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Washington State University scientists... say the region saw three other cultural transitions over the preceding five centuries. The researchers also document recurring narratives in which the Pueblo people agreed on canons of ritual, behavior and belief that quickly dissolved as climate change hurt crops and precipitated social turmoil and violence... Bocinsky, WSU Regents Professor Tim Kohler and colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,000 southwest archaeological sites and nearly 30,000 tree-ring dates that served as indicators of rainfall, heat and time. Their data-intensive approach, facilitated by climate reconstructions run at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of...

New work on the skeletal remains of scarlet macaws found in an ancient Pueblo settlement indicates that social and political hierarchies may have emerged in the American Southwest earlier than previously thought. Researchers determined that the macaws, whose brilliant red and blue feathers are highly prized in Pueblo culture, were persistently traded hundreds of miles north from Mesoamerica starting in the early 10th century, at least 150 years before the origin of hierarchy is usually attributed. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the acquisition and control of macaws, along with other valued...

ScienceArchaeologists discover evidence of a vanished civilisation from 1300s  Lucy Pasha-Robinson,The Independent 5 hours ago  Reactions   Like   Reblog on Tumblr   Share   Tweet   Email Archaeologists may have discovered evidence of an ancient civilisation that disappeared from a corner of the southwestern US over seven centuries ago.The exodus of the Ancestral Puebloans has baffled scientists for years after they vanished without a trace from Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park in the 13th Century.One theory was the group - also known as the Anasazi - had simply migrated several hundred kilometres east.Now scientists may have found the evidence to...

Historically, scarlet macaws lived from South America to eastern coastal Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of miles from the American Southwest. Previously, researchers thought that ancestral Puebloan people might have traveled to these natural breeding areas and brought birds back, but the logistics of transporting adolescent birds are difficult. None of the sites where these early macaw remains were found contained evidence of breeding—eggshells, pens or perches. "We were interested in the prehistoric scarlet macaw population history and the impacts of human direct management," said George. "Especially any evidence for directed breeding or changes in the genetic diversity that could co-occur...

A few years ago, a team of researchers in Poland came across a pair of Neanderthal bones that held a grisly secret: Their owner had been eaten by a giant bird. The two finger bones belonged to a Neanderthal child who had died roughly 115,000 years before, making those bones the oldest known human remains from Poland, according to Science In Poland. Once the bones were analyzed, the scientists concluded that the hand bones were porous because they had passed through the digestive system of a large bird. It is unclear if the bird killed the child and then ate...

Tiny holes in the bones indicate that they passed through a large bird’s digestive system, according to Professor Pawel Valde-Nowak of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. It’s not clear, however, whether the bird attacked and ate the young Neanderthal or scavenged the remains of a dead child. Believed to be about 115,000 years old, the bones are the oldest human remains ever discovered in Poland. Experts from the Jagiellonian University and Washington University in St. Louis confirmed that the remains are digital bones from a child’s hand. The Archaeological Museum of Krakow and the Polish Academy of Sciences also participated...

Four white men fired by the Philadelphia School District have won a racial-discrimination lawsuit, and a federal jury awarded them nearly $3 million in damages. After Friday's verdict, Carl E. Singley, a prominent African American lawyer who represented the school district, exchanged words with some members of the all-white jury as they rode a courthouse elevator. He called them "crackers," four jurors said in interviews. Within 30 minutes, U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle 3d brought Singley and five of the seven jurors in the case back into his courtroom. Singley, a former Temple Law School dean, promptly apologized. "What I...

Winning by Jack Welch, Suzy Welch If you judge books by their covers, Jack Welch's Winning certainly grabs your attention. Testimonials on the back come from none other than Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rudy Giuliani, and Tom Brokaw, and other praise comes from Fortune, Business Week, and Financial Times. As the legendary retired CEO

Governmental Awards and Recognition of Falun Dafa from China and the World Since its public introduction in May 1992, Falun Dafa has attracted over 100 million practitioners worldwide in just ten years. Falun Dafa cultivation emphasizes that one should conduct oneself according to the principle of "Truth-Compassion-Tolerance". Regardless of gender and age, regardless of nationality and race, every practitioner who persistently cultivates his/her heart and practices the exercises has benefited tremendously. Constant diligent cultivation has brought significant changes to many practitioners in both physical conditions and moral values. At the same time, Falun Dafa is gaining worldwide understanding and appreciation,...