Tea at Trianon: New Type of Early Human

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

Saturday, July 17, 2021

New Type of Early Human

From RTE:

The fossils date to between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago, and the team believes the Nesher Ramla type would have overlapped with Homo sapiens, the lineage of modern humans.

"We had never imagined that alongside Homo sapiens, archaic Homo roamed the area so late in human history," lead archaeologist Yossi Zaidner said.

"The morphology of the Nesher Ramla humans shares features with both Neanderthals... and archaic Homo," the researchers said in a statement.

"At the same time, this type of Homo is very unlike modern humans -- displaying a completely different skull structure, no chin and very large teeth."

Along with the human remains, the dig uncovered large quantities of animal bones as well as stone tools.

"The archaeological finds associated with human fossils show that 'Nesher Ramla Homo' possessed advanced stone-tool production technologies and most likely interacted with the local Homo sapiens," Mr Zaidner said.

The researchers suggested that some fossils previously discovered in Israel dating back as far as 400,000 years could belong to the same prehistoric human type.

Dentist and anthropologist Rachel Sarig of Tel Aviv University said that previously researchers had tried to ascribe the older bones to known human groups like Homo sapiens or Neanderthals.

"But now we say: No. This is a group in itself, with distinct features and characteristics," she said.

The Israeli researchers make the still controversial claim that the discovery of a new archaic Homo group in the Middle East challenges accepted ideas that Neanderthals originated in Europe.

"Before these new findings, most researchers believed the Neanderthals to be a 'European story', in which small groups of Neanderthals were forced to migrate southwards to escape the spreading glaciers," Tel Aviv University's Israel Hershkovitz said. (Read more.)