BARRIERA CORALLINA della GROENLANDIA

Coral reef discovered off Greenland 



By sheer coincidence, Canadian researchers have discovered a reef of living cold-water corals in southern Greenland. PhD student Helle Jørgensbye from DTU in Denmark has been investigating the reef further 

Coral from the newly discovered reef off Greenland [Credit: Bedford Institute of Oceanography] 

The first ever Greenlandic reef is located in southwest Greenland and was formed by cold-water corals with hard limestone skeletons. There are several species of coral in Greenland, but this is the first time that an actual reef has been found. In the tropics, reefs are popular tourist destination for divers, but there is little prospect of Greenland becoming a similar diving hotspot. The newly discovered living reef is located off Cape Desolation south of Ivittuut, and lies at a depth of 900 metres in a spot with very strong currents, making it difficult to reach. This also means that so far little is known about the reef itself and what lives on it The reef was discovered by accident when a Canadian research vessel needed to take some water samples. When the ship sent the measuring instruments down to a depth of 900 metres, they came back up completely smashed. Fortunately there were several pieces of broken coral branches on the instrument that showed what was responsible. "At first the researchers were swearing and cursing at the smashed equipment and were just about to throw the pieces of coral back into the sea, when luckily they realized what they were holding," says PhD student Helle Jørgensbye, DTU Aqua, who does research into life at the bottom of the west Greenland waters. The first photos Another Canadian research vessel returned to the site last fall to try and lower a camera down onto the reef to explore it close up. The coral reef is on the continental shelf itself where it is very steep and where there are strong currents. "We got some photos eventually, although we almost lost them at the bottom of the ocean as the camera got stuck fast somewhere down in the depths. Luckily we managed to get it loose again and back up to the surface," says Helle Jørgensbye. "It's been known for many years that coral reefs have existed in Norway and Iceland and there is a lot of research on the Norwegian reefs, but not a great deal is known about Greenland. In Norway, the reefs grow up to 30 metres high and several kilometres long. The great Norwegian reefs are over 8,000 years old, which means that they probably started to grow after the ice disappeared after the last ice age. The Greenlandic reef is probably smaller, and we still don't know how old it is," says Helle Jørgensbye, expressing the hope that at some point this will be investigated more closely. According to Helle Jørgensbye, finding a coral reef in southern Greenland was not entirely unexpected: "There are coral reefs in the countries around Greenland and the effect of the Gulf Stream, which reaches the west coast, means that the sea temperature get up to about 4 degrees, which is warm enough for corals to thrive. In addition to the, for Greenland, comparatively warm temperature, a coral reef also needs strong currents. Both these conditions can be found in southern Greenland," she says. Coral reefs are important areas for fish because it provides masses of food and lots of hiding places for fish fry. The Greenlandic reef is formed from Lophelia stoney corals. Other species of coral are also found in many parts of the west coast. However, they are all 'stand-alone' corals and do not form reefs. The identification of the Lophelia specimen was carried out by Professor Ole Tendal from Denmark's Natural History Museum. 
Cold Water Corals 
Normally, coral reefs are associated with the tropics, but they are also found in cold waters. While the tropical coral reefs depend on light to survive, cold-water coral reefs live in total darkness, at depths the sun's rays never penetrate. Nevertheless, they have many colourful residents and many different kinds of organisms living in them. Coral reefs are built up of thousands of small coral animals that live in a large colony which forms a common limestone skeleton. While hot water corals obtain some of the energy they need to grow from the light-dependent green algae which live in the corals, cold water coral get all their nourishment from small animals, which they catch. Thus, they are not dependent on light and can live in very deep water 

Source: Technical University of Denmark (DTU) [January 28, 2014]

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Tempio di Minerva a Milano

Trovati i resti romani di un tempio sotto la 

Cattedrale (Duomo ) di Milano . 

Si tratta dei resti di un tempio pagano, che con ogni probabilità era dedicato alla Dea Minerva.
L'annuncio è stato dato mercoledì scorso, nel corso della presentazione di altri ritrovamenti archeologici, tra cui i resti dell'antico Forum mediolanum, sito nelle fondamenta della Pinacolteca Ambrosiana e della Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
Gli scavi archeologici volti a disseppellire i resti della grande città che - a partire dal 292 dopo Cristo - fu la capitale dell'Impero Romano d'Occidente per più di un secolo, proseguono, malgrado la difficoltà relativa alla carenza di fondi.
Fino ad oggi, parte della pavimentazione, ricavata da quella che si definisce 'pietra di Verona', è stata ridata alla luce. Si è anche scoperta la base di una sezione di arcata. Si calcola che nella sua interezza il Foro occupasse una superficie di 166 per 55 metri, cioé poco meno di un ettaro. Nell'attesa di potere estendere gli scavi, si è proceduto ad allestire un ingresso laterale nell'edificio, in modo da permettere le visite del pubblico.
I lavori sono stati condotti a mezzo i fondi della Cariplo e della Regione Lombardia e costituiscono parte del progetto di un 'percorso Archeologico Milanese' che dovrà essere pronto per la 'Milano Expo' del 2015

 Source: ANSA [January 29, 2014]

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BACCO IN SARDEGNA

L’anatolico Bacco in Sardegna

by REDAZIONEROSEBUD • 30 JANUARY 2014

di Massimo Pittau. Pure il culto di un’altra divinità molto famosa, anch’essa di origine anatolica e assai probabilmente lidia, risulta entrato nella Sardegna antica e addirittura allunga le sue propaggini nella Sardegna attuale, Bacco, il dio del vino. Oltre che sicuri ritrovamenti archeologici relativi a questo dio\1\, molto notevole è in Sardegna la venerazione di uno strano santo cristiano Bakis (latinizzato in Bachisius), del quale non si trova alcuna notizia nel Martyrologium Romanum. Esso dovrebbe corrispondere a uno dei tre santi che dalla Bibliotheca Sanctorum sono ricordati col nome di Bacco e che sarà arrivato in Sardegna durante la dominazione bizantina\2\. Senonché, per ragioni linguistiche e per ragioni etnografiche si intravede abbastanza chiaramente che la figura e il nome di questo santo cristiano si sono inseriti e fusi sincretisticamente con quelli del precedente dio pagano del vino.

Sul piano linguistico infatti c’è da precisare che il nome sardo Bakis non corrisponde esattamente alla forma greca né a quella latina del nome di Bacco, mentre corrisponde meglio alla forma lidiaBaki-. Ed anche i suoi diminutivi sardi Bakilli, Baghilli, Bakkillodde corrispondono esattamente al lidio bakillis = «bacchico», con un suffisso che sicuramente è anche tirrenico e protosardo.

Sul piano etnografico innanzi tutto molto notevoli e perfino stupefacenti sono alcune raffigurazioni che si trovano nella chiesa di Bolotana (NU) dedicata al suo patrono santu Bakis e terminata appena nel 1594: sulla facciata esterna e anche nei capitelli dei pilastri interni si trovano in bassorilievo figure di danzatori, uomini e donne, e i maschi hanno i genitali scoperti.

Oltre a ciò, al culto di santu Bachis è connessa la credenza di donne che sarebbero possedute o invasate dal santo e come tali sarebbero considerate e visitate dalle altre donne con devozione; ed è un ricordo abbastanza evidente delle Baccanti o Menadi possedute o invasate dal dio Bacco\3\.

Ma ancora più interessante e quasi incredibile era un’usanza documentata fino a poco più di 50 fa in alcuni villaggi della Barbagia (Olzai e Mamoiada): in occasione dell’impianto di una nuova vigna, al quale venivano invitati tutti i parenti e amici del padrone, costui, alla fine della giornata di lavoro, veniva preso di forza e sottoposto anche a grossolani scherzi a carico dei genitali. Dopo, legato strettamente e adornato di edera, di foglie di altre piante e di fiori campestri, veniva trascinato a casa sua, dove la moglie procedeva al “riscatto del prigioniero” con una prima offerta di vino e di dolci ai sequestratori. La festa poi terminava con una abbondante cena fino a tarda notte con canti e risa. Ebbene, in questa usanza è facile trovare stringenti connessioni col racconto del rapimento del giovane Bacco da parte di pirati “tirreni” (non si trascuri questo particolare!), racconto tramandato dallo pseudo-omerico Inno a Bacco, nel quale si ha pure la più antica citazione dei Tirreni\4\. Anche in questo racconto infatti risulta che da una parte Bacco viene preso a forza e legato strettamente all’albero della nave, dall’altra i pirati tirreni procedono al rapimento in vista di un “riscatto” da chiedere ai genitori del rapito. La sua liberazione poi avviene con una serie di prodigi, quando i legami che lo avvincono all’albero della nave si mutano in tralci di vite e di edera e in fiori\5\.

Infine è notevole un bronzetto nuragico rinvenuto ad Ittiri (SS) che raffigura un individuo col fallo eretto (itifallico) e che suona il flauto doppio, di probabile origine lidia, simile alle launeddas sarde, l’antichissimo flauto triplice: si tratta chiaramente di uno dei Satiri o Sileni, pur’essi itifallici e suonatori di flauti, che facevano parte del corteo di Bacco. La presenza di questi esseri mitologici nella Sardegna antica è probabilmente confermata anche dal toponimo odierno Silenu di Ploaghe (SS)\6\.

Note

\1\ Cfr. Spano G., Culto di Bacco in Sardegna, nel «Bullettino Archeologico Sardo», 1987, III, pgg. 97-100. È notevole e significativo che, sia pure con riferimento all’epoca romana, siano state trovate in Sardegna ben 9 statuine di Bacco e 3 di Baccanti; cfr. Meloni P., La Sardegna Romana, Sassari 1990, II ediz., pg. 395.

\2\ Cfr. Biblioteca Sanctorum, Roma 1962, II, pg. 687; Socii Bollandiani, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina, Bruxelles 1900-1901; Idem, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, 1968. E poiEnciclopedia Cattolica, Roma 1949, s. v.; De Felice Emidio, I nomi degli Italiani, Venezia 1982, pg. 271; Idem, Dizionario dei Nomi Italiani, Milano 1986, pg 84, s. v. Bachisio.

\3\ Si veda l’importante studio di Italo Bussa dedicato a santu Bakis nei “Quaderni Bolotanesi”, num. 37, pgg. 114-149, del quale però io non condivido tutte le conclusioni.

\4\ Inno a Bacco, 7, 8 (pg. 66 dell’edizione di A. Baumeister).

\5\ Cfr. LISNE 43-44; LELN 66-70.

\6\ Cfr. Arias P. E., Satiri e Sileni, nell’«Enciclopedia dell’Arte antica classica e orientale», Roma 1966, vol. VII; Pittau M., LELN, pgg. 61-63.***

***Estratto dall’opera e-book di Massimo Pittau, Il dominio sui mari dei Popoli Tirreni (Sardi-Nuragici Pelasgi Etruschi) , Ipazia Books, 2013, Amazon.

Immagine: Bacco rappresentato da Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Iscrizione Achemenide a Persepoli

Achaemenid inscription found in Iran's Perspolis 


Archaeologists said they have discovered pieces of a stone inscription belonging to an ancient Achaemenid emperor in Persepolis in Iran’s Southern province of Fars. 


Achaemenid inscription in the National Archaeological Museum, Tehran [Credit: FarsNews] 

The inscription was unearthed at the Palace of Xerxes King (Khashayar Shah) who reigned around 520 BCE. 
A team of experts is trying to attach the pieces together to decipher the text of inscription, said the team leader Professor Gian Pietro Basello of the University of Naples, Italy. Basello is a specialist in historical philology of Iranian languages of the "L’Orientale." He also claimed that he has found a few spelling mistakes in the inscriptions placed in the ruins of Persepolis. “The texts of the inscriptions were written by people with a high level of literacy, but the mistakes happened when the engravers cut the texts into the stones," said Basello’s colleague, Adriano V. Rossi, during a seminar held in the Southern Iranian city of Shiraz. A new review of the royal Achaemenid inscriptions discovered in Persepolis was presented at the seminar. 
Established by Cyrus the Great, Achaemenid Empire was the first Persian Empire ruled in Western and Central Asia. One of the Achaemenid kings, Darius I (518 BCE), built Persepolis as the capital of the Empire. The importance and quality of the monumental ruins make it a unique archaeological site. 

Source: Fars News [January 29, 2014]

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Lascito genetico dell'Uomo di Neanderthal

Credo che lo studio del genoma umano sia affascinante in ciascuno dei suoi aspetti. Oggi si stanno ottenendo risultati impensabili solo fino a qualche anno fa. Si sono scoperti alcuni tratti umani moderni che derivano sicuramente dal Neanderthal (più probabilmente dall'interbreeding fra le due specie, quella dell'uomo anatomicamente moderno H.Sapiens Sapiens, e il Neanderthal, H Sapiens). Alcuni tratti avevano un significato evolutivamente positivo rispetto all'ambiente, altri negativo. Questi ultimi sono stati eliminati dalla selezione. Sapiens (che era 'uscito dall'Africa' molto prima)  e Sapiens Sapiens erano due specie affini, ma già diverse  tra loro a causa della distanza temporale di circa 500.000 anni, che le avevano portati a differenziarsi al limite dell'infertilità degli ibridi. Molte altre notizie seguiranno!

The Neanderthals' genetic legacy 


Remnants of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans are associated with genes affecting type 2 diabetes, Crohn's disease, lupus, biliary cirrhosis and smoking behavior. 

They also concentrate in genes that influence skin and hair characteristics. At the same time, Neanderthal DNA is conspicuously low in regions of the X chromosome and testes-specific genes. 

Many of the Neanderthal genes that live on in people today are involved in making keratin, a protein used in skin, hair and nails [Credit: Jose A Astor/Alamy] 

The research, led by Harvard Medical School geneticists and published Jan. 29 in Nature, suggests ways in which genetic material inherited from Neanderthals has proven both adaptive and maladaptive for modern humans. (A related paper by a separate team was published concurrently in Science.) "Now that we can estimate the probability that a particular genetic variant arose from Neanderthals, we can begin to understand how that inherited DNA affects us," said David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS and senior author of the paper. "We may also learn more about what Neanderthals themselves were like." In the past few years, studies by groups including Reich's have revealed that present-day people of non-African ancestry trace an average of about 2 percent of their genomes to Neanderthals -- a legacy of interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals that the team previously showed occurred between 40,000 to 80,000 years ago. 

(Indigenous Africans have little or no Neanderthal DNA because their ancestors did not breed with Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia.) 

Several teams have since been able to flag Neanderthal DNA at certain locations in the non-African human genome, but until now, there was no survey of Neanderthal ancestry across the genome and little understanding of the biological significance of that genetic heritage. "The story of early human evolution is captivating in itself, yet it also has far-reaching implications for understanding the organization of the modern human genome," said Irene A. Eckstrand of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partially funded the research. "Every piece of this story that we uncover tells us more about our ancestors' genetic contributions to modern human health and disease." Deserts and Oases Reich and colleagues -- including Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany -- analyzed genetic variants in 846 people of non-African heritage, 176 people from sub-Saharan Africa, and a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal whose high-quality genome sequence the team published in 2013. 

View of the cave in Siberia where the Neanderthal was found whose DNA was analyzed in the current study [Credit: Bence Viola] 

The most powerful information the researchers used to determine whether a gene variant came from a Neanderthal was if the variant appeared in some non-Africans and the Neanderthal but not in the sub-Saharan Africans. Using this and other types of information, the team found that some areas of the modern non-African human genome were rich in Neanderthal DNA, which may have been helpful for human survival, while other areas were more like "deserts" with far less Neanderthal ancestry than average. The barren areas were the "most exciting" finding, said first author Sriram Sankararaman of HMS and the Broad Institute. "It suggests the introduction of some of these Neanderthal mutations was harmful to the ancestors of non-Africans and that these mutations were later removed by the action of natural selection." The team showed that the areas with reduced Neanderthal ancestry tend to cluster in two parts of our genomes: genes that are most active in the male germline (the testes) and genes on the X chromosome. 

This pattern has been linked in many animals to a phenomenon known as hybrid infertility, where the offspring of a male from one subspecies and a female from another have low or no fertility. "This suggests that when ancient humans met and mixed with Neanderthals, the two species were at the edge of biological incompatibility," said Reich, who is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Present-day human populations, which can be separated from one another by as much as 100,000 years (such as West Africans and Europeans), are fully compatible with no evidence of increased male infertility. In contrast, ancient human and Neanderthal populations apparently faced interbreeding challenges after 500,000 years of evolutionary separation. "It is fascinating that these types of problems could arise over that short a time scale," Reich said. A Lasting Heritage The team also measured how Neanderthal DNA present in human genomes today affects keratin production and disease risk. Neanderthal ancestry is increased in genes affecting keratin filaments. This fibrous protein lends toughness to skin, hair and nails and can be beneficial in colder environments by providing thicker insulation, said Reich. "It's tempting to think that Neanderthals were already adapted to the non-African environment and provided this genetic benefit to humans," he speculated. The researchers also showed that nine previously identified human genetic variants known to be associated with specific traits likely came from Neanderthals. These variants affect diseases related to immune function and also some behaviors, such as the ability to stop smoking. The team expects that more variants will be found to have Neanderthal origins. The team has already begun trying to improve their human genome ancestry results by analyzing multiple Neanderthals instead of one. Together with colleagues in Britain, they also have developed a test that can detect most of the approximately 100,000 mutations of Neanderthal origin they discovered in people of European ancestry; they are conducting an analysis in a biobank containing genetic data from half a million Britons. "I expect that this study will result in a better and more systematic understanding of how Neanderthal ancestry affects variation in human traits today," said Sankararaman. As another next step, the team is studying genome sequences from people from Papua New Guinea to build a database of genetic variants that can be compared to those of Denisovans, a third population of ancient humans that left most of its genetic traces in Oceania but little in mainland Eurasia. This research was supported by the Presidential Innovation Fund of the Max Planck Society, NSF HOMINID grant 1032255, NIH grant GM100233 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

Author: Stephanie Dutchen 

| Source: Harvard Medical School [January 29, 2014]

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Il mercato, il fiume, il tempio.

Questo bel resoconto di Sylvia Poggioli rende conto del laborioso scavo che ha prodotto uno dei più antichi (forse il primo!) tempio mai costruito in Roma, e forse prima ancora che il semplice mercato sul fiume si trasformasse davvero in una città: il Tempio di Fortuna, dea che doveva presiedere alla regolarità ed al buon esito degli scambi e dei commerci.

Lo scavo ha prodotto l'esposizione (durata solo per tre gironi, per motivi di sicurezza) delle fondamenta del tempio, che si trovano al di sotto del livello dell'acqua del fiume.

Oltre a mostrare la grande sovrapposizione di strati (i romani appiattirono le ripide colline e riempirono le profonde valli della zona: solo così riuscirono a costruire la loro città), si è così dimostrato che il cosrso del fiume fu anticamente deviato: esso originalmente scorreva molto vicino all'area della chiesa medioevale di Sant'Omobono.

Oldest Roman temple to date unearthed in Rome 


Archaeologists excavating a site in central Rome say they've uncovered what may be oldest known temple from Roman antiquity. 

Excavation at the Sant'Omobono site in central Rome has provided evidence of early Romans efforts to transform the landscape of their city [Credit: Sylvia Poggioli/NPR]

 Along the way, they've also discovered how much the early Romans intervened to shape their urban environment. And the dig has been particularly challenging because the temple lies below the water table. At the foot Capitoline Hill in the center of Rome, stands the Medieval Sant'Omobono church. Today, the Tiber River is about a hundred yards away. 

But when the city was being created, around the 7th century B.C., it flowed close to where the church now stands, where a bend in the river provided a natural harbor for merchant ships. "And here they decide to create a temple," says Nic Terrenato, who teaches classical archaeology at the University of Michigan and is co-director of the Sant'Omobono excavation project. "At this point Rome is trading already as far afield as Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt," he says. "So they build this temple, which is going to be one of the first things the traders see when they pull into the harbor of Rome." 

The temple – the foundations of which are below the water line — was probably dedicated to the goddess Fortuna. The archaeological team discovered large quantities of votive offerings such as miniature versions of drinking vessels, left not by locals but by foreign traders. 

The Sant'Omobono excavation team dug a 15-foot reinforced hole below the water line [Credit: Sylvia Poggioli/NPR] 

In antiquity, Terrenato says, temples built on harbors had the function of fostering mutual trust between locals and traders. "It's like a free trade zone and the goddess is supposed to guarantee the fairness of the trade," he says. The discovery of the archaic temple's existence came after years of fundraising in Italy and in the U.S., and it required sophisticated technological know-how. Last summer, an ambitious joint project of the University of Michigan and Rome archaeology officials finally got under way. 

Archaeologist Albert Ammerman, who has excavated numerous sites in Rome, calls it a "mission impossible." "They're digging at the very bottom of this trench, at about 7 and a half feet below the water," he says. The team used heavy machinery to drill a rectangular hole 15 feet deep. A crane lowered large sheets of metal to keep back the soggy soil. Terrenato says the archaeologists had to fight claustrophobia to be able to spend as much as 8 hours a day at the bottom of that trench. 

The foundation of the temple of Fortuna, which sits below the water line, was visible for only three days during the excavation [Credit: Sylvia Poggioli/NPR] 

"You're in a very deep hole, and although you know in theory that the sheeting is going to hold everything up, there is a primal part of your brain that tells you to get out of there, if the walls come closing in there's not going to be any way out for you," he says. 
The foundations of the temple of Fortuna were visible for only three days — for security reasons, the team could not leave the trench open and it had to be filled up again. But digging through the city's many layers, archaeologists have learned a lot: Early Rome — a city of high hills and deep valleys prone to flooding — soon became one large landfill as the founders chopped off hilltops, and dumped them into lowlands to try to make the city flatter and drier. And as the city grew layer by layer and more temples were built, Ammerman, the archaeologist says, the Romans encroached on their river, diverting the original waterway. "It's actually not totally natural, it's the humans are actually changing the river to the way it is here," he says. "They had the ability to realize that to make their city go, they have to transform the landscape." As they figured how to cope with their surroundings, the early Romans developed sophisticated engineering and administrative skills and a collective ability to deal with their challenging environment. It's discoveries like these, Ammerman says, that debunk the idealized image of ancient Rome — the immutable and eternal city — as a place that never changed. 

Author: Sylvia Poggoli | Source: NPR [January 29, 2014]

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Pioveva, quel giorno...

Qualcuno asserisce che: "pioveva, quando i Shardana conquistarono Ugarit"...

A parte l'umorismo intrinseco della frase (come può un archeologo, oppure uno storico, o chiunque altro - se è per questo - risalire ad un dettaglio insieme così liricamente preciso e così meravigliosamente insignificante?!), già Claude Schaeffer (il primo scavatore di Ugarit, uno dei migliori archeologi francesi del suo tempo) aveva compreso che le cose non erano affatto andate così, quando sostenne - per primo - che "Ugarit non era caduta per un assedio, bensì per un terremoto". Non poté provarlo. Fu ridicolizzato.

Gli è stata finalmente resa ragione, con gli studi tecnologici di oggi: Ugarit cadde davvero per un maremoto ed un terremoto (non sappiamo dire se piovesse, ma invero ce ne curiamo davvero poco!). 

Cartina 'copia e incolla' illustrante i presunti movimenti di 'invasione, distruzione e ritorno a casa' dei fantomatici 'Popoli del Mare'. 
Ovviamente, le zone di distruzione si trovano esattamente sopra o comunque mai lontano dalle linee di faglia della zona, tra le più attive nel mondo: la faglia Nord-Anatolica, la faglia del Mar Morto, la faglia Egea, la faglia degli Zagros , etc.

Solo in seguito, le popolazioni circostanti (forse proprio gli 'Aramei' della buffa cartina che indica ancora tutta la finta 'epopea' degli inesistenti 'Popoli del Mare'!) attaccarono e depredarono ciò che ne restava, senza la necessità di un vero assedio, perché le mura che la difendevano erano crollate e la popolazione era in un comprensibile stato di abbattimento e di terrore. Ras Shamra, la 'collina dei finocchi' restò così deserta e non fu più ricostruita: eppure era stata una città stato potentissima! L'archeologia mostra tracce di abbandono per lunghissimo tempo.
Negli episodi del Collasso della fine dell'Età del Bronzo ci furono, pertanto, episodi di 'guerra', se proprio vogliamo puntualizzare. 
Ma certamente non si trattò del baldanzoso avanzare di un avventuroso esercito invincibile con le armature scintillanti sotto il sole! Questa è un immagine fumettistica.
Fu, piuttosto, il molto più realistico tentativo di tutti gli esseri viventi per sopravvivere ad una intera serie di orribili eventi naturali concatenati perfidamente e tutti più grandi di loro.
Quel tentativo fu condotto in ogni modo possibile ai profughi spaventati: fuggendo, cercando una nuova terra, strisciando, se necessario combattendo e morendo: per i propri figli, se non per sé.

E sono certo che quegli uomini e quelle donne - se solo per ipotesi potessero - desidererebbero essere ricordati per quello che realmente furono: testardi, tenaci, irriducibili combattenti della sopravvivenza, semplici ed umili persone normali, ma vere e realmente esistenti, con negli occhi il sogno sfavillante di una terra promessa per sé e per i propri figli. Molti perirono e solo alcuni ebbero successo: e i loro discendenti sono qui tra noi, oggi.

Non meritano di essere ricordati come ridicoli ed insignificanti super-eroi da fumetti: non meritano questa offesa, solo per promuovere qualche scribacchino da due centesimi che desidera strumentalizzare i desideri di un pubblico bambino. Magari per vincere un'elezione agitando un simbolo identitario.

Un'area cerebrale legata alla cognizione

Brain area

unique to humans 

linked to cognitive powers 

Oxford University researchers have identified an area of the human brain that appears unlike anything in the brains of some of our closest relatives. 

(A) The right vlFC ROI. Dorsally it included the inferior frontal sulcus and, more posteriorly, it included PMv; anteriorly it was bound by the paracingulate sulcus and ventrally by the lateral orbital sulcus and the border between the dorsal insula and the opercular cortex. (B) A schematic depiction of the result of the 12 cluster parcellation solution using an iterative parcellation approach. We subdivided PMv into ventral and dorsal regions (6v and 6r, purple and black). We delineated the IFJ area (blue) and areas 44d (gray) and 44v (red) in lateral pars opercularis. More anteriorly, we delineated areas 45 (orange) in the pars triangularis and adjacent operculum and IFS (green) in the inferior frontal sulcus and dorsal pars triangularis. We found area 12/47 in the pars orbitalis (light blue) and area Op (bright yellow) in the deep frontal operculum. We also identified area 46 (yellow), and lateral and medial frontal pole regions (FPl and FPm, ruby colored and pink) [Credit: Neuron, Neubert et al.] 

The brain area pinpointed is known to be intimately involved in some of the most advanced planning and decision-making processes that we think of as being especially human. 'We tend to think that being able to plan into the future, be flexible in our approach and learn from others are things that are particularly impressive about humans,' says senior researcher Professor Matthew Rushworth of Oxford University's Department of Experimental Psychology. 'We've identified an area of the brain that appears to be uniquely human and is likely to have something to do with these cognitive powers.' MRI imaging of 25 adult volunteers was used to identify key components in the an area of the human brain called the ventrolateral frontal cortex. The study also investigated how these components were connected up with other brain areas. The results were then compared with equivalent MRI data from 25 macaque monkeys. The ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the brain is involved in many of the highest aspects of cognition and language, and is only present in humans and other primates. Some parts are implicated in psychiatric conditions like ADHD, drug addiction or compulsive behaviour disorders. Language is affected when other parts are damaged after stroke or neurodegenerative disease. A better understanding of the neural connections and networks involved should help the understanding of changes in the brain that go along with these conditions. The Oxford University researchers report their findings in the science journal Neuron. They were funded by the UK Medical Research Council. Professor Rushworth explains: 'The brain is a mosaic of interlinked areas. We wanted to look at this very important region of the frontal part of the brain and see how many tiles there are and where they are placed. 'We also looked at the connections of each tile – how they are wired up to the rest of the brain – as it is these connections that determine the information that can reach that component part and the influence that part can have on other brain regions.' From the MRI data, the researchers were able to divide the human ventrolateral frontal cortex into 12 areas that were consistent across all the individuals. 'Each of these 12 areas has its own pattern of connections with the rest of the brain, a sort of "neural fingerprint", telling us it is doing something unique,' says Professor Rushworth. The researchers were then able to compare the 12 areas in the human brain region with the organisation of the monkey prefrontal cortex. Overall they were very similar, with 11 of the 12 areas being found in both species and being connected up to other brain areas in very similar ways. However, one area of the human ventrolateral frontal cortex had no equivalent in the macaque – an area called the lateral frontal pole prefrontal cortex. 'We have established an area in human frontal cortex which does not seem to have an equivalent in the monkey at all,' says first author Franz-Xaver Neubert of Oxford University. 'This area has been identified with strategic planning and decision making as well as "multi-tasking".' The Oxford research group also found that the auditory parts of the brain were very well connected with the human prefrontal cortex, but much less so in the macaque. The researchers suggest this may be critical for our ability to understand and generate speech. 

Source: Oxford University [January 28, 2014]

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Trovati 'nuovi' poemi di Saffo

Lost poems of Greek poetess Sappho found 

Only a few poems of the Greek poetess Sappho’s work have survived but thanks to a leading scholar’s investigation two new works have just been recovered—and gives experts hope to find more. 

One of the recently discovered poems by Sappho [Credit: GreekReporter] 

A chance inquiry by an unidentified collector has led to a spectacular literary discovery: Parts of two previously unknown poems by Sappho, the great Greek poetess of the 7th Century B.C. One of the poems is remarkably well preserved and adds greatly to what is known about Sappho and her poetic technique. The two poems came to light when the owner of an ancient papyrus, dating to the 3rd century A.D., consulted an Oxford classicist, Dirk Obbink, about the Greek writing on the tattered scrap. Dr. Obbink, a MacArthur fellow and world-renowned papyrologist, quickly realized the importance of what the papyrus contained and asked its owner for permission to publish it. His article, which includes a transcription of the fragmentary poems, will appear in a scholarly journal this spring, but an on-line version has already been released. Despite Sappho’s fame in antiquity and huge literary output, only one complete poem of hers survives today, along with substantial portions of four others. One of those four was substantially recovered only in 2004, also from a scrap of papyrus. Dr. Obbink’s new find adds a precious sixth poem to the body of Sappho’s surviving work and inspires hope that more such recoveries lie ahead. “The new Sappho is absolutely breath-taking,” said Albert Henrichs, a Harvard classics professor who examined the papyrus with Dr. Obbink. “It is the best preserved Sappho papyrus in existence, with just a few letters that had to be restored in the first poem, and not a single word that is in doubt. Its content is equally exciting.” One of the two recovered poems, Prof. Henrichs notes, speaks of a “Charaxos” and a “Larichos,” the names assigned by ancient sources to two of Sappho’s brothers but never before found in Sappho’s own writings. It has as a result been labeled the Brothers poem by Prof. Obbink. “There will be endless discussion about Charaxos and Larichos, who may or may not be Sappho’s brothers,” Prof. Henrichs commented. One important point in that debate will be the Brothers poem’s clear implication that Charaxos was a sea-going trader. The historian Herodotus, writing about two centuries after Sappho, also describes Charaxos as a wayfarer—a man who traveled to Egypt, where he spent a fortune to buy the freedom of Rhodopis, a beautiful slave he had fallen in love with. Upon his return home, Herodotus relates, Sappho brutally mocked her brother’s lovestruck folly in one of her poems. The Brothers poem contains no such mockery, but rather depicts an exchange between two people concerned about the success of Charaxos’ latest sea voyage. The speaker—perhaps Sappho herself, but the loss of the poem’s initial lines makes this unclear—advises that a prayer to Hera would be the best way to ensure this success, and expounds on the power of the gods to aid their favorites. The poem’s final stanza speaks of Larichos, presumably Sappho’s younger brother, “becoming a man…and freeing us [Sappho’s family?] from much heartache.” A horizontal line on the papyrus indicates the end of the Brothers poem and the beginning of the next, an address to the goddess Aphrodite. Only scattered words from this second poem can be recovered from the papyrus, which grows more tattered and illegible toward the bottom. To judge by what is known of Sappho’s poetry generally, this poem may have taken the form of a request that Aphrodite aid Sappho in the pursuit of a beloved, whether male or female. The two poems share a common meter, the so-called Sapphic stanza, a verse form perhaps devised by Sappho and today bearing her name. Both belonged therefore to the first of Sappho’s nine books of poetry, and their recovery gives a clearer glimpse than scholars have ever had into the makeup and structure of that book. “All the poems of Sappho’s first book seem to have been about family, biography, and cult, together with poems about love/Aphrodite,” Dr. Obbink writes, adding that the two thematic groups may have alternated throughout the book as they do on the papyrus. Sappho wrote in a dialect of Greek called Aeolic, significantly different in sound and spellings than the Attic Greek that later became standard. The papyrus in fact contains a few markings where a scribe, judging that Aeolic Greek might be unfamiliar to readers, made cues for correct pronunciation. It also bears the marks of an ancient tear and a patch job—a place where, after some rough handling, the original scroll was spliced back together with a pasted-on papyrus strip. The handwriting on the papyrus allowed Dr. Obbink to establish its date as late 2nd or 3rd century A.D., almost a millennium after Sappho first wrote. It was not long after this time that texts written in Aeolic and other non-standard dialects began to die out in the Greek world, as the attention of educators and copyists focused increasingly on Attic writers. Sappho, along with many other authors, became a casualty of the narrowing Greek school curriculum in late antiquity and the even greater selectivity of the Middle Ages when papyrus scrolls were recopied into books. Works that became extinct in this narrowing process can still be recovered, however, from scraps of papyrus that predate its onset. Egypt, home to a large Greek-speaking population in antiquity, has been the source of most of these papyri, since in its dry climate even plant-based materials can survive intact. An Egyptian town called Oxyrynchus, where thousands of papyri have been recovered from an ancient trash dump, has furnished fragments of many formerly extinct texts, and Dr. Obbink, the head of Oxford University’s Oxyrynchus Papyrus Project, has often played a lead role in deciphering and publishing their contents. The new Sappho papyrus probably came from Egypt and perhaps from Oxyrynchus, but its provenance may never be known. A thriving black market for papyri means that many of them emerge not from archaeological digs but from souks, bazaars and antiquities shops. Other important literary texts are no doubt lurking in these places, awaiting some lucky turn of events like that which brought the Brothers poem before an expert’s eyes. 


Author: James Romm | Source: The Daily Beast [January 28, 2014]

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Decontaminare il DNA antico!

Prima che si conoscessero gli studi genetici, il materiale umano antico si maneggiava a mani nude e così è stato per lunghissimi anni. Il risultato è che moltissimi resti umani antichi ed interessantissimi sono contaminatissimi da Dna 'moderno' ed erano - fino ad oggi - inutilizzabili dal punto di vista genetico. Questa, quindi è una splendida notizia, che darà presto un'abbondante messe di risultati!


New method rescues DNA 

from contaminated Neanderthal  bones 

 Retrieval of ancient DNA molecules is usually performed with special precautions to prevent DNA from researchers or the environment to get mixed in with the DNA from the fossil. However, many ancient fossils have been lying in museum collection for decades, and are contaminated with present-day human DNA before they enter the DNA-laboratory.


 Neanderthal bones have been lying forgotten in museum collections for decades and have become contaminated with present-day human DNA before even entering the laboratory [Credit: J. Reader/SPL] 


A new method presented in the online edition of the journal PNAS this week provides a solution to this problem. A statistical model for how degradation can be detected in DNA sequences is shown to be able to isolate DNA from ancient bones even when it is vastly outnumbered by modern-day DNA contamination--not in the laboratory, but in the computer. "Many extremely interesting DNA data sets from ancient humans never see the light of day because of contamination. The idea behind this method was to change that", says Pontus Skoglund, lead author of the study and PhD in evolutionary genetics at Uppsala University. To apply the method on a real-world fossil, Pontus Skoglund and his supervisor Mattias Jakobsson, professor at the Department of Evolutionary biology at Uppsala University and senior author of the study, teamed up with Johannes Krause and Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who had a sequenced mitochondrial DNA from a Neandertal bone from Okladnikov cave in the Altai mountains in Siberia, but found that there was also modern human DNA in the bone. Application of the new method allowed the modern human DNA to be removed, and the complete mitochondrial genome of the Okladnikov individual showed that it was closely related to other Neandertals in Europe. The drawback currently is that the DNA must be at least a thousand years old to allow separation from modern-day DNA, so studies of recent historical individuals still face many challenges. "There are many really interesting ancient human remains that we can rescue from severe contamination with this method. And the method is not limited to Neanderthals, even remains of anatomically modern humans that are contaminated by modern-day humans can be rescued", says Mattias Jakobsson. Author: Anneli Waara | Source: Uppsala University [January 27, 2014]

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Istruzioni di costruzione dell'Arca: 3700 anni fa.

Babylonian tablet describes how to 

build 'Noah's ark' 


Noah's ark was never built, still less crash landed on Mount 

Ararat, a British Museum expert has declared – despite 

holding in his hand 3,700-year-old instructions on exactly 

how to construct one. 

Irving Finkel with the cuneiform clay tablet at the British Museum [Credit: Sang Tan/AP] 

"I am 107% convinced the ark never existed," Irving Finkel

 said. His discoveries, since a member of the public brought a

 battered clay tablet with 60 lines of neat cuneiform text to 

Finkel – one of the few people in the world who could read

 them – are outlined in a new book, The Ark Before Noah.

 While every child's toy and biblical illustration – and the 

latest film version, due for release later this month and

 starring Russell Crowe as Noah – shows a big pointy-ended

 wooden boat, the Babylonian tablet gives what Finkel is 

 convinced is the original version of the story. The ark is a 

 huge circular coracle, 3,600 square metres in dimension

  or two-thirds the size of a football pitch, made like a giant 

 rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, and 

waterproofed with bitumen inside and out. This was a giant 

version of a craft which the Babylonians knew very well,

 Finkel pointed out, in daily use up to the late 20th century to

 transport people and animals across rivers. Its people-and-

animal-carrying abilities will soon be put to the test: the 

production company Blink is making a Channel 4 

documentary based on his research, including building a 

circular ark. The tablet gives a version of the ark story

 far older than the biblical accounts, and Finkel 

believes the explanation of how "holy writ appears on this 

piece of Weetabix", is that the writers of the Bible drew on 

ancient accounts encountered by Hebrew scholars during the

 Babylonian exile. 

The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood  by Irving Finkel, Hodder & Stoughton  

Texts about a great flood and the order by God to the one

 just man to build a boat and save himself, his family, and all

 the animals, clearly older than the Bible story, were first

 found in the Middle East in the 19th century. They caused

 both consternation and wild excitement, including an


expedition to find the broken part of one tablet in a 

mountain of shattered clay fragments. However, the tablet

 studied by Finkel is unique, the only one with precise 

instructions on how to build the ark – and the crucial detail

 that it should be circular. He believes the data on its exact 

dimensions, the two kinds of bitumen, and the precise

 amount of rope needed, are evidence not that the vessel

 once existed, but of a storyteller adding convincing details

 for an audience that knew all about boat-building. The tablet

 was brought to him on a museum open day by Douglas 

Simmons, whose father, Leonard, brought it back to England

 in a tea-chest full of curios, after wartime service in the 

Middle East with the RAF. When the Guardian originally

 broke the story of its discovery, Simmons said his father had

 once showed his treasures to some academics, and was 

bitterly disappointed when they were dismissed as rubbish.

 He suspects the tablet was either bought for pennies in a 

bazaar or literally picked up. Finkel describes the clay tab

let as "one of the most important human documents ever discovered", and his conclusions will send ripples into the world of creationism and among ark hunters, where many believe in the literal truth of the Bible account, and innumerable expeditions have been mounted to try to find the remains of the ark. The clay tablet is going on display at the British Museum, loaned by Simmons, beside a tablet from the museum's collection with the earliest map of the world, as seen from ancient Babylon. The flood tablet helped explain details of the map, which shows islands beyond the river marking the edge of the known world, with the text on the back explaining that on one are the remains of the ark. Finkel said that not only did the ark never exist, but ark hunters were looking in the wrong place – the map shows the ark in the direction of, but far beyond the mountain range later known as Ararat.

Author: Maev Kennedy | Source: The Guardian [January 24, 2014]

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