo. We are inspired and challenged onwards by the orisha Oya, a Yoruba warrior-goddess who stands with one foot in Yoruba-speaking Africa and another in northern Brazil. She is my own Orisha, revealed to me in a mind-blowing event in Brazil in 2019.

Oya’s own religion Candomblé, was banned until 1970 in Brazil. In the interests of simplicity, consider Candomblé to be folk Catholicism — except that women have real power in the religion that has been on the move publicly in Brazil since 2005.

To Fight or Not To Fight

It will be women’s choice whether or not we seize the power of red in a transformational way. Increasing numbers of us must be willing to step out of the shadows and find our backbone — our inner Oya. As a daughter of Oya — the word used to describe me on that fateful day in Brazil in 2019 — it is our duty to rise against the prevailing winds of white nationalism worldwide.

By definition, in accepting my own identity as a daughter of Oya, I am acknowledging the leadership of women of color in this obviously-coming “religious holy war”. As scary as these times are, I am personally propelled forward with the understanding that if red is the lowest charka — the root chakra on the chart — purple is the highest.

Getting to Purple Status

It is true that we can’t advance to purple status, without rising through blue — and we all know that blue is for boys, right? Except that it wasn’t, at least here in America.

Only at the beginning of the 20th century, did some stores begin suggesting ‘sex-appropriate’ colors for newborn boys and girls. Initially, pink was the color for boys. Girls wore blue. That is truth, and I will pick up that narrative soon with much more proof than Britannica.

Frankly, I’m as surprised as you are with this discovery. In understanding that American girls wore blue and boys wore pink, I see Oya’s goddess color of purple on the horizon — if only we can rise together in unity. It’s akin to my long-ago discovery that abortion was not only legal in colonial America, but it was widely advertised in newspapers and on city lamp posts. The facts of history are rewritten always to support the ideological interests of the most powerful among us. At least in liberal democracies, tensions around power and truth arise because arguments that would get me beheaded in Saudi Arabia are more easily expressed in America.

Make no mistake, though. I have been in police protection for a year over a crazed white dude trying to kill me for supporting Planned Parenthood. So we’re speaking of degrees of danger and repression here in America — at least for this white woman. The police were very supportive of me and took the reality of my danger very seriously.

We know that in many cases, such protection would not be offered to a woman of color — straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans — I’m sure I’ve made a grievous error in this word lineup, but you get my point. ~ Anne

Humanrace 'Clean' Beauty Skincare Is Pure Pharrell Williams Philosophy

Image Collage © AnneofCarversville.com. Pharrell Williams, the guru of empathy including his adidas sneakers launches Humanrace skincare products.

Pharrell Williams has launched an epic skincare brand at humanrace.com. Not only does the brand name Humanrace dovetail perfectly with the singer/rapper/designer/entrepreneur’s philosophical mindset. But because the two words are typically split in typography, searching for the single word brings up Pharrell Williams’ new venture in Google’s top position. Nice — and I doubt he paid much for it.

Yes, it helps that Humanrace’s November 25 launch covers the current issue of Allure magazine, lensed by Ben Hassett. All the relevant details of Humanrace’s DNA are covered in Brennan Kilbane’s interview Pharrell Dives Into the Beauty Business.

The chief sensations officer of Humancare is perfectly at home Zooming from his Miami kitchen about the super simple, skin-loving essentials developed with his longtime dermatologist, Elena Jones.

According to Jones, “This routine is formulated from Pharrell’s skin-care experience… We adhered to the European standard of 1,300 banned ingredients as an important starting point and then we went further to develop our own restrictions. We worked to create products that had no rocks, nuts, seeds or plastic particles in our formulas to ensure no microtears occur which can result in damaging your skin.”

Humanrace is sustainability-centered. Each component of packaging is refillable and reusable, constructed from more than 50 percent post-consumer recycled landfill plastic.

Humanrace Skincare launches with a trio of products: Rice Powder Cleanser, Lotus Enzyme Exfoliator and Humidifying Cream.. “I grew up in humidity,” the Virginia Beach native tells Kilbane.says. “The way I think about things... I’m an Aries, but I’m also a Cancer rising. Water makes me feel free. Water is very inspiring to me.”

Returning to the subject of Humanrace skincare as a genderless, vegan, fragrance-free and “clean” brand, Pharrell once again gets philosophical about the complex simplicity of human life.

“Sometimes you need to cleanse your spirit. Sometimes you need to cleanse your mind. Sometimes you’ve just got to get rid of some dead skin.”

Something in the Water Festival: April 23-25 . . . Virginia Beach, VA

SOMETHING IN THE WATER FESTIVAL 2021

April 23-25 . . . Virginia Beach, VA

Virginia Beach Atlantic Ocean image by Ravs Yan on Unsplash

Eyeing the New South

It was an impactful, online New York Times ad recruiting artists to Virginia that first attracted me to Virginia Beach. That July 2017 midnight sighting was followed by the August 12, 2017white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. That memorable weekend left me wondering if a move to Virginia was realistically in my destiny.

My cousin Jo and I spent several November 2017 days in Virginia three months later, and I remained positive about the move — highly impacted by the ‘truths’ about Jefferson that were openly-discussed in our tour at Monticello.

Looking out over a desolate, wintery Civil War battlefield was sobering post-Charlottesville, and I felt more strongly than ever that creating a New South was part of my older and wiser DNA.

I can say with total honesty, though, that news of Pharrell Williams’ 2019 ‘Something in the Water’ festival sealed the deal, removing any further hesitation about moving to Virginia. All systems became GO!

The beauty entrepreneur’s Allure interview with Brennan Kilbane delves into activism in a post George Floyd world.

In previous interviews, Williams has been careful to point out that he is not primarily an activist. But this past summer, shaded by the Movement for Black Lives, his thinking has evolved. He’s been particularly inspired by Michael Harriot and Henry Louis Gates Jr. — their writing has shown him that effecting powerful, meaningful change can be done in myriad ways. “Gates said, there are many different ways to protest, to be on the front lines,” Williams says, referencing protests that have occurred all over the United States since May. “Some people are great orators. Some people are great strategists. Some people can stand and hold a placard, protest sign, for way longer than other people. There are people making sandwiches and bringing nourishment to people who are out there. My activism has [taken a lot of shapes]. Because my culture, our lives matter.

Image Collage © AnneofCarversville.com. UL: © Pharell; UR: London protest Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash.

Scientists Find Three Kinds of Early Humans Living Together in South Africa

The drimolen fossil site. (Andy Herries)

By Brian Handwek. First published on SmithsonianMag.com

Scientists studying the roots of humanity’s family tree have found several branches entangled in and around a South African cave.

Two million years ago, three different early humans—Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and the earliest-known Homo erectus—appear to have lived at the same time in the same place, near the Drimolen Paleocave System. How much these different species interacted remains unknown. But their contemporaneous existence suggests our ancient relations were quite diverse during a key transitional period of African prehistory that saw the last days of Australopithecus and the dawn of H. erectus’s nearly two-million-year run.

“We know that the old idea, that when one species occurs another goes extinct and you don’t have much overlap, that’s just not the case,” says study coauthor Andy Herries, a paleoanthropologist at La Trobe University in Australia.

Homo erectus cranium with stylized projection of the outline of the rest of the skull. (Andy Herries, Jesse Martin and Renaud Joannes-Boyau)

Three Species, One Place

Australopithecus africanus is the most primitive of this trio. The lineage dates to 3.3 million years ago and combines human features with ape-like attributes including long, tree climbing-arms. Despite these intermediate features, Australopithecus’s exact relation to modern humans remains unknown. The species is thought to have died out around 2 million years ago.

Paranthropus robustus, an offshoot of the human family tree not considered a direct human ancestor, is known for large, powerful jaws and teeth that could pulverize a diet of nuts, seeds, roots and tubers. Paranthropus lived from perhaps 2 million years ago (the remains described in this study are the earliest known) until about 1.2 million years ago.

Homo erectus was the first ancestor of modern humans to have human-like body proportions and the first to appear outside of Africa. The species appeared in what is now the nation of Georgia 1.85 million years ago and survived in some Indonesian enclaves until as recently as 117,000 years ago. It’s generally believed that they first evolved in Africa, and the cranium find described at Drimolen would push back their earliest-known occurrence anywhere in the world by more than 100,000 years.

“It’s an excellent paper, and it looks quite convincing,” says Fred Spoor of the Natural History Museum, London. “It would have been ideal if there was more of the cranium, but I think they make a very good case that it’s Homo and that the closest affinities are probably with erectus. And that would make it quite likely the oldest Homo erectus-like thing.”

The Drimolen excavations and excavated fossils. (Andy Herries)

“I have no doubt that they have something that is of the genus Homo,” adds Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist and head of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program. But Potts notes that the incomplete skull doesn’t show all the telltale features that would characterize it as Homo erectus or some other relative. Furthermore, the cranium belongs to a 2- or 3-year-old child, for which comparisons are scarce. “I’m not 100 percent sure that they have Homo erectus. And that would be one of the really interesting parts of the study, because if they do have Homo erectus then it is the earliest known in the world.”

Out of Africa, or Within Africa?

If Herries and colleagues are correct that they have found Homo erectus, the early dates of the find pose an intriguing question: How did the species arrive in South Africa?

One possibility is that H. erectus originated here and later spread to East Africa and then out of the continent. However, Herries says that the discovery of the oldest-known bones doesn’t necessarily mean H. erectus started in this locale. Perhaps they migrated to the area.

“It seems that Homo erectus and Paranthropus and stone tools all suddenly occur in South Africa at this point,” Herries says. “This suggests that we’ve got movement into the region, and I think it’s really part of this same sort of story. We talk about 'Out of Africa' a lot, but the hominids didn’t know they were going out of Africa. They were just moving.”

Herries and colleagues cite some evidence for non-hominid migrations that may lend weight to this theory. An extinct prehistoric zebra and springbok appear at South African sites during this same time, suggesting some environmental factors spurred their relatively sudden migration into the region from regions further north where they are known to have lived earlier.

It’s a question of putting our ancestors in their place ecologically, Potts says, which drives much of his work on hominin evolution. “We think a lot about what’s going on with other mammals when looking at explanations of human evolution,” he says. “This period around 2 million years ago is one of prolonged, very high climate variability in Eastern Africa. I think that’s just the right conditions for animals to be moving around to track different environments.”

If it was a migrant, H. erectus would have moved into an area that was already occupied by other ancient hominids and shared the same landscape with them for a significant time. “The fact that in a small area in South Africa you have not just three species but three different genera, … at the same time is neat,” says Spoor, who this week published a study modeling the brains of the famed hominid Lucy and her kin. “This will certainly put Drimolen back on the map.”

“We talk a lot about [diverse species coexisting] with Neanderthals, modern humans, and Denisovans, and we can see that with DNA, but we don’t have that ability with this earlier stuff,” adds Herries. “I’m sure it happened and this may be one of the first instances where we can really see it.”

La Trobe University PhD student Angeline Leece in front of fossil bearing brecccia at Drimolen. (Jesse Martin)

A Dating Dilemma

The Drimolen Paleocave System is part of South Africa’s Unesco World Heritage Site called the Cradle of Humankind, a collection of limestone caves near Johannesburg that are one of Africa’s two great sources of hominid fossils. More than 900 have been found, representing at least 5 different species, during excavations that began nearly a century ago.

The big problem in South Africa has been dating all these finds. East Africa’s rift valleys, the continent’s other great hominin fossil source, feature layers of volcanic ash that can be dated by measuring the decay of radioactive elements, thereby dating the fossils within. In many South African caves, by contrast, older, fossil-filled sections have collapsed into lower areas. Modern humans operated mines in the area, too. The result is a confusing and complicated landscape that defies easy reconstruction.

Herries, who specializes in geochronology, says the Drimolen site is a bit different. It’s a small cavern that was deposited during a short period when water sunk into the cave, leaving a large sediment cone in the middle in which the fossils were found. Studies of the cave sediments show that this happened during a short window of time when Earth’s magnetic field flipped, a major help in dating the finds.

“That’s a huge advantage because we know when these magnetic changes occurred in the past,” Herries says. Scientists know when the field flips because the event leaves magnetic patterns in volcanic rock, especially in lava on the ocean floor, leaving a record of these reversals.

By using the known rate at which uranium decays into lead the team dated a tiny flowstone in the middle of the cave, formed by minerals in water that moved across the cave walls and floor, to about 1.95 million years ago—just in time for the magnetic field reversal. “That’s the critical combination that allowed us to date those layers, and date the bits where the crania come from which are slightly older than that.” The team also dated molars associated with the fossils using Electron Spin Resonance techniques with wider margins of error that nonetheless correlate to the same period. “My hope is that people will be convinced that we can date these cave sites in South Africa effectively now. It takes a lot of hard work, and a bit of luck.”

Potts was among those convinced by the dating but found himself even more impressed by the significance of the multi-species fossil find—something that until now was only seen in northern Kenya’s Turkana Basin, where four hominin lineages once coexisted.

“They’ve done a great job demonstrating that while there is this amazing diversity in East Africa (Turkana), there is an amazing but different combination of species diversity in South Africa, with different lineages of hominins hanging around at the same time. Now the number of such sites is doubled. That’s quite important in my view.”

Humans of the Kalahari Desert Region Formed Social Networks

Ostrich eggshell beads were exchanged between ancient hunter-gatherers living in distant, ecologically diverse regions of southern Africa, including deserts and high mountains. (Image courtesy of Brian A. Stewart, Yuchao Zhao, and the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology/John Klausmeyer) via Smithssonian.com

By Megan Gannon. First published at Smithsonianmag.com.

Foragers today who live in southern Africa's Kalahari Desert know that a drought or war can threaten their community's survival. To mitigate these risks, they enter into partnerships with kin in other territories, both near and far, so that if they have a bad year, they can head to another area to gather water and food.

"It's a really good adaptation to a desert environment like the Kalahari, which has huge spatial and temporal variability in resource distribution," says Brian Stewart, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan. "It can be very rainy in one season and in the next absolutely dry, or it can be very rainy in your area and then 10 kilometers away, it's just nothing." According to new archaeological research led by Stewart, this kind of partnership—which acts as a kind of insurance against one side of the partnership having a down year—has been happening for at least 30,000 years old.

In the study, which was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stewart and his colleagues examined ostrich eggshell beads found during archaeological excavations at two high elevation rock-shelters in Lesotho, a country enclaved within South Africa. Since the 1970s and 1980s, archaeologists have been finding finished beads made from ostrich eggshells at prehistoric campsites in the area, Stewart says, even though ostriches are notably absent from the region. Based on this fact, and on anthropologists' comparisons with the systems used by modern hunter-gatherers, scientists assumed the ostrich beads to be part of the foragers’ long-distance insurance partnerships. That is, people from many miles away brought the beads and traded them to cement the social ties needed to ensure cooperation when one group of people endured tough times.

"Because of how effective this system is at shoring up risk, it's been used by a lot of archaeologists as a blanket explanation for why people exchange stuff," Stewart says. But, he adds, this idea hadn't really been tested for the archaeological record.

To figure out where the beads from Lesotho were created, Stewart and his colleagues examined their strontium isotope levels. Earth’s crust is abundant with a slightly radioactive isotope of rubidium that, over time, decays into strontium. As a result, different rock formations have different strontium signatures, and local animals can acquire those unique signatures via food and water. In this way, researchers can figure out where a 30,000-year-old ostrich came from.

"Now with globalization and our food moving all over the place—we can eat avocados in December in Boston, for instance—our strontium signatures are all messed up," Stewart says. "In the past, they would have been more pure to where we're actually from."

The study showed that the majority of the beads from the Lesotho rock shelters were carved from the eggshells of ostriches that lived at least 60 miles (100 km) away. A few even came from about 190 miles (300 km) away, including the oldest bead, which was about 33,000 years old. "The really surprising thing was just how far they were coming in from, and how long that long distance behavior was going on," Stewart says.

Archaeologists have documented, in the Kalahari and elsewhere, the deep history of long-distance movements of utilitarian items such as stone tools and ochre pigment, which can be used as a sunscreen or a way to preserve hides. In East Africa, researchers have recorded instances of obsidian tools being carried more than 100 miles (160 km) as early as 200,000 years ago.

"When you have stone or ochre, you don't really know that this exchange is representing social ties," says Polly Wiessner, the anthropologist who first documented the exchange partnerships among the Ju/’hoãnsi people in the Kalahari Desert in the 1970s. "However, these beads are symbolic. This is one of our only sources for such early times to understand social relations."

Wiessner suspects that the closer-range ties—the ones around 60 miles—that Stewart and his colleagues found indeed represent people who pooled risk and shared resources. However, she says, it’s possible that the few examples of beads that came from further away could have been acquired through trade networks.

"Often at the edge of risk-sharing systems, feeder routes extend to bring in goods from other areas by trade or barter and so the recipient does not know people at the source," says Wiessner, who wasn't involved in Stewart’s study but reviewed it for the journal. "It doesn't mean people had face-to-face contact from that far away."

Wiessner points out that people living 30,000 years ago were anatomically modern humans, so she would expect them to have large social networks. Similarly, Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist with the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, says, "I think that gift exchange is likely to have a much earlier origin." Wadley, who has studied the social organization of Stone Age hunter-gatherers but wasn't involved in the new study, also found the results convincing.

The new study suggests that the exchange network would have spanned at least eight bioregions, from arid scrubland to subtropical coastal forests. Stewart and his colleagues speculate that the system may have arisen during a period of climate instability, when access to a diversity of resources would have been crucial.

"This is just another piece in the puzzle of the incredible flexibility of our species," Stewart says. "We are able to innovate technologies that just make us so good at adapting very quickly to different environmental scenarios."

Who Were the Mysterious Neolithic People That Enabled the Rise of Ancient Egypt?

Neolithic skull. Author provided.

By Joel D. Irish, Professor and Subject Leader, Anthropology and Archaeology, Liverpool John Moores University; Czekaj- Zastawny Agnieszka, Associate Professor, Polish Academy of Sciences; and Jacek Kabacinski, Research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Polish Academy of Sciences. First published on The Conversation.

To many, ancient Egypt is synonymous with the pharaohs and pyramids of the Dynastic period starting about 3,100BC. Yet long before that, about 9,300-4,000BC, enigmatic Neolithic peoples flourished. Indeed, it was the lifestyles and cultural innovations of these peoples that provided the very foundation for the advanced civilisations to come.

But who were they? As it turns out, they haven’t actually been studied much, at least relative to their successors. But our excavations of six burial sites – with some of the analyses recently published – have now provided important insights into their mysterious ways of life.

One reason why we know so little about Neolithic Egypt is that the sites are often inaccessible, lying beneath the Nile’s former flood plain or in outlying deserts.

Excavation site. Author provided

With permission from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) we – members of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition – explore Neolithic sites in Egypt’s western desert. The sites we are currently excavating lie along the former shores of an extinct seasonal lake near a place called Gebel Ramlah.

Though not lush, the Neolithic was wetter than today, which allowed these ancient herders to populate what is now the middle of nowhere. We focus on the Final Neolithic (4,600-4,000BC), which was built on the success of the Late Neolithic (5,500-4,650BC) with domesticated cattle and goats, wild plant processing and cattle burials. These people also made apparent megaliths, shrines and even calendar circles – which look a bit like a mini Stonehenge.

During the final part of the Neolithic period, people started burying the dead  in formal cemeteries. Skeletons provide critical information because they are from once living people who interacted with the cultural and physical environments. Health, relationships, diet and even psychological experiences can leave telltale signs on teeth and bone.

In 2001-2003 we excavated three cemeteries from this era – the first in the western desert – where we uncovered and studied 68 skeletons. The graves were full of artefacts, with ornamental pottery, sea shells, stone and ostrich eggshell jewellery. We also discovered carved mica (a silicate mineral) and animal remains, as well as elaborate cosmetic tools for women and stone weapons for men.

We learned that these people enjoyed low childhood mortality, tall stature and long life. Men averaged 170cm, while women were about 160cm. Most men and women lived beyond 40 years, with some into their 50s – a long time in those days.

Grave artefacts from 2001-2003 excavations. Author provided.

Strangely, in 2009-2016, we dug two more cemeteries that were very different. After analysing another 130 skeletons, we discovered that few artefacts accompanied them, and that they suffered from higher childhood mortality as well as shorter lives and stature. We’re talking several centimetres shorter and perhaps ten years younger for adults of both sexes.

Astonishingly, the largest of these two cemeteries had a separate burial area for children under three years of age, but mostly infants including late-term foetuses. Three women buried with infants were also found, so perhaps they died in childbirth. In fact, this is the world’s earliest known infant cemetery.

Interpreting the findings

So what can this tell us about these peoples, let alone their descendants? As it turns out, a lot. We can use the findings to make interpretationsabout gender, life-stage, well-being, status and other things.

For example, why were there such differences between the two grave sites? They could have been separate populations, but it is unlikely based on overall physical similarities. So perhaps they imply variation by status – with one graveyard being for the elite and the other for workers. This is the earliest such evidence in Egypt.

The sites also shed light on the family structures of the time. The overall sex ratio across all cemeteries is three women to each man, which may indicate polygamy. However, the total number of burials and a lack of reference to individual houses suggests these were extended family cemeteries.

We also believe that attainment of “personhood” – the age children are socialised into being “people” – was from three years, given their inclusion in adult cemeteries.

There is also clear evidence of respect for previously buried people by later mourners reusing the graves to bury their dead. When coming across old skeletons, they often carefully repositioned the bones of these ancestors. In some interesting cases, they even made attempts to “reconstruct” the skeletons by replacing teeth that had fallen out back into the skeleton – and not always correctly (see lead image).

These behavioural indicators, together with the seemingly innovative technological and ceremonial architecture mentioned earlier, such as the calendar circles and shrines, imply a level of sophistication well beyond that of simple herders. Taken together, the findings provide a glimpse of things yet to come in Ancient Egypt.

Conservation of sites

Well preserved vs. wind‐eroded remains at Gebel Ramlah. Author provided.

A key component of our work involves conservation of Egyptian (and world) heritage. We found no evidence of grave looting, unlike for sites in the Nile Valley. The last people to touch Neolithic material at Gebel Ramlah lived during that time. However, wind-related erosion has reached a point where once-buried remains lie on or near the surface.

In fact, the pace of destruction has increased significantly since 2001. Once exposed, the context of these sites can be lost and organic material can get sandblasted to bits. This means that if we hadn’t discovered these remains when we did, they would have soon been lost forever. But sadly this likely means that other sites from the time are literally disappearing.

For that reason, we and the SCA have decided that, when we have studied our material, all will be reburied on site to, hopefully, survive for thousands more years.

Related: Remains of 9,000-year-old Neolithic Settlement Unearthed Outside Jerusalem CNN

Africa's Past Revealed in Journeys of Ostrich Eggshell Beads

First published at The Conversation by Elizabeth Sawchuk Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York) and Jennifer Midori Miller, Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

You can tell a lot about a person by the things they wear, and this has likely been true throughout human history. The earliest kind of decoration was probably ochre, which we know humans have used for at least 200,000 years.

By 75,000 years ago, people begin wearing beads. Since that time, ornaments and other symbols have been central to the way we express our identities and signal our relationships. In fact, this is probably one of the things that makes us human.

Ornament production really took off about 50,000 years ago, when we see the earliest standardised jewellery in the form of small disc beads made from ostrich eggshells. In Africa, ostrich eggshell beads are one of the most common type of archaeological artifacts, particularly from sites dated to the last 10,000 years. They are also found in smaller numbers throughout Asia where 12,000-year-old ostrich eggshell beads have been discovered in China.

Since ostrich eggshell bead jewellery is still produced today, this is one of the longest running cultural traditions in the world.

Photo by Tom Podmore on Unsplash. Modern-Day ostrich strolling along cape point, cape peninsula, cape town, south africa.

But what can these beads tell us about the ancient peoples who made and wore them?

In a recently published paper, we analysed 1,200 ostrich eggshell beads from 22 sites in southern Africa and eight sites in eastern Africa. Although beads are found at many African archaeological sites, they tend to be overlooked in research. Many of the bead measurements for this study were taken from decades-old, unstudied collections and are being reported for the first time. We believe that this research demonstrates the importance of studying existing museum collections and approaching old questions in new ways.

Our aim was to see how ostrich eggshell bead size has changed over the past 10,000 years. Bead size has become an informal way to estimate the age of archaeological sites in southern Africa. Yet beads overall have received relatively little attention compared to other types of artefacts and there is much we still don’t know. Our study increases the number of published bead measurements from less than 100 to over 1000, allowing us to study patterns on a larger scale and gain new perspectives on the African past.

Our findings provide important insights into how ancient peoples responded to change. Topics like migration and the economy dominate today’s new cycle. Yet ancient peoples also faced issues like climate change, cultural contact, and economic shifts. The things that people made and used, like ostrich eggshell beads, can help us understand the impacts of these changes on their lives.

Photo by Team Mfina on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/n_MZ5snB8qk

Herders versus hunter-gatherers

Three decades ago, the archaeologist Leon Jacobson noticed a pattern in ostrich eggshell beads from Namibia. Those associated with hunter-gatherer sites tended to be smaller than those associated with herder sites. Since we know that herding entered southern Africa around 2000 years ago, Jacobson suggested that sites with beads larger than about 7.5mm might be younger than that.

Other studies confirmed the same pattern within the western part of southern Africa. Some researchers also argued that bead size might help distinguish which sites were used by herders versus hunter-gatherers. But this remains contested.

Until now, the idea that ostrich eggshell beads changed with the introduction of herding had only been tested in the southern part of Africa, and with a limited number of sites. We therefore decided to test this with a much larger dataset, and in other places like eastern Africa where herding also spread some 3000 years earlier.

Regional variations

At the southern African sites, we also found that larger beads appeared after 2,000 years ago. However, contrary to previous studies, our data show that these larger beads did not replace long-standing bead traditions. In fact, the vast majority of ostrich eggshell beads continued to be quite small. On the other hand, beads from the eastern African sites were highly variable in size and showed no change when herding entered that region around 5,000 years ago.

Ostrich eggshell beads in eastern and southern Africa seem to tell a different story about herding’s spread. Cattle, sheep and goats are not native to either of these regions and must have been introduced by contact with peoples living farther north.

In both places, groups also made ostrich eggshell beads before and after herding spread.

In eastern Africa, the lack of change in bead size could suggest that local hunter-gatherers adopted livestock, or that incoming herders possessed similar traditions and/or quickly adopted local styles.

In southern Africa, the appearance of larger beads around 2000 years ago suggests the introduction of livestock stimulated a change in bead traditions, or that new styles were introduced at the same time as sheep.

Yet in both places, local bead traditions remained dominant. Curiously, the larger beads in southern Africa fall within the range of eastern African beads, hinting at contact between these regions as suggested by other archaeological evidence and ancient DNA.

Our research findings suggest that the spread of herding into new areas did not lead to the replacement of local peoples and practices. Rather, people responded in more nuanced ways and maintained certain cultural traditions.

This research not only helps us understand the African past, but is important for considering how we as humans use culture to cope with the changes in our world.

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Tomas De La Fuente Captures Vera van Erp With Masai In Tanzania For Telva Magazine August 2018

Model Vera van Erp is styled by Gabriela Bilbao in a tribute to fall plaids and noble origins heritage. Photographer Tomas De La Fuente captures Vera in Tanzania, where she is joined by the Masai people, for the shoot in Telva Magazine's August issue. The trip to Tanzania was arranged by Ratpanat Luxury & Adventure travel. 

Marina Nery In 'Tomorrow's Tribe', Lensed By Sebastian Kim for Vogue Australia April 2014

Ancient tribal influences meet up with contemporary fashion trends — and perhaps an evolving zeitgist around the powerful feminine — in Sebastian Kim’s editorial ‘Tomorrow’s Tribe’ for Vogue Australia’s April issue. Newcomer model Marina Nery is styled by Katie Mossman in Alexander McQueen, Chanel, Celine, Gucci, Calvin Klein and more for another Sebastian Kim exploration of the feminine goddess.

Goddess Hathor's Fifth Dynasty Priestess Hetpet's Tomb Unveiled A Century After Discovery In Egypt

A painting of seemingly larger-than-life Hetpet sitting on a table as her children provide her offerings. Photo via Egypt Today

Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered a 4,400-year-old tomb close to Cairo, one that contains rare wall paintings and is thought to be the tomb of a priestess named Hetpet. Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the discovery located near the Giza pyramids. 

“The tomb is in very good condition,” Dr. Waziri said. “There are colored depictions of traditional scenes: animals grazing, fishing, bird-catching, offerings, sacrifice, soldiers and fruit-gathering.”

Hetpet is believed to have been close to Egyptian royals of the Fifth Dynasty, part of a prosperous period in Egyptian history known as the Old Kingdom during which the pyramids, temples and palaces were built under the rule of pharaohs. Hetpet served as a priestess for Hathor, a goddess depicted as a cow and associated with fertility, motherhood and love. By this time in women's history, female priests were not that common in ancient Egypt, but Hathor's priesthood was an exception. 

Hetpet's name was first seen on antiquities uncovered at the site in 1909 by a British explorer who sent them to Berlin and Frankfurt.  The tomb itself was not unearthed until more than a century later in 2017

AFP reports that among the wall paintings are unusual scenes of monkeys, which were kept as pets at the time. "One shows a monkey picking fruit and carrying a basket, and another shows a monkey dancing in front of an orchestra. Only one other painting of a dancing monkey has been found previously, reports the Egyptian newspaper al Ahram, with a monkey dancing in front of a guitarist in the 12th-century tomb of Kal-ber in Saqqara. 

Wall paintings from the newly-discovered Hetpet's tomb near Cairo, located in the Giza western cemetery. Photos via Egypt Today.

C Bangs Makes Activist Art Of Abortifacients For 'Plant Cure' At NYC's CENTRAL BOOKING Art Space

'fpseedsfetus' by C Bangs, Brooklyn, New York 

Brooklyn artist, activist, feminist and cosmology lover C Bangs delivered 'fpseedsfetus' in my FB feed, sharing news of her group show 'Plant Cure' at CENTRAL BOOKING Art Space, 21 Ludlow Street ~ New York, NY 10002 ~ 347-731-6559 ~ B/D to Grand Street in collaboration with The New York Academy of Medicine.

You can visit 'Plant Cure' until Oct. 29, 2017 and please note the Art & Science Panel, 'The Roots of Plant Cures': Friday, October 13, 6pm. Moderator: Anne Garner, Curator, The New York Academy of Medicine. The catalogue is of great interest as an artists review. 

My senses were drenched with sensual beauty upon seeing C's 'fpseedsfetus', before reading the story behind the art. C is married to one of my oldest friends in New York, prompting me to share her work here on AOC.  C tells the story behind the 'Plant Cure Show'.

C Bangs, 'Plant Cure' at CENTRAL BOOKING Art Space

"My artist’s residency at The New York Academy of Medicine in collaboration with CENTRAL BOOKING Art Space began February 21, 2017 with five other artists who exhibit their work at CB Art Space. “The directive from CB Art Space were to “Just to be clear, though your references will come from the books in the collections, your artwork need not be in book form. And feel free to produce more than one work as well, even installations are welcome as we will have more space than usual for this exhibition.”

After the orientation I went to the Library on February 28 and began my research initially photographing images from a botanical book. Returning to my studio and uploading the images from my phone I found that the image of the Flowering Pavonis aka Caesalpinia pulcherrima was a striking flower that I began to research. After the painful election of the current administration and the threats to cut the budget to Planned Parenthood as well as the attacks on the environment I became more interested in focusing my work around this plant. 

The following are quotes from The History of Abortifacients by Stassa Edwards 11/18/14:

The story of the peacock flower is a microcosm of a larger history of abortifacients: knowledge passed from woman to woman, often outside the boundaries of traditional medical discourses and, therefore, forever confined to a moral realm of danger and superstition. But despite hundreds of years of legal and religious repression, the abortifacient endured, proving that the desire for reproductive freedom is not nearly as modern as some argue.

The history of abortifacients is a narrative that parallels and informs our own contemporary debates over them, particularly in the wake of the Hobby Lobby decision. It's a history that has always been mired in the murky waters of what exactly an abortifacient is; what constitutes life, and when does it begin? But it's also a story of the incredible flexibility of legal systems that found ever-new and astonishing ways to suppress reproductive freedom.

Abortifacients are nearly as old as the written word itself, as early as 1085, when Constantine the African included iris, rue, willow and stinking ferula as effective herbs for inducing menses. Even before that, Muhuammed ibn Zakariya Al-Razi described a cinnamon, rue, and wallflower broth for similar purposes in a text dating between 865-925.

Abortifacients were mixed and were, it seems, readily available through midwives or "wise women" throughout the Roman era. There were few laws governing their use, in large part because of the broader sense at the time of when a pregnancy actually began. The determination of pregnancy was left to the woman, who would not have been considered pregnant until she actually declared herself so. Such determination almost always came after the quickening (when a woman actually feels fetal movement), which can occur anywhere between 14 and 20 weeks into a pregnancy.

My investigation included the work of Maria Sibylla Merian, a botanical illustrator who, in her 1705 book Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam wrote that slave women used the seeds of the plant to abort pregnancies after being raped by their owners.

The month before I accompanied my husband, Dr. Gregory Matloff to a solar sail conference in Kyoto, Japan where on a sight seeing trip I encountered a candy shop where artists’ sculpted candy in wildly varied images and colors. Watching the entire process of sculpting the brightly colored sugar into the form of an orange haired man with a characteristic trumpian hair style. At the end I and the other women who viewed the process were given pieces of the candy with the image that ranged in size from 1.5” to .04” in diameter. This was a bitter-sweet moment because in them referencing our presence and before the inauguration I was the recipient of several intricately formed pieces of our soon to be president. As I painted my panels I decided to include all of the candy onto the first panel in the form of a protest for what it stood for and in response to the right women have to determine the course of their lives. Appropriately the untreated candy has begun to flake and deteriorate reflecting the current administration."

'PavonisA' by C Bangs Brooklyn, New York

''Pavonis B' by C Bangs, Brooklyn, New York

'PavonisC' by C Bangs Brooklyn, New York

'Pavoniscosmos1' by C Bangs, Brooklyn, New York

'Flowering Pavonis female edge' by C Bangs Brooklyn, New York

C Bangs: Merging Art & Science

Bangs enjoys a long love of cosmology, expressed exquisitely in her gift for merging art & science. C is also an interpreter, taking complex scientific topics and bringing them to life through visualization. I've included several examples of this work, devoted to her love of cosmology. Review all of C's art and her portfolio on her website C Bangs

STAR BRIGHT? Chapter 1 Frontispiece (2015) by C Bangs Brooklyn, New York

'STAR BRIGHT?' (LuluAS cover copy) Cover' (2015) by C Bangs Brooklyn, New York

'STAR BRIGHT?' Chapter 13 Frontispiece (2015) C Bangs Brooklyn, New York

'Gaia/Vger oil & acrylic with mica & iron oxide 48"x60" 2001

Dr. Gregory Matloff

C mentioned her husband Dr. Gregory Matloff, (see website) one of my oldest friends in New York. Greg's intellect and passion for astronomy was always breathtaking and never more so than today. You can read two of his recent articles as a sampling of the ideas and futuristic visions that bind C and Greg together in a wonderful relationship that fires on all cylinders -- on Earth and beyond.  C and Greg share a mutual website for STAR BRIGHT?. 

Call me inspired. ~ Anne

Is the Universe Conscious? NBC News

The Man Who Could Make Interstellar Travel to Alpha Centauri Possible Inverse

Lascaux 4, Full-Size Replica Of Ancient Cave Paintings, Opens In Dordogne, France

Often labeled the 'Sistine Chapel of prehistory', France's Lascaux cave paintings may be up to 20,000 years old. Included as a UNESCO world heritage site since 1979, the public has been banned from visiting the Lascaux caves since 1963. The caves were accidentally discovered by a group of boys in 1940, and for a period of time, visitors did tour the site. Archaeologists and art historians then discovered that the amount of carbon dioxide being exhaled by humans caused major damage to the integrity of the paintings, necessitating that they be closed from the general public forever. 

In a wonderful gift to the worldwide public, Lascaux 4, a full-size replica of the ancient cave paintings has opened in the Dordogne region of France. The whole Lascaux cave will be the essential part of Montignac-Lascaux Parietal Art international Centre, devoted to using the latest image technology and virtual mediation to recreate the experience of actually walking through the Lascaux caves. 

Nicolas St-Cyr, artistic decorator of Lascaux-4, officially known as the International Centre for Cave Paintings, is one of the few to have visited the real Lascaux. “It’s very special. You have the feeling you are in the presence of man 22,000 years ago when you see the paintings. These were talented artists, working by the light of animal oil lamps, and it’s like they were done yesterday. I was trembling when I came out.”

I made a fascinating discovery just now. Among the mysteries of the Lascaux caves is the reality that the paintings are almost all of animals. In Lascaux, there is only one man painted on the walls, amidst all the animals. In one of the most beautiful regions on earth, there are no paintings of flowers, trees or countryside. During this period (17,000-20,000 years ago) the predominant food was reindeer, and there are deer -- but no reindeer -- on the walls of Lascaux. 

Because AOC is fascinated with the history of mammoths and also long-buried mammoth ivory in Siberia, I had to ask Google: are there any woolly mammoths painted on the walls of Lascaux? The answer is 'no', but my question is a good one. The nearby Rouffignac cave, with drawings from a similar time period, is best known for the large number of woolly mammoths on the walls. 

Female Skull In Israel's Manot Cave Links Humans & Neanderthals 55,000 Years Ago

Israeli researchers published a critical article this week, arguing that a 55,000 years-old, female skull found in the Manot Cave of Israel’s Western Galilee is a critical links in understanding the evolution of the human species.  Scientists believe that the skull offers definitive proof that anatomically modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals in the same geographical area.

It’s widely accepted science that human origins date back about 200,000 years to Africa. However, there has not been agreement about which migration model of early Homo sapiens led to the population of our planet, accompanyied by the extinction of Neanderthals.

“The morphology of the skull indicates that it is that of a modern human of African origin, bearing characteristics of early European Upper Palaeolithic populations. This suggests that the Levantine populations were ancestral to earlier European populations,” said Prof. (Israel) Hershkovitz (of Tel Aviv University).  “This study also provides important clues regarding the likely inbreeding between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals.”

The Manot Cave, where the skull was unearthed, was discovered accidentally in 2008 when a bulldozer struck the cave roof, revealing a time capsule tens of thousands of years old. “This is a goldmine,” said Prof. Hershkovitz. “Most other caves are ‘disturbed caves,’ but this is untouched, frozen in time — truly an amazing find. Among other artefacts found there, the skull, which we dated to 55,000 years ago using uranium thorium methods, was astonishing. It provides insight into the beginnings of the dispersal of modern humans all over the world.”

According to Prof. Hershkovitz, the skull disproves two major narratives: that all modern human populations are linked to migrations out of Africa 100,000 years ago, and that early European Upper Paleolithic populations interbred with local European Neanderthals. Instead the skull indicates that modern humans met and interbred with Neanderthals in Israel, only to later pass on their genes to the rest of the world. Considering Europe was in the last Ice Age period, its harsh climate rendered it generally inhospitable, so humans from the Levant moved first to Asia, and only later (45,000 ago) to Europe.

Discover Magazine writes that Neanderthal remains dating back 50,000-65,000 years have been found near Manot Cave. The new skull called Manot 1 is the first recorded evidence that modern humans were living in the same place at the same time.

In a series of coincidences that are peppered throughout my life, scientists have threaded another needle in the highly-probable story that human life originated in the region of Lake Turkana bordering Kenya and Ethiopia before migrating into a region known today as The Levant.

In a very real sense, today’s religious wars are going on in the very region that is the cradle of human civilization. My own relationship with The Levant area is most focused on studying the evolution of the goddesses and the rise of monotheism.

Kenya, Lake Turkana and the Omo Valley people of Ethiopia are a much stronger connection — one revealed through my inexplicable connections with the young photographer Dan Eldon.

Olga Maliouk In 'Neo Folk' By Signe Vilstrup For Glamour Italia October 2014

Model Olga Maliouk channels the sensual side of warrior goddesses in this visually rich fashion statement styled by Simone Guidarelli. Signe Vilstrup makes the splendid capture ‘Neo Folk’ honoring tribal influences around the globe for Glamour Italia’s October issue./Hair and makeup Loris Rocchi

Christian Louboutin Does 'Lilith' By Peter Lippmann For Fall 2013

Christian Loubotin goes biblical in his Fall 2013 lookbook, lensed by Peter Lippmann. These baroque, Rubens-inspired scenes are strictly Old Testament. Fiesty creatures like Lilith, Adam’s first wife, were completely written out of the New Testament as just one more example of women’s demise. I think it’s fair to say that Lilith definitely would have worn Christian Loubotin as she stormed out of the Garden of Eden, after refusing to submit to Adam. Or so the Old Testament story goes.

Christian Louboutin and Peter Lippman deliver a fashion cornucopia and two new models of shoes: Artifice Strass and Grusanda and clutches covered with spines. This looks like some serious fashion amo for American women to wear in the trenches, as we fight for our rights and against the lights of our own progress being snuffed out in the Republican War on Women.

It’s the research from Baylor University that lies at the heart of the very important book America’s Four Gods. While I lament the findings in the research, I highly recommend reading this book.

About 25% of all Americans who believe in the concept of God, reject the notion that we humans can even understand intellectually the concept of God as taughts across America. What’s disturbing about the research is the reality that only 2% of American women but 50% of American men believe that God has no gender. Specifically God is not male.

Until substantial numbers of American women agree with about half of American men and yours truly (part of the pathetic 2% of American women) that God is not male but genderless, we ladies are easily manipulated by the Good Book.

The conclusions in ‘America’s Four Gods’ come from in-person meetings with about 5,000 Americans surveyed. But it’s backed up by digital examinations of the views of about 250,000 survey-takers online. Several of my Facebook friends and I took the test. ~ Anne

Rianne Ten Haken by Petrovsky & Ramone for Vogue Netherlands May 2012

Dutch Vogue delivers a smashing editorial featuring Rianne ten Haken, lensed brilliantly by Petrovsky & Ramone. Wearing a wardrobe of tribal prints and decorative headpieces, Rianne is transformed into a believable warrior goddess dressed in Haider Ackermann, Pierre Balmain, Just Cavalli, MIchael Kors and more, styled by Marje Goekoop. All creatives are working in concert on ‘Once Were Warriors’, including makeup by Adrien Pinault and hair by Ilham Mestour. Bravo!