How Science Works - Revising Our View of Why Humans Evolved an Upright Stature

How Science Works

Revising Our View of Why Humans Evolved an Upright Stature

Artistic rendering of the open woodland habitat reconstruction at Moroto II with Morotopithecus bishopi vertically climbing with infant on back and juvenile below.

Image credit: Corbin Rainbolt

Apes may have evolved upright stature for leaves, not fruit, in open woodland habitats | University of Michigan News

3D view of a Motopithecus bishopi vertebra

Here we have another example of scientists challenging the accepted consensus which, unlike my last example which concerned a fundamental model of cosmology, this time concerns conflicting ideas of hominid evolution.

Not, as creationists like to delude themselves, by rejecting the whole concept of evolution in favour of their magical superstition, but the precise mechanism by which we, or rather our ancestors, evolved an upright stature and a bipedal gait. That this is an evolved feature is beyond doubt.

The scientific consensus is that human ancestors evolved an upright posture as a result of a combination of factors, including the need to adapt to an increasingly savannah-like environment, as well as the need to free up the hands for tool use and other activities.

One theory suggests that the shift to bipedalism allowed early hominins to better see over tall grasses and detect predators, while also freeing up their hands for tool use and other tasks. Another theory proposes that upright posture evolved as a means of thermoregulation in hot environments, allowing early hominins to better dissipate heat through a smaller surface area exposed to the sun.

There is also evidence to suggest that the development of bipedalism was a gradual process, with multiple adaptations and changes in anatomy occurring over time. For example, the pelvis and lower limb bones of early hominins gradually became more elongated and robust to support bipedalism.

References:

1. Lovejoy CO. The origin of man. Science. 1981 Jul 24;213(4506):341-50. doi: 10.1126/science.211.4480.341. PMID: 17748254.
2. Richmond BG, Jungers WL. Orrorin tugenensis femoral morphology and the evolution of hominin bipedalism. Science. 2008 Mar 21;319(5870):1662-5. doi: 10.1126/science.1154197. PMID: 18356526.
3. Aiello LC, Wheeler P. The expensive-tissue hypothesis: the brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution. Curr Anthropol. 1995;36(2):199-221. doi: 10.1086/204350.
4. Carrier DR. The energetic paradox of human running and hominid evolution. Curr Anthropol. 1984;25(4):483-95. doi: 10.1086/203165.

ChatGPT. (2023, April 15). What is the current scientific consensus regarding why human ancestors evolved an upright stature? With references, please. [Response to a question]. Retrieved from https://github.com/AbhinavS99/gpt3-sandbox/blob/main/nbs/02_OpenAIGPT3/ChatGPT.ipynb

However, a minority view is that it evolved because it made it easier for our ancestors to collect fruit in forests. It is this minority view that researchers from the University of Michigan are challenging. They believe they have found evidence that it evolved in open woodland in which the diet consisted of leaves.

The University of Michigan news release explains the finding and its significance for anthropologists and the human evolutionary story:

How Science Works - Looking For Evidence That the Current Consensus May be Wrong or Incomplete

How Science Works

Looking For Evidence That the Current Consensus May be Wrong or Incomplete

The small red dot highlighted inside the white box on this James Webb Space Telescope image is an early galaxy, seen as it looked just 350 million years after the Big Bang.

James Webb Space Telescope Images Challenge Theories of How Universe Evolved | College of Natural Sciences

Science is reasonable uncertainty
Religion is unreasonable certainty.

Images of six candidate massive galaxies, seen 500-800 million years after the Big Bang.
These are more massive that the theory predicts.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/I. Labbe

The great strength of science is scientists' willingness to re-examine what they think they know and to change their mind when the evidence changes. Science values truth over certainty, so all scientific knowledge is provisional and contingent on not being falsified.

Religion, by contrast, sells certainty and theists value certainty over truth, more so at the fundamentalist extreme, where intellectual dishonesty and sleights of hand to gain followers are rewarded and admired (as the many extremely wealthy televangelists in the USA, to whom lying is second nature, attest). Intellectually bankrupt creationists prefer a comforting lie to an uncomfortable truth. Scientists, on the other hand, can make their name and gain kudos and scientific respect by successfully challenging the consensus view with convincing evidence and exposed frauds are cast into academic oblivion.

To see this in action, try to get a creationist to accept that a glaring contradiction in the Bible means that one or other verse must be wrong because both mutually exclusive contradictory statements can't both be right.

For example, the contradictory accounts of what Judas did with the 30 pieces of silver, how he died, who bought the 'field of blood' and why was it so-called?

Creationism in Crisis - Oldest Known Bat Fossil Give Clue to Evolution of Flying Mammals

Creationism in Crisis

Oldest Known Bat Fossil Give Clue to Evolution of Flying Mammals

Photo of a newly described bat skeleton representing Icaronycteris gunnelli. This specimen is the holotype, the name-bearing representative of a new species, and is in the American Museum of Natural History’s research collections.

Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Fig 3. Skeleton of paratype of Icaronycteris gunnelli
(ROM:Palaeobiology-Vertebrate Fossils:52666).

Rietbergen TB, van den Hoek Ostende LW, Aase A, et al. (2023)

Oldest Bat Skeletons Ever Found From Wyoming Fossils | AMNH

The evolution of bats is far from clear because of the paucity of fossils. It is interesting therefore that the oldest known fossilised bat has been discovered in Wyoming, USA, in the Green River Formation. This adds just another chapter to the account of how the Green River Formation refutes creationism, as I'll go into shortly.


First, a bit about the evolution of bats from ChatGPT:

Bats are a unique group of mammals that have adapted to a life of flight. The evolution of bats is a subject of much debate among scientists, but recent studies suggest that they likely evolved from small, arboreal, insect-eating mammals around 50 million years ago. Fossil evidence from the Eocene period supports this theory, showing that early bats had elongated fingers with membranes stretched between them, much like modern bats.

One of the most significant challenges in studying the evolution of bats is understanding how flight evolved. Recent studies have shed light on this question, suggesting that flight evolved in bats through a process known as "penny-plane" aerodynamics, where the wings generate lift by creating a vortex of air. This mechanism is unique to bats and is not found in any other flying animals.

Another interesting aspect of bat evolution is their remarkable ability to echolocate, or use sound waves to navigate and locate prey. This ability likely evolved early in bat evolution, and recent studies suggest that it may have co-evolved with the development of flight.

Overall, the evolution of bats is a fascinating topic that continues to be the subject of much research and debate. By studying the fossil record and the behavior of modern bats, scientists are gaining new insights into the origins and adaptations of these unique mammals.

Reference:

Simmons, N. B., & Seymour, K. L. (2021). Evolution of bats. In Mammalogy (pp. 294-317). Springer, Cham.

ChatGPT. (2023, April 14). Tell me about the evolution of bats, with references, please. [Response to a question]. Retrieved from https://github.com/openai/gpt-3

Before moving on to the new fossil, I'll deal briefly with the Green River Formation, because it utterly refutes another creationist article of faith - the alleged Global flood a few thousand years ago.

Creationism in Crisis - How Skates' Ability to 'Fly' Through Water Evolved

Creationism in Crisis

How Skates' Ability to 'Fly' Through Water Evolved

Adult skate stained with Alcian blue to show the cartilage

© Tetsuya Nakamura

The cartilage of the skate is stained with Alcian blue, the bones with Alizarin red. One of the few places in the world that collects Leucoraja erinacea and breeds it for research, including for the present study, is the Marine Resources Center at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole.

© David Gold, Lynn Kee and Meghan Morrissey, MBL Embryology Course

How skates learned to fly through water | Max Delbrück Center

More than 450 million years ago, a primitive fish doubled its genome and so, contrary to creationist fraud claims, doubled the amount of genetic information without the intervention of a magic god. The extra genes were then available to the process of evolution, without loss of function of the original genes, again contrary to creationist claims that all mutations are detrimental, therefore can't be part of evolution.

That doubled genome then drove the evolution of some 60,000 different vertebrates, including mammals such as humans.

Now scientists at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin, the Andalusian Center for Developmental Biology (CABD) in Seville and other labs have discovered that part of the evolutionary story of skate 'wings' is partly due to the way the DNA containing the genes for them is folded together with the non-coding regulatory sequences that turn thee genes on an off at the right time in the developing embryo.

The major genomic changes to give the skates their 'wings' happened some time ago in its evolutionary history but the main changes since then have been due to changes in this 3D folding.

As the Max Delbrück Center's press release explains:

Unintelligent Design - The Complex Lengths to Which Creationism's Idiot Designer Goes To Solve the Problems Its Incompetence Causes

Unintelligent Design

The Complex Lengths to Which Creationism's Idiot Designer Goes To Solve the Problems Its Incompetence Causes

Photo: Getty Images

Your baby’s gut is crawling with unknown viruses – University of Copenhagen

Human gut microbiome

Source

If you've bought into the Creation Cult's intelligent [sic] design notion, it's probably best to ignore articles like this that might cause you to doubt the competence of your putative designer, but you're probably used to ignoring evidence that refutes creationism or you wouldn't have fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax in the first place.

Nevertheless, it discoveries such as this by Danish Scientists led by Shiraz A. Shah, of Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev-Gentofte, Gentofte, Denmark, together with colleagues from France and Canada, that highlight the way arms races can lead to ludicrous levels of complexity of which any even half-competent designer would be rightly ashamed.

It comes about because the human gut, especially that of babies, is an ideal, warm, moist, and nutrient-rich environment for micro-organisms, so is teeming with bacteria, protozoa, and viruses, some of which are harmless but some of which parasitize both the microbes and the human cells of the gut.

One incidental benefit that creationists will point to is that the presence of these organisms probably helps train the developing babies’ immune system so it is more effective in later life, so the presence of these organisms can be beneficial.

But hold on! What are they 'training the immune system' for? They are training it to protect us from the very bacteria that the supposedly intelligent designer designed to harm us. At least, since it is supposedly omniscient, it knew what its bacteria and viruses would do when it designed them, so we must assume it designed them for that purpose.

And, if we accept that it designed bacteria to train our immune system, why did it then design the viruses that kill these beneficial bacteria?

But whatever it was thinking of, if 'thinking' is the appropriate term, the result is a baby’s gut teeming with more than 200 different families of virus, many of which were unknown prior to this study. The team's findings are published, open access, in the journal Nature Microbiology.

The research and its significance is explained in a University of Copenhagen news release:

Unintelligent Design - Crazy Sex Determination in Male Yellow Crazy Ants

Unintelligent Design

Crazy Sex Determination in Male Yellow Crazy Ants

A male yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes)

Photo/©: Hugo Darras

Male yellow crazy ants are real-life chimeras | Press and Public Relations

Two male yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes)

Photo/©: Hugo Darras

If you're an intelligent designer and you have a perfectly functional, tried and tested method for determining the sex of the insects you create, you would use that method for a new species, wouldn't you?

Not if you're the creationist cult's putative intelligent designer, you don't. What you do is come up with an even more complex way of doing the same thing, for no apparent benefit!

In many insects, including the hymenopterans (bees, wasps, ants, and sawflies) the normal way the sex of an individual is determined is by the number of copies of each chromosome in the cell nucleus. Females are diploid, i.e., they get two copies - one from their mother and one from their father, via a fertilized egg - while males are haploid, having only one copy, which they inherit from their mother via an unfertilized egg.

It has been that way since the order evolved, or so it would seem as almost all of them use the same method, suggesting it was the method used by their last common ancestor, 200 million years ago.

Unintelligent Design - How to Make a Ludicrously Complex Genome for No Apparent Reason

Unintelligent Design

How to Make a Ludicrously Complex Genome for No Apparent Reason

The scientists analyzed several gigabyte of microbial DNA sequences.

Stowaways in the Genome – Universität Innsbruck

Distribution of endogenous MCP clusters across 462 genomes from 238 protist species. MCP clusters (25% identity across 30% length, 73 clusters) are shown as inner circles scaled in size according to the number of MCPs in each cluster. Numbers refer to the MCP cluster number assigned, with the larger viral groups labeled. MCP clusters are connected to the eukaryotic species (based on NCBI taxonomy) they are found in. Clusters with a more diverse host range are drawn closer to the center of the plot.

Bellas, C; Hackl, T; Plakolb,M-S; Koslová,A; Fischer, M.G; Sommaruga, R.(2023)

Q. What is the difference between an evolved organism, and one allegedly designed by creationism's putative intelligent designer?

A. Nothing! They both look like no intelligence was involved in their design, because they will both have masses of waste, ludicrous complexity, and no ultimate purpose, other than making more copies of themselves.

Although creationists have been programmed to point to complexity as evidence of design, it is actually evidence of bad (or no) design, because good, intelligent design is minimally complex.

This point was neatly illustrated in a paper published in PNAS a couple of days ago which showed that the genome of single-celled, eukaryote organisms contains ancient 'fossil' endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) that do nothing but need to be replicated every time the organism replicates, wasting resources and risking error. Altogether the team found remnants of over 30,000 such viruses.

The discovery was made by a group of researchers led by Dr. Christopher Bellas and colleagues from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, with colleagues from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands and Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg, Germany.

The team were interested in the new 'Polinton-like viruses' that two of the team had previously found in protista from an Austrian alpine lake. According to my AI software, ChatGPT:

Creationism in Crisis - Stuff the Authors of Genesis Never Even Guessed At

Creationism in Crisis

Stuff the Authors of Genesis Never Even Guessed At

A view of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies from the James Webb Telescope.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Creationism in Crisis

Stuff the Authors of Genesis Never Even Guessed At

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope

New map of the universe’s cosmic growth supports Einstein’s theory of gravity

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), Chile

It has been said that, like the Qur'an, if the Bible were discovered for the first time today, we could date it accurately by the scientific ignorance in it.

There is no hint of knowledge about Germ Theory, electricity, atoms, photosynthesis, thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics, gravity, or dark matter and dark energy, anywhere in the Bible, unless you stretch the meanings of words beyond breaking point and add things that are not there.

It's as though the authors knew no more than the little that was already known at the time and didn't realise that much of what they thought they knew was fundamentally wrong. But you would expect a creator god who wanted us to believe it knew everything and most importantly, had a vital message for mankind, would have included something new and even something useful - like electricity or antibiotics, for example, but it couldn't even describe the scientific method, let alone a null hypothesis or the need for controls in an experiment.

So, it took until the early part of the 20th century for a scientist to discover that matter and energy are interchangeable because they are different aspects of the same thing, and so why planets orbit suns and Earth has enough gravity to stop us and the atmosphere floating off into space. Einstein’s discovery of Relativity is now a fundamental of cosmology and theoretical astrophysics.

Creationism in Crisis - Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

Creationism in Crisis

Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

(a) SEM photo of cord fragment.

Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Creationism in Crisis

Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

(b) 3D Hirox photo of cord fragment.

Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Creationism in Crisis

Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

(c) schematic drawing illustrating s and Z twist.

Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Creationism in Crisis

Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

(d) enlarged Hirox photo with cord structure highlighted, arrows indicate location of photos e and f.

Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Creationism in Crisis

Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

(e) SEM photo of bordered pits (circled in red).

Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Creationism in Crisis

Neanderthals invented String 40,000 Years Before God Invented Earth!

(f) SEM photo of bordered pits.

Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Oldest ever piece of string was made by Neanderthals 50,000 years ago | New Scientist

Figure 3
(a) SEM photo of cord fragment, (b) 3D Hirox photo of cord fragment, (c) schematic drawing illustrating s and Z twist; (d) enlarged Hirox photo with cord structure highlighted, arrows indicate location of photos e and f; (e) SEM photo of bordered pits (circled in red); (f) SEM photo of bordered pits.

Drawing by C. Kerfant; Hirox: C2RMF, N. Mélard.
Hardy, B.L., Moncel, MH., Kerfant, C. et al. (2020)

Here's some of that scientific evidence stuff that creationists must dismiss somehow to remain a member of their anti-science, counter-factual cult. It's the news that Neanderthals were making string 40,000 years before they believe the Universe was created. The cult exists despite the overwhelming evidence that it is wrong by many orders of magnitude, and that magic was not involved, so one little piece of ancient string is hardly likely to change their minds.

As a piece of archaeology, however, the fact that Neanderthals had the technology to make string - one of the foundational technologies of human technology - is surprising and unexpected. Making string, which involves extracting long fibres from plants (in this case, the bast fibres from the bark of a conifer), twisting them together to make longer strands, then twisting those strands together with the opposite twist to lock the fibres in place, is a complicated and labour-intensive process.

Creationism in Crisis - The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Monk seal, Monachus monachus

Creationism in Crisis

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Monk seal, Monachus monachus

Creationism in Crisis

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Monk seal, Monachus monachus

Creationism in Crisis

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Monk seal, Monachus monachus

Creationism in Crisis

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Monk seal, Monachus monachus

Creationism in Crisis

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback Thanks to Human Cultural Evolution

Monk seal, Monachus monachus

Monk sealMonachus monachus

The Mediterranean Monk Seal Is Making a Comeback | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

With 99% of all known species having gone extinct, creationists still like to imagine an omniscient god created them. One must assume, therefore, that they believe it created them to go extinct!

It's a strange sort of intelligence that would intelligently design something to fail, but that's the sort of double think creationists need to be capable of to be members of their anti-science cults.

But the good news is that one of these 'creations', the Mediterranean Monk seal, is making something of a comeback, having been reduced to about 800 individuals, mostly around the coast of Greece.

The Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus) is one of the world's most endangered marine mammals and is the only seal species endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. The species is characterized by its monk-like hood, and its gray-brown fur with lighter colored undersides.

Here are some key facts about the Mediterranean monk seal:

Habitat: Mediterranean monk seals are found in the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Atlantic Ocean, primarily along the coastlines of Greece, Turkey, and North Africa.

Population: According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Mediterranean monk seal population is estimated to be between 500 and 700 individuals, making it one of the rarest mammals in the world.

Threats: The primary threats to Mediterranean monk seals include habitat loss, human disturbance, entanglement in fishing gear, and hunting. The species has been heavily exploited for its fur, oil, and meat, and has suffered from a decline in its prey species due to overfishing.

Conservation Efforts: The Mediterranean monk seal is protected under various national and international laws, including the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. Several conservation organizations are also working to protect the species, including the Mediterranean Monk Seal Conservation Society and the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal.

References:

• International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List:
  https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/13653/45227516
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries:
  https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/mediterranean-monk-seal
• Mediterranean Monk Seal Conservation Society:
  https://www.monachus-guardian.org/monk-seal/monk-seal-facts/
• Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk Seal:
  http://www.monachus.org/eng/index.htm

ChatGPT. (10 Apr 2023). Tel me about the Mediterranean Monk seal, with references, please. [Response to a user question]. OpenAI.

The Monk seal was once abundant around the Greek coast and used to breed on the beaches but evolved a change of habit due to persecution by humans who saw it as competition for fish. It now breeds in sea caves and tends to stay in them when not in the sea.

The Greek poet, Homer, mentioned what is probably the monk seal in his Odyssey:

Homer, the ancient Greek poet, mentioned the Mediterranean monk seal in his epic poem, the Odyssey. In Book 4, lines 345-347, he describes the sea-monsters that inhabit the waters around the island of Pharos:

…and the great seal (phoke) was in attendance upon her from the bottom of the sea, even the seal that was wont to come forth last from his lair to bask upon the shore.

In this passage, the Greek word "phoke" is used to refer to the seal, which is believed to be the Mediterranean monk seal. It is interesting to note that the word "phoke" is also the origin of the English word "phocid," which refers to the family of true seals that includes the Mediterranean monk seal. It is worth noting that the Odyssey was written in the 8th century BCE, long before the Mediterranean monk seal became endangered. At the time, the species was likely abundant and well-known to the ancient Greeks.

It is a sign of cultural evolution that humans are now more inclined to protect endangered species than to persecute them, consequently, the monk seal population has rebounded, and they are now present in Croatia and Albania from where they had disappeared. When a female monk seal, nicknamed Argyro, who became so familiar with humans on the island of Samos that she would lounge in beach chairs and hang out in a cafe, was shot, it caused an outrage throughout Greece. In earlier times, Greek fishermen would boast that they had killed a monk seal as this was considered a good thing to do.

This cultural evolution in humans, where the primitive notion that a god had given all the animals on Earth to humankind to use or abuse as they wished, to one where we realise we all share this one planet and depend on maximising biodiversity if we are all to survive, has allowed the monk seal to reverse its cultural evolution and once again start to come out of the sea caves and appear in numbers on beaches. This is another example of how Humanism is replacing the old, harmful religious superstitions as human ethical evolution rids itself of the regressive influence of religion.

Long may this Humanist trend continue.

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Fake News - Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth- But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Francis focuses Easter message on hope, with prayers for an end to global conflicts

In his traditional Easter address 'Urbi et Orbi' ([to] the City and the world), Pope Francis announced that it was a solid fact that Jesus has risen, leaving historians bemused and wishing they too had the powers to declare truth by fiat. It would save an awful lot of time and money.

Scientists, of course, have long been envious of the magical power of religious clerics to simply declare facts to be true, even mutually contradictory ones and ones proven to be false. No need for all that experimentation and analysis; simply give it some thought, decide what would be convenient if it were true, and declare it to be so! Voilà! (Or should that be, Shazam?)

The Pope has this magical power, apparently, because an omniscient God speaks directly to him and informs him of the inerrant truth - rather like a mega-rich televangelist in that respect. All Pope Francis must do is announce it, and, at least as far as the Catholic Church and its followers are concerned, it is so.

However, he then went on to throw that whole 'fount of divine wisdom' thing into confusion by calling on the world to pray for peace between Russia and Ukraine. (There is nothing like an empty gesture in times of trouble, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than sending aid.)

But hold on!

Crucifiction News - What Took Christians So Long to Depict The Crucifixion?

Crucifiction News

What Took Christians So Long to Depict The Crucifixion?

The Crucifixion by Andrea Mantegna, painted between 457 and 1459
The central panel of an altarpiece for church of San Zeno, Verona, Italy

The Louvre, Paris

The Crucifixion by Giotto di Bondone (c 1303-1305)
Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy

The crucifixion gap: why it took hundreds of years for art to depict Jesus dying on the cross

As it is Easter, when Christians traditionally celebrate the repugnant notion of vicarious redemption through the blood sacrifice of a supposedly innocent person, I thought it would be good to examine the whole notion of the crucifixion of the legendary founder of the Christian religion, Jesus.

What I'm not going to do is point out the glaring and irreconcilable inconsistences in the accounts of the crucifixion and the alleged resurrection, which betray the fact that any pretense to be eye-witness accounts are just that - pretense.

If you want more information on that you're more than welcome to try the Easter Challenge to see if you can resolve the accounts into a coherent narrative incorporating all the alleged events.

The Easter Challenge

The origins of Easter have nothing to do with the alleged crucifixion of course, being based, at least in part on the Roman festival of Hilaria:

For example, the timing of Easter is determined by the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which was also an important time in the Roman calendar. The Roman festival of Hilaria, which was held in honor of the goddess Cybele, was celebrated around the same time as the vernal equinox and involved parades, feasting, and gift-giving.

Reference:

• "The Origins of Easter" by Mark Cartwright, Ancient History Encyclopedia: https://www.ancient.eu/article/1294/the-origins-of-easter/
• "Easter" by Christine M. Tomassini, Encyclopædia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday
• "The Pagan Roots of Easter" by Jennifer Billock, History: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/history-of-easter-origins-of-easter-traditions

ChatGPT. (2023, April 9). What are the Roman origins of Easter?
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat

The name 'Easter' comes from the Old English 'Ēastre', the name of an Anglo-Saxon festival celebrating the spring equinox which was used by the Christian Church as the arbitrary date of the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, which has as much basis in fact as the supposed date of his birth, i.e., none at all.

Perhaps the first thing to point out about the story is its unlikelihood.

Creationism in Crisis - Genetic Evolution of Woolly Mammoths Explained

Woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius
Note the minuscule ears compared to modern elephants

Science Picture Co., Corbis

Genomics of adaptive evolution in the woolly mammoth: Current Biology

The thing about the Theory of Evolution is that, contrary to creationist claims and unlike creationism, it can make accurate predictions. Not only does that fact refute the creationist lie, but it also means that creationism has no place in science and can be dismissed as an alternative to the real science of evolution.

Because evolution is defined as change in allele frequency over time, this means that when we look for evidence of evolution in the phenotype and then map it onto changes in the genome over time, they should march in lockstep through the history of the evolving species.

And, to the great discomfort of creationists, this is exactly what scientists found when they analyzed the genomes of 22 relatively recent woolly mammoths recovered from frozen specimens that lived about 100,000 years ago, with one of the oldest known woolly mammoths, 'Chukochya', that lived about 700,000 years ago, and compared them to the genomes of modern elephants.

What can you tell me about woolly mammoths, species and distribution? Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were large, prehistoric relatives of modern elephants that lived during the Pleistocene epoch, from about 300,000 to 10,000 years ago. They were well-adapted to cold environments, primarily inhabiting the mammoth steppe—a vast, treeless region that stretched from Western Europe through northern Asia and North America during the Ice Age.

Key Features:

• Thick Fur Coat: Woolly mammoths had a dense undercoat of fur and a layer of longer guard hairs to help insulate them from the extreme cold.
• Fat Reserves: They had a layer of subcutaneous fat, up to 10 cm thick, which helped retain heat.
• Curved Tusks: Their large, spiraled tusks could grow up to 4 meters long and were used for foraging under snow, fighting, and display.
• Humped Back: This was due to large fat deposits stored in a hump for additional energy and insulation.

Species
The woolly mammoth is the most famous and well-studied member of the mammoth genus (Mammuthus), but it is part of a larger group of mammoth species, including:

1. Mammuthus columbi – The Columbian mammoth, larger and lived in more temperate areas of North America.
2. Mammuthus meridionalis – Southern mammoth, which preceded the woolly mammoth and inhabited warmer climates.
3. Mammuthus exilis – A dwarf species found on the Channel Islands off the coast of California.

Distribution

• Eurasia: Woolly mammoths were widespread across northern Europe, including the British Isles, Siberia, and parts of Russia.
• North America: They crossed into North America via the Bering Land Bridge, populating regions like Alaska and Canada.
• Pleistocene Glaciation Period: During colder periods, woolly mammoths migrated further south into lower latitudes of Europe, Asia, and North America.

They survived in some isolated regions, like Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean, until about 4,000 years ago, long after their mainland extinction.

Extinction

Woolly mammoths likely went extinct due to a combination of factors:

1. Climate Change: As the Ice Age ended, warming temperatures caused the mammoth steppe to shrink, reducing their habitat.
2. Human Hunting: Early human populations are believed to have hunted mammoths, contributing to their decline.
3. Habitat Loss: Shrinking tundra regions and the spread of forests and wetlands left fewer areas for mammoths to thrive.

Today, woolly mammoths are an important subject of study in paleontology, with well-preserved specimens found in permafrost, providing valuable insights into their biology and environment. There have also been discussions about "de-extincting" woolly mammoths using genetic technology.

The work was conducted by a team led by Professor Love Dalén, professor of evolutionary genomics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden and is published open access in Cell Biology. The research and its significance is explained in information made available by Cell Press and published in Science Daily:

Creation News - Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Creation News

Scientist Observe Creation in Progress. No Gods Involved

Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars | NASA

Artist's impression of a runaway supermassive black hole that was ejected from its host galaxy as a result of a tussle between it and two other black holes. As the black hole plows through intergalactic space it compresses tenuous gas in front of it. This precipitates the birth of hot blue stars. This illustration is based on Hubble Space Telescope observations of a 200,000-light-year-long "contrail" of stars behind an escaping black hole.

Credit: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a runway supermassive blackhole, with a mass about that of 20 million of our suns, which is moving through space and leaving a trail of newly created suns in a wake about 200,000-light-years long (twice the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy). The object is travelling so fast it covers the equivalent of the distance from Earth to the moon in 14 minutes.

Hubble image of black, deep-space field with white, yellow, and reddish galaxies. Image center: small, white-bordered, boxed area that contains one, long, thin, diagonal streak of whitish-blue stars. Two galaxies also reside within the box.

This Hubble Space Telescope archival photo captures a curious linear feature that is so unusual it was first dismissed as an imaging artifact from Hubble's cameras. But follow-up spectroscopic observations reveal it is a 200,000-light-year-long chain of young blue stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the tip of the bridge at lower left. The black hole was ejected from the galaxy at upper right. It compressed gas in its wake to leave a long trail of young blue stars. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the universe. This unusual event happened when the universe was approximately half its current age.

NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Close up of the area inside the white sqyare above.

It is believed that, by compressing the thin interstellar gas ahead of it, this initiates a gravitational collapse to condense into suns. The time taken for this process puts the black hole far enough away to avoid swallowing the nascent suns, so leaving the trail of young sons behind it.

We think we're seeing a wake behind the black hole where the gas cools and is able to form stars. So, we're looking at star formation trailing the black hole. What we're seeing is the aftermath. Like the wake behind a ship we're seeing the wake behind the black hole.

Gas in front of it gets shocked because of this supersonic, very high-velocity impact of the black hole moving through the gas. How it works exactly is not really known.

This is pure serendipity that we stumbled across it. I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed that we have a little streak. I immediately thought, 'oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.' When we eliminated cosmic rays we realized it was still there. It didn't look like anything we've seen before.

Pieter van Dokkum
Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

The trail must have lots of new stars, given that it is almost half as bright as the host galaxy it is linked to.

The black hole lies at one end of the column, which stretches back to its parent galaxy. There is a remarkably bright knot of ionized oxygen at the outermost tip of the column. Researchers believe gas is probably being shocked and heated from the motion of the black hole hitting the gas, or it could be radiation from an accretion disk around the black hole.

Because it was so weird, van Dokkum and his team did follow-up spectroscopy with the W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii. He describes the star trail as "quite astonishing, very, very bright and very unusual." This led to the conclusion that he was looking at the aftermath of a black hole flying through a halo of gas surrounding the host galaxy.

This intergalactic skyrocket is likely the result of multiple collisions of supermassive black holes. Astronomers suspect the first two galaxies merged perhaps 50 million years ago. That brought together two supermassive black holes at their centers. They whirled around each other as a binary black hole.

Then another galaxy came along with its own supermassive black hole. This follows the old idiom: "two's company and three's a crowd." The three black holes mixing it up led to a chaotic and unstable configuration. One of the black holes robbed momentum from the other two black holes and got thrown out of the host galaxy. The original binary may have remained intact, or the new interloper black hole may have replaced one of the two that were in the original binary, and kicked out the previous companion.

When the single black hole took off in one direction, the binary black holes shot off in the opposite direction. There is a feature seen on the opposite side of the host galaxy that might be the runaway binary black hole. Circumstantial evidence for this is that there is no sign of an active black hole remaining at the galaxy’s core. The next step is to do follow-up observations with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm the black hole explanation.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by The American Astronomical Society. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

The research paper was published yesterday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Abstract

The interaction of a runaway supermassive black hole (SMBH) with the circumgalactic medium (CGM) can lead to the formation of a wake of shocked gas and young stars behind it. Here we report the serendipitous discovery of an extremely narrow linear feature in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys images that may be an example of such a wake. The feature extends 62 kpc from the nucleus of a compact star-forming galaxy at z = 0.964. Keck Low-resolution Imaging Spectrometer spectra show that the [O iii]/Hβ ratio varies from ∼1 to ∼10 along the feature, indicating a mixture of star formation and fast shocks. The feature terminates in a bright [O iii] knot with a luminosity of ≈1.9 × 1041 erg s⁻¹. The stellar continuum colors vary along the feature and are well fit by a simple model that has a monotonically increasing age with the distance from the tip. The line ratios, colors, and overall morphology are consistent with an ejected SMBH moving through the CGM at a high speed while triggering star formation. The best-fit time since ejection is ∼39 Myr, and the implied velocity is v BH ∼ 1600 km s⁻¹. The feature is not perfectly straight in the HST images, and we show that the amplitude of the observed spatial variations is consistent with the runaway SMBH interpretation. Opposite the primary wake is a fainter and shorter feature, marginally detected only in [O iii] and the rest-frame far-ultraviolet. This feature may be shocked gas behind a binary SMBH that was ejected at the same time as the SMBH that produced the primary wake.

van Dokkum, Pieter; Pasha, Imad; Buzzo, Maria Luisa; LaMassa, Stephanie; Shen, Zili; Keim, Michael A.; Abraham, Roberto; Conroy, Charlie; Danieli, Shany; Mitra, Kaustav; Nagai, Daisuke; Natarajan, Priyamvada; Romanowsky, Aaron J.; Tremblay, Grant; Urry, C. Megan; van den Bosch, Frank C.
A Candidate Runaway Supermassive Black Hole Identified by Shocks and Star Formation in its Wake
The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023), 946(2). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acba86.

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by The American Astronomical Society. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Compare that to the creationist notion that the formation of the universe is accurately described by a Bronze Age Hebrew origin myth that has a magic man made of nothing, spoke some magic words that cause the Universe to form out of nothing. More magic words then cause Earth's sun to form, several days after there was light, measured on a time basis based on the rotation period of a planet that didn't yet exist as it orbits a sun that hadn't been created, and which wasn't going to orbit it anyway as it would be fixed in space so it couldn’t move, while the sun orbits around it.

Creationists hold that this is the best available description of reality, far surpassing for accuracy and reliability anything that science can reveal. People who believe that also hold that their evidence-free superstition is a valid alternative to modern science and should be given equal status in any debate because Bronze Age Canaanite hill farmers who thought Earth was flat and hadn't yet invented the wheel, knew more than we do.

Creationism in Crisis - How Elephants Are Helping Us Understand Human Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

How Elephants Are Helping Us Understand Human Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

How Elephants Are Helping Us Understand Human Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

How Elephants Are Helping Us Understand Human Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

How Elephants Are Helping Us Understand Human Evolution

Creationism in Crisis

How Elephants Are Helping Us Understand Human Evolution

Elephants as a new model for understanding human evolution | Max Planck Institute

More very bad news for Creationists today. It comes in the form of a paper which depends on the Theory of Evolution by Natural selection to explain not only our own social evolution but why behaviour such as empathy, concern for the welfare of others, and ability to communicate are not the uniquely human characteristics Creationists claim them to be, as evidence of our special creation by a magic creator.

I've recently written about 'Domestication Syndrome' , how it can be seen in several of our domesticated animals, and how it probably played a part in our own evolution by a process of self-domestication.

Now a group of researchers led by Limor Ravi of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, have found that elephants also appear to have self-domesticated and have proposed that they could form a model for understanding how prosocial behaviour evolved.

Domestication Syndrome refers to a suite of physical and behavioral changes observed in domesticated animals as a result of artificial selection by humans. These changes can include reduced brain size, smaller teeth and jaws, reduced aggressiveness, and changes in coat color and texture.

The concept of Domestication Syndrome was first proposed by Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev in the mid-20th century. Belyaev conducted an experiment in which he selectively bred silver foxes for tameness, based on their willingness to approach humans without showing fear or aggression. Over several generations, the foxes developed a range of physical and behavioral changes that resembled those seen in domesticated dogs, including floppy ears, curly tails, and a greater tolerance for human interaction.

Since then, studies have shown that similar changes occur in many other domesticated species, including dogs, cats, pigs, cattle, and chickens. These changes are thought to result from a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with genetic changes driving physical traits and behavioral changes resulting from the animals' exposure to human environments.

References:

• Trut, L. N. (1999). Early canid domestication: The farm-fox experiment. American Scientist, 87(2), 160-169.
• Wilkins, A. S. (2014). Wrangling over domestication syndrome. BioScience, 64(11), 1021-1028.
• Driscoll, C. A., Macdonald, D. W., & O'Brien, S. J. (2009). From wild animals to domestic pets, an evolutionary view of domestication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(Supplement 1), 9971-9978.

ChatGPT. (2023, April 6). Tell me about "Domestication Syndrome", with references, please.
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat

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The process of self-domestication refers to the theory that humans have undergone a form of self-domestication over the course of our evolutionary history, in which we have become more cooperative, less aggressive, and more tolerant of each other. This process is thought to have led to the development of complex social structures and the ability to work together to achieve common goals.

One of the key researchers in this area is Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University. Wrangham has argued that the process of self-domestication in humans was driven by the selection for less aggressive and more cooperative individuals. This selection was likely driven by a number of factors, including the need to work together to secure food and defend against predators, as well as the benefits of cooperation in social groups.

Other researchers have supported the idea of self-domestication in humans, and have proposed various genetic and neurological mechanisms to explain the process. For example, some researchers have suggested that self-domestication may have been driven by changes in genes associated with the regulation of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is involved in regulating mood, social behavior, and aggression.

References:

• Hare, B., & Wrangham, R. W. (2017). The self-domestication hypothesis: Evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 4(3), 307-318.
• Jensen, P. (2010). The self-domestication hypothesis: evolution of humane behavior. Current Zoology, 56(3), 338-346.
• Wrangham, R. W. (2018). Two types of self-domestication, and what they tell us about humanity. Current Anthropology, 59(2), 151-162.
• Wrangham, R. W. (2018). How cooking made us human. In H. LeVine (Ed.), Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 139-156). Wiley.

ChatGPT. (2023, April 7). Tell me more about the process of self-domestication, with references, please.
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat

'Domestication syndrome' includes behaviour that is less aggressive and more prosocial, such as playfulness and other behaviour which encourages group cohesion. Limor Raviv's team which included researchers from the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, the University at Buffalo The State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, NY, USA and The University of Seville, Seville, Spain, have identified elephants as another species, in addition to humans and bonobos that have self-domesticated in their evolutionary history and so show evidence of 'domestication syndrome'.

They therefore conclude that elephants may be a model species for the study of the evolution of prosociality.

As the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics news release explains:

Human Evolution in Africa - A Forgotten Settlement in 'The Cradle of Humankind'

Human Evolution in Africa

A Forgotten Settlement in 'The Cradle of Humankind'

Human Evolution in Africa

A Forgotten Settlement in 'The Cradle of Humankind'

Human Evolution in Africa

A Forgotten Settlement in 'The Cradle of Humankind'

Human Evolution in Africa

A Forgotten Settlement in 'The Cradle of Humankind'

A Forgotten settlement in the Cradle of Humankind adds a note to southern African history

Four different Australopithecus crania that were found in the Sterkfontein caves, South Africa. The Sterkfontein cave fill containing this and other Australopithecus fossils was dated to 3.4 to 3.6 million years ago.

Because of the hominin remains found there, the system of caves at Driefontein in Gauteng, South Africa is a designated world heritage site, known as 'The Cradle of Humankind'. It is believed by some to be where modern Homo sapiens evolved out of ancestral hominins.

Driefontein is a cave system located in the Cradle of Humankind, a World Heritage Site in Gauteng, South Africa. The Cradle of Humankind is a paleontological site that is home to some of the world's most important hominid fossil finds, including the fossils of "Mrs. Ples" and "Little Foot."

The Driefontein cave system has been of particular interest to paleontologists because of the discovery of early hominid fossils there. The fossils found at Driefontein date back over 2 million years, and include specimens from several species, including Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus.

One of the most notable discoveries made at Driefontein was that of the "Little Foot" skeleton, which was found in the Sterkfontein Caves in 1994. Little Foot is an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton, estimated to be around 3.67 million years old, making it one of the oldest hominid fossils ever found.

The Cradle of Humankind is a significant site for the study of human evolution and the history of life on Earth. Its importance has been recognized by UNESCO, which designated it a World Heritage Site in 1999.

References:

1. "Driefontein, Cradle of Humankind." South African Heritage Resources Agency. https://www.sahra.org.za/sahris/sites/77811012-740e-4d30-9c17-9b21ef4d3b53
2. "The Cradle of Humankind: Driefontein Cave." South African Tourism. https://www.southafrica.net/gl/en/travel/article/the-cradle-of-humankind-driefontein-cave
3. "Little Foot, Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa." University of Witwatersrand. https://www.littlefoot.org.za/

ChatGPT.(6 Apr 2023) "Tell me about the Driefontein 'Cradle of Humankind', in South Africa, with references."
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat

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"Mrs. Ples" and "Little Foot" are two important hominid fossils found in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa.

1. "Mrs. Ples":
   "Mrs. Ples" is the nickname given to a fossil skull discovered in 1947 by paleontologist Robert Broom at the Sterkfontein Caves, which are part of the Cradle of Humankind. The fossil is officially known as StW 5, and is believed to be around 2.05 million years old. "Mrs. Ples" is believed to be a member of the species Australopithecus africanus, and is one of the most complete early hominid skulls ever found.
2. "Little Foot":
   "Little Foot" is the nickname given to a nearly complete Australopithecus skeleton discovered in the Sterkfontein Caves in 1994. The fossil is officially known as StW 573, and is believed to be around 3.67 million years old, making it one of the oldest hominid fossils ever found. The discovery of "Little Foot" is significant because it provides important insights into the evolution of bipedalism, or walking on two legs. The skeleton is also notable for being nearly complete, which is rare in the field of paleoanthropology.

References:

1. "Mrs. Ples." Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/origins-humankind/mrs-ples
2. "Little Foot, Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa." University of Witwatersrand. https://www.littlefoot.org.za/
3. "Little Foot: A Rare Look at One of the World's Oldest Skeletons." National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/12/little-foot-fossil-stw-573-australopithecus-south-africa-human-origins/

ChatGPT. (6 Apr 2023) "Tell me more about the fossils 'Mrs Ples' and 'Little Foot', with references, please."
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/chat

In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, Tim Forssman, Senior lecturer, University of Pretoria, South Africa, explains the significance of the site in the story of the evolution of modern humans.

The article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Human Evolution in Africa - How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Human Evolution in Africa

How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa

Human Evolution in Africa

How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa

Human Evolution in Africa

How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa

Human Evolution in Africa

How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa

Human Evolution in Africa

How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa

Human Evolution in Africa

How Hunter-Gatherers Contributed to Cultural Evolution

Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa

Archaeology shows how hunter-gatherers fitted into southern Africa’s first city, 800 years ago

Golden rhinoceros from Mapungubwe

In the west, we tend to minimise the cultural achievements of Africa because it never attained the advanced technological economies Europe and Asia achieved n=my the Late Middle Ages. The factors which caused Africa to remain technologically under-developed include climate, lack of animals suitable for domestication as draught animals and beasts of burden, and the presence of tropical parasites such as the tsetse fly making it difficult to use domestic animals imported from Eurasia.

But despite this there is evidence of sophisticated cultures and political entities such as Great Zimbabwe, Kiliwa and the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, in south Africa, which by 800 CE was trading with China, and India as well as the rest of Africa.

Mapungubwe is a significant cultural site in South Africa, as it was the capital of the Mapungubwe Kingdom, which flourished between the 9th and 13th centuries AD. This kingdom was one of the largest and most complex societies in southern Africa at the time, and its people traded with China, India, and other parts of Africa.

The Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, as it provides insight into the development of African societies before the colonial period. It is also considered a symbol of African cultural identity and the resilience of indigenous cultures in the face of colonialism.

Furthermore, Mapungubwe is considered an important archaeological site, as it has yielded a wealth of artifacts, including gold objects, pottery, and glass beads. These artifacts provide evidence of the advanced technological and artistic skills of the Mapungubwe people and their connections to other parts of the world.

References:

• "Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape." UNESCO World Heritage Centre, whc.unesco.org/en/list/1099/.
• "Mapungubwe." South African History Online, www.sahistory.org.za/place/mapungubwe.
• "Mapungubwe National Park and World Heritage Site." South African National Parks, www.sanparks.org/parks/mapungubwe/.

ChatGPT. (2023, April 6). What's the cultural significance of Mapungubwe in South Africa? References, please. [Response to a question on OpenAI]. Retrieved from https://openai.com

In the following article, Tim Forssman, Senior Lecturer, University of Mpumalanga, South Africa, explains how his team are excavating the site in the Mapungubwe National Park and World Heritage Site and the significance of their discoveries, especially how the hunter-gatherers around the city were essential to its continuation and prosperity.

His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here.

Published: April 3, 2023 2.58pm BST

Archaeology shows how hunter‑gatherers fitted into southern Africa’s first city, 800 years ago

Archaeologists excavate inside and outside Little Muck Shelter, in the Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa.

Photo: Tim Forssman

Tim Forssman, University of Mpumalanga

Where the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers meet, forming the modern border between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, lies a hill that hardly stands out from the rest. One could easily pass it without realising its historical significance. It was on and around this hill that what appears to be southern Africa’s earliest state-level society and urban city, Mapungubwe, appeared around 800 years ago.

After nearly a century of research, we’ve learnt quite a lot about this ancient kingdom and how it arose among early farmer society and its involvement in global trade networks. However, before farmers settled the region, this terrain was the home of hunter-gatherer groups, who have hardly been acknowledged despite, as it seems, their involvement in the rise of Mapungubwe.

My team and I have been working in northern South Africa at sites that we believe will help us recognise the roles played by hunter-gatherers during the development of the Mapungubwe state in a bid to generate a more inclusive representation of the region’s past.