Free Republic

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...