Free Republic

Eat like a caveman for a healthy heart By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 8:28PM BST 08/05/2008 A “caveman diet” of berries, nuts, lean meat and fish could help reduce the risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows. Scientists found that volunteers who ate the stone age fare for just three weeks had lowered blood pressure and a reduced risk of clots. They also lost an average of five pounds in weight.Meat, as long as it is lean, is beneficial Our early ancestors lived on a diet lacking in cereals, dairy products and refined sugar for centuries...

MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- Seven women who are members of a Russian cult that has been holed up in a cave for months awaiting the end of the world have emerged and are being treated by emergency workers, regional officials said Friday. More than two dozen members who remain inside the cave could come out as early as Saturday, said the official in the governor's office of the Penza region, about 650 kilometers (400 miles) southeast of Moscow. He said four children, who were reportedly under the age of two, were among those remaining inside the cave. Penza Vice Governor...

Over the past decade, two facts have become increasingly obvious – that our ever-increasing consumption is wrecking the planet, and that continually chasing more stuff, more food and more entertainment no longer makes us any happier. Instead, levels of stress, obesity and dissatisfaction are spiralling. So why is our culture still chasing, consuming, striving ever harder, even though we know in our sophisticated minds that it’s an unrewarding route to eco-geddon? New scientific studies are helping to reveal why. It’s our primitive brains. These marvellous machines got us down from the trees and around the world, through ice ages, famines,...

'Cave man' causes trouble for nursing home A 54-year-old Norwegian man who once lived in a cave and refuses to wash is now creating a health risk at an Oslo nursing home, claim its operators. A local court has ruled, however, that he can't be forced to keep himself clean. A lawyer for the so-called "cave man" (long known as hulemannen in Oslo) told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Friday that his client was "relieved and very satisfied" by the court ruling in his favour. "He has waited a long time, and can now finally decide over his own body," lawyer...

Reindeer: It's What Was For Dinner Jennifer Viegas, Discovery NewsOnce a Staple Dec. 20, 2007 -- Reindeer meat went from being an occasional treat to everyday fare among prehistoric cavemen who lived in Southwest France and what is now the Czech Republic, two new studies suggest. In fact, so many nibbled-on reindeer bones were present in their caves that possible calendars circa 26,000 years ago might have been carved on the leftover bones. They may have also been used as counting devices or for ornamentation. The first study, authored by J. Tyler Faith, analyzed bones found in limestone cave and...

Ancient DNA retrieved from the bones of two Neanderthals suggests that at least some of them had red hair and pale skin, scientists report this week in the journal Science. The international team says that Neanderthals' pigmentation may even have been as varied as that of modern humans, and that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were likely redheads. The scientists -- led by Holger Römpler of Harvard University and the University of Leipzig, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, and Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig -- extracted, amplified, and sequenced a...

Cavemen 'may have used language' By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 12:42pm BST 20/10/2007 They are typically portrayed as primitive brutes capable only of grunting, but new research now suggests Neanderthals may have whiled away the hours in their caves in conversation. Neanderthals may have had their own culture Scientists who have been trawling through the DNA found in Neanderthal bones have discovered that the now extinct species had a “language gene” that is only found in modern humans. Their controversial findings create the tantalising possibility that Neanderthals were in fact capable of speech much like humans and communicated...

Guys with bulldog-like faces have been chick magnets throughout human evolutionary history. A recent study of the skulls of human ancestors and modern humans finds that women, and thereby evolution, selected for males with relatively short upper faces. The region between the brow and the upper-lip is scrunched proportionately to the overall size of their heads. Among the men who fit the bill: Will Smith and Brad Pitt. In a past study, researchers found a similar facial pattern in chimpanzees, with males having relatively shorter and broader faces compared with females, controlling for body size. Men with "mini mugs" might...

10,000 B.C. (2008) Actors Steven Strait (D'Leh) Camilla Belle (Evolet) Omar Sharif Marco Khanlian (One Eye) Cliff Curtis Nathanael Baring Timothy Barlow (The Pyramid God) Mona Hammond (Old Mother) Reece Ritchie Joel Virgel Nakudu Mo Zinal Director by Roland Emmerich Director Epic tale that centers on three stages in the development of primitive man, as seen through a 21-year-old hunter from a primitive tribe who must hunt mammoth to survive. Release Date: March 7th, 2008 (wide) Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution

A prehistoric hunter known as Oetzi whose well-preserved body was found on a snow-covered mountain in the Alps died more than 5,000 years ago after being struck in the back by an arrow, scientists said in an article published Wednesday. Researchers from Switzerland and Italy used newly developed medical scanners to examine the hunter's frozen corpse to determine that the arrow had torn a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to a massive loss of blood. That, in turn, caused Oetzi to go into shock and suffer a heart attack, according to the article published online in...

(Scientist says modern humans, earlier species found camaraderie, and sometimes a mate, in each other) Researchers have long debated what happened when the indigenous Neanderthals of Europe met "modern humans" arriving from Africa starting some 40,000 years ago. The result was the disappearance of the Neanderthals, but what happened during the roughly 10,000 years that the two human species shared a land? A new review of the fossil record from that period has come up with a provocative conclusion: The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions were right, they mated.How often this happened will never...

Scientists studying pictures from Nasa's Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars. The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. Details were presented here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. Temperature data from Mars Odyssey's Themis instrument support the idea. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant. The caves may be the only natural structures capable of protecting primitive life forms...

Video: The O’Reilly Factor, so easy a caveman could host it! In viewer mail last night Bill received a message saying that hosting his show is so easy a caveman could do it. Bill's reaction was classic. Video here -http://hotair.com/archives/2007/03/09/video-the-oreilly-factor-so-easy-a-caveman-could-host-it/

The ABC network said it had ordered a pilot for a comedy, tentatively titled "Cavemen," that features the characters used in a series of television ads by an insurance company. In the ads, cavemen appear insulted by a Geico insurance pitchman's claim that the company's Web site is so easy to use that "even a caveman can do it." The potential series, one of 14 pilots that will be produced by Touchstone Television this spring, features the cavemen as they "struggle with prejudice on a daily basis as they strive to live the lives of normal thirty-somethings in 2007 Atlanta."...

For decades, human evolution researchers have debated whether Neandertals and modern humans interbred. Most scientists have come down on the side that any romances between these hominid cousins must have been fleeting at best. But a new study suggests that a few of these passing dalliances might have had a major impact on the evolution of the Homo sapiens brain. If so, Neandertals, although long extinct, may have left humanity a lasting genetic gift. Some anthropologists have argued that a handful of hominid skeletons show features of both Neandertals and modern humans (Science, 11 February 2005, p. 841). But so...

Iran-Cave MP from Jiroft, Ali Zadsar here Wednesday said that a village whose residents are cavemen has been discovered at the heights of the city of Jiroft near Anbarabad in the southeastern province of Kerman. Speaking on the sidelines of Majlis open session, he said that a village was discovered 120 kms from the town of Anbarabad in the winter of 2005. He added that the residents of the newly-discovered village put on no clothes and feed on leaves. Zadsar said, "The village, called Pid-Nekoupieh, is situated in the mountain and the 200 people who live there have never left...

Science Journal: Caveman crooners may have aided early human life Friday, March 31, 2006 By Sharon Begley, The Wall Street Journal In Steven Mithen's imagination, the small band of Neanderthals gathered 50,000 years ago around the caves of Le Moustier, in what is now the Dordogne region of France, were butchering carcasses, scraping skins, shaping ax heads -- and singing. One of the fur-clad men started it, a rhythmic sound with rising and falling pitch, and others picked it up, indicating their willingness to cooperate both in the moment and in the future, when the group would have to hunt...

Russian Boxer Valuev Number One WBA Heavyweight Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev has reached the top of the WBA heavyweight rating. Earlier, Valuev, Russia’s largest boxer at 151 kilograms and a height of 215 centimeters, occupied the third place in the list. Valuev will thus fight the current WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz as the latter he defends his title. The Russian’s manager, Wilfried Sauerland, was quoted by RTR-Sport television channel as saying he will take all measures to make the match between Valuev and Ruiz take place this year. Valuev has so far won 43 matches and lost none. In...

POSTNATAL depression, which brings untold anguish to thousands of homes every year, may be a relic from the days when humans lived in caves, scientists have discovered. Researchers at Edinburgh University believe hormonal imbalances responsible for the devastating condition may have been responsible for increasing aggression in new mothers. Dr Simone Meddle, a lecturer in veterinary science, claims that in prehistoric times the change in behaviour would help to prepare mothers for protecting their young from predators. But as human life has become safer, these strong maternal instincts have become redundant. Instead, she says, the hormones may be building up...

Archaeologists in Germany have found what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world. They have unearthed what they believe to be the 7,200-year-old figurines of a couple having sex, reports the Guardian. The find, at an archaeological dig in Leipzig, shatters the belief that sex was a taboo subject in the stone age era. First, Harald Stäuble of the Archaeological Institute of Saxony, discovered the 8cm lower half of a man, which he named Adonis von Zschernitz. One month later, Dr Stäuble found what could be the matching female figurine. Dr Stäuble said: "Adonis is bent forward and...

Professor Richard Roberts points to an artist impression of a hobbit-like dwarf, the astonishing discovery that could rewrite the history of human evolution, in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 28, 2004. A 3-foot-tall adult female skeleton found in a cave on a remote Indonesian island is believed 18,000 years old and smashes the long-cherished scientific belief that our species, Homo sapiens, systematically crowded out other upright-walking human cousins beginning 160,000 years ago.(AP Photo/Rob Griffith)Wow! Using powerful scanning devices look at what the artist was able to illustrate! Look how wise and thoughtful the little fella appears! Wow, wow, and triple wow: impressive...

Diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of death and sickness in the United States and most Western countries. Yet while these diseases are epidemic in contemporary Westernized populations and typically afflict two-thirds of the adult population, they are rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherers and other less Westernized cultures.Why? There is an increasing awareness that the profound environmental changes, such as diet and other lifestyle conditions that began with the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry (the care and breeding of domestic animals), occurred too recently for the human genome to adapt to.Thus, universal characteristics of preagricultural human diets...

Embarrassment, Health Issues Prompted Dieting Many people have struggled to drop a few pounds, but what happens when you need to lose several hundred pounds? Several years ago, Steve and Melissa Horstman of Boone County, Ky., decided that they didn't want to live with their weight problems anymore, and they used the emotional pain over being overweight to reach their goals. Melissa and Steve met on the Internet several years ago and soon learned of their common bond: obesity. "When you weigh 150 pounds over, you don't go out and socialize," Melissa said. The couple met, dated and married, but...

Thu May 29, 4:57 PM ET Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson insists he never sexually assaulted the woman he was jailed for raping in 1991, but talking about her makes him so angry he wants to rape her now. In a Fox News interview to be broadcast May 29, 2003, Tyson calls former beauty queen Desiree Washington 'a lying, monstrous young lady' and says, 'I just hate her guts.' Tyson is shown at a news conference at the Grand Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, in this February 20, 2003 file photo. Photo by Peter Jones/Reuters

New DNA evidence suggests "African Eve", the 150,000-year-old female ancestor of every person on Earth, may have lived in Tanzania or Ethiopia. A genetic study has shown that the oldest known human DNA lineages are those of East Africans. The most ancient populations include the Sandawe, Burunge, Gorowaa and Datog people who live in Tanzania. Researchers found a very high amount of genetic variation, or diversity, between the mitochondrial DNA of different individuals in these populations. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down exclusively through the maternal line. The longer a population has existed, the more variation accumulates in its DNA...