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Imagine if you had been a Roman posted to the far edge of Africa. Staring out at the Atlantic. Or a medieval standing on the edge of your world- at Ushant, maybe. Either way, the ocean would have stretched out before you-incomparably vast, cold, dangerous and uncrossable. Nothing came from across it, and nothing went there, until Colombus in 1492 finally proved that there was land on the other side.

That’s the conventional story. We at LSS have always been aware of hints and clues that it is not the whole story. Some of them seem like pseudohistory and wishful thinking. Others are more intriguing. For one thing, the Vikings really did sail out of Europe and reach North America, albeit in small numbers. But somehow they got lost in the parentheses. And if you live in the Arctic, where the continents of Europe, Asia and America bunch together, you could be forgiven for hardly noticing the difference.

Now there is exciting evidence that this was exactly the case. Dan Avery of the Daily Mail writes today of an amazing trade route which caused beads made in Venice to end up in far-away Alaska. And all this sometime between 1440 and 1480, a dozen years before the plucky navigator borrowed all that money and ships from the Queen of Spain.

We at LSS have always preferred Economic History as our favourite history. We are always amazed at how vast the world must have seemed before powered engines and radios. A bit like we think of space now. Yet brave and ambitious souls were crossing it, doubtless in search of profit-which tells you something. Above all, nothing in History is ever settled, a bit like other fields of real learning.

Blue glass beads from Venice discovered in Alaska date to the mid-15th century  | Daily Mail Online

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories – Wikipedia

#transoceaniccontact #traderoutes #christophercolumbus #alaska #venice

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Faithful readers will recall our little offering (LSS 20.5.2020) about Homo naledi, the enigmatic hominin from South Africa. It was just to give you something to think about in lockdown. Now we’ve got another hominin puzzle for you. But this one is so baffling that the more we read about it, the less we feel we know. Let’s start.

In 2003 researchers in the Liang Bua caves on the island of Flores found the bones of a tiny little hominin which they nicknamed “the Hobbit”. There was evidence of tools, and fire. That settled, the controversies began. How old was the little creature? Why so small? Where did it come from? Was it a dwarf human, or was it another species? By 2021 a very rough consensus emerged, rightly challenged by some. It was a species called Homo floresiensis;* it lived between 50-60 000 years ago; tools associated with it range back to 190 000 years; small size is common in all species isolated on small islands. See the Wikipedia link below.

For us the problem is that it fits so very badly indeed with the conventional Story of Human Evolution. Once upon a time in East Africa there lived a group of apes called australopithecines who were nothing more than chimps running around on two legs. Then came a funny little fellow called Homo habilis*, who at least made tools and hunted a bit. Then about 1.8 million years ago came a tall,,noble near-human called Homo erectus* (or ergaster) who made magnificent tools, hunted, started fires, and whose brain was only a bit smaller than ours. Eventually this intrepid creature left Africa, strode out across Asia and began the mass slaughter for which we humans, clearly direct descendents, are so famous today.

Here come the puzzles. Health warning: the more you dig down to solve them, the worst they will get.

1 Why do the wrist, shoulders and other skeletal features of H floresiensis show strong affinities to Homo habilis who lived and died in Africa over a million years before?

2 How did the ancestors of the hobbits reach Flores? It is surrounded by deep fast-running straits, which never dried out, not even in the ice ages.

3 H habilis has been credited with using a very primitive type of tool called Oldowan. These are found all over Africa and Asia. Homo erectus produced much better tools, called Acheulian-but not Asia. What is going on?

4 What is the role of Homo georgicus in all this? Found in Dmansi, Georgia, it is very primitive for a Homo erectus, but a bit advanced to be a Homo habilis. The date, at 1.8 million years, is odd too. And so is the location.

How accurate are our definitions of certain hominin species? Who made what tools, and when? Why the huge gaps in space in time between apparently related creatures? Why are migrations only allowed out of Africa, and not the other way?

We wish you an interesting afternoon.

Homo floresiensis – Wikipedia

30. Homo georgicus | The History of Our Tribe: Hominini (lumenlearning.com)

Homo erectus – Wikipedia

#hobbits #flores #humanevolution #scientificpuzzles #originsof boats

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However you cut it, there is strong evidence that the logging industry may be depriving us of more than mere oxygen. Evidence is starting to grow that mass deforestation leads to mass outbreaks of disease-some of them particularly nasty, like Ebola, HIV, Lassa, Lyme, and Malaria. We’ve got two links for you today, both from impeccable middle of the road journals- Forbes* with Jeff MacMahon and National Geographic* with Katarina Zimmer. You should read them both. But check this from Katarina on the Nipah virus:

In 1997, clouds of smoke hung over the rainforests of Indonesia as an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania was burned to make way for agriculture, the fires exacerbated by drought. Smothered in haze, the trees couldn’t produce fruit, leaving resident fruit bats with no other option than to fly elsewhere in search of food, carrying with them a deadly disease.

Not long after the bats settled on trees in Malaysian orchards, pigs around them started to fall sick—presumably after eating fallen fruit the bats had nibbled on—as did local pig farmers. By 1999, 265 people had developed a severe brain inflammation, and 105 had died. It was the first known emergence of Nipah virus in people, which has since caused a string of recurrent outbreaks across Southeast Asia.

So,if it works for Nipah, why not SARS-Cov-2 ? The borderlands of South East Asia, where China meets Laos, Burma and Vietnam are full of small mammals like pangolins, civets and bats. Above all bats, which are known to harbour any number of corona viruses. Disease has been jumping the barrier from animals to humans for thousands of years. Isn’t it time we stopped destroying the forests, and found other uses for them?

How Deforestation Drives The Emergence Of Novel Coronaviruses (forbes.com)

Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans (nationalgeographic.com)

#Sars-Cov-2 #covid19 #lassa #HIV #malaria #nipahvirus #lyme #repression #nipah #zooneses #bats #originsof coronavirus

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For our foreign readers: nothing, and we mean nothing, obsesses the British so much as property; what the Americans call real estate. It’s true some dinner party conversations may touch upon sex (but usually everyone’s too tired), holidays (but: “been there, done that”) children (but who needs anxiety?) and even work (god, Chris is so boring!). No, it’ll be property that really gets their juices flowing-how much you’ve got, what you paid for it, what you’re doing to it and how much you could sell it for in order to buy the next ones. In this uber-financialised economy, its been the culture for generations.

It’s not hard to see why: it’s a status symbol; it may give you somewhere pleasant to live; it’s an investment. Above all, it was drummed into generations of poorer children that it was better to pay into a mortgage than to shell out the same money every month to a shark landlord, and have nothing in return. For the Ruling Class it was better still: people paying off twenty five year mortgages are unlikely to strike or join inconvenient political parties. They too have a stake in the system.

Except when they don’t. Here’s Larry Elliott of the Guardian

Levels of owner-occupation fell from a peak of 71% in the early years of this century to 64% less than a decade and a half later and have remained there ever since. One of the (many) reasons why the Conservative party polls poorly among young people is that its policies have been tailored to suit the interests of older voters

We confess that this worries us even more. History shows that an educated, propertyless precariat is a prime recruiting ground for revolutionaries of all sorts. To be fair Elliott sees hope where we didn’t think it would be: Gerard Lyons of the Policy Exchange Think Tank. Lyons sees the problem as more about deposits than paying mortgage instalments. His solution?

 …… a form of blended mortgage product that would deliver 95% loan-to-value home loans but be provided by three different financial institutions. The riskiest part of the mortgage – the bit between 85% and 95% of the homes value – would be provided by investment banks; the middle chunk would be provided by retail banks and building societies, while the last part would be delivered by long-term investors such as pension funds.

The paper supports the idea of a land value tax, and says the stamp duty holiday should become permanent, with no levy on lower-priced homes.

We beg you to read the full article; no one does context and even-handed analysis better than Elliott. Lyons and Policy Exchange are a right-wing outfit, not left-wing. Societies fail not because they didn’t understand their problems, but because they rejected solutions until it was too late.

How to turn the UK’s ‘generation rent’ into ‘generation buy’ | Larry Elliott | Business | The Guardian

Helping Generation Rent become Generation Buy:  | Policy Exchange

#property #mortgage #generationrent #owner-occupiers #socialmobility #policyexchange #deposit

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Three for you this week, our common theme is something surprising, but which you just might want to know.

Scary variant Before we all relax and say “the vaccines have got it all solved”, like drunks on their second pint of beer, don’t forget that Sars-Cov-2 has some nasty tricks to play. Like mutating into dangerous new forms. Here’s Nature:

Scientists have released the data behind UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s warning last week that the new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7 is linked to more deaths. The chance of dying is around 35% higher for people who are confirmed to be infected with the new variant. The risk is most pronounced for older men. The chance of death for an 85-year-old man increases from about 17% to nearly 22% for those confirmed to be infected with the variant. Researchers caution that the data are preliminary, and it is not clear whether the variant is deadlier than previous strains or is spreading to more people who are vulnerable to severe disease.Nature | 4 min read
Reference: medRxiv paper

Trump trumped It was always obvious that Trump and his supporters were going to try to play fast and loose with the 2020 election results. Just how close they came, and how democracy was saved, is outlined in this piece by Molly Ball in Time. Slowly a coalition of business, unions, Democrats, democrats, and moderate Republicans was assembled with just enough critical mass to ensure a fair result. We knew nothing about this, but it is one of the most exciting pieces that we have read for a long time-we think you’ll like it too.

The Secret Bipartisan Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election | Time

^{We thank Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire for this story}

Hiding in plain sight? Despite the efforts of many intelligent people, the deep causes of mental and neurological disorders are still hazy. And they are terrible afflictions, ruining the lives of sufferers and their families. Now the intriguing possibility exists that the balance of your gut biome– all those little creepy things that line your gut- may have profound consequences for your nervous system as a whole. It’s early days yet, but interest is growing fast. We love it when a people suddenly discover something that was there all along. Birds are dinosaurs. Continents drift. And maybe, just maybe, the cause of ASDs lies in something that happened to the mother before birth. Very clickable.

Evidence is building that the trillions of bacteria in the gut could have profound effects on the brain, and might be tied to a whole host of disorders. What was once a fringe theory — the gut–brain axis — is seeing an explosion of interest. Now, researchers are working to separate hope from hype to develop better and easier treatments for brain diseases.Nature | 12 min read

#2020election #donaldtrump #democracy #joebiden #covid-19 #sars-cov-2 #gutbiome #autism #neurologicaldisorder #bacteria #microorganism

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As we write these lines, England is about to be swamped by a blast of arctic cold. But that’s no excuse for the sophisticated philosofe not to enjoy a refined Friday night tipple. So we thought that our English readers, and indeed all those in cold climes around the world, could do with a little advice on some heart-warming recipes to get you through the long weekend ahead.

After a youth wasted on the pursuit of virtue, ideology and moral rectitude, the editorial board of LSS has acquired more worldly-wise weltanschauung that encompasses a broader view of humanity, its hopes and its foibles. That is why we are proud to take advice from educated men, and women, of many views and opinions, unless they gratuitously set out to offend or otherwise frighten the horses. Thus the Gentleman’s Flavour is a cigar site, and we don’t smoke cigars. Or anything else. But some of you do, and you are our friends. And they had such a good , succinct, easy to understand list of winter warmers, that we had to put their site up for this week. Click below for tips on:

Will’s Sugar Shack Hot toddy Hot Mulled Port

Spiked Apple Cider Will’s Winter espresso Martini

Southern Hot Toddy

Stay safe on those icy pavements readers- you know what going into hospital could bring right now!

5 Warming Cocktails To Beat Cold Weather – The Gentleman’s Flavor

#snow #cold #toddy #cocktail

_{We thank Mr and Mrs A P Foster of Dorset for the idea in this post}

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Fifty years ago, with the Moon reached, Project Apollo was being wound down. Certainly the cost had been enormous (though as nothing compared to the Vietnam war, the financial bailout of 2008, and the daddy of them all the Iraq-Afghanistan campaign from 2003 onwards. We remember an argument we sometimes heard at the time. “Why spend all that money going to the Moon, when there are so many poor people who need help on Earth?” It is a decent and moral argument, and we admit that some of us struggled with it back in ’71. The only spin-off from Apollo was non-stick frying pans. Why indeed give money to slightly nerdy science types to play with, when there are hungry, diseased children out there?

Professor Mariana Mazzucato has an interesting reply. She quotes the following tale told by NASA administrator Ernst Stuhlinger to a nun who had raised that very question. We quote from Mazzucato’s book Mission Economy*

Stuhlinger asked the nun to first consider the story of a benign and much-loved count who lived in Germany 400 years ago. The count was always redistributing his riches to the poor. But he did more than redistribute; he created. The count funded the scientific activities of a strange local man who worked in a small laboratory grinding lenses from glass, and then mounting the lenses in in tubes and creating small gadgets. The count was criticised for wasting money on the craftsman when the needs of the hungry were so much greater. And yet, explained Stuhlinger, it was precisely such experiments that later paved the way for the invention of the microscope, which proved one of the most useful devices for fighting disease, poverty and hunger. The Count, by retaining some of his spending money for research and discovery, contributed far more to the relief of human suffering than…by giving all he could possibly spare to his plague-ridden community. (p79)

Fast forward to 1961. The Count is President John F. Kennedy. The researcher is the Apollo programme. Instead of a microscope, we got CAT scans, LEDs, scratch resistant lenses, memory foam, the computer mouse, laptop computers, the resistant foam in your trainers, MRIs, solar panels, water purification, defibrillators, pacemakers and many more examples of what Mazzucato terms “economic multipliers”. An inflexible emphasis on budget sheets, or endless importuning for immediate welfare spending would have killed all this. So both Right and Left can blush in shame!

We’ve said it before-research spending pays incalculable dividends. If you don’t believe us, at least give good Professor Mazzucato a try-she’s worth it.

Mariana Mazzucato Mission Economy Allen Lane 2021

#economicmultiplier #NASA #publicprivatepartnership #spinoffs #R&D #projectapollo #presidentkennedy

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One of the best things about Forensic Science is not only that it can work with very small samples, but that the conclusions drawn are very large. What’s more, it is tested twice-first by other scientists in all the usual ways like conferences, learned journals and many an earnest water cooler moment. Then it goes to court and gets tested by barristers who, despite whatever personal defects they might have, are possessed of razor sharp minds and can detect any error or illogicality. It’s the ultimate test of the scientific method. Which is actually very easy. Look very hard at something. Is it real? How does it differ from what you know? What does it let you predict?

Oddly enough. it was using this method in climate science which provided the clinching proof that humans are causing global warming. As every schoolchild knows, carbon mainly comes in two forms: ¹²C and ¹³C. And these are being constantly recycled through living things and the atmosphere. Because plants generally like to work with ¹²C they absorb more of it from the atmosphere. So if you measures the ratio of ¹³C/¹²C it’s higher in plants than it is in the atmosphere as a whole. But because of the recycling, the atmospheric level should be stable. Which it was for many thousands of years. But if you start burning lots and lots of plant material, especially in the form of coal, that ratio will change. Which it has since about 1850. (Did we hear someone say “Industrial Revolution”?) Since when the atmospheric ¹³C/¹²C ratio has been falling steadily as more and more ¹²C goes up the chimney. You’re breathing it in too, but that’s another story. We have a link below to to the Wiley dummies website, which we always find to be a marvellous source of clear explanation on many topics.

So here’s some questions for those Dog and Duck types who spend too much time swallowing the output of certain TV channels whole.

How much has the ¹³C/¹²C ratio changed since 1850? Why has it changed? If it is not caused by burning fossil fuels, what is the alternative explanation? If the effect is cyclic, how long are the cycles? How have they changed in relation to other natural cycles? What other evidence can you offer to make me believe what you say?

We don’t know what answers they will give. But we have noticed that people who start shouting, change the subject or allege conspiracies show that they don’t know what they’re talking about on any subject.

Isotopes: How Do Scientists Know that Humans Cause Global Warming? – dummies

#globalwarming #carbonisotopes #CO2 #climatechange #denialists

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Following our ever-present ethos of a tiggerish, bouncy optimism, which we know you like, we have a short story and some long links to a really hopeful step forward in the world of brain implants. Also known as neural implants, it’s where a small processing unit is fixed to interface with neural tissue, aiding or even substituting for its function. As Joe Pinkstone in the Mail* reports, there are amazing possibilities to help people control addictions-or for those with heartbreaking diseases like Parkinsons.

There is one problem. These implants need quite an operation to put them in-and they run on electricity. What do you do when the battery runs down. Give the poor patient another operation? That’s why we think that Joe’s piece is so significant. A Korean team led by Jae Woong Jeon have found a way to recharge the little implants by wireless technology, which should potentially let them last for a lifetime. And let you carry lots more.

We have some nice links below to the whole question of neural implants for readers who wish to learn more. But here’s a thought; do you want to live in a world where a buzzer sounds in your head every time you reach for a fresh can of Stella Artois?

Brain implants the size of a coin combat drug addiction in rats | Daily Mail Online

What Are Brain Implants and What Are Their Future Uses? (moneyinc.com)

Brain implant – Wikipedia

#neuralimplant #wirelesstechnology #brainimplant #addiction #neurology #parkinsonsdisease #neurodegenerativedisease #informationtechnology

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Old science fiction hands will recall a common trope of their beloved genre. A huge disaster creeps up on humankind; slowly at first, with the author giving teasing hints, until the cataclysm is on us all and everyone can see how bad they’ve been. It was a technique perfected by John Wyndham in works such as The Kraken Wakes and The Day of the Triffids. Except in the case of Covid-19, it may have happened for real.

Up to now, the story of Covid-19 has been simple: it appeared at the very end of 2019 in Wuhan China, got out, and spread around the world, wreaking havoc on lives, economies and the licensed catering industry. There’s a load of argy-bargy about where it came from, who covered up what, who forgot to order vaccines, and so on. But that’s secondary. The real questions are: should we even be in this mess? And why didn’t we see it coming?

Because there is now increasing evidence that SARS-COV-2 was circulating well before the ground zero date of December 2019. Regular followers will recall our story in July about researchers in Barcelona who found clear evidence of SARS-Cov-2 in water samples from March 2019. Confession-we wondered if one day that would be put down to contamination or misidentification. Except it hasn’t. And now there is another link in the chain, to a study from Italy which found virus related antibodies in 14% of a set of blood samples which were taken in September 2019. Another study showed positive tests in Brazil in November 2019-that’s a long way from Wuhan. Some of this work has still to be peer-reviewed and everyone needs time to digest the implications-but are you beginning to wonder?

We don’t do personal stuff much here. But we are aware of several persons who contracted curious and rather nasty respiratory diseases in November 2019, some of them close to us, some who worked in the health services. Coincidence? Or was it because busy doctors had not been trained to look for COVID-19, so, very understandably, they didn’t find it?

All of which raises many questions and few answers. What has been the follow up, if any, to the Barcelona finding of March 2019? Why was there a strong detection signal in Brazil, if the virus was only supposed to be starting in far off Wuhan? Are there any other biological samples around the world from 2019 which are still fresh enough to look for the virus or its antibodies? And what about 2018? Don’t forget that the HIV virus was drifting around at low frequency for years before the big outbreak in 1981. Why the sudden jump for Sars-Cov-2 in Wuhan?

If we want to avoid another pandemic, we need to know a lot more about how this one started, and spread. How about a windfall tax on hedge funds, to do it once and for all?

^{We thank Buckinghamshire landowner Mr Gary Herbert for help with both the inspiration and research for this story}

Unexpected detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the prepandemic period in Italy – PubMed (nih.gov)

SARS-CoV-2 in human sewage in Santa Catalina, Brazil, November 2019 | medRxiv

#wuhan #china #sars-cov-2 #covid-19 #coronavirus #barcelona #italy #brazil #sewage #publichealth #originsof covid-19