Golden hair in unusual places.
Travels in Ethiopia.
Ancestral ghosts.
“Nothing in history makes sense except in light of demography.”
"What the researcher above captured was a snapshot in time, freezing a moment which was transitory, as the ancient substrate of Southeast Asia was absorbed into the advancing wave of farmers. One could go on in this vein. We know so much more than we did in the past, and not to be hyperbolic, but some of what we know suspect resembles Conan the Barbarian more than the wildest imaginings of prehistorians of the past generation. But that’s one of the great things about scholarship: it can confound pedestrian expectations. And on occasion which captures the ineffable aspects of truth obscured should astound us"It's interesting that Razib Khan, one of my favorite smart guys, is now blogging at The Unz Review. I wish him continued success.
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The ancient Greek art in my first link is fascinating. Although it spans only the period from 1600-1100 BC, the differences in skin pigmentation and facial structure, most notably the portrayal of the nose, are striking.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the entirely fresh and original fashion take on the whole "side boob" thing.
DeleteNo, really.
Did they find any breast implants in the ruins? Because without them, that's a really tough look to be rockin'...
Them's some boobs. Holy moly!
DeleteThird picture down. Second chick from the left. Yowza.
DeleteAnd the red tunic thing is very Fredrick's of Hollywood.
Poor lady red.
DeleteShe tries to promote some culture and intellectual curiosity and we go all hillbilly on her.
<giggles/>
The two "Mycenaean daughters" in the second to last picture seem to have a lot, ahem, going on also.
DeleteHa Ha, just occurred to me that this must be where Lady Gag Gag's costumers go for inspiration. Although it looks way better on them than it does on her.
DeleteOK, next headline.
Delete"Golden hair in unusual places."
Hmmm....
No coincidence then that the Stanford University spokesperson quoted in the "Golden hair.." article is called BUSTamante...
Deletebwahahaha...
So much for kulchur. Boobs! Big deformed pointy boobs for all! :))
DeleteYou all are so funny! :)
At least nobody asked the Solomon Island towhead babes if the carpet matched the drapes.
DeleteOh wait, I just did.
(I am such a pig.) :(
Oink oink. ;p
DeleteGlad I'm not the only one to notice the killer chests, and VERY glad I was far from the first to comment on it.
DeleteMakes me wonder if the Mycenaean artists were all fourteen year old boys, doing pictures of their fantasies
Makes me wonder if the Mycenaean artists were all fourteen year old boys...
DeleteBingo, we have a winner!
Chicken dinner!
DeleteWe're buried in snow here in the PNW, BTW.
ReplyDeleteWe're buried in snow in the Ozarks too. And ice! My partner and I went down a long hill sideways today. It was pure ice! We didn't go over the edge, thank God. Once we finished screaming and sucking up the seat cushions we put chains on all four tires and continued our nursing rounds. I'm still a little twitchy. :))
DeleteThe article on ancestral ghosts looked interesting. Too bad it wasn't in English.
ReplyDeleteOh fudge. I'm sorry Matt, that's not my intended link. I'll have to retrace my steps and try to find the English translation of the eye-crossing technical stuff.
DeleteI kinda get it, I think - my math is stronger than my genetics.
DeleteI'd encountered the whole "universal ancestor" thing some time ago - if someone lived about a thousand years ago, and there is at least one attested descendant of that person who is currently alive, then it's a good bet that everyone is descended from that person. (!) At least within a common ethnicity...
What's cool is that one of those common ancestors can nonetheless have no genetic impact.
I can understand this most easily thinking of the purely matrilineal and patrilineal genes (mitochondria and Y chromosome, respectively). If you're a great (great great....) grandmother of everyone, but nobody is your daughter's (daughter's... child), then nobody (necessarily) has your mitochondrial DNA (unless you both share an even more distant great mother). Ditto with fathers's sons and the Y chromosome.
I don't remember enough of even basic genetics from high school bio to see the rest of it, but I can kinda get it...
I kinda get it too, but it makes my head hurt. How can we have NO genetic material from our common ancestor? Surely SOMETHING, some tiny scrap, would be passed down. If not, are we truly "related" to that ancestor?
DeleteGhost ancestors. We haz dem.
For each chromosome, it's a coin toss, right? You get the one from your mother or your father...
DeleteSo it's possible that a few generations down, "your" genes lose every toss which produces your surviving descendants.
I guess these guys calculated the odds and discovered it was in fact likely that there would be some of these ghost ancestors, given enough generations.