Europeans, DNA and 7,000 Years

 So, in a snub to all racists, the DNA of a hunter gatherer who lived in what is now Spain 7,000 years ago has been analysed and has revealed that Europeans gained our white skin a lot later that first believed.

The genetic material was recovered from a tooth of La Brana 1, an ancient man whose skeleton was found in a deep cave system in Spain in 2006, revealed the extremely odd combination of dark skin and blue eyes, according to the study in the journal Nature.  Europeans from the Mesolithic Period between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, when La Brana lived, were thought to have already been fair-skinned due to low ultraviolet radiation levels at these high latitudes.

"Until now, it was assumed that light skin colour evolved quite early in Europe, (during) the Upper Palaeolithic... But this is clearly not the case," study co-author Carles Lalueza-Fox from Spain's Evolutionary Biology Institute said.  "This individual had the African variants for the pigmentation genes."

For those of us who are not history geeks, the Upper Palaeolithic or Late Stone Age stretched from 50,000-10,000 years ago, followed by the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age that lasted until about 5,000 years ago, when it was followed in Europe by the Neolithic or New Stone Age.

It is widely accepted that Man's oldest common forefather was dark skinned, and that people became more pale as they moved further north out of Africa into colder climates with less sunlight and subsequent migrations and mixing created the wide range of hues we have today.

La Brana's genome is the first of a European hunter-gatherer to be fully sequenced and when compared to today's humans, it was found to be most closely genetically related to northern Europeans like the Swedes or Fins.  Lalueza-Fox and his team also found the genetic signature for blue eyes and dark hair and while the exact hue of skin cannot be determined, the scientists say its combination with blue eyes was not to be found in modern Europeans today.  I have to admit that if I saw someone with that combination of features walking down the street they would certainly draw my attention.

So light-skinned Europeans emerged "much later" than once believed - possibly only in the Neolithic era when erstwhile hunter-gatherers became farmers and the cause may have been a change in diet and lower vitamin D intake associated with this lifestyle change.   In the absence of natural vitamin D, the human skin can produce its own in contact with the Sun - but dark skins synthesise much less than fair ones - creating an evolutionary incentive for change.  So my guess would be that blue eyes were needed earlier to cope with the low light levels but we didn't need the white skin until later.

The probe also found that La Brana 1 had not yet acquired the genetic mutation that allowed later humans to digest milk and starch more easily - an adaptation that probably coincided with the birth of agriculture in the Neolithic age.

This change in skin tone and digestive trait, if it was caused by the arrival of agriculture in our society, would certainly be compatible with the program 'Mankind the History of Us All'.  According to this program, which I watched last year our original ancestor, the first Man that they have been able to genetically trace, lived in the African Rift Valley and was dark skinned.  So 'Adam' wasn't white like they depict him in all the illustrated Bibles, he was black.  He was also two inches taller than the average modern American.

Say what you like about the 'savages', a hunter-gatherer lifestyle obviously got homo sapiens off to a good start.

However, many thousands of years later, long after mankind had domesticated the wolf, the mother of farming, as she is known, realised that if she planted so of the grain she had gathered then she would know where is was growing and harvesting it would be that much easier.  This was the start of farming and according to 'Mankind the History of Us All', farming has been at the root of most of mankind's problems since.  It tied us down to the land so we couldn't move so we came into conflict over resources, which was the start of war.  All the major plagues, from TB to the Bubonic, where introduction to mankind by living in close contact with farm animals, so disease seriously arrived when we started farming.  Then when the crops failed there were too many of us to go back to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle so people starved, which is famine.  Does it appear that I'm listing the four riders of the Apocalypse?

It has also been found that about a thousand years after we started farming the human race shrunk.  The average farmer man was only five foot two inches and the average farmer woman was only four four eight.  Farming in other words, was not good for us.  So you have to ask why are we so hung up on it?  Oh that's right, with 7 billion people now living on earth there is no way we can feed that many out of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.  I'd say we could be in big trouble if the crops fail big time.

Dolphin Slaughter in the Feroe Islands

Stop Press!

I've just encountered the sick 'right of passage' that is practise in the Feroe Islands that lie between Scotland and Denmark.

The Feroe Island are an autonomous, self-ruling set of islands that ceded from Denmark in 1948 where every year the bays turn red with blood.  However, the only war here is man's war on those that cannot defend themselves.

Every year hundred of the highly intelligent Calderon dolphins are slaughtered by the young teenagers of the islands in a stomach churning 'right of passage' to prove that they are 'adult' and 'mature'.

The playful creatures are lured in because they will interact with humans, such is their intelligence.  However, instead of receiving the friendship they are expecting, they are beaten to death with thick hooks that look like a cross between anchors and butcher hooks until they drown, screaming, in their own blood.

It seems that ordinary whaling with explosive harpoons was not brutal enough for these people, they had to take it to a whole new level with whole pods of dolphins being butchered in this vile festival, where just about every one on the islands turns out, as either participants or spectators.

I'm sorry but even if the meat is being eaten afterwards, I cannot condone this disgusting practise.  It is the duty of a hunter to make sure their prey dies as swiftly as possibly, the respect of what you'd wish for if the positions were reversed and you were the one dying.  Beating a creature to death is not swift, dutiful or honourable.  It is sadistic and doing as a 'right of passage' is just enshrining within a culture that which should be condemned in society.

I'd say that Denmark should take a long look at the quality of the people it's allowed to rule themselves as they are now casting a very bad light on their parent country.

Failing that Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd should start campaigning in this area.

To the youth of Feroe I say this - it takes bravery to stand in the way of a terrified creature that has no defence but to swim as fast as it can; it takes even more to stand in the face of your peers and your elders to say 'no, I refuse to do this thing'.

Monsanto

Monsanto, one of the biggest companies in the GMO field and one that has always insisted that it is doing nothing wrong while opposing any request to be open about the risks of its produce, even under the Information Act.  So when yet another intrepid group of people stand up to Monsanto and demand that the company comes clean it should just be business as usual i.e. one big hush up.

 

But this time, it’s Monsanto’s own shareholders who are asking questions. Their simple request is that Monsanto stops keeping them in the dark on genetically-modified food -- and they need our support.

 

After over 6,000 of donators chipped in, SumOfUs organisers are headed to St Louis for the crucial shareholder vote -- working tirelessly to win the support of the big investment funds. But unless Monsanto and its shareholders feel the massive community opposition to their agenda, they’ll conclude they can ignore the people, yet again and vote against GMO transparency. That’s why people need to act now.

 

The brave group of shareholders who will present this resolution at Monsanto’s annual meeting want the company to be straight with its shareholders. They’re asking Monsanto to report on the costs and business risks of GMOs -- from the contamination of non-GMO crops, to the effect on bees and other “non-target” organisms, and more. These are real risks and costs, and it’s a sensible proposal -- for anyone other than a corporation that thinks that suing family farmers and fighting truth-in-labelling laws is business as usual.

 

Monsanto is trying to defeat this shareholder vote -- using the same tactics it uses to defeat all opposition to its agenda. Its business model is based on keeping everyone all in the dark. It has fought against every effort to label genetically modified ingredients, spending $15 million to defeat laws in California and Washington alone.

 

However, more and more people are standing up and shouting for the truth.  Now that even its own shareholders are joining the fight Monsanto can feel the tide turning against it and that tide is gaining momentum.  Already, numerous US states and countless countries have restrictions on GMOs and rules about their labelling and like every snowball effect, the more that join the more that consider joining.

 

However, instead of recognising the community sentiment and business risk, Monsanto is still fighting. That is why these shareholders are so important.  They are in the position where they can make Monsanto take responsibility for what its doing but Monsanto is doing its best to shut them up.

 

That’s why it’s crucial that we support these shareholders who are taking a stand at Monsanto’s annual meeting, and demand that Monsanto study the risks and costs of GMOs and come clean to their shareholders and the public. Unless they know we’re watching, many of Monsanto’s biggest shareholders will feel free to support Monsanto’s management and vote against the shareholder resolution.

 

It doesn't take much to let them know that we are watching what they are up to, just a name on a petition and with the Internet that only takes a few minutes at most these days but it is immensely important for the future of consumer rights.  Once Monsanto is forced to answer to us all then other big companies will know that they are not safe from public scrutiny.  At that point it will be that much easier to make them clean up their business practises because they will remember that every business is ultimately dependant on it public accepting what they do and buying their produce.

 

Vox populii, Vox del (the voice of the people is the voice of God)!

 

Sign the petition now to demand that Monsanto come clean on the costs of GMOs, and support the brave shareholders behind this proposal.

The Parasol Protectorate

O. K. at a total loss of what to write for a blog post this week I've decided to do a review.  My subject 'Souless' by Gail Carriger, the first of the Alexia Tarabotti novels.

Set in a Victorian London, like and unlike our own, where the main difference is that during the reign of Henry VIII vampires and werewolves integrated with human society, driving Henry VIII and Britain to be cut off from the Catholic Church of Europe.  Since then the supernatural set, as they are collectively know, have driven Britain to become the world power of the British Empire, the werewolves providing the muscle on the battle fields and the vampires advancing science about as fast as they can.

Enter into this interesting scene one Alexia Tarabotti, a preternatural i.e. she was born without a soul.  As such she can negate supernatural powers, although that is usually only an embarrassment, especially when she's involved in the 'killing' of an unknown vampire, as it draws far too much attention from the supernatural set.

Not long after she accidentally 'kills' the unknown vampire Alexia finds herself tangled up with a vampire Hive on one side and Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous and werewolf) on the other.  When the Queen herself becomes interested in the whole affair Alexia finds herself in rather more trouble than a proper English spinster should have to deal with.

Turns out not all of the British scientist scene are keen on allowing the vampires and werewolves as much influence as they have.

I love this book for the brilliantly drawn characters and the brilliant wit in the dialogue and description such as:

"Goodness gracious me," exclaimed Alexia, "what are you wearing?  It looks like the unfortunate progeny of an illicit union between a pair of binoculars and some opera glasses.  What on earth are they called, binocticals, spectoculars?"
The earl snorted his amusement and then tried to pretend he hadn't. "How about glassicals?" he suggested."

Although my out right favourite character has to be Lord Akeldama, a vampire who has an outrageous taste in clothes and the ability to speak in italics, most of the time.

For the Love of Dogs... And Other Animals

Just watched Paul O'Grady's Orphans and thoroughly enjoyed it.

As he puts it himself "I'm no David Attenborough" but his love of all animals and his willingness to muck in and help them stand out as all his own.  The program also shows that, despite all the bad press and stories that come out of Africa, there are still people more than willing to bend over backward to help those that cannot speak in their own defence.

There are some funny stories that make you smile and others that will make you weep.  The sanctuary for the African Penguins is the scene for stories of both sorts.  The funniest being Paul trying to convince a reluctant penguin to come out into the rain.  Que "You're a penguin for pity's sake, you're meant to be waterproof".

The saddest was the penguin that came in blind and ended up having to be put down.  Whether the staff liked it or not they are fighting to save a species and not an individual that can't give anything for the survival of that species.  That's the darker side of conservation, sometimes very hard decisions have to be taken on where and when and upon which animals to spend the limited resources that they have.  Ultimately those decisions mean that some of the animals have to be euthanized, which is not a decision that anyone is happy with but when you get down to it is what Mother Nature does.  For the lion to eat the wildebeest must die.  To my mind what sets man above the animal is that we can practise mercy to the weakest of the community whereas animals drive out the weak and injured or else use them as a meat shield between the healthy and the predator.

However, not all humans are as pleasant as those who protect those that can't protect themselves, as the baby elephant Suni can testify.

After her mother was killed by poaches someone attacked her with an axe, resulting in sickening wounds that nearly severed her spine just above her pelvis.  This has left her with a half paralysed leg which means that she may never be able to return to the wild.

What sort of person does that to an animal that can't fight back?  What sort of person half cripples a baby creature and then leaves it to drag itself along the road on its front legs?  I could almost understand it if they had killed her and butchered her for her meat but to hack her up and then just leave her to die?  That to me makes no sense, unless it is the sense of a twisted mind that enjoys inflicting pain.

I am sorry but the older I get and the more of the depravities of the human world I see the more I think that some humans ought to be put down.

On a more cheerful note, the African Penguin is also known as the Blue Penguin and its greatest threat is the loose of its nesting sites because it nests in burrows in sandy dunes.  However, I saw a program back in the nineties about a seaside community in South Africa who, when they extended the sea front, built it all on stilts so that the penguins can still nest in their traditional sites.  What this didn't take into account is the fact that African Penguins have little to no natural fear of humans and are quite happy to be around us.  So if you ever visit the Blue Penguin Night Club you could find yourself tripping over one of the clubs namesakes as they sometimes climb up the front steps and come on to the dance floor.

Nestle

So Nestle, not content with trying to claim credit for using cow's milk as a laxative despite the fact that Indian medical texts have been recording that knowledge for a thousand years, is now trying to patent the extract of Nigella Sativa, otherwise know as the fennel flower.  This small plant has been used as a cure all remedy for a thousand years, treating everything from vomiting and fevers to skin diseases among the poorest people of the Middle East and Asia.  It has been widely available where Western produced pills and potions have not.

 

But now Nestlé is claiming to own it, and filing patent claims around the world to try and take control over the natural cure of the fennel flower and turn it into a costly private drug.

In a paper published last year, Nestlé scientists claimed to “discover” what much of the poorest of the third world have known for millennia: that nigella sativa extract could be used for “nutritional interventions in humans with food allergy”.

But instead of creating an artificial substitute, or fighting to make sure the remedy was widely available, Nestlé is attempting to create a nigella sativa monopoly and gain the ability to sue anyone using it without Nestlé’s permission. Nestlé has filed patent applications -- which are currently pending -- around the world.

Prior to Nestlé's outlandish patent claim, researchers in developing nations such as Egypt and Pakistan had already published studies on the same curative powers Nestlé is claiming as its own.

 

So not only is Nestle hijacking other peoples research, it is also trying to do the impossible.  The pharmaceutical companies while not do clinical trials on herbal and natural remedies because they cannot be patented and therefore cannot make the companies money.  So how come Nestle, a chocolate and cereal company, can patent a herbal remedy? This does not make sense until you look at Nestlé's bank budget.  It seems if a business has enough money they can do any thing they please.

 

And among companies Nestle has a long track record of not caring about ethics. After all, this is the corporation that poisoned its milk with melamine, purchases cocoa from plantations that use child slave labour, and launched a breast milk substitute campaign in the 1970s that contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of babies from poor communities.

But Nestlé is sensitive to public outcry, and that it's been beaten at the patent game before. The easiest way to put pressure on this company is to go to the website of consumer pressure group SumOfUs and sign their petition.  After that it's time to vote with your feet.  If a packet has the name Nestle on it, don't buy the product.  It is seriously annoying when you realise your favourite cereal, Cheerio, are a Nestle product (I'm speaking from experience here) but the only way we can hurt the Big Guys is if we kick them where it hurts - their wallets.  If the big corporations realise that every time they try to put profit before human rights and health their consumers are going to stop buying from them and their shareholders are going to get bad quarterly statements, then they will have to stop doing these violations.

 

The Big Companies may look big and scary but they rely on consumers to buy their stuff.  If we don't buy their stuff they go into administration and they then have to either change their practises so we go back to buying their stuff or they fold.

 

In the end, the power to make or break these big companies rests with us.  We can make them take responsibility for their actions and change the world for better.

Differences in Equality

I am going to take umbrage with Brendan O'Neill's article in the Big Issue Festive Edition out last week.

He dislikes the fact that it has been reported that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have claimed that they have discovered that men's brains are built for perception and action while women's brains are more adept at reasoning and intuition.  He rounds out his argument saying that this is a "classic example of 'neurosexism'" - the use of neuroscience to propagate gender stereotypes.

Well excuse me but the last time I looked I, being a women, didn't have a penis and boys don't have wombs.  We are different, both physically and hormonally, so why is it wrong to suggest that we maybe different mentally?  Why is it wrong to suggest that we might have brains that are built differently?

As for it propagating gender stereotypes - I was under the impression that women were keep out of careers like politics and writing and the sciences because we were stereotypically less able to reason.  Therefore these researchers are suggesting the very opposite of stereotypes - they have said that "women's grey matter is more adept at reasoning and intuition".  As long as I understand the rules of language properly these researchers are saying women are better at reasoning than men.  So, if we take that science to the end of language, that would suggest that men should step out of jobs that require reasoning - like, say, running the country - and leave it to those who are better at reasoning i.e. women.

The other reason I dislike Brendan's article is because it smacks of hypercritical values in science - it's O.K. to use science to work out how an autistic's brain differs from the neuro-typical but it's not O.K. to use it to work out what the neuro-typical brain is shaped for men and women is normally.  So just how are the researchers meant to understand how the autistic brain differs in the first place?

Oh and enough thing that pocks a hole in Brendan's argument is that other researchers have use brain scanning to discover that the brain of an autistic women i.e. someone like me, is closer to the brain of a neuro-typical man in some areas, where as the brain of an autistic man is different from both the brain of a neuro-typical man and the brain of a neuro-typical women.

Conclusion - autism affects the brains of men and women differently!

They have also concluded that it is possible that there are more autistic women than first diagnosed and it is a certainty that the treatments and behavioural plans that help autistic men are highly unlikely to help an autistic woman.  Therefore more research is needed to discover what help autistic women the best.

This would certainly bare out my own experience because I have observed the autistic men I know to have very little understanding that their behaviour is sometimes unacceptable, where as I know that sometimes my behaviour is sometimes unacceptable, I just don't know what mask I need to put on to make my behaviour acceptable.

So if autism affects the brains of men and women differently, doesn't that suggest that there is an underlying difference in the first place.  However, just because we have different brains doesn't mean we aren't equal.

Why can't we be equal and different?  Why can't we celebrate that we have different talents and different strengths?  Why can't we use our different talents and strengths to help each other out?

Surely that is what equality is all about because if God wanted us to be all the same he would have made us as cans of beans!