Cyprus-Forum.com

[theodosia]

love his topic, will read the rest tomorrow.

[Get Real!]

World's Smallest Mammoth Discovered

So you finally found your hairy little penis Yialoser... I kept telling you to look in your sovrako!

how do you know its "hairy" did you see it?

I’m assuming it’s a fluffy little entity like his brain.

[Get Real!]

love his topic, will read the rest tomorrow.

Err, you won’t find any more references to penises... just the one.

[supporttheunderdog]

Ancient Mariners: Did Neanderthals Sail to Mediterranean?

Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 15 November 2012 Time: 02:13 PM ET

Neanderthals or other extinct human lineages may have sailed to the Mediterranean Islands long before previously thought. Here, an excavation at Akrotiri Aetokremnos, a site in Cyprus dating back to about 10,000 B.C. where pygmy hippo fossils were found.
CREDIT: Alan Simmons.

Neanderthals and other extinct human lineages might have been ancient mariners, venturing to the Mediterranean islands thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

This prehistoric seafaring could shed light on the mental capabilities of these lost relatives of modern humans, researchers say.

Scientists had thought the Mediterranean islands were first settled about 9,000 years ago by Neolithic or New Stone Age farmers and shepherds.

"On a lot of Mediterranean islands, you have these amazing remains from classical antiquity to study, so for many years people didn't even look for older sites," said archaeologist Alan Simmons at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

However, in the last 20 years or so, some evidence has surfaced for a human presence on these islands dating back immediately before the Neolithic. [Image Gallery: Our Closest Human Ancestor]

"There's still a lot to find in archaeology — you have to keep pushing the envelope in terms of conventional wisdom," Simmons said.

Neanderthal sailors?

For instance, obsidian from the Aegean island of Melos was uncovered at the mainland Greek coastal site of Franchthi cave in layers that were about 11,000 years old, while excavations on the southern coast of Cyprus revealed stone artifacts about 12,000 years old.

"We found evidence that human hunters may have helped drive pygmy hippos to extinction on Cyprus about 12,000 years ago," Simmons said. "This suggests that seafarers didn't need to have already domesticated plants and animals to go to these islands, which is a pretty complex set of tricks — they could have been hunter-gatherers."


A pygmy hippo skull found at Akrotiri Aetokremnos, a site in Cyprus dating back to about 10,000 B.C. Evidence suggests human hunters may have driven the animals to extinction on Cyprus.
CREDIT: Alan Simmons.

Recently, research has hinted that seafarers may have made their way out to the Mediterranean islands even earlier, long before the Neolithic, and not only to isles close to the mainland, but to more distant ones as well, such as Crete.

For instance, stone artifacts on the southern Ionian Islands hint at human sites there as early as 110,000 years ago. Investigators have also recovered quartz hand-axs, three-sided picks and stone cleavers from Crete that may date back about 170,000 years ago. The distance of Crete about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the mainland would have made such a sea voyage no small feat.

The exceedingly old age of these artifacts suggests the seafarers who made them might not even been modern humans, who originated between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Instead, they might have been Neanderthals or perhaps even Homo erectus.

"The whole idea of seafaring makes these extinct groups seem more human — they were going out to sea to explore places that were uninhabited," Simmons told LiveScience.

Dating artifacts

The problem with these ancient finds is determining their exact age. "They're well beyond the range of radiocarbon dating," Simmons said. Although researchers can also deduce the ages of artifacts based on the ages of surrounding materials, these artifacts weren't found in reliable contexts that could indisputably attest to their age, he added.

Although the idea that extinct human lineages possessed such advanced mental capabilities might be controversial, ancient seafaring has been seen elsewhere in the world. For instance, Australia was colonized at least 50,000 years ago, while fossils in Indonesia suggest that an extinct lineage of humans was seafaring as long ago as 1.1 million years.

"If the ancient finds in the Mediterranean can be verified, they will show that Homo erectus or Neanderthals or both had the skills and cognitive ability to build boats and navigate them," Simmons said.

Simmons detailed this research in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Science.
http://www.livescience.com/24810-neande ... anean.html

this article is factually incorrect and in some respects unsound.

Crete is not over 100 miles from the mainland by at the closest under 60. Island hopping the maximum pasage is under 20 miles.

Island hopping the longest passge to Melos is under 10 miles.

Break into bits and where the destination can probbaly be seen (at least from the jumping off point ) then the naviagtion is not so hard.

Likewise Australia is not so far from Papua new Guinea and with Islands in between that one is probably never out of sight of land. It is estimated that in going from Africa to Australia early Homo Sapiens would only need average a mile a day to to do the journey.

[yialousa1971]

First modern humans who settled in Sicily came from mainland Europe

Skeletons in Cave Reveal Mediterranean Secrets

Nov. 28, 2012 — Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.


Location of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites on the Ègadi Islands and in NW Sicily. These cave sites include: Grotta d’Oriente (1) and Grotta dell’Ucceria (2) on the island of Favignana; Grotta di Punta Capperi (3), Grotta di Cala dei Genovesi (3), Grotta Schiacciata (4) and Grotta di Cala Calcara (5) on the island of Levanzo; Grotta Maiorana (6), Riparo San Francesco (7), Grotta Martogna (8), Grotta Emiliana (9) and Grotta Maltese (9) on the mainland of Sicily. (Credit: Mannino et al. Origin and Diet of the Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers on the Mediterranean Island of Favignana (Ègadi Islands, Sicily). PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (11): e49802 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049802)

Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals the time when modern humans reached these islands. Mannino says, "The definitive peopling of Sicily by modern humans only occurred at the peak of the last ice age, around 19,000 -26,500 years ago, when sea levels were low enough to expose a land bridge between the island and the Italian peninsula."

The authors also analyzed the chemical composition of the human remains and found that these early settlers retained their hunter-gatherer lifestyles, relying on terrestrial animals rather than marine sources for meat. According to the study, despite living on islands during a time when sea level rise was rapid enough to change within a single human lifetime, these early settlers appear to have made little use of the marine resources available to them. The authors conclude, "These findings have crucial implications for studies of the role of seafood in the diet of Mediterranean hunter-gatherers."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 182945.htm

[supporttheunderdog]

interesting post: thanks.

[yialousa1971]

Researchers find evidence of early man in caves near Naples

Remains of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in same caves
04 December, 16:55




(ANSA) - Rome, December 4 - Researchers are poring over thousands of tiny artifacts - including a child's milk tooth - found in a southern Italian cave that appears to have been shared by both Neanderthals and early man.

The caves of Roccia San Sebastiano, which overlook the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Naples, are being combed for traces of those who once lived there.

On the slopes of the medieval fortress of Montis Dragonis, near Mondragone in Caserta province, researchers say they've uncovered layers of history, rich in early historical finds.

The discovery is telling them "a story of the evolution that goes from 40,000 to 20,000 years ago, when the cave was used for uninterrupted time by Neanderthals and Sapiens," says prehistoric archaeologist Carmine Collina.

Within perhaps the oldest layer, dated at between 40,000 to 39,000 years of age, researchers discovered the milk tooth of a Neanderthal child and the remains of many tools, such as tips and splinters, made by Neanderthals.

"The tooth was lost when the individual was of an age comparable to that of our children at 10 years," says paleoanthropologist Giorgio Manzi, from Rome's Sapienza University.

The age of the tooth is especially important because it helps to mark the final stage in the life of Neanderthals in Italy, and the arrivals of homo Sapiens, says archaeologist Marcello Piperno, also of Sapienza University.

Last year, researchers found two milk teeth discovered at the site of Grotta del Cavallo, in Italy's Puglia province.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA

http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format ... 0954796182

[yialousa1971]

Neanderthals May Have Sailed to Crete
Neanderthals, or even older Homo erectus might have sailed around the Mediterranean.

By Jennifer Viegas
Thu Nov 15, 2012 02:00 PM ET

Neanderthals, or even older Homo erectus("Upright Man") might have sailed around the Mediterranean, stopping at islands such as Crete and Cyprus, new evidence suggests.

The evidence suggests that these hominid species had considerable seafaring and cognitive skills.

"They had to have had boats of some sort; unlikely they swam," said Alan Simmons, lead author of a study about the find in this week's Science. "Many of the islands had no land-bridges, thus they must have had the cognitive ability to both build boats and know how to navigate them."

Simmons, a professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, added that there is no direct evidence for boats dating back to over 100,000 years ago. If they were built then, the wood or other natural materials likely eroded. Instead, other clues hint that modern humans may not have been the first to set foot on Mediterranean islands.

On Crete, for example, tools such as quartz hand-axes, picks and cleavers are associated with deposits that may date to 170,000 years ago. Previously, this island, as well as Cyprus, was thought to have first been colonized about 9,000 years ago by late Neolithic agriculturalists with domesticated resources.

Excavations at an Akrotiri site on Cyprus have turned up ancient thumbnail scrapers and other tools dating to beyond 9,000 years ago. There is also a huge assembly of fossils for a dwarf pygmy hippopotamus, which might have been good eats for the earlier islanders. It's possible they hunted the small, plump animal to extinction.

"Conventional wisdom used to be that none of these islands had too much settlement prior to the Neolithic because the islands were too impoverished to have supported permanent occupation," Simmons said. "This likely is untrue. Hunters and gatherers can be pretty creative."

Permanent settlements, however, appear to have happened after these suspected first forays into the islands.

Other evidence outside of the Mediterranean supports that pre-Neolithic humans could sail. Simmons, for instance, points out that these individuals "must have been able to cross substantial expanses of sea to reach Australia by at least 50,000 years ago."

"Additionally," he continued, "findings from the Indonesian Wallacea islands suggest the presence of hominins as early as 1.1 million years ago on Flores Island."

Modern humans today quibble about which culture was the first to discover this or that country, but the truth is that many lands were probably first discovered and/or settled by hominid species that were not Homo sapiens.

As for what happened when modern humans arrived, it is possible that the different populations were not entirely put off by each other.

"If the Crete and likely Homo erectus or the other Ionian (Neanderthal) evidence is ultimately verified, it is possible that some mating could have occurred with later modern humans emerging from Africa, but this likely occurred around 100,000 years ago," Simmons said, adding that evidence for island occupation at that particular time is scant.

Bernard Knapp, a professor at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, told Discovery News, "The very earliest documented presence of people on these (Mediterranean) islands should be termed 'exploitation.' Once people came to stay, we should speak of 'permanent settlement.' 'Colonization' is a loaded term."

Knapp hopes that future research will lead to "some level of secure chonometric dating, beyond tool typologies" to help clarify when exactly the islands were first discovered.

Thomas Strasser, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Providence College, told Discovery that he believes "future research will confirm recent discoveries that hominids reached the Mediterranean islands when they first left Africa. I believe the Homo erectus radiation out of Africa was both terrestrial and maritime."

http://news.discovery.com/history/neand ... ommentsDiv

[yialousa1971]

The Greek Cimmerian Bosporian kingdom



Svetlana make sure you watch this.

[yialousa1971]

The greatest Greek women from antiquity untill medieval times