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posted by cmn32480 on Friday September 04 2015, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-still-no-bigfoot dept.

An international team of researchers has sequenced the first complete genome of an Iberian farmer, which is also the first ancient genome from the entire Mediterranean area. This new genome allows to know the distinctive genetic changes of Neolithic migration in Southern Europe which led to the abandonment of the hunter-gatherer way of life. The study is led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), in collaboration with the Centre for GeoGenetics in Denmark. The results are published in the Molecular Biology and Evolution journal.

The first farmers entering Europe about 8,000 years ago coming from the Near East spread through the continent following two different routes: one to Central Europe via the Danube, and the other towards the Iberian peninsula following the Mediterranean coast. These latter farmers developed their own cultural tradition: the Cardium Pottery, so-called due to a characteristic incised decoration made with the edges of bivalves shells belonging to the genus Cerastoderma (formerly Cardium).

DNA records are filling in a lot of gaps in the human saga, such as the recent discovery of Denisovans, the "Other Neanderthals."


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jbWolf on Saturday September 05 2015, @05:26AM

    by jbWolf (2774) <jbNO@SPAMjb-wolf.com> on Saturday September 05 2015, @05:26AM (#232526) Homepage

    Read Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible. You'll find that the Bible isn't exactly all fiction and myth - Asimov does an excellent job of deciphering a lot of the Bible. He also doesn't pretend to know it all.

    One important piece of information you left out so people on this site will be more interested to read this book (in case they didn't already know): Asimov was a devout atheist.

    Changing topics a bit: I never read this particular book, but I did read "Understanding Physics" written by him decades ago when I was a teen. It took an obscure topic that experts could not explain and laymen could not easily understand and brought them together. Although (obviously) outdated, it is a great book that influenced me greatly. I realized that dummies like me could understand hard topics like relativity and quantum theories. It just needs to be presented in the right way. I assume the his book on the bible was written similarly.

    --
    www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:45AM (#232535)

    Thanks for that!

    One important piece of information you left out so people on this site will be more interested to read this book (in case they didn't already know): Asimov was a devout atheist.

    That actually makes me want to read this even more.

    I often find the observations of atheists far more insightful than listening to yet another re-hash of what someone has been told to say.

    Makes the "witness" look more like a shill than a honest reporter trying to get to the truth of things.

    For all practical purposes, it gives religion the appearance of separating the gullible out from among us, so they can be taken advantage of. Find superstitious people, feed them a line of promises, and reap the tithes. Makes way for poor people and rich leadership types who know how to manipulate the believer.

    I have had too much of being told to "false witness" things I have not seen for myself. For all practical purposes it has caused me to ditch religion as a "false prophet". It is strongly against my ethics to make claims I cannot verify and demonstrate.

    This does not mean it killed my spiritually, but the spiritual side of me is fuming with "righteous indignation" of what I see being done in the name of God.

    • (Score: 2) by jbWolf on Saturday September 05 2015, @02:56PM

      by jbWolf (2774) <jbNO@SPAMjb-wolf.com> on Saturday September 05 2015, @02:56PM (#232628) Homepage

      I have always found it helps to keep a wide distance between the definition of "belief in God" and "religion". To me, they are very different things.

      --
      www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
      • (Score: 1) by ethanol on Saturday September 05 2015, @11:29PM

        by ethanol (971) on Saturday September 05 2015, @11:29PM (#232793)

        To me religion is a construct to organise and often profit on the sense of something more than we see. A belief in a specific god or gods is generally a result of early exposure to religion. This makes it difficult to separate the concepts. Religions that grow seem to be the ones that best get their be followers to either make more followers or recruit them.

        Would be interesting to see what kind of belief shows up in isolation from religion. Perhaps something like animism?

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 05 2015, @01:39PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 05 2015, @01:39PM (#232606) Journal

    I can't help chuckling over your post. Asimov was Asimov. He was such a prolific writer, it's hard for me to believe that even an uneducated person has never heard of him. Here? Soylent News? I am almost of the opinion that anyone who doesn't know Asimov probably doesn't belong here.

    But, yeah - again - Asimov was Asimov. The book doesn't cater to anyone, or to any belief. He went through the book, and compared what was written with contemporary writings, made some very interesting deductions, and finished with a typical Asimov narrative. And, never once does he ask the reader to believe anything at all.

    I miss the man. I surely do miss waiting for a new Asimov book to be published.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jbWolf on Saturday September 05 2015, @02:52PM

      by jbWolf (2774) <jbNO@SPAMjb-wolf.com> on Saturday September 05 2015, @02:52PM (#232626) Homepage

      And, never once does he ask the reader to believe anything at all.

      As you and I have lamented before -- not enough people do that. It is one of our greatest problems today.

      it's hard for me to believe that even an uneducated person has never heard of him. Here? Soylent News?

      I've found that 10 years after-the-fact is when a group of people begin to forget something huge. 20 years is when a significant section of the group will forget. And if "forget" is not the right word, then it's a loss-of-impact. Look at 9/11. It's been 14 years. That means 9/11 probably has very little impact on a current 20 year old. Pearl Harbor will never mean to me what it meant to my grandfather. But 9/11 means a hell of lot. 9/11 won't matter to my goddaughter, though. She was a new born when it happened. Asimov? Died in 1992 -- 23 years ago. The average 30 year old will probably not have read any of his works.

      Damn. Now, I'm feeling old. Maybe you and I should grab our canes, go out on the back porch, and talk about what all those young whippersnappers don't know but should. :P

      --
      www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]