5,300-year-old “bow drill” rewrites the story of ancient Egyptian tools.

A new study reveals that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested — reshaping what we thought we knew about early engineering and craftsmanship.

Read more: https://omniletters.com/5300-year-old-bow-drill-rewrites-the-story-of-ancient-egyptian-tools/

#AncientEgypt #Archaeology #AncientTechnology #HistoryRewritten #Egyptology #AncientTools #Innovation #ArchaeologicalDiscovery #HumanHistory #EarlyEngineering

This wasn’t that long ago. Little girls shouldn’t need to be so brave. Grownass women shouldn’t be so hateful.

https://youtube.com/shorts/d-vmEqJii6o

#BlackHistory #HumanHistory #WhiteHistory

🌟🪨 Rewriting America’s origins! 50,000-year-old artifacts from South Carolina’s Topper Site—chipped stones & tools—push human presence back far beyond traditional timelines, challenging Clovis-first theory. Evidence mounts for ancient migrations! Read more: https://thedebrief.org/50000-year-old-artifacts-unearthed-at-controversial-archaeological-site-could-rewrite-the-early-prehistory-of-the-americas/

@goodnews

#GoodNews #AncientArtifacts #PrehistoricAmerica #ArchaeologyWin #HumanHistory

The role of goats in the world: Society, science, and sustainability

by Christopher D. Lu, October 2023

Highlights

• Goats are intertwined with evolution of human civilization and dispersal.
• Continuous scientific and technological development is crucial to sustain a viable goat sector as a force to alleviate food insecurity, malnutrition, and poverty.
• Role of goats are consequential to food and nutrition, economic, and environmental sustainability.

Excerpts: "Goats have been a part of evolution of human civilization tracing back to the Neolithic period. Goat milk and meat were exploited from the beginning of the middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B in the Near East (Helmer et al., 2007). Goat is one the first domesticated ungulates. Initial goat domestication has been documented in the highlands of Western Iran at 10,000 calibrated calendar years (YBP) ago (Zeder and Hesse, 2000, Hermes et al., 2020). Domestic goats (Capra hircus) is believed to be domesticated from wild bezoar populations (Capra aegagrus) (Zeder, 2008). Evidence in genetic markers suggested that multiple divergent ancient wild goat sources were domesticated in a dispersed process that resulted in genetically and geographically distinct Neolithic goat populations (Daly et al., 2018). A large-scale mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of wild and domestic goats suggested that area in Eastern Anatolia, Northern and Central Zagros to have been the domestication centers where almost all domestic goats were originally from (Naderi et al., 2008).

"Presence of high mtDNA diversity in Inner Asian Mountain Corridor and Central Kazakhstan suggested that herding communities living in montane ecosystems were drawing from genetically diverse goat populations in the Iranian Plateau (Hermes et al., 2020). Analyses of the nearly complete mitochondrial protein-encoding genes of the goat revealed that the timing of population expansion of goats occurred in the Late Pleistocene and predated the now believed the beginning of goat domestication, approximately 10,000 YBP (Nomura et al., 2013). Demographic analyses using Multiple Sequentially Markovian Coalescent suggested that the divergence times between modern Asian and European goat populations might have predated the archaeologically estimated domestication time (Zheng et al., 2020). These observations raised the possibility that goats might have been domesticated even earlier than 10,000 YBP.

"Domestication of goats has been closely related to human dispersal (Colli et al., 2018). Domesticated goats (Capra hircus) are at the subsistence core of pastoralist and farming communities around the world (Redding, 1984). From the Greek mythology of the half-human-half goat deity, Goat-knight Steed in the popular web series Critical Role, to Gogoat (Number 673 in Pokemon), goats have been part of history of human imagination. The roles of goats in the world are numerous, form entertainer, yoga enhancer, to food and fiber producer that has been an important part of life sustaining history of human civilization. The role of goats in nutrition, health, and food security is underscored by the continuous increase in global production and consumption of goat milk and meat."

Read more:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921448823001529

#SolarPunkSunday #DairyGoats
#GoatFarming #GoatCheese #GoatMeat #Sustainability #HumanHistory #AnimalProducts #Methane

Jawbones and other remains found in a Moroccan cave were dated to 773,000 years. They help close a gap in Africa’s fossil record of human origins.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/science/morocco-fossils-human-evolution.html

#Evolution #HumanHistory #Anthropology
@nytimes.com

Where New Year’s resolutions come from – NPR

Special Series, Word of the week

Why do we make New Year’s resolutions? A brief history of a long tradition

December 31, 20255:01 AM ET, Heard on All Things Considered

By Rachel Treisman 2-Minute Listen Transcript

Join the club — it’s several thousand years old.

New Year’s resolutions are a key part of how many people observe the holiday, as much of an annual tradition as the Times Square ball drop or a midnight champagne toast.

History

Why do so many people ring in the new year on Jan. 1?

The concept of taking stock and vowing to do better in the new year actually dates back centuries, though there wasn’t always a pithy name for it.

The word “resolution” entered English from Latin in the late 14th century, originally defined as the STEM-coded “process of reducing things into simpler forms.” Over time, it broadened to more figurative meanings, like solving conflicts and remaining steadfast. By the 19th century, it had also come to signify an expression of intent — including for the year ahead.

One of the first appearances of the phrase “new year resolutions” was in a Boston newspaper in 1813, according to Merriam-Webster.

And yet, I believe there are multitudes of people, accustomed to receive injunctions of new year resolutions, who will sin all the month of December, with a serious determination of beginning the new year with new resolutions and new behaviour, and with the full belief that they shall thus expiate and wipe away all their former faults — Unknown, 1813

But diary entries show that people had been practicing the concept well before then — like English writer Anne Halkett, who wrote a list of Bible-inspired pledges on Jan. 2, 1671, titled “Resolutions.”

Historians trace the phenomenon even farther back: to 2000 B.C., when Babylonians celebrated the new year with a 12-day springtime festival called Akitu. They marked the arrival of the farming season by crowning a new king, thanking deities for a bountiful harvest and, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, resolving to return neighbors’ borrowed agricultural equipment.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Where New Year’s resolutions come from : NPR