Tea at Trianon: The Enigmatic Denisovans

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 26, 2019

The Enigmatic Denisovans

From Gizmodo:

A pinky finger bone, some teeth, and a lower jaw. That’s all the physical evidence we have of the mysterious Denisovans, an extinct group of hominins closely related to the Neanderthals. Remarkable new research offers a physical reconstruction of the Denisovans based on genetic evidence, providing our first potential glimpse of this ancient human species.

A paper published today in Cell has accomplished the seemingly impossible: a reconstruction of Denisovan anatomy using genetic information. The new work, co-authored by archaeogeneticists Liran Carmel and David Gokhman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggests the Denisovans possessed several distinguishing physical characteristics that set them apart from both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, including a broad, projecting face, an exceptionally weak chin, and wide hips.

“The paper by Gokhman and colleagues is a pioneering piece of research, which at first glance seems almost like science fiction,” Chris Stringer, a physical anthropologist from the Natural History Museum in London who wasn’t involved with the new research, wrote in an email to Gizmodo. “This is exciting work, pushing the boundaries of what can be gleaned from ancient genomes.”
Science fiction is right. Very little is known about Denisovan anatomy owing to the paltry amount of available physical evidence. (Read more.)