Free Republic

The “infamy” of December 7, 1941, is deeper than most Americans have ever imagined. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was almost certainly the result of a Soviet plot—“Operation Snow”—carried out by Harry Dexter White, a figure of enormous influence in the Roosevelt administration and a known Soviet spy. Americans remember Pearl Harbor as the work of a Japanese military machine hell-bent on a war of conquest. The truth is more complicated. The imperial regime had faced severe political shocks throughout the 1930s. Two attempts on the life of Emperor Hirohito—one by a Japanese communist whose father was a member...

'Truly amazing' scientific discovery on adaptation of Yakutian horses to cold By The Siberian Times reporter 28 November 2015 Fast track evolution as great Siberian symbol is surprisingly unmasked as an immigrant breed. Researchers say these horses, which seem so well attuned to the harsh cold with thick, dense winter coats, their armour against temperatures of minus 70C (minus 94F), are incomers that only arrived in these parts within the last 800 years. Picture: Maria Vasilyeva The resilient Yakutian horses are one of the great native sights of the Sakha Republic - or Yakutia. In their way as much a part of...

Russian archaeologists have discovered the remains of the world's oldest known Arctic settlement - a Siberian riverfront site that they say could help determine when humans first arrived in the Americas. The 30,000-year-old site - twice as old as any previous Arctic dig - includes a rhinoceros bone shaped into a spear that shows a "striking resemblance" to spear points found by archaeologists in Clovis, N.M.

An Oxford University-led... research team... will be looking at a group of artefacts in excavations and museum collections that are traditionally described as ‘Celtic’ because of their use of spirals, circles, interlaced designs, or swirling representations of plants or animals. One main line of enquiry is the relationship between the central European Celts and their nomadic Eurasian neighbours (often referred to as Scythians or Sarmatians), who inhabited the European end of a grassland (steppe) corridor that stretched east towards Central Asia and China... Iron Age tombs frozen in the mountains of Siberia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan have yielded Roman glass, Chinese...

In 2008, archeologists working at the Denisova Cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains discovered a tiny piece of a finger bone, believed to be a pinky, buried with ornaments in the cave. Scientists extracted the mitochondrial DNA (genetic material from the mother’s side) from the ancient bone and checked to see if its genetic code matched with the other two known forms of early hominids–Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans. What they found was a real surprise. The team, led by geneticist Svaante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute, discovered that the mtDNA from the finger bone matched neither–suggesting there...

Woolly mammoths died out because of dwindling grasslands - rather than being hunted to extinction by humans, according to a Durham University study.After the coldest phase of the last ice age 21,000 years ago, the research revealed, there was a dramatic decline in pasture on which the mammoths fed. The woolly mammoth was once commonplace across many parts of Europe. It retreated to northern Siberia about 14,000 years ago, where it finally died out approximately 4,000 years ago.

A high-quality genome sequence obtained from a female Neanderthal toe bone reveals that the individual’s parents were close relatives and that such inbreeding was prevalent among her recent ancestors, according to a paper published today (December 18) in Nature. But the sequence also reveals that interbreeding occurred between Neanderthals and other hominin groups, including early modern humans. “Did humans evolve like a constantly branching tree? A lot of people think so,” said Milford Wolpoff, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study. “But there’s also been this thread of thought, by some...

Two graves dating back 2,700 years believed to be from ancient necropolis under city centre. Workmen called in police and archeologists after discovery of the remains of the ancient people. One was buried with a knife and buckle. Archeologists are still inspecting the find but they grave is believed to be from the Irmen culture and dates to approximately 700 BC to 800 BC. The experts believe the graves are in the same Bronze Age necropolis as was disturbed 103 years ago when the site was previously excavated during construction of a building that is now being renovated. At this...

When Venezuelan Oil Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso resigned in 1963, he blasted the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, at the time torn by internal rivalries, for failing to produce any benefits for his country. Half a century later, OPEC is still split and Venezuela is again unhappy, this time at the unwillingness of the organization’s top producer, Saudi Arabia, to rescue oil prices from a six-year low that’s dragging the battered Venezuelan economy into an even deeper crisis. On Sept. 10, Venezuela’s oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, tweeted appeals for OPEC and non-OPEC countries “to have a discussion on...

Imaging of Mollivirus particles. (A) Scanning electron microscopy of two isolated particles showing the apex structure. (B) Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging of an ultrathin section of an open particle after fusion of its internal lipid membrane with that of a phagosome. (C) Enlarged view of the viral tegument of a Mollivirus particle highlighting the layer made of a mesh of fibrils (black arrow), resembling Pandoraviruses’ intermediate layer, and the underneath internal membrane (white arrow). Three ∼25-nm interspaced rings are visible around the mature particle. (D) Light microscopy (Nomarski optics 63×) imaging of a lawn of Mollivirus particles, some of...

In the northwestern United States, wildfire smoke has invaded major cities as millions of acres of land burn. On the other side of the world, infernos that have been burning for weeks – in a part of Siberia, no less – have turned the landscape into what resembles Hell on Earth. Near Lake Baikal, the biggest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, large wildfires are sending huge amounts of smoke into the air, shrouding the popular vacation area in the middle of summer, Mashable said. The wildfires have been a combination of natural and man-made, the report added, and...

Five mummies were found to be shrouded in copper, while also elaborately covered in reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Nearby were found three copper masked infant mummies - all males. They were bound in four or five copper hoops, several centimetres wide. Similarly, a red-haired man was found, protected from chest to foot by copper plating. In his resting place, was an iron hatchet, furs, and a head buckle made of bronze depicting a bear. The feet of the deceased are all pointing towards the Gorny Poluy River, a fact which is seen as having religious significance. The burial...

Scientists say an entirely separate type of human identified from bones in Siberia co-existed and interbred with our own species.The ancient humans have been dubbed "Denisovans" after the caves in Siberia where their remains were found. There is also evidence that this population was widespread in Eurasia. A study in Nature journal shows that Denisovans co-existed with Neanderthals and interbred with our species - perhaps around 50,000 years ago. An international group of researchers sequenced a complete genome from one of the ancient hominins (human-like creatures), based on nuclear DNA extracted from a finger bone.

The DNA of some 4,000 year-old bodies unearthed five years ago in Xinjiang, in northwest China, provides scientific evidence of early intermingling between people of European and Asian origin. Zhou Hui, a professor of life science and her team discovered that some of the earliest inhabitants of the Tarim Basin in the Taklamakan Desert were of European and Siberian descent. The basin, where hundreds of well-preserved mummies have been found since the 1980s, has attracted great attention from scientists worldwide. Professor Victor Mair of Pennsylvania University claimed in 2006, "From around 1800 B.C. the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin...

Frozen Siberian Mummies Reveal a Lost CivilizationGlobal warming may finally do in the bodies of the ancient Scythians. by Andrew Curry That the warrior survived the arrow’s strike for even a short time was remarkable. The triple-barbed arrowhead, probably launched by an opponent on horseback, shattered bone below his right eye and lodged firmly in his flesh. The injury wasn’t the man’s first brush with death. In his youth he had survived a glancing sword blow that fractured the back of his skull. This injury was different. The man was probably begging for death, says Michael Schultz, a paleopathologist at...

Analysis of DNA of present day indigineous people throws new light on how our ancestors crossed the Bering land and ice bridge which then connected modern-day Chukotka and Alaska. A study led by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, asserts that there was one one initial migration from Siberia to America. Around 10,000 years later there was a split in these human ancestors into two groups, which anthropologists call Amerindians (American Indians) and Athabascans (a native Alaskan people). Previous research had suggested that Amerindian and Athabascan ancestors had crossed the strait independently. 'Our study presents the most...

Some people in the Brazilian Amazon are very distant relations of indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians, two groups of scientists who conducted detailed genetic analyses reported Tuesday. But the researchers disagree on the source of that ancestry. The connection is ancient, all agree, and attributable to Eurasian migrants to the Americas who had some Australasian ancestry, the scientists said. But one group said the evidence is clear that two different populations came from Siberia to settle the Americas 15,000 or more years ago. The other scientific team says there was only one founding population from which all indigenous...

The 7,500- to 11,000-year-old remains suggest the oldest settlers of the Americas came from different genetic stock than more recent Native Americans. Modern Native Americans share traits with Mongoloid peoples of Mongolia, China, and Siberia, the researchers said. But they found dozens of skulls from Brazil appear much more similar to modern Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans. A Brazilian study involving a large collection of South American skulls suggests at least two distinct groups of early humans colonized the Americas. Anthropologists Walter Neves and Mark Hubbe of the University of Sao Paulo studied 81 skulls of early humans and found...

Scientists in the Russian Far East have carried out a post-mortem examination of the remains of the only mummified dog ever found in the world. Found sealed inside permafrost during a hunt for traces of woolly mammoths, the perfectly-preserved body is 12,450 years old. The dog, believed to be a three-month-old female, was unearthed in 2011 on the Syallakh River in the Ust-Yana region of Yakutia, also known as the Sakha Republic. Experts spent the past four years analysing the body – which included not just bones but also its heart, lungs and stomach – but only carried out the...

In Heaven + Earth (Global Warming: The Missing Science), Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide, Australia, asks us to embrace big-picture science views; for to recognize our limits is a sign of maturity. "Climate science lacks scientific discipline," says the pro-amalgamation Professor, and in order to see more clearly we need to adopt an interdisciplinary approach. This requires humbleness. In Chapter 2: History, Plimer travels back in time, thousands of years, in fact, to debunk Gore's catastrophic global warming myths. I particularly like his research on the ancient Greeks. For Plato (427-347 BC) advanced the...