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[Solomon]

Bart:
I think that the map you just posted is simply identifying known megalithic sites, whilst the earlier was trying to show that as the culture developed, it expanded.

You notice that the upper map shows the culture to be - simplistically - primarily coastal and then riverine. I think that this is how the entire culture spread globally, for it was technology-driven, not militaristic, and this knowledge was carried by boat.

There is another slight possibility to explain the above map. I know of a stone circle near my home, but it was built over with a housing development some 25 years ago. I suspect that quite a number of sites have been destroyed in the more populous south east: starting with the builders of churches and monasteries, who found standing stones a convenient building material (particularly so when they were obviously pagan).

Solomon

[Bart]

Reverse Heyerdahl: Ancient-style Reed Boat Tackles Atlantic

Jul 7, 2007

Washington/New York - Like the great Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, a German biologist and amateur anthropologist is obsessed with ancient long-distance seafaring.

   But while Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki and later Ra expeditions proved that ancients could have used trade winds and ocean currents to drift westward around the globe to South America and the South Pacific, Dominique Goerlitz wants to prove the opposite.

   Goerlitz, 41, and a crew of eight plan to set sail Wednesday from New York in a prehistoric-style reed boat to show that people 6,000 to 14,000 years ago could have made the more complicated eastwardly journey from the New World to get back home again.

   The reed boat - called the Abora III - is constructed along the lines of Heyerdahl's Ra, out of 17 tonnes of reed papyrus that grows at the 3,800-metre-high Lake Titicaca on the border of Peru and Bolivia. Goerlitz in fact had some input from the late Norwegian explorer on some of his earlier boats launched in Europe.

   Unlike the Ra, however, the Abora has 16 leeboards - or retractable foils - for steering, a refinement that will enable Abora to tack into the wind and carry it eastwards.

   'Why did I not see this?' Goerlitz quoted Heyerdahl as saying after their first meeting in 1995 in Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Heyerdahl was referring to the keel-board evidence in ancient drawings that Goerlitz had found.

   First stop on the Abora's projected three-and-a-half-month journey is the Azore islands, where Goerlitz hopes to put in for fresh provisions by August 10, and then to Cadiz on Spain's southern tip and the Canary Islands. The boat will be equipped with modern navigation and communications equipment.

   One of the crew members, Bolivian Fermin Limachi, 38, the son of a man who worked on a Heyerdahl boat, helped build Goerlitz's Abora. The Amyra Indians of the high Andes are the world's only known people who still know how to form reeds into tight tapered bundles for sea- worthy vessels.

The idea that ancient people could have navigated and steered large vessels across vast oceans - not just drifted in wind and currents - flies in the face of all established academic knowledge. That in fact is what spurs Goerlitz on - that, and the fact that people laughed at Heyerdahl, too.

   'We act as though the ancients were second class people,' Goerlitz told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'Yet they must have been advanced sailors, and I'm convinced they had advanced navigation.'

   Goerlitz cites the evidence: Plants known to have originated exclusively in the New World, like cocaine and tobacco, were found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian ruler Ramses II. Vintage 6,000-year- old rock drawings in Egypt's Wadi Hammamat depict reed boats with keels on the side.

   But what clinched Goerlitz's conviction was a lowly plant called the bottle gourd. Goerlitz, who says he makes his living as a freelance lecturer, is working on his doctorate in invasion biology at the University of Bonn.

   For more than a decade, he has bugged his professors about how the bottle gourd, which was essential for the development of irrigation and agriculture across a world that had not yet discovered pottery, managed to spring as a full-blown domesticated plant within a relatively short time in Asia, the Americas and Africa.

   The standard answer was that the seed was first domesticated in one place, and then floated to the other places.

   'I asked my botany professor, and he shrugged his shoulders,' Goerlitz said. ''We assume it got there under its own power,' I was told. 'Ask the archeologists'.' The archeologists didn't know either, and they sent Goerlitz to the ethnologists, who also didn't know.

   Goerlitz was convinced that the answer lay in vibrant long- distance ocean voyages, carried out for trade or colonization long before historians believe was possible.

   Goerlitz found confirmation in more recent molecular biology studies showing that the bottle gourd, in fact, grew 9,000 years ago in southern Africa, and yet also emerged as a full-blown domesticated plant, without any evidence of gradual cultivation, in the Americas about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

   'There's amazing evidence that people could sail in every direction, and the evidence in the books must be completely wrong. People who spread agriculture ... from Asia to Africa, these must have been advanced sailors,' Goerlitz said.

   The Abora's website, www.abora3.de, will be posting live reports on the journey, estimated to cost more than 500,000 dollars.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/news/article_1327055.php/PREVIEW_Reverse_Heyerdahl_Ancient-style_reed_boat_tackles_Atlantic

[Solomon]

Carved and decorated gourd
This gourd, intricately carved and decorated with silver, resembles a pipe-stem. A pipe attachment would have been inserted in the central opening in the body of the gourd. It was most likely donated by the India Museum to Kew in 1879, when the South Kensington-based museum closed its doors.

   For more than a decade, he has bugged his professors about how the bottle gourd, which was essential for the development of irrigation and agriculture across a world that had not yet discovered pottery, managed to spring as a full-blown domesticated plant within a relatively short time in Asia, the Americas and Africa.

   The standard answer was that the seed was first domesticated in one place, and then floated to the other places.

   'I asked my botany professor, and he shrugged his shoulders,' Goerlitz said. ''We assume it got there under its own power,' I was told. 'Ask the archeologists'.' The archeologists didn't know either, and they sent Goerlitz to the ethnologists, who also didn't know.

   Goerlitz was convinced that the answer lay in vibrant long- distance ocean voyages, carried out for trade or colonization long before historians believe was possible.

   Goerlitz found confirmation in more recent molecular biology studies showing that the bottle gourd, in fact, grew 9,000 years ago in southern Africa, and yet also emerged as a full-blown domesticated plant, without any evidence of gradual cultivation, in the Americas about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.


Lagenaria siceraria: Genetic and archaeological evidence for the early history of domesticated bottle gourd:

Bruce D. Smith

Archaeobiology Program, Department of Anthropology, NMNH,

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560, USA

Over the past several decades, new genetic and archaeological approaches have substantially improved our understanding of the transition to agriculture, a major turning point in human history that began 11,000 - 5,000 years ago with the independent domestication of plants and animals in at least eight separate world regions. Biologists and archaeologists interested in understanding the initial domestication of plants in the Americas, however, have long been puzzled by the apparent very early presence of the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) in the New World. Thought to be indigenous to Africa, this ideal container crop has been reported in archaeological contexts in East Asia by 9,000-8,000 cal. B.P., and to have had a broad New World distribution by 8,000 cal. B.P. This paper presents the results of a recent collaborative research project integrating genetic and archaeological approaches and designed to address a set of core questions regarding the early history the bottle gourd. Was it indigenous to the Americas, and if not did it reach the New World directly from Africa or through Asia? If introduced, was it transported by humans or by ocean currents? Was it wild or domesticated upon arrival, and where was it first domesticated? Fruit rind thickness values and accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dating of archaeological specimens indicate that the bottle gourd was present in the Americas as a domesticated plant by 10,000 cal. B.P., placing it among the earliest domesticates in the New World. Ancient DNA sequence analysis of archaeological bottle gourd specimens and comparison with modern Asian and African landraces identify Asia as the source of its introduction. The bottle gourd, like the dog, was a �utility� species. Both appear to have been domesticated somewhere in Asia long before any food crops or livestock species, and both could well have been brought to the Americas by Paleoindian populations as they colonized the New World.

Bottle gourds

The bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) is particularly interesting because it is one of the few plants that was cultivated in both the Old and New Worlds in prehistoric times. Several early civilisations used its dried fruits as storage containers; the ancient Hawaiians alone had over 40 different uses for it. The plant may have originated in Africa. Its dry fruits, capable of floating for considerable periods, were probably distributed to South America by sea.

Bottle gourds are also sometimes known as calabashes, not to be confused with the fruits of the calabash tree (Crescentia cujete). They come in an amazing variety of shapes, sizes and colours. Some may reach 3 m in length whilst others may be up to 2 m round. Colours vary from dark green to almost white and they may be mottled or striped, warted, ridged or smooth.



Probably the first, and still the most important, use of the bottle gourd was as a water carrier. The natural hourglass shape of some varieties allowed a rope to be attached. They were also used as containers for making butter, cheese and beer, and for storing dry materials such as grains.

In Japan, the bottle gourd itself was eaten - the flesh was cut into strips and dried in the sun before consumption. Amongst the medicinal uses of the bottle gourd were as a purgative, an antidote for certain poisons and a cure for coughs. An infusion of the seeds was drunk to cure chills and for headaches, and juice from the leaves was taken against jaundice and to cure baldness! In early Peruvian civilisations, bottle gourds were even used in head surgery. A broken piece of skull was replaced by a piece of gourd shell, and the skin stitched back over it.

Bottle gourds are also used as floats for fishing nets and in raft-making. An unusual method of catching ducks involved floating bottle gourds on lakes for several days so that the ducks became used to them. Hunters, with their heads concealed by other gourds, would then swim towards the ducks and catch hold of them from under water.

Dried gourds can be carved into spoons, pipes, snuff boxes and bird houses, decorated as ornaments and made into articles of clothing such as hats, masks and penis sheaths. They are also widely used in musical instruments including rattles, xylophones and drums as well as wind and stringed instruments.

[Baja Bush Pilot]

NEW YORK � A 41-foot raft made of reeds and wooden planks set out Wednesday on voyage from New York to Spain, a daring and perhaps foolhardy attempt to prove people in the Stone Age could have crossed the Atlantic. The fragile-looking craft was towed down the harbor past the Statue of Liberty, to be cut loose once it passed into the open sea. At the helm was Dominique Gorlitz, 41, a German botanist and ex-teacher who has spent years preparing for the expedition.

 �We are trying to retrace the ancient waterways to prove that prehistoric people crossed the ocean both ways,� Gorlitz said as the Abora III, named for a Canary Island sun god, cast off. He estimated the voyage would take five weeks to Pontevedra, Spain, where success would prove that mariners predating Columbus by 12,000 years could have navigated the ocean by sailing against � as well as with � prevailing winds. The Abora III will use leeboards to steer like a modern sailboat. A stop was planned at the Azores.

Gorlitz's crew of 10 men and two women have enough food for 100 days, fresh water and a few modern amenities � satellite phones, navigational gear and generator-powered laptops.  The group seemed unfazed at crossing the Atlantic during hurricane season in a tiny craft with two wooden huts and a toilet shack on deck. �If I was not confident that we could do this, I would not do it,� Gorlitz said.

Gorlitz's theory is based on traces of tobacco and coca � substances native to the New World � having been found in an Egyptian pharaoh's tomb, as well as cave drawings in Spain he says suggest that people 14,000 years ago understood ocean currents. Kenneth L. Feder, an anthropology professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn., said Abora III's trip cannot prove any of that.

�I wish them well, but for a proper replicative experiment in archaeology, the culture has to be consistent,� he said in a telephone interview. �How can they replicate the past accurately by using evidence from thousands of years ago in Egypt and a boat similar to those built 800 years ago in South America? These are completely different periods.�

He said there were other possible ways for nicotine and coca to have turned up � possibly from now-unknown plants in Africa, or even from �mummy unwrapping parties� in 19th century England.  �This trip proves that if you are brave and foolhardy you can sail a primitive boat across the Atlantic, but that's all it proves,� Feder said.

[Bart]

" He said there were other possible ways for nicotine and coca to have turned up � possibly from now-unknown plants in Africa, or even from �mummy unwrapping parties� in 19th century England.  �This trip proves that if you are brave and foolhardy you can sail a primitive boat across the Atlantic, but that's all it proves,� Feder said. "

The dogma nevers changes, the exact same thing was said when Heyerdahl sailed. Never mind that the rest of the facts are ignored.

Bart

[Administration]

Public release date: 17-Oct-2007
Contact: Suzanne Wu


University of Chicago Press Journals

Fossilized cashew nuts reveal Europe was important route between Africa and South America

Cashew nut fossils have been identified in 47-million year old lake sediment in Germany, revealing that the cashew genus Anacardium was once distributed in Europe, remote from its modern �native� distribution in Central and South America. It was previously proposed that Anacardium and its African sister genus, Fegimanra, diverged from their common ancestor when the landmasses of Africa and South America separated. However, groundbreaking new data in the October issue of the International Journal of Plant Sciences indicate that Europe may be an important biogeographic link between Africa and the New World.

�The occurrence of cashews in both Europe and tropical America suggests that they were distributed in both North America and Europe during the Tertiary and spread across the North Atlantic landbridge that linked North America and Europe by way of Greenland before the rifting and divergence of these landmasses,� explain Steven R. Manchester (University of Florida), Volker Wilde (Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Sektion Palaeobotanik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany), and Margaret E. Collinson (Royal Holloway University of London, UK). �They apparently became extinct in northern latitudes with climatic cooling near the end of the Tertiary and Quaternary but were able to survive at more southerly latitudes.�

The cashew family (Anacardiaceae) includes trees, shrubs, and climbers prominent in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates around the world. A key feature is an enlarged hypocarp, or fleshy enlargement of the fruit stalk, which is a specialized structure known only in the cashew family.

The researchers examined possible fossil remains found in the Messel oil shales, near Darmstadt, Germany, which are dated to about 47 million years before the present and reveal the presence of a �conspicuously thickened� stalk. In four out of five specimens, this hypocarp was still firmly attached to the nut, indicating that the two were dispersed as a unit. According to the researchers, the size and shape of the hypocarp � like a teardrop and two or three times longer than it is wide � support its assignation to the Anacardium genus, common to South America, rather than the African Fegimanra genus, though the fossils have features common to both.

�The occurrence of Anacardium in the early Middle Eocene of Germany suggests . . . that the two genera [Anacardium and Fegimanra] diverged after dispersal between Europe and Africa,� the researchers write. �Presumably, Anacardium traversed the North American landbridge during the Early or Middle Eocene, at a time of maximal climatic warmth, when higher latitudes were habitable by frost-sensitive plants.�

The astoundingly close similarity between the fossil and modern day Anacardium also indicates little evolutionary change to the cashew since the mid-Eocene period: �Although cashews have been cultivated for human consumption for centuries, it is clear that they were in existence millions of years before humans. The cashew had already evolved more than 45 million years ago, apparently in association with biotic dispersers,� they write.

###

A major outlet for botanical research since 1875, the International Journal of Plant Sciences presents the results of original, peer-reviewed investigations from laboratories around the world in all areas of the plant sciences. Topics covered include genetics and genomics, developmental and cell biology, biochemistry and physiology, morphology and structure, systematics, plant-microbe interactions, paleobotany, evolution, and ecology.

Steven R. Manchester, Volker Wilde, and Margaret E. Collinson, �Fossil Cashew Nuts from the Eocene of Europe: Biogeographic Links Between Africa and South America.� International Journal of Plant Sciences 68(:1199-1206.