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On September 19, 1997, the New York Times announced the discovery of a group of earthen mounds in northeastern Louisiana. The site, known as Watson Brake, includes 11 mounds 26 feet high linked by low ridges into an oval 916 feet long. What is remarkable about this massive complex is that it was built around 3400 B.C., more than 3,000 years before the development of farming communities in eastern North America, by hunter-gatherers, at least partly mobile, who visited the site each spring and summer to fish, hunt, and collect freshwater mussels... Social complexity cannot exist unless I it...

Papua New Guineans among world's first farmers Friday, 20 June 2003 Papua New Guinea's highlands are one of the places where farming first began (Pic: ANU) Papua New Guinea's highlands was one of the cradles of farming, where some of the world's staple food plants were first domesticated, researchers have confirmed. The region now joins five others as a core area in which the agricultural revolution - the world's most dominant landuse - had its origins, report a team led by archaeologist Dr Tim Denham of Adelaide's Flinders University in today's issue of the journal Science. "Until recently, the evidence...

Round and rectangular buildings with grain silos at a Copper Age site in Israel suggested social stratification to the excavators. Using micromorphology, the author demonstrates that while the rectangular building was occupied by people, the round ones had contained animals, perhaps as providers of milk, and dung for fuel. While this removes the direct indication of social variance, it strengthens the argument that animals, as well as grain, formed the basis for the creation of surplus.

If you picked up a carton of eggs at the store this week, they probably set you back about $1 or $1.50. The organic, cage-free kind costs more like $3. But some urban and suburbanites are skipping the store entirely when it comes to things like eggs and honey and turning instead to their own backyards. Whether from tighter food budgets or local-eating ideals, more and more people are petitioning their cities to allow small animal husbandry.

Using a genetic technique pioneered at Stanford, the team found that animal-herding methods arrived in southern Africa 2,000 years ago on a wave of human migration, rather than by movement of ideas between neighbors. The findings shed light on how early cultures interacted with each other and how societies learned to adopt advances. "There's a tradition in archaeology of saying people don't move very much; they just transfer ideas through space," said Joanna Mountain, PhD, consulting assistant professor of anthropology. Mountain and Peter Underhill, PhD, senior research scientist in genetics at Stanford's School of Medicine, were the study's senior authors....

The Humane Society of the U.S. has, for years, been trying to frighten people away from consuming meat, milk and eggs -- but its recent testimony before a congressional committee reached a new low when the HSUS president, Wayne Pacelle, made the unsupported claim that pigs could be harboring the infamous and deadly British ‘mad cow” disease. Swine veterinarians quickly pointed out that “mad cow,” or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has never occurred naturally in swine. At the height of the British “mad cow” epidemic, both swine and cattle were exposed to the tissues from thousands of infected cattle and the...

  Did the earth mooove for you?  Blondie ... identity protected and, inset, Richard, who has herd it all now       By ROBIN PERRIEJuly 06, 2007       COPS rushed to a farm to put a kinky teenager udder arrest — after he was seen romping with a COW.  A shocked passer-by rang 999 after seeing the youth — wearing only black briefs — having sex with the steer at 4.30am.By the time officers arrived he had fled but night-time patrols are on the alert in case he strikes again.Farmer Richard Parish was stunned to hear what had...

Destruction of Personal Property Rights as We Know Them - Legally, livestock animals are a form of personal property. The NAIS plan refers to a "national herd" (Plan p.8) which clearly indicates the government's vision: private ownership rights will be destroyed, and no one will be allowed to birth, hatch, own, or transfer any head of livestock without government permission. We can take our shotguns and walk over our neighbor's property, but if children ride their ponies to their neighbors, or a farmer gives a couple chickens to a neighbor, that will have to be registered with the government.

Well, that didn't take long. Rocker-turned-radio host David Lee Roth, who accepted the no-win task of replacing ratings king Howard Stern in January, was bounced from the airwaves Friday after barely three months on the air in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and four other markets. "I was booted, tossed, and it's going to cost somebody," Roth said on his last show, intimating that his lawyers would go after CBS Radio for the full compensation due from his reported $4 million contract. The timing of the move was interesting: It arrived just days before the Roth show's first Arbitron numbers. CBS...

Do cows really eat fish? Do they eat fish eggs? I have personally replied (on behalf of clients) to multiple Draft Biological Opinions regarding two national forests where U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists made these claims. They claimed that cows destroyed the nests (redds) of fish species that don't build nests, stepped on fish, and muddied the water of fish that spawn only in muddy water. They also designated dry washes as critical habitat for endangered species of fish.

Prince Charles to Marry Camilla Parker Bowles Thursday, February 10, 2005 LONDON — Prince Charles announced Thursday that he will marry his lover Camilla Parker Bowles after more than 30 years of an on-again, off-again romance that was blamed for destroying the prince's marriage to Princess Diana. The Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles will marry on Friday, April 8, at Windsor Castle, said Clarence House (search), Charles' residence and office. They will be married in a largely private civil ceremony at the palace, not in a Church of England (search) service. The April wedding which will not have the...

A BACTERIAL disease spread through sodomy between rams was increasing their risk of infertility, NSW Agriculture said yesterday. Senior field veterinary officer at Wagga Mr Rob Walker said the disease, ovine brucellosis, was becoming more common among NSW rams. Recent blood testing of commercial sheep flocks in southern NSW had found between 40 and 50 per cent of rams carried the infection. The percentage of rams in each flock that were infected had increased from six to 12 per cent during the past 15 to 20 years.

Pets may get a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T By SUSAN PALMER The Register-Guard   Recommend this story to others.   A dog is not a toaster, a cat is not a sofa and a fish is certainly not a bicycle. So how come animals have "owners"? The outdated language harkens back to once-common attitudes that women were the property of their spouses and black slaves were the property of those who employed them, animal welfare activists say. Activists want the Eugene City Council to replace "animal owner" with "animal guardian" in city code language dealing with pets. Elizabeth Jayne, 21, "guardian" of 8-month-old...