Ice Age hunter-gatherers may have had cheek piercings, even as children
A group of Ice Age hunter-gatherers living in central Europe may have adorned their faces with cheek piercings at as early as six-years-old. Although the author of a recent study published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archeology isn't the only researcher to suggest the theory, he may be the first to link it to a longtime mystery—the curious dental wear-and-tear found in nearly every dental set recovered from the 29,000-year-old community.
Named after the Pavlov Hills region across northern Austria and southern Poland, the Pavlovians were an Upper Paleolithic culture known for their sophisticated stone age technology and tools. Archeologists have recovered numerous artifacts like spearheads, digging tools, and needles made from bone since the group's discovery in 1952. These also include skeletal remains such as well-preserved teeth, many of which display an inexplicable detail—most adolescents and nearly all adults show signs of abrasion on either one or both cheek sides. As Gizmodo explained on Tuesday, researchers have since offered multiple theories about the damage, including the use of pebbles to induce salivation and help with thirst.
But according to John Willman, a biological anthropologist at the University of Coimbra's Laboratory of Prehistory (CIAS) in Portugal, the damage may have come from the aftereffects of a cultural rite of passage.
'While working on my Ph.D. thesis, I was fascinated by the strange wear on the surfaces of the canines and cheek teeth of individuals from Pavlovian sites. In addition to normal wear on the chewing surface of teeth, they have flat wear planes on their 'buccal' (cheek) surfaces,' Willman wrote in an accompanying post to his personal blog.
Willman went on to explain that the enamel wear reminded him of similar results caused by some facial piercings, particularly labrets. He also noticed 'interesting evidence' pointing to teeth crowding and rotation that he believes may have been caused by pressure from the piercings.
'Basically the opposite of what happens if you wear braces or [a] retainer to straighten your own teeth,' he wrote.
After analyzing dental records, Willman noted Palovians may have begun receiving labret piercings since they were between 6 and 10 years old, with additional piercings added as they got older as part of cultural rites of passage. But one major missing piece (or pieces) remains—the piercing jewelry itself.
'One of the most difficult parts of accepting the hypothesis I put forth for labret use is that we don't have any labrets in the burials!' he wrote on Monday.
However, that is likely to be expected, given the time period. Willman theorizes the piercings may have used perishable materials like leather or wood, or that they were passed down among the community instead of buried with individuals. In the meantime, Willman shared his hopes that similar artifacts may be found in other cultures that support the hypothesis.
'Whatever the cause of the strange dental wear is, it is clear that Pavlovian people shared in a behavior that produced it, and this is pretty remarkable in [its] own right,' he said.
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Yahoo
a day ago
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How many ice ages has the Earth had, and could humans live through one?
Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you'd like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@ How many ice ages has the Earth had, and could humans live through one? – Mason C., age 8, Hobbs, New Mexico First, what is an ice age? It's when the Earth has cold temperatures for a long time – millions to tens of millions of years – that lead to ice sheets and glaciers covering large areas of its surface. We know that the Earth has had at least five major ice ages. The first one happened about 2 billion years ago and lasted about 300 million years. The most recent one started about 2.6 million years ago, and in fact, we are still technically in it. So why isn't the Earth covered in ice right now? It's because we are in a period known as an 'interglacial.' In an ice age, temperatures will fluctuate between colder and warmer levels. Ice sheets and glaciers melt during warmer phases, which are called interglacials, and expand during colder phases, which are called glacials. Right now we are in the most recent ice age's warm interglacial period, which began about 11,000 years ago. When most people talk about the 'ice age,' they are usually referring to the last glacial period, which began about 115,000 years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago with the start of the current interglacial period. During that time, the planet was much cooler than it is now. At its peak, when ice sheets covered most of North America, the average global temperature was about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). That's 11 degrees F (6 degrees C) cooler than the global annual average today. That difference might not sound like a lot, but it resulted in most of North America and Eurasia being covered in ice sheets. Earth was also much drier, and sea level was much lower, since most of the Earth's water was trapped in the ice sheets. Steppes, or dry grassy plains, were common. So were savannas, or warmer grassy plains, and deserts. Many animals present during the ice age would be familiar to you, including brown bears, caribou and wolves. But there were also megafauna that went extinct at the end of the ice age, like mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths. There are different ideas about why these animals went extinct. One is that humans hunted them into extinction when they came in contact with the megafauna. Yes, people just like us lived through the ice age. Since our species, Homo sapiens, emerged about 300,000 years ago in Africa, we have spread around the world. During the ice age, some populations remained in Africa and did not experience the full effects of the cold. Others moved into other parts of the world, including the cold, glacial environments of Europe. And they weren't alone. At the beginning of the ice age, there were other species of hominins – a group that includes our immediate ancestors and our closest relatives – throughout Eurasia, like the Neanderthals in Europe and the mysterious Denisovans in Asia. Both of these groups seem to have gone extinct before the end of the ice age. There are lots of ideas about how our species survived the ice age when our hominin cousins did not. Some think that it has to do with how adaptable we are, and how we used our social and communication skills and tools. And it appears that humans didn't hunker down during the ice age. Instead they moved into new areas. For a long time it was thought that humans did not enter North America until after the ice sheets started to melt. But fossilized footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico show that humans have been in North America since at least 23,000 years ago – close to the peak of the last ice age. Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@ Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you're wondering, too. We won't be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Denise Su, Arizona State University Read more: What will the Earth be like in 500 years? Small climate changes can have devastating local consequences – it happened in the Little Ice Age Last of the giants: What killed off Madagascar's megafauna a thousand years ago? Denise Su does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Gizmodo
Meet the Real Zombies That Exist Everywhere Around Us
Zombies are real and everywhere we look. Not human zombies, of course, but animal ones: insects, arachnids, and countless other species. In her new book, Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control, author and science writer Mindy Weisberger delves into the world of zombifying parasites, aka the various lifeforms that have evolved to nudge or outright force their hosts into doing their bidding. The average person probably knows about a few of these parasites, such as the fungi that take over an ant's body so it can climb up blades of grass and release a new generation of infectious spores—an act so horrifically spell-binding that a fictional version of it sparked the human apocalypse seen in the popular game and HBO TV show The Last of Us. But Weisberger details a whole litany of zombie-making bugs (microscopic germs, insects, and other creepy crawlies) for readers to be grossed out by, including a few that might even be able to influence human behavior. 'Parasitism has been around for about as long as there has been life on earth.' Gizmodo spoke to Weisberger about her fascination with these bugs, the evolution of parasitism in general, and disco-lighted snails. Ed Cara, Gizmodo: We here at Gizmodo are no strangers to covering all sorts of zombie bugs. But what drew you specifically to spend so much time digging into these parasites and their gruesome way of life? Mindy Weisberger: For starters, they're inherently fascinating. And like a lot of people, my first introduction to these zombifying agents was the cordyceps fungus in The Last of Us, which of course is inspired by an actual zombie ant fungus in the genus Ophiocordyceps. So this is something that people maybe are a little more aware of now. But over time, as a science reporter, I came across more examples of different types of zombifying organisms, and I just started to get a sense of the scope of how many different kinds there were and all of these different mechanisms they had for zombification. So, of course, there are zombifying fungi, but there are also zombifying viruses. There are zombifying insects. There are many, many species of wasps that have evolved to manipulate their hosts. There are zombifying worms. So, it seemed like the deeper I went, the more that I uncovered and the more I just wanted to learn about all of these different types of zombifiers. And that just led me down the rabbit hole. And, of course, I wrote a whole book about them, but there are still so many examples that just didn't even make it into the book. So, these parasites are a very, very rich source of study, and they tell us a lot about the natural world and how different relationships work and the different kinds of strategies that have evolved for different forms of life to survive. Gizmodo: Throughout the book, you talk about how abundant and ancient these parasites really are. That raises the question of why. Why have so many organisms evolved to have this sort of freeloading lifestyle, despite the very real risks of being wholly dependent on another living thing? Weisberger: So, just the fact that you use freeloading is very telling. People in general have a negative view towards parasites because many parasites cause disease. And I also think, from a capitalistic perspective, the idea of being a freeloader is like, 'Oh my God, there's nothing worse than that.' But in fact, this is obviously a very successful strategy, and parasitism has been around for about as long as there has been life on Earth. One of the researchers that I spoke to for the book was Kelly Weinersmith, who studies parasitic wasps. And she said that parasitologists like to joke amongst themselves that the first form of life that emerged on earth was free-living, and the second was parasitic. Because it is actually a very attractive strategy. I mean, if you had to worry about going out and looking for food, finding a safe place for you to reproduce and raise your young, and potentially exposing yourself to all different kinds of threats and predators, would it not be profitable to find yourself a place where everything you need is there, all the nutrients are there, the place where you can reproduce is there? Once you've established yourself in a way that you can evade the host's immune system and just do your thing, that is actually a safer, better option for you. And this is why parasitism has evolved so many times across not just the animal kingdom, but plants and fungi as well. By some estimates, there are roughly about 8 million known animal species, and at least 40% of those are estimated to be parasitic. And this is something that goes back hundreds of millions of years. The earliest direct fossil evidence of parasitism is found in the shells of marine organisms called brachiopods, from a site in China dating to about 512 million years ago. These parasites were probably worms that built these little mineralized cylinders for themselves on the shells of these brachiopods. And they were thought to be kleptoparasites, which means that they stole their host's food. And the way that scientists figured that out was when they looked at the brachiopod fossils, the ones that were carrying a greater load of these parasites were smaller, which seemed to suggest that they were not getting enough to eat. So parasitism goes back a very long time. But of all the known parasite-host associations on the planet, only a tiny fraction to date are known to involve behavioral manipulation. Gizmodo: You detail so many different examples of zombie parasitism that the average person might wonder; is this something I should ever be worried about? Are there any bugs out there that can or possibly could zombify people someday? Weisberger: Well, it's natural to be concerned about how this might affect you personally. And the fact is that there are some pathogens that are known to affect mammal behavior, and you probably know them already. Rabies, of course, is a very common one. Cases of rabies are recorded in texts that go back thousands of years, and it's known to affect its host's behavior very dramatically. This usually involves behavioral changes that make them more aggressive, and there's also excessive salivation involved. The thinking is that this benefits the parasite, because aggressive animals are more likely to fight. And the virus particles are shed in their saliva. So the combination of changing aggressive behavior and a lot of drool means that the rabies virus is able to increase its chances of successful reproduction. Another example you might know about is Toxoplasma gondii, which causes the disease toxoplasmosis. T. gondii's definitive hosts are cats, which means that it only can reproduce in cats. But it can live in lots of different species of birds and mammals, and that includes people. And so there's robust evidence that T. gondii changes the behavior in infected rodents. What it does in rats and mice is it reduces their fear of cats. It makes them attracted to cat urine, which is something that's normally, for good reason, a deterrent for them. It makes them bolder around cats, which means they're more likely to be eaten by cats, which means the T. gondii they are carrying will then get inside a cat where it needs to be to reproduce. But there's also evidence starting to come out in papers within the last decade or so showing that there seem to be similar types of behavioral changes in animals that are not rodents. In hyena cubs, for example, that are infected with T. gondii, they seem to be bolder around lions. And there are studies of captive chimps infected with T. gondii that seem to lose their fear of leopards, which are a natural prey of theirs. Now with humans, they're dead-end hosts. More than 2 billion people worldwide are thought to carry this pathogen, even if they don't show any symptoms or have any signs of toxoplasmosis. And there's also a growing body of evidence hinting that T. gondii can change human behavior, even if the person doesn't show any other symptoms, and in similar kinds of ways where the person with T. gondii will be bolder or more aggressive. But figuring out what actually makes a specific behavioral change is very complicated. And it's even more complicated in people compared to figuring out what changes behavior in an ant, for example. So there is still, at this point, a lot of work to be done to be certain that you can separate out these specific changes and link them to T. gondii, rather than there being other factors involved. But it's definitely an interesting area of study. Gizmodo: Speaking of unresolved questions, what are some of the biggest mysteries left to be solved about these zombifying parasites? Weisberger: Well, if you look at the history of how scientists have studied behavior manipulation and zombification, some of the first records of these are centuries old. And usually it just starts out with the scientist observing that an insect is either behaving in an unexpected way or that it seems to be sprouting things that are not normal. But it's only really been in the last 20 years or so that scientists have been able to drill down and look at the neurochemistry of what's going on. We're finally at that point we can start to figure out questions like: What are the proteins that are being changed? What are the genes that are being expressed? What is the parasite actually doing to its host? And one of the big questions is; is the parasite itself producing the compounds that are causing the change, or is it producing compounds that then get the insect to produce chemicals that affect its behavior? For example, there is a type of wasp that zombifies spiders. And what it does is it lays an egg on the spider, the egg hatches, and the wasp larvae essentially just piggybacks on the spider. It just sits there discretely sipping the spider's hemolymph [the invertebrate version of blood], almost like a juice box, until it's ready to pupate. And when that happens, there is a very dramatic behavioral change in the spider. The spider starts to build a web that is completely different from the normal web it makes. You can probably picture the Charlotte's web type of web, which is a series of concentric circles with spokes. And that's a typical prey catching web. But the zombified spider builds a web that's usually used to keep it safe and secure as it molts. Once the spider is done with this web, its job is done. The wasp larvae drains it dry, the spider corpse drops to the ground, the wasp builds itself a little cocoon and then it hangs out in the wasp web—the last web that the spider ever built. So what the wasp is doing is it's stimulating in the spiders a massive amount of hormones called ecdysteroids. And the big unanswered question right now is, is the wasp producing this itself or is it stimulating it in the spider? Because spiders naturally produce these hormones just before they molt; it's actually the trigger that starts the whole process of them building this web in preparation for them having this big physical change. So in this and in many, many other examples of zombification, there is still so much to be unpacked about what the specific pathways are between the parasite and its host, about the small nudges that it's doing to cause these dramatic changes in behavior. Gizmodo: So to close things out, what's your favorite zombie bug that you learned about in writing this book? Weisberger: I was originally a filmmaker before I was a science journalist, so I'm naturally attracted to things that are very visual. And one of the most dramatic examples that caught my attention are the discofied zombie snails. So these are land snails that are infected by worms in the genus Leucochloridium. What these worms do is they infect the snails using these broodsacs, which is like these little sausages full of worm larvae. And these broodsacs are very colorful, they're usually striped, patterned in shades of brown and green depending on the species. The sacs migrate into the snails' eye stalks, and once there, they pulse, making the stalks look very much like the undulation of a crawling caterpillar. Now, the definitive hosts of these worms are birds; they have to be in a bird to reproduce. So this display, which looks like a caterpillar, is something that is uniquely attractive to hungry birds. The worm also manipulates the snail's behavior so that it will wander out into exposed spaces, rather than hunkering down in the undergrowth where it normally stays. So they're now out in the open and they have these caterpillar-looking eye stalks, making the broodsacs an enticing meal. But the eyestalks split very easily, so the broodsacs will often just pop right out, and the snail will often heal its eyestalks and be fine afterward. That's my favorite species example, but I also have a favorite specific individual zombie bug. There was a zombie ladybug that became TikTok famous in 2021, which became known as Lady Berry. There's this content creator named Tiana Gayton, who's very enamored of insects and spiders. And one day, she was in a grocery store when she looked at a head of lettuce and saw a ladybug that looked like it was hugging something. It looked like it was hugging a small cocoon. And she was like, 'Oh, this is weird. I'm going to take this ladybug home with me and see what's happening.' She took it home and she tried to pry the ladybug's legs away from the silk around the cocoon, but the ladybug refused to let go. It turned out that the ladybug was parasitized by a species of wasp that manipulates its behavior. It will lay an egg inside the host's abdomen, the egg hatches out of the ladybug and forms into a pupa, and the host then becomes the pupa's bodyguard. So the ladybug was guarding the cocoon. But Tiana Gayton was determined to save it. She pried it off the cocoon, separated it from the cocoon, and put the ladybug in a little jar. She gave it water, gave it food, and nursed it back to health. And eventually she took Lady Berry to the park and returned it to the wild. And so there's an example of a zombie that got something most zombies don't: a second chance. Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, is now available in hardcover and as a e-book.
Yahoo
3 days ago
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Beyond de-extinction and dire wolves, gene editing can help today's endangered species
Have you been hearing about the dire wolf lately? Maybe you saw a massive white wolf on the cover of Time magazine or a photo of 'Game of Thrones' author George R.R. Martin holding a puppy named after a character from his books. The dire wolf, a large, wolflike species that went extinct about 12,000 years ago, has been in the news after biotech company Colossal claimed to have resurrected it using cloning and gene-editing technologies. Colossal calls itself a 'de-extinction' company. The very concept of de-extinction is a lightning rod for criticism. There are broad accusations of playing God or messing with nature, as well as more focused objections that contemporary de-extinction tools create poor imitations rather than truly resurrected species. While the biological and philosophical debates are interesting, the legal ramifications for endangered species conservation are of paramount importance. As a legal scholar with a Ph.D. in wildlife genetics, my work focuses on how we legally define the term 'endangered species.' The use of biotechnology for conservation, whether for de-extinction or genetic augmentation of existing species, promises solutions to otherwise intractable problems. But it needs to work in harmony with both the letter and purpose of the laws governing biodiversity conservation. What did Colossal actually do? Scientists extracted and sequenced DNA from Ice Age-era bones to understand the genetic makeup of the dire wolf. They were able to piece together around 90% of a complete dire wolf genome. While the gray wolf and the dire wolf are separated by a few million years of evolution, they share over 99.5% of their genomes. The scientists scanned the recovered dire wolf sequences for specific genes that they believed were responsible for the physical and ecological differences between dire wolves and other species of canids, including genes related to body size and coat color. CRISPR gene-editing technology allows scientists to make specific changes in the DNA of an organism. The Colossal team used CRISPR to make 20 changes in 14 different genes in a modern gray wolf cell before implanting the embryo into a surrogate mother. While the technology on display is marvelous, what should we call the resulting animals? Some commentators argue that the animals are just modified gray wolves. They point out that it would take far more than 20 edits to bridge the gap left by millions of years of evolution. For instance, that 0.5% of the genome that doesn't match in the two species represents over 12 million base pair differences. More philosophically, perhaps, other skeptics argue that a species is more than a collection of genes devoid of environmental, ecological or evolutionary context. Colossal, on the other hand, maintains that it is in the 'functional de-extinction' game. The company acknowledges it isn't making a perfect dire wolf copy. Instead it wants to recreate something that looks and acts like the dire wolf of old. It prefers the 'if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck' school of speciation. Disagreements about taxonomy – the science of naming and categorizing living organisms – are as old as the field itself. Biologists are notorious for failing to adopt a single clear definition of 'species,' and there are dozens of competing definitions in the biological literature. Biologists can afford to be flexible and imprecise when the stakes are merely a conversational misunderstanding. Lawyers and policymakers, on the other hand, do not have that luxury. In the United States, the Endangered Species Act is the main tool for protecting biodiversity. To be protected by the act, an organism must be a member of an endangered or threatened species. Some of the most contentious ESA issues are definitional, such as whether the listed species is a valid 'species' and whether individual organisms, especially hybrids, are members of the listed species. Colossal's functional species concept is anathema to the Endangered Species Act. It shrinks the value of a species down to the way it looks or the way it functions. When passing the act, however, Congress made clear that species were to be valued for their 'aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people.' In my view, the myopic focus on function seems to miss the point. Despite its insistence otherwise, Colossal's definitional sleight of hand has opened the door to arguments that people should reduce conservation funding or protections for currently imperiled species. Why spend the money to protect a critter and its habitat when, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, you can just 'pick your favorite species and call up Colossal'? Biotechnology can provide real conservation benefits for today's endangered species. I suggest gene editing's real value is not in recreating facsimiles of long-extinct species like dire wolves, but instead using it to recover ones in trouble now. Projects, by both Colossal and other groups, are underway around the world to help endangered species develop disease resistance or evolve to tolerate a warmer world. Other projects use gene editing to reintroduce genetic variation into populations where genetic diversity has been lost. For example, Colossal has also announced that it has cloned a red wolf. Unlike the dire wolf, the red wolf is not extinct, though it came extremely close. After decades of conservation efforts, there are about a dozen red wolves in the wild in the reintroduced population in eastern North Carolina, as well as a few hundred red wolves in captivity. The entire population of red wolves, both wild and captive, descends from merely 14 founders of the captive breeding program. This limited heritage means the species has lost a significant amount of the genetic diversity that would help it continue to evolve and adapt. In order to reintroduce some of that missing genetic diversity, you'd need to find genetic material from red wolves outside the managed population. Right now that would require stored tissue samples from animals that lived before the captive breeding program was established or rediscovering a 'lost' population in the wild. Recently, researchers discovered that coyotes along the Texas Gulf Coast possess a sizable percentage of red wolf-derived DNA in their genomes. Hybridization between coyotes and red wolves is both a threat to red wolves and a natural part of their evolutionary history, complicating management. The red wolf genes found within these coyotes do present a possible source of genetic material that biotechnology could harness to help the captive breeding population if the legal hurdles can be managed. This coyote population was Colossal's source for its cloned 'ghost' red wolf. Even this announcement is marred by definitional confusion. Due to its hybrid nature, the animal Colossal cloned is likely not legally considered a red wolf at all. Under the Endangered Species Act, hybrid organisms are typically not protected. So by cloning one of these animals, Colossal likely sidestepped the need for ESA permits. It will almost certainly run into resistance if it attempts to breed these 'ghost wolves' into the current red wolf captive breeding program that has spent decades trying to minimize hybridization. How much to value genetic 'purity' versus genetic diversity in managed species still proves an extraordinarily difficult question, even without the legal uncertainty. Biotechnology could never solve every conservation problem – especially habitat destruction. The ability to make 'functional' copies of a species certainly does not lessen the urgency to respond to biodiversity loss, nor does it reduce human beings' moral culpability. But to adequately respond to the ever-worsening biodiversity crisis, conservationists will need all available tools. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Alex Erwin, Florida International University Read more: If it looks like a dire wolf, is it a dire wolf? How to define a species is a scientific and philosophical question How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect vital habitat One green sea turtle can contain the equivalent of 10 ping pong balls in plastic Alex Erwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
