A quick bit of linguistic anthropology to round off your Wednesday afternoon. Greek linguist, Ioanna Sitaridou, located a population of people in Northeastern Turkish villages, near the Black Sea (or Pontus), speaking the Romeyka dialect of ancient Greek. Ancient Greek has not been in use for thousands of years, so a finding like this can give... Continue Reading →
Göbekli Tepe Temple in Turkey Predates the Pyramids of Giza
Just caught news of this temple from Newsweek and thought I'd share. I don't know much about it, in fact this is the first time I read about it. But I am asking my friend and colleague in Turkey about it... so I'll fill you in with any additional details as they come. The Newsweek article... Continue Reading →
I’m Off To Turkey Until September 20th!
I don't regularly make announcements about my life, but I wanted to let you that blogging here will be sparse because I'm leaving to Turkey to do some fieldwork. I should return in two weeks time, unless we find something that needs a bit more time or if the PKK and Turkish government have another... Continue Reading →
New Results On The Domestication Of Barley In Iran & Cattle In Turkey
Two papers have come out this week that refine our understanding of the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic Near East. The first is actually an advance copy, "Population Based Re-sequencing Reveals that the Flowering Time Adaptation of Cultivated Barley Originated East of the Fertile Crescent," published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, in which... Continue Reading →
Ancient mtDNA sheds some light on gender roles in Ancient Greece
Historians have for a long time thought ancient women of Greece were treated as property. That's because most of the written Grecian record came from Athens and wrote of women as inferior creatures, scarcely more intelligent than children. The little bit we know about the other Greek states was more often than not written by... Continue Reading →
Mutatons in VLDLR gene in the Quadrupeds from Turkey
Remember in 2005-06 when there was a whole lot of buzz about the quadrupedal siblings in Turkey? There first was this paper, "Cerebellar hypoplasia and quadrupedal locomotion in humans as a recessive trait mapping to chromosome 17p," and then there was this paper, "A new syndrome with quadrupedal gait, primitive speech, and severe mental retardation... Continue Reading →
500,000 year old Homo erectus from Turkey, and with Tuberculosis
EurekAlert is running a very interesting press release on the discovery of a 500,000 year old Homo erectus fossil recovered from Turkey. Apparently the fossil, a fragment of skull bone, shows lesions that the individual had tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a deadly infectious disease caused by multiple strains of mycobacteria. Because the mycobacteria have lost numerous... Continue Reading →
The “publicity blitz” of the Turkish quadrupeds
Considering there's somewhat of a wildfire of discussion on the group of siblings from Turkey, who walk on all fours both on this site and around the entire blogosphere... I thought I'd share with you John Hawks' critical view on it. He calls it a "publicity blitz " and states that we are all being... Continue Reading →
