Vultures protest in Brussels and force EU to feed them

More or less.

Since the mad cow epydemic, EU issued rules forbidding to leave cattle carcasses in the open. This was a major setback for the winged cleaners, whic have been starving since then. While these birds are most common in the Iberian peninsula, the EU-induced famine has made many of them to travel wildly and in at least one case, a vulture has been spotted perched on top of a bus in the center of Brussels.

That seems to have been too much for the European Comissioners who, maybe fearing to become the vulture's prey themselves, have reverted their previous ruling, allowing finally to leave carcasses on the fields, provided it is deemed safe and higienic.

Source: BBC.
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mtDNA tree (version 1.1)

After digging for some time in the sources at PhyloTree, I have come with a revised mtDNA tree that locates most (but not all) rare lineages.

Please check for any possible errors and/or further information I might have missed.

Click to enlarge

The tree is exactly the same as in the previous version. The only changes are in the location of some rare clades, reducing the number of "unknown" lineages to just 4 M subclades. In two cases (M22'25 and M47'50) I only know the location of one of the two subclades but I'm simplistically assuming that it applies for the whole lineage.

Most of the newly located rare lineages are South Asian, SE Asian (noted as East Asian) or Australian.

The revision still seems to keep M and R gravitating (or at least most highly diverse) at South Asia. N remains mysterious with its highest apparent diversity in Australia (but it is possible that some of the rare lineages are related) and then in South Asia (especially if we include R).


Visually:

· M forms basically a "T" with South Asia, East Asia and Sahul at the three extremes and a thin projection to the west.
· N(xR) follows the southern Asian coasts from West Asia to Sahul, with a rather reduced projection to the NE (i.e. middle-East Asia).
· R is more West-South-SE Asian axis, with only limited presence in Sahul.

There is a rather strong link between South Asia and West Asia at the R and N lineages, that in some cases extends to Australia (but always seems to exclude East Asia). This does not diffuminate the diferential personality of these regions though.


Further observations: comparison of N with M and R:

The high apparent diversity of N in Australia (take with a grain of salt) may suggest a SE Asian origin for this lineage or at least a high level of flow of this clade through SE Asia in the early stages of Eurasian expansion. I find a strictly Australian N urheimat rather unlikely anyhow.

If my reading is correct, the very first moment of Eurasian expansion was starred by the M explosion and that of many (9) of its derived lineages, mostly in South and SE Asia. N, which was surely lurking along M at that stage may then have been carried to SE Asia along with the other M lineages. It is a possibility.

Anyhow there is no single temporal instance (except its very original node) where you can talk of an "N explosion" clearly: its subclades expand locally, and even often ignoring regional divisions, without any particualr temporal concentration, scattered along time. This is quite different of what we can see in M (early stages especially) and, to a lesser extent maybe, R (second phase), whose nodes are succeeded by large scale expansion of their subclades.

Let me explain myself graphically (">" means the temporal equivalent of one SNP):
· M expands (35 branches) > 9 M subclades (26%) expand > 8 M subclades (23%) expand
· N expands (12 branches) > 2 N subclades (17%) expand > 2 N subclades (17%) expand (one is R)
· R expands (15 branches) > 6 R subclades (40%) expand > 2 R subclades (13%) expand

So not only the M node is much more vigorous than those of N and R but also its branches show more vigor as well. R seems also pretty vigorous at least in the first moment (at that point even much more than M) but, otherwise, N seems to trail behind the rest and scatter its expansion through time.

Only primary derived nodes were considered above.

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Check also my previous version and comments.
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Key witnesses of Bush' election-rigging dead in mysterious circumstances

Found at Rebelión (in Spanish): scroll down for the specific sources' links, all seemingly in English, many of them from The Brad Blog.

The story begins in 2003 in a Florida motel, where Raymond Lemme, Florida Attorney General's officer in charge of investigating the allegations of Republicans rigging the elections in that state in the year 2000 elections, was found dead with two cuts in his right arm. Police declared "suicide" but anyone with some knowledge of suicide techniques knows that it is virtually impossible to kill oneself that way (no matter what Holywood says: it is an attention-calling performance or a stupid failure, not any effective method of self-destruction). Anyhow, there was never any forsenic examination in spite of all the strange elements concurring (for example he had left that motel room the night before, not to mention his political relevance).

In 2008, Mike Connel, an important figure in the Bush' gang, especialized in informatics and very close to Karl Rove, died in a private airplane "accident" just minutes after taking off. This happened soon before he was going to witness in trial for the election rigging in Ohio in 2004, a state that decided GWB victory. He had already released information to the prosecutors, who considered him a key witness and asked for his institutional protection, which was declined.

He was also implicated in vote rigging in senatorial elections in Georgia.

Moral? Use the classical transparent ballot boxes: e-voting is a scam.
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mtDNA tree (version 1.0)

What follows is my version of the mtDNA tree found at PhyloTree. The main characteristic is that each 10 horizontal pixels in the full size image represent one (known) SNP.

Click to enlarge

Anotations in magenta at the right are merely informative of the main location of the various lineages. I used only 7 distinct geographical regions for this purpose: Africa, West Eurasia (extending sometimes to North Africa and Central Asia), South Asia (extending in one case to Central Asia), East Asia (extending sometimes through North Eurasia, Central Asia and America), Andaman Islands, Australia and Melanesia. Some lineages I really don't know right now where they have been found and have been left without anotations.


Preliminary findings: the rythm of expansion.

Very simplified, I find the following apparent pulses:

1. A very old one when L0, L1 and L2'3'4'5'6 begin their expansion.

2. A "rapid" sequence of expansion of L3:
2.1. Expansion of L3 and L2.
2.2. Expansion of three L3 subclades: L3b'c'd'j, L3e'ik'x and L3h.
2.3. Expansion of M, N and many M sublineages of "very short stem" (1 SNP)
2.4. Expansion of R and many M, N and R sublineages of "short stem". Includes also N1, N9, S, most Melanesian M, most South Asian M that had not expanded before, M7, M9, D...

3. After a brief "pause", expansion of the main West Eurasian lineages: HV and U, coincident with some les relevant branching pulses in South and East Asia and even Melanesia.

4. The latest multiple expansive pulse I have located, apparently some time after step 3, is centered in East Asia and surely related to the colonization of the north. The main clades taking part are C and Z, but also M10, M11, M12 and M13 (all East Asian, except the last that I don't know right now). It has some parallel in West Eurasia with the expansion of many U subclades, notably U5, U6 and R0a.


Update: I had to correct an anotation in the image and used that intervention to add a table of diversity of the three major Eurasian macro-haplogroups by regions. It is very clear that M and R diversity gravitates around South Asia. The case of N(xR) is less clear and should depend in where the various minor N lineages are found maybe. Still the case for a South Asian origin can be made for this clade too, moreso if we add R to the figure of South Asian N clades (all three shared with other regions though).
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Somalian pirates claim defense of national waters

There's an interesting first-hand account from a Somalian pirate at the BBC today. Dahir Mohammed Hayeysi claims that foreign illegal industrial overfishing and toxic waste dumping are the main reasons behind Somali piracy. He also claims that foreign navies can't do nothing to stop it, that only a government who can protect their waters can.
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Basque film triumphs in Cuba festival

The film Querida Bamako (Dear Bamako), co-directed by Txarli Llorente and Omer Oke (former Director of Immigration in the Western Basque autonmous government) got the first prize for fiction movies in the Festival of Poor Cinema of Cuba, plus the especial mention of the foreign press.

A Basque documentary, Sicarios del Capital (Hitmen of Capitalism), of Gregorio Subersiola, got the Zero Poverty prize in the section of documentary, videoart or experimental work. It deals with the political violence in Colombia, where people is murdered every other day, mostly for oposing the government and the ultra-wealthy.

This Festival of Gibara is focused in low-budget films from around the world, but, according to Omar Oke, it is a festival that gathers many films and lots of talent, because what they mean by "poor" is only about budget.

Oke evaluated positively the success of his film because, while commercial cinemas have rather ignored it, it has got a very good circulation in parallel and even alternative circuits. Thanks to this subdistribution it has been watched by many people in many festivals, at schools, at NGO meetings...

Oke has another film already finished: La Causa de Kripan (Kripan's Cause), which deals on female castration. He is still awaiting for donors to finish post-production.

Oke (l) and Llorente (r) before their movie's poster

Other films that earned prizes in the Gibara Festival are Chilean El Súper of F. Aljaro and F. del Río, Chile, and La Anunciación (The Annunciation) of E. Pineda Barnet, Cuba. Brazilian Café com Leite (Tú, Él, Yo) of D. Ribeiro got the first prize for short movies, while Bilal of Indian Sourav Sarangi obtained the first prize in the documentary, videoart and experimental work section.

Other prizes were given to Costa Rican El Camino (The Path), of Yshtar Yasin Gutiérrez (foreign press jury choice), Bolivian Humillados y Ofendidos (Humilliated and Offended) , of J.H. Alvárez, C. Brie and P. Brie (best Spanish American documentary) and Cuban Los Dioses Rotos (The Broken Gods), of E. Daranas (especial prize from the audience).

Source: Gara.
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Our rulers' hypocrisy on racism

Found at Desert Peace. Drawing by Carlos Latuff (copyleft).

I can only imagine that the guard in the background is Canada, a country that has the most boot-licking attitude towards Israel and Zionazism.

As you probably know, Canada (first of all), the USA (second) and some European states are boycotting the Durban conference on racism because they do not seem to accept that the main case of outraging racism and apartheid in the world today is Israel.

They fill their mouths with the word "antisemitism" until the term has been dried up of any meaning. And, anyhow, aren't Arabs Semitic too?
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Shlomo Sand on the invention of the Jewish People

Interesting interview with this Israeli historian that you can read at Rebelión (in Spanish) or at l'Humanité (in French). I know of no English version but I'll translate some excerpts here. He deals with his book When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?

I am very much Israeli, of Jewish origins. My cultural baggage is not European but especially Israeli. My first words of love were in Hebrew! It is very interesting to find out that Zionism does not acknowledge the Israeli people but still talks of "Jewish people", therefore neither Arab nationalism nor Zionism acknowledge the fact that in the Near East a society, a culture, even, it can be said, a new people that speaks a distinct language has arisen.

(...)

The exodus from Egypt never happened. (...) As historical document the Bible is not valid. I began researching when did the Bible became a historical book.

(...)

The first model [of Jewish nationalism] is the idea of the German nation. A national idea that is not republican, that is not civic, that relies on the notion of "where do we come from?" instead of using that of "where do we go from here", like the national ideas of France and the USA.

Therefore a lineal, totally imaginary, national history was created, beginning with the Bible.

(...)

I am not really sure that there was a Judaistic monotheism before the destruction of the Second Temple, before the destruction of the Kingdom of Judea. There are many archaeologists who think that there was never a large Kingdom of Israel. (...) The Bible is nothing but a mobilizing text to create a God-chosen people.

(...)

All children in Israel know that Tito exiled the Jews in the year 70 AD. (...) Can you believe that there is not a single book on the exile? Specialists know therefore that there was never any exile (...)

Ben Gurion, a great Zionist, believed until the late 1920s that the real descendants of the Judeans (term I use in my book) were the Palestinian peasants who never left the country. There were elites who migrated but, as always happens in history, the large masses of food producers never went anywhere.

(...)

So, if Jews were not really exiled, where did they live? I had not paid any attention to the fact that the Kingdom of Judea forced all its neighbours to convert. First by the sword, like any other religion, and then by persuassion too. Judaism proselytized until the triumph of Christianism. Then it became a religion enclosed in itself. (...) Jewishness is not any essence: it is a great religion. (...) I think that the origin of 80% of modern Jews is in Eastern Europe, notably Khazars and Slavs.

(...)

In Israel we have a regime that is deeply undemocratic, because it does not intend to serve the society but to the Jewish ethnicity throught the World.

(...)

It is the first time that a non-Zionist candidate to the post of Tel Aviv major gathers 34% of votes [communist Dov Khenin].
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Chávez' gift to Obama makes Galeano a superstar

Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent in the English version) is surely the most famous book of E. Galeano, a classic of Spanish-language literature even few decades after being written. It narrates in black humor tones, by means of historical anecdotes, the colonialist and neocolonialist plundering of the other America, the one south of Río Grande, since Colombus' times.

This masterpiece was ranked number 52,295 by sales in Amazon last friday and by Sunday morning it was ranked just second. This in regard to the English-language edition, the Spanish version is surely better known and, while has also grown, it has done so less spectacularly (possibly because it can be obtained at most local bookshops and libraries and also because many already own a copy).

When in 2006, Chávez pronounced his famous discourse at the UN General Assembly, claiming that the podium, that had been used by GWB still smelled to sulfur, he carried a copy of one of Chomsky's book, also sending it to the bestselling rankings.

You may agree or not with the Venezuelan leader but no doubt that he is a great book-seller.

Source: Rebelión.
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Haitians massively join election boycott

Only 8% of electors casted their votes in the Senatorial polls in occupied Haití. This happened after Fanmi Lavalas, the party of the popular President Bertrand Aristide, ousted by a Franco-US invasion, was forbidden to take part in the polls.

Five years after the imperialist coup of 2004, Aristide and his Lavalas (avalanche) party remain the only popular choice in the impoverished Caribbean country and with good reason. Hopefully one day the imperialist troops (and shame on Brazil for participating in the occupation, by the way) will have to leave and the people's choice will be respected regardless of what the Gringos think about it.
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Thailand turmoil finally well explained

I was getting the impression, watching the repression in Thailand this week, so different to the lack of it when the "yellow shirts" did exactly the same last year, that the current "yellow" government is basically a puppet of the king and very especially the army and that in the end Thaksin and his "red shirts" would be the party of the people and the others just the usual political dogs of the estabilishment. But I don't know too much of Thailand (other than it being the main vassal of the US Empire in the region, together with Philippines), so I have kept a cautious "neutral" attitude.

Finally I have found at The Guardian (via Rebelión) an article that explains what is really going on.

The author, Giles Ji Ungpakorn explains that, yes, Thaksin is evil, burgueoise and corrupt but he managed to lead the popular discontent against the de-facto monarchical dictatorship and the estabilishment in general, which is even more evil, burgeueoise and corrupt. After the reaction managed to take him out, the real party behind him is emerging and their new name Real Democracy (instead of the rather silly "Thai Loves Thai" used in the past) speaks a lot.

Ungpakorn explains that what is going on is in fact just the normal class war going on everywhere else: the people demanding real democracy and social change, some of which Thaksin implemented in fact. But he argues that the red shirts are far from being just mere passive followers of Thaksin, that they have reacted in anger in fact to some of his policies and lack of them in the past and that, now that Thanksin is in exile, have become even more radicalized.

In turn the yellow shirts are denounced as a monarchist fascist old guard trying to impose a "new order" where most public positions, including parliamentary seats, would not be elected. Fascism.

Ungpakorn had to exile himself last February to avoid being persecuted under the fasicst laws of the SE Asian realm that severaly persecute anyone who criticies the totalitarian monarch.

In a sense we are watching some of what happened in Nepal last year, with the difference that the red shirts, by the moment, are not so much radicalized and certainly (unlike the yellow shirts) are not armed like the Maoist guerrilla of the Himalayan country. As the confrontation deepens the republican sentiment grows and, well, anything may happen. Moreso in such an awful general economic context as the one we suffer now.
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Basque former major acquited of terror charges

The former major of Andoain (Gipuzkoa) has been acquited of charges of "collaboration with terrorist gang" not without having been imprisoned for six months and incommunicated in police dependencies for five full days.

Joxean Barandiaran was accused on the grounds that he had a meeting with other politicians to discuss the possible frame of a would-be Basque state (or so says the police report). The same judge that sent him to prision "preventively" has now admitted that there are no grounds for the accusation.

Back in the day the arrests of theses politicians in Bordeaux had a high mediatic hype, as the issue was presented as the arrest of a major ETA cell and blah blah.

Source: Gara.
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More Islamist abuses in Obama's Empire

Afghanistan would be laughable if it would not be for so much people suffering under the Neotaliban rule supported by the USA-NATO occupation force. The last brutality is the approval of a communalist law allowing Shia (but not Sunni) men to rape their wives once eavery four days (that's the kind of Torah mentality they have: all regulated, even sex - but of course women's opinions do not matter). This is sold as some sort of "multiculturalism" because it would acknowledge differences between Sunni and Shia sharia traditions.

Of course Afghan women do not buy. And have gone out to the streets of Kabul to protest in the weirdest kind of feminist parade I've ever witnessed (all them covering their heads and chanting "Allah u akbar": "God is great").

After the demo they were attacked by stone-throwing super-macho counter-demonstrators (all men) that yelled "Death to the Christians' slaves". Like if Christians had not supported the same kind of patriarchal abuses in the very recent past. I was born under a Christian fundamentalist regime, I know what I am talking about: that same kind of laws allowing rape in marriage were in effect until many years after the death of Ayatollah Franco.

What I don't think that was allowed anymore back then (fascism after all is a "modern" phenomenon, even if reactionary and spiteful) was what still happens in the favorite ally of the USA in the region: the ultra-fascist mafious tyranny known as Saudi Arabia. As you surely know the situation of women's rights in the "Muslim Vatican" (with 27 million subjects and many more foreign de-facto slaves) is worse than imaginable. But you may not know that fathers can arrange marriages for their minor daughters with whomever they want, even if these girls are still as young as 8 years old. This is the case of a young girl from an impoverished family (yes there is poor people in Saudia, indeed - and not all are outcasts with foreign passports) who has been forcibly married by her father to an 80 years old pervert. The mother appealed in court, causing some controversy in the retrograde realm, but the father's decission was upheld.

And this is the kind of abuses we are asked to watch indifferent in a world that knows no real borders anymore. In these cases I always think that a little bit of Stalinism would not be in excess in such areas. It's not bigotry: I am just appalled that human rights are smashed by superstitious ideologies (aka religions). Obviously it must be Arabs who solve Arab problems and Afghans who solve Afghan problems but some internationalist support for those fighting for the rights and dignity of Humankind is never in excess. If instead of supporting the bigots and machos there, we would arm the feminists, then at least we would know we are doing something of use. But we (our governments) arm the nazis and ignore the humanists and that has no pardon.
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Beinstein on The Crisis

Admittedly I had never heard before of this Argentine economist with cathedra in Besançon but his opinions fit surprisingly well with what I think, so I will try to echo some of his thoughts.

Source: Rebelión: Una conversación con Jorge Beinstein sobre la 'crisis general de la civilización burguesa': "Esta crisis es mucho más grave que la de 1929". Interview by S. López Arnal (in Spanish, obviously).

Some excerpts:

Nature of the crisis:

Under the appearence of a curious convergence of many "crisis" (economical, energetic, enviromental, state, urban, etc.) what is actually happening is a general crisis of the burgeueoise civilization. In its immediate origin we find a chronic overproduction crisis lasting for almost four decades (...). Even if this chronic overproduction crisis appears as the trigger, the final catalyst of this civilizational crisis, we must clearly differentiate both concepts. (...) It happens that each historical overproduction crisis left open injuries, structural damage, parasitary degenerations (...) that at the beginning of the 21st century are finally causing a "general subproduction crisis": the general incapability of the system to reproduce itself in an expanded manner anymore, to keep growing in the long term.

We are now going through the beginning of the end of a long historical transit (...). In principle we would be at the beginning of a long-lasting crisis-decadence but this is not more than a work hypothesis: History often turns out unexpected.

Financial bubble:

The global network of real state bubbles was evaluated in dossier at The Economist around 2005, soon before the debacle in the USA, as equivalent to the Gross Product of all rich countries together. This is a lot but it is littile when compared with the sum of derived financial products registered by the Bank of Basel that same year that were an speculative mountain worth 12 times the World Gross Product.

The Greater Middle East wars:

(...) they believed that the colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would give them the control of a vast Eurasiatic zone stretching from the Balcans to Afghanistan, at whose core, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea basins, are located about 70% of the global oil reserves. (...) This imperialist offensive was pushed by the Military-Industrial Complex (...). Since Reagan's presidency it became entangled with parasitary and predatory business (...) conforming an oligarchic and mafious system that nowadays constitutes the backbone of the imperial power. All that was expressed in an almost caricaturesque manner by the government of George W. Bush and his hawks, now Obama, in spite of his populist gestures, is just a puppet of that highly irrational power whose dynamics push the system towards disaster. The new president (...) is more of the same: militarist business continue their triumphant march generating a fiscal deficit without precedents in US history whose continuation could even cause the bankrupticy of the imperial state in the mid term.

Senility crisis:

It is necesary to look before 1930: this crisis is much bigger even if we just ponder the financial-economical aspects. Never before in the history of Capitalism was such a huge speculative mass accumulated at all, not just in absolute terms but especially when compared with the World Gross Product. Capitalism today is a mere predatory-parasitary system and that sets an essential qualitative difference with the past. (...)

Never before did Capitalism suffer from such a huge crisis, which looks like the inverse phenomenon to the birth crisis of the modern system at the end of the 18th century (...). Now we face a senility crisis of the burgueoise world, with its economical system trapped in financial parasitism, with its imperial Military-Industrial Complex transformed in a decadent machine, its state structures degradated, etc.

China:

The talk about a "Chinese capitalist superpower of the 21st century" has been nothing but a mediatic hype that recycled the old and always failed illussion of reconversion of underdevelopement into develepoment thanks to the intensification of the burgueoise type transformations. Chinese growth, subordinated to the dynamics of global Capitalism, has arrived to its stagnation stage. (...) sooner or later, and it seems it will be very soon, the once prosperous Chinese industrial structure will enter in a deep crisis that will question in a very general manner the overall status quo.

Prospects:

Capitalism can survive but in a decadent manner, like has been doing for the last four decades. That will depend on the social and political convulsions caused by its decline (...). The neo-fascist coup attempt of the hawks does not need to be the last one of its kind: the US Industrial-Military Complex is suffering a severe cultural crisis: its internal prestige has declined but still has the instruments to generate a new reactionary alternative. This is a very serious possibility.

(...) The only thing they can do is to apply succesive doses of tranquilizers, of partial remedies, insufficient measures in wait of some miracle, that is what doctors usually do with their ailing patients.

Comparison with the fall of the Soviet Union:

It is a very good comparison, that we can extend to many other pre-modern civilizations, consumed by parasitism and that finally imploded.

Enviromental crisis:

Enviromental degradation is at the very center of the current civilization crisis: it is tightly associated to the process of predation of natural resources (...) whose ultimate cause is found in technological reproduction of Capitalism. This one has followed a trajectory of some two centuries of creative destruction-predation in the Shumpeterian sense of the concept, that is: with a positive net result from the viewpoint of the expansion of the productive forces... until it has arrived now to a phase of growingly negative redits in civilizational terms, including the enviromental aspect. (...)

Enviromental degradation is not a long term problem, a problem for the generations to come in a distant future: it is hitting now the economic activity, rural and urban life. Those who want to leave the matter aside in the name of economic urgencies have a very abstract vision, very detached from factual reality, from the problems of a possible reproductive reorganization, from the necessary energetic reconversion, etc.

How the Left should act:

We are right now immersed in the Capitalist crisis that looks as of long duration and without foreseable exit. Turbulences have just begun (...). In this new context, the Left should go into the offensive rapidly, developing a wide fan of struggles aiming to power. Gather the anti-system forces, de-estabilize the existing power systems, reduce their social legitimacy, make efforst of social and regional convergence.

It is very difficult, almost impossible, to outline a general project for all the left movements around the planet. Nevertheless we can find some common elements: for instance, political democratization at all levels, fracturing the elitist dynamics that defined the neoliberal era: grassroots democracy versus burgeuoise pseudodemocracy. And, beginning from that, recycling of the productive web: of finances, of internal and external trade, etc. That implies nationalizations (...), not to serve the interests of the elites but to transform them into truly public, that is: democratic, with strong imprints of self-management, of administrative transparency, of popular control. It is necessary to deal with the social redesign of economy: redefine consume styles based on quality and durability, rejecting the consumerist dehumanizing, individualist madness. Consume to live and not live to consume. This kind of approach would allow us to adress rationally the energetic issue: facilitating a reconversion that will take some time and that should go through huge energy savings. It should also allow for the developement of strategies of reconstruction in the enviromental aspect.

Socialism:

The way out of the crisis that I have just outlined is nothing else but a march to Socialism. But what should we understand today as Socialism? Certainly not the kind of statist Socialism experimented through the 20th century, prisioner of a decisive ideological dependency from the military-industrial burgueois statism in rise since the end of the 19th century. (...)

Now it is all changing very quickly: the burgueoise civilization drifts without direction, its great myths are beginning to collapse (...). Consequently Socialism today should adopt much more radical, revolutionary and democratic shapes than in the past (...)

The emancipation movement must be thought and tried from clearly Communist final goals (...). Socialism concieved as plural path, as process of creative destruction, of institutional breakages, demolitions that allow for the instauration of solidarious, fraternal social structures of production and consume, not anymore as humanist complement of Capitalism but as its revolutionary superation: estabilishing decentralized political structures, incrementing, multiplying direct democracy. Much of that can be found in the revolutioanry movements of Latin America, though I am persuaded it is not just a regional exception.

Marx:

(...) We are indeed returning to Marx: to critical thought rooted on the rebellion of the exploited, irreconciliable enemy of conformism, of pseudo realist adaptation to what conservatives define as "possible". To the true Marx, not to parrot him but surely to march beyond him. To the Marx without dogmatic ties, to the irreverent Marx, who wrote "I am not Marxist", rejecting that way to become a provider of infallible recipes and eternal truths.

Marx' ideas are necessary, unavoidable when we try to understand the current crisis, but they are also not enough. (...) when we try to understand the much more vast challenge of the civilization crisis, we lean on Marx to advance beyond his cultural universe. (...)

Banners, slogans:

(...) in the last decades we have been smashed by a conservative conformist avalanch that has no precedents in modern history because of its dimensions. It has been less than one decade that a slogan, which we would have laughed upon in the 60s and 70s because of its coyness, became rather popular: "another world is possible". We must begin thinking in terms of "revolution", "socialism", "postcapitalism", not as audacious ideas to share with some friends but as banners for action destinied to the great popular majorities.
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More on epigenetics

From Science Daily. Original paper: Qi Fu et al., Epigenetics: intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) modifies the histone code along the rat hepatic IGF-1 gene (behind paywall).

This study found that rat fetuses receiving poor nutrition in the womb become genetically primed to be born into an environment lacking proper nutrition. As a result of this genetic adaptation, the rats were likely to grow to smaller sizes than their normal counterparts. At the same time, they were also at higher risk for a host of health problems throughout their lives, such as diabetes, growth retardation, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and neurodevelopmental delays, among others. Although the study involved rats, the genes and cellular mechanisms involved are the same as those in humans.

In other words: malnourished mothers have smaller children with less caloric needs but who have sacrificed neural and physical health for that small, but maybe decissive, advantage for their extreme enviroment.

What I wonder is wether some of such epigenetic alterations can actually stuck in the upcoming generations, as another research showed recently. If so, poverty, particularly extreme poverty, could have harmful long-lasting effects in whole populations and social classes (not just in the original sufferers but also their descendants). Of course, I also wonder if such epigenetic modifications (assuming they can be transfered through generations) can be reversed by improving the conditions of living and especially nutrition.

And I do wonder about the apparent changes in size in prehistorical human remains may have been caused by nutrition. I recall in fact a paper (sorry no reference right now) in which it was shown that prehistorical Indians were much larger than contemporary Europeans, while today the situation is exactly the opposite. And I also wonder about the apparent reduction in size (including brain size) among humans in general since Paleolithic times. These phenomenons don't seem to have been caused by population replacements at all but could well have been caused by nutritional difficulties (maybe caused by Neolithic or maybe the ones that triggered Neolithic - hard to tell).
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Amazon censors homosexual romance

A lot of people seems to be infuriated by the nonsensical decission of Amazon (the online bookstore olygopoly) of "de-rating" (whatever that means) all titles with any reference to LGTB, what means (it seems) they won't appear in most searches.

As I do not really ever buy anything online (and seldom offline, except the basics of course), I have little idea of what all this means in detail but it seems clear that is another attept by the global fundamentalist conspiracy against human intelligence and common sense to censor what people can access through the net. In this case it seems particularly harmful as it directly attacks the civil rights of a minority (but also those of the majority, who wants to read freely).

But as I say, my understanding is limited, so I direct you to more knowledgeable sites:
· Dear Author
· Meta Writer
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Epigenetic modifications can be inherited

A fascinating article at Science Daily today: Epigenetics: DNA Isn’t Everything.

A certain laboratory strain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has white eyes. If the surrounding temperature of the embryos, which are normally nurtured at 25 degrees Celsius, is briefly raised to 37 degrees Celsius, the flies later hatch with red eyes. If these flies are again crossed, the following generations are partly red-eyed – without further temperature treatment – even though only white-eyed flies are expected according to the rules of genetics.

These two flies have the same eye color genes

And not just them: other species like the agouti (certain rodent) also have shown to be able to transmit epigenetic modifications to the next generations like if these were normal genetic traits.

This means that enviromental influences can have very long lasting effects, overruling the genetic fundamentals. Genes are not themselves modified in these epigenetic processes, just activated or deactivated, the same that your liver cells are so they can only be liver cells and not, say, neurones or muscular cells. The fascinating discovery is that such transformations, when they happen at embryonic level, can become permanent and transmitted to further generations without known limit.

I wonder how many of the human phenotypic traits that anthropometrists usually attribute to genes with no or limited evidence are in fact mere epigenetic "permanent" modifications because of this or that historical accident. It would be nice to know for sure.
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Petras on The Crisis and Obama's 'more of the same'

Read at Voltaire Network: World Depression: Regional Wars and the Decline of the US Empire, by James Petras. Too long and detailed to adress here. Petras is always a good read.



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USA provided the weapons for Gaza massacre

From Voltaire Network: U.S. shipped 989 munitions containers to Israel week before Gaza invasion.

A German cargo ship, Wehr Elb, transported 14,000 tonnes of munitions from the USA to Israel just a week before that Israeli attack. At least 300 containers were unnloaded at Ashod, a few kilometers north of Gaza, according to Amnesty International, while the Pentagon says all them arrived to Ashod in fact.

Amnesty International is sure that the cargo contained arms and munitions and has a "strong suspicion" that it also contained white phosphorus shells, used by the Zionists to masacre civilians in flagrant violation of Intenrational Law.
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Study suggests single origin for Pygmies.

· E. Patin et al., Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter–Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set. PLoS Genetics, 2009.

The autors analyzed autosomal DNA samples from Western and Eastern Pygmies, as well as of a variety of agriculturalist peoples of Tropical Africa. They conclude that Pygmies separated from other Tropical Africans as a single population at the estimated time of some 60,000 BP and that they split into two groups, Eastern and Western, c. 20,000 BP.

Fig. 2. A is regular K-means clustering and B represents "filtered" populations after exclusion of individuals with more than 20% admixture at K=4.
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Ancient Canaan city razed by Hebrews

There is a news item at Science Daily telling of the finding of a tablet with what appears to be a woman ruler, probably the "Mistress of Lioness" who asked in vain for help to her Egyptian overlords when the area was being plundered by tribes of wandering Hebrews and other peoples in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1350 BCE). In her letter she said that her city was in danger because of the threat of bands of barbarians and rebels.

The city, located west of Jerusalem, was anyhow razed and was later known as Beit Shemesh (Hebrew name) or similar variants, meaning House of Shemesh, the Canaanite Sun goddess.

What I find more interesting anyhow is not in the article though. Beit Shemesh is, following Wikipedia, the first city in the country that shows clear signs of Jewish domination, notably bones of only "kosher" animals, unlike in surrounding cities of the same time. This strongly suggests that Beit Shemesh was one of the first Jewish conquest in the country, what in turn seems to idicate that the barbarians and rebels that the Queen wrote about were no other but the Hebrews. Nearby Jerusalem is only believed to have been conquered centuries later, c. 1000 BCE, by the semi-mythical King David.

The period of the Late Bronze Age and even the very beginnings of Iron Age was one of strife and confusion through all West Eurasia, with the obscure Sea Peoples' pillages, the destruction of Troy and Ugarit, the collapse of the Hittite Empire, the expansion of the Urnfield culture peoples, the vanishment of the oldest and long-lived West European civilization, Zambujal, and also the conquest of Canaan by a bunch of sectarian warlike nomads: the Hebrews.

The Jewish domination of Canaan, later known as Palestine, lasted only about one thousand years. After the Roman conquest and genocidal quelling of revolts, the country was fully integrated into the Eastern Roman Empire, and then conquered by the Muslim Caliphate and various successors. Most of the inhabitants became Christians first and then Muslims and are now known as Palestinians (the bulk of modern Jewish ancestry seems actually to be in the diaspora converts from, especially, Asia Minor and Khazaria instead). 

Update (Nov. 2012): see this article on the Jewish and Philistine period (a bit messy, specislly wrong usage of English words like ancestors but still of some interest).

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Magdalenian artifacts found in Scotland

Flint tools have been discovered near Biggar, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. They are very similar to the ones used in the Netherlands and Northern Germany c. 14-12,000 years ago, in the Magdalenian period. This suggests that their users could have originated in that area and crossed through what is now the North Sea, then above sea level (Doggerland).

If the datation could be confirmed, it would mean pushing back the earliest known inhabitation of Scotland by humans more than 3000 years. Before this finding the oldest known human settlements in the country were dated to c. 8500 BP, in the Epipaleolithic period.

Source: BBC.
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Note: preliminary mtDNA timeline

After squeezing my neurones for many days I have found a reasonable (albeit still hypothetical) timeline for Eurasian mtDNA based on SNP count. I have used a very simplified tree/sequence, that focuses in West Eurasian lineages, as these are the easiest ones to match with the known archaeo-cultural record, at least for me.

I used the mtDNA tree at PhyloTree.org as reference because it seems best kept and updated.

L3>>>>M>N>>R>>R0>HV/U>>H/U6/U8>>>U5>>>>U5a>>K>T/W>K1/K2>>>>>>>>"present"

Obviously this sequence is not a genealogical tree but a mere lineal count of some representative nodes (epysodes) in the Eurasian genetic tree. The different lineages have been blended in a single "temporal" line for working purposes only. Each ">" symbol represents 1SNP in relation to the previous node and to the general L3 node (that includes all Eurasian plus some African mtDNA).

Of course, my assumption is that each SNP should represent an approximately similar period of time in the evolution of the Eurasian mtDNA.

"Present" is considered here by taking some well studied K subclade. I decided to use it after preliminary attempts made modern K sublineages to be well "in the future". At this stage it has not be contrasted with other lineages, what may produce some relevant fine tuning later on.

I tried hard (I swear) to make the H "explosion" fit with Gravettian but that only pushed R0 and U too late into the UP, and made the M,N,R "supernode" to be also incredibly too recent. Also contemporary U6 and U8 are way too likely to be of Aurignacian (Dabban in the case of U6) times. So the H/U6/U8 is here fixed to 41,000 BP, being the other reference point.

The results are (rounded to the nearest milennium):
·L3 67 kya
·M 59 kya
·N 56 kya [9 M sublineages]
·R 52 kya [D, M14, M30, M36]
·R0 48 kya [G, M8, M43, M45]
·U/HV 45 kya [CZ, M31, M34, M39, M48, N2, B, R9]
·H/U6/U8 41 kya (assumed) [Q, N9a, N9b, U2, HV0, R5, R8]
·U5 34 kya [M1, M28, U6b'd, U8b'K]
·U5a 26 kya [M32, R0a,U6a, U7]
·K 21 kya [M21, M22, U4]
·T/W 19 kya [N2a, R11, U6c]
·K1/K2 17 kya

Likely contemporary nodes not directly considered are listed in [brackets] for reference. Not all other major lineages/nodes are coincident with the ones considered here; the ones listed are just for a quick reference of the wider Eurasian picture.

Notice that D and G are listed among the oldest East Asian nodes to branch and they are also the ones considered oldest in Central Asia (derived subclades, not considered), what suggests that the oldest colonization of this region had an Oriental origin.

Overall the impression is that:

1. The "fast coastal migration" scenario, via Bab el-Mandeb, seems ratified, as the dates could not fit with an older Eurasian coalescence. Would I try to force that, the H "explosion", for instance, would have to be much older than any European AMH presence, what makes absolutely no sense. This seems to contradict my previous estimates for Y-DNA, so I will have to review them.

2. When the R "explosion" happened, there were already N-lineage people in East Asia (N9) and Australia (S), and most M sublineages (16/26) had already began branching out in their respective destinations (exceptions include the only West Eurasian M sublineages: M1 and M48). This probably means that the expansion of R implies a second distinct pulse of the Eurasian expansion of AMH, I guess that associated with that of Y-DNA K.

3. AMHs arrived to West Asia and expanded there c. 48-45 kya. The later date may imply also the colonization of parts of the Balcans (Bakho-Kiro).

4. The main expansion of West Asians into Europe and North Africa happened c. 41 kya (this is presumed but should pose no problem as we know that well enough on archaeological grounds). H, U6 and U8 formed and began branching out ("exploding" in the case of H) at that time.

5. The timeline of U5 approaches that of Gravettian (original at c. 28 kya) but not well enough. It must be noted anyhow that the western expansion of Gravettian is much more recent, closer to the Solutrean origins, what gives some margin for speculation. Eastern Europe was basically colonized in this period, what explains well why U5 is more common towards the East, while H is towards the West of Europe.

6. K appears to have a Solutreo-Magdalenian time frame, what would mean that U8 as a whole, also U8b'K, probably coalesced in Europe and not in West Asia. At first I suspected that K would end up being Neolithic but, after some reality check (mutations to present), it seems not. West Asian U8b (also found in Italy) and K is therefore product of a back-migration therefore. I am at the moment uncertain but suspecting that T2 might have migrated to Europe also in this prehistorical context.

And for those who worship the TRMCA (i.e. Tandem Repeat Molecular Clock [Hypothesis] Age [Estimate]) model, I suggest them to re-read my favorite Grimm brothers' tale: The Emperor's New Clothes, which is very illustrative of what happens when people trust what they can't see, and when blind acceptance of authority on the fear of being called a fool goes mainstream, even if it's an obvious nonsense. In any case, as this estimate of mine clearly conradicts many of these elaborate guesses (even if it fits surprisingly well with known Prehistory), I'll be glad to discuss their concerns in the comments section, like always.
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Traffic pollution causes underweight babies

Source: BBC Science & Enviroment.

Researchers from the Univeristiy of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, discarded other possible factors such as smoking, race or socioeconomic background to determine that pollution, specfically pollution caused by road traffic, is a major cause of abdnormally low weight in newborns.

The risk of a small birth weight baby rose significantly with each increase in particulate matter of four micrograms per metres squared, during the first and third trimesters of pregnancy. Similarly, the risk of a very small birth weight baby rose significantly with each 10 parts per billion increase in nitrogen dioxide.

These two pollutants are emitted by motor vehicles.
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Stone blades already 500,000 years ago.

Found at Remote Central, original news from Science Now.

This is a most interesting news and review for those of us who are interested in the formation of Humankind. In the past blade-making abilities were considered something somehow definitory of what meant to be Homo sapiens. Eventually blade tools associated with Neanderthals were discovered too and it was also acknowledged that many Sapiens cultures did not use blades altogether anyhow. The use of this technology is anyhow quite definitory of the Upper Paleolithic of West Eurasia.

Recent research anyhow has been pushing back this technology: to 380,000 in West Asia and 300,000 in Europe. Now the record of antiquity has been beaten by a discovery in Kenya that is dated to more than 500,000 years ago (509-543,000 BP)

The revealing artifacts

It must be mentioned that H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens are not that old, they are generally believed to be some 200,000 years old as species, maybe less in the case of H. sapiens.

So who made them? Apparently our direct ancestor Homo heidelbergensis, whose remains (sometimes described as H. rhodesiensis) have been found in the same part of the Kenyan formation. In the case of the later European blades it would be H. antecessor, the direct ancestor of Neanderthals, while it is not obvious who would be responsible for the West Asian ones, of intermediate age.

One factor that is anyhow underlined is the last dramatic expansion of brain size in the human lineage about 600,000 years ago, which may have been responsible for a major shift in human intelligence, allowing for more complex achievements among our ancestors and extinct relatives.
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Watch who you email

Another fascist EU directive requiring telecom companies to keep track of all your emails and net phone calls has become effective. Only Sweden has decided to completely ignore it while in Germany is being challenged at court.

By this method mail will not be private anymore, as the police will have ready access to the list of the people you are communicating with.

Just another courstesy of Scarecrow Productions: we get some fanatic freaks to bomb you, we frighten you and we take your freedoms all at once. The very coup that has been going on in the West and the world in general since September 11 2001, with all democratic rights being stripped once after the other and with rulers, police corps and judges being given dictator powers.
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Cheap straw-made homes withstand the hardest erthquake

A most interesting developement in architecture for the people: engineer and students demonstrate that an innovative design of cheap home built mostly of straw bales can withstand earthquakes near the top of the Ritcher scale, with almost no damage.

The design is intended for the people of the Hindu Kush area, where earthquakes are common. While inspired in local techniques, the house does not use straw bales only for insulation but actually for the very structure of the building. The cimentation is made of sacks of gravel, another cheap readily available material and the walls are covered with clay plaster, similarly easy to obtain.

The result is an extremely resistent home that, subject to an extremely violent artificial earthquake survived with just a small crack in the plaster.

After the earthquake... just a crack.

The project by the University of Reno, Nevada, aims to offer cheap but earthquake-proof homes for the people of Kashmir, where recent earthquakes wroke havoc.

So good for the old brickmakers' propaganda stories: straw stands best in fact.
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Afghanistan, as fundamentalist now as with the Taliban

It is surely not the only case but it is most outraging: Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh allegely downloaded an article in support of women's rights from the Internet and distributed it. In the morning of October 27th 2007 he was arrested. Then he was tortured and sentenced to death on the grounds of "blasphemy" (what the heck?). After some local and international outrage, and numerous protests in Afghanistan itself, the sentence was commuted to 20 years of prision and ratified by the Afghan supreme court.

Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh in prision

In Rebelión, his brother dennounces the hypocritical Western support for a regime that is full of religious fanatics, corrupt, obscurantist and totalitarian. He dennounces that the "talibanists" (as to make a difference with the armed opposition talibans) control the government in Kabul and the provinces and that all the Western intervention has done virtually nothing in favor of the human rights of the Afghan people.

I wonder if that is the reason why the USA and its NATO vassals are losing the war after all: their inability to deliver consistently with their discourse.
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Arctic will be ice free in three decades

This is the conclussion drawn by two independent researchers from Washington state on a selection of the best models for the effects of ongoing climatic change in the Arctic. Climatlogist Muyin Wang and oceanographer James Overland selected the six best performing models on this matter (out of 23), picking only those that had been able to make good predictions for the recent past, and concluded that this (bottom half, top two are from now) is the most likely picture for March and September 2040:

Source: Science Daily.
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Brief review of recent mtDNA H info

Haplogroup H (mtDNA) has been popping up at Dienekes' and Mathilda's blogs several times as of late. In order to keep a clear reference, here is the list of the papers:

1. V. Alvarez-Iglesias, A. Mosquera-Miguel et al. New Population and Phylogenetic Features of the Internal Variation within Mitochondrial DNA Macro-Haplogroup R0. PLoS-ONE, 2009. (open access)
2. H. Ennafaa, V. M Cabrera et al. Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup H structure in North Africa. BioMed Central Genetics 2009. (open access)
3. L. Cherni et al. Post-last glacial maximum expansion from Iberia to North Africa revealed by fine characterization of mtDNA H haplogroup in Tunisia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2008. (abstract only - full paper behind paywall)
4. D. Caramelli et al. A 28,000 Years Old Cro-Magnon mtDNA Sequence Differs from All Potentially Contaminating Modern Sequences. PLoS-ONE, 2008. (open access)
5. H. Chandler, B. Sykes and J. Zilhao. Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal. Actas del III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica, 2005. (PDF - freely accessible)

Fig. 3 from paper #1
H subclades' distribution in Europe, West and Central Asia

(1) and (2) are just out of the oven and it is really nice that such important papers are open access. (1) covers Europe, West Asia and Central Asia, while (2) focuses in North Africa (with context references for West Asia and Iberia), being the perfect complement of (1), illustrating how West European H1 and H3 comprise the largest part of North African H (which in turn is 25% of all regional mtDNA). (3) is sadly behind a paywall but the main conclusion visible in the abstract: Although no signs of local expansion were detected, which would allow a clear dating of their introduction, the younger and less diverse Tunisian H1 and H3 lineages indicate Iberia as the radiating centre.

(4) is a most important research that has found CRS haplotype in the HVR-I (most likely H) in a 28,000 years old individual from Paglicci Cave, Puglia, Italy. This discovery clashes directly with he usual MCH hunches that make this subclade much recent and document that haplogroup H and at least some of its subclades were already common in the early Gravettian and are no modern developement at all. (5) is an older yet relevant paper that shows that haplogroup H was strongly dominant in both Epipaleolithic and Neolithic Portuguese, along with some U and less important clades.

Overall it seems reasonably clear that H expansion dates at least from Gravettian times (no other cultural group has been so pan-European ever) and that its expansion into North Africa suggest that Iberomaurusian (Oranian) culture was with all likehood derived from Southern Iberian Gravetto-Solutrean. It also seems very clear that the DNA "molecular clock" does not seem to be ticking at the usually speculated rythms at all.

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Update: Another paper on aDNA, including H, that I had forgotten is R. Kèfi et al. Diversité mitochondriale de la population de Taforalt (12.000 ans bp - maroc): une approche génétique a l’étude du peuplement de l’afrique du nord. Anthropologie 2005. Reviewed and translated in its essentials by Mathilda several months ago [note: previous link has gone broken but I found a Power Point direct download from Pasteur Institut].

The HVS-I haplotype sequencing of 23 bone remains from Taforalt cave, Morocco, yielded the following results:

· H or U (CRS, most likely all H): 11 (47.8%)
· H (not CRS): 4 (17.4%)
· JT: 3 (13%)
· U6: 2 (8.7%)
· V: 2 (8.7%)
· L3, M or N: 1 (4.3%)

JT means JT(xJ,xT), a very rare finding, exclusive nowadays of North Africa and Italy. The authors mention that this same mtDNA pool is the one found among modern Notheren Moroccan Berbers who live in that same area.
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USA: one out of ten citizens surviving on food stamps

32.2 million people in the USA (10% of the population) are living on food stamps, the rationing method used in the North American republic to keep starvation at bay. Unemployed able to claim benefits are now another almost six million, reports Al Jazeera. Yet another 3% of the population is in jail or probation, as noticed in Genes and Demons. The various figures of the marginated may overlap somewhat, I guess but we are anyhow talking of a marginalized population approaching maybe 15% of all US-Americans.

And the trend, sadly, does not look like reverting any time soon.
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Y-DNA timeline (4) - comparison with climatic data

In the second post of this mini-series, I suggested to do some fine tuning experiments in regard with my Y-DNA timeline analysis, by comparing the general graph (which shows pattern and proportions) with actual climatic data.

I have done some of it, mirroring the glaciar climatic data in order to make it fit with the left to right orientation of my graph, and stretching it at different escales until it fit as well as I could figure with the apparent demic expansions' pattern.

The result is as follows:



I am pretty much satisfied with this result but I welcome alternative proposals if you think you can find something better. Just in case I tried to find other possible fittings between the two graphs and the best I could come up with was this:


Unlike in the previous case this alternative does not satisfy me, nor I think it will anybody else. Even if the oldest dates could fit better with some usual assumptions (OOA at 80-70 kya, main Eurasian expansions at 60-40 ka), it makes the "recent past" final line to be way too distant from the present, well in the Magdalenian period and in the middle of a cold phase. There are many other inconsistencies that suggest that this "short chronology" version is wrong.

But feel free to experiment yourself: maybe you can come up with some improved chronology that I have missed.

So I am sticking to the first graph, which I am pretty much satisfied with. What revised conclusions can we come up with?

1. The Y-DNA root and the OOA (CF split) epysode are close in time. It suggests that the whole process of Y-DNA diversification at high levels happened in an expansive phase that culminated in the OOA. It fits well with a climatic high and also with archaeological data, recently ratified with the datation of North African Aterian to c. 95,000 BP. It suggests that the OOA route was not via southern Arabia but via the Fertile Crescent instead, where the oldest Eurasian AMH fossils are found.

2. The DE split (OOA chapter 2) is the only anomalous reference point, as it is in a climatic low. Nevertheless this may well be due to the normal margin of error in the estimate and could have happened in the previous or subsequent climatic highs perfectly.

3. The F-K (or F-IJK-K-NOP) supernode (first expansion) is in the 80-70,000 BP window. It may have got the Toba epysode in between (sharp valley between two climatic peaks) or right after it (much larger and also deep climatic low). Whatever the case, it fits well with the evidence of South Asian cultural continuity at Jawalpura under and over the Toba ash layer.

Of some interest is that the first and second nodes in this supernode show divisions with West Eurasian exclusive subclades, as are G adn IJ, as well as South Asian only (H). It suggests that "the F clan" was estabilished between West and South Asia at the time.

A parallel expansion is that of macrohaplogroup D, which shows an East Asian distribution nowadays (from Andaman to Siberia). It is possible that D lineages represent, in the Y-DNA, the oldest Eastern Eurasian signature.

In Africa, haplogroup B seems also to have expanded in this window.

4. The second expansion corresponds to a better accepted period: that between 60 and 50,000 BP for the Eurasian expansion.

The expansion of macrohaplogroup C may have happened then (though there is great uncertainty, because this clade is not sufficiently well studied). A possible center for this haplogroup could have been SE Asia, though South Asia is also a possibility.

Other splits happening in this phase are (seemingly) those of H, IJ, NO and P (Q and R). It clearly seems an already regionalized expansion in South Asia, West Asia, East Asia and Central/South Asia respectively. Some time before, Melanesian clade M expanded too, what surely means that people were already thriving in New Guinea at that time.

In Africa, haplogroup E also began its early expansion at this time.

5. Another moment of particular interest is c. 41,000 BP, where the graph places the split between I2a and I2b, as well as of J1 and J2. This is so strictly coincident with Aurignacian expansion that I can't but take it as proof that the graph is well calibrated (as this was not taken in account initially at all). Further division of these clades happened closer to the Gravettian timeline, what makes me wonder if some J2 subclades, rare in West Asia but common in Europe and South Asia, are not pre-Neolithic signature as well.

Other clades expanding in this period (roughly 45-30,000 BP) are C2 (Melanesia), G (West Eurasia), N (East and North Eurasia), O (East and SE Asia), Q (South, Central and North Asia), R (South, Central and West Eurasia) and S (Australia).

In Africa, it is also the time of expansion of E1b1 and E1b1b (but not yet of E1b1a), as well as that of E2 (but not yet of E1a).

6. The last mark in cyan color in the graph is for the formation of the West European R1b1b2a1, dated to some 19,000 years ago. It really makes it look like a Solutrean or Magdalenian founder effect. A matter that surprises me but that I am going to research as much as I can, looking for possible precursors of either of these cultures in West Asia, where R1b coalesced almost without doubt since some 30-28,000 years ago. This date for R1b as a whole is nevertheless most intriguing, as it is oddly coincident with Gravettian expansion. I can only scratch my head at the moment, as the structure of R1b is only relatively well understood with many blanks in our knowledge of non-European (and even European) subclades.

The formation of the (rather rare) R1b1b1a subhaplogroups would still fall within a late Magdalenian (or early post-Magdalenian at most) time frame.

Other expansions at this "late" moment are those of E1a and E1b1a (Africa), C1 (Japan), L (South and Central Asia), T (West Eurasia), and probably R1a1 towards the easternmost edge of Europe.

7. The "recent past" final line of (relative) stability is dated to some 9,000 years ago, in the Epipaleolithic or early Neolithic (depending on the region). This may seem a little early to some but it's what the excercise of fine tuning has produced on its own. It does anyhow fit with a climatic high, what makes sense.

That's all, folks.

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Previous post of the Y-DNA timeline series: 1, 2, 3.
Related R1b structure post.
MtDNA miniseries: 1, 2, 3.
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Irradiated food destroys myeline, causes neurological diseases

Experiments with cats have shown that a diet of irradiated food causes destruction of the nerve insulator myelin and subsequent neurological diseases. The good news is that, removed the radiactive diet, cats recover slowly but satisfactorily.

While the authors argue that they think that the cause of the myeline destruction is "species specific" they provide no evidence for this claim, which sounds in fact mere wishful thinking. Food irradiation is somewhat common in industrial countries, especially the ultra-modernist (for some things) USA, being a rather controversial method of food preservation.

Significatively multiple sclerosis (one of the major diseases caused by myelin deterioration) is much more common in North America and some parts of Europe (areas where food irradiation is relatively common) than anywhere else in the world, though genetic factors may also be at play.

Other illnesses associated with faulty myelin are autism and alzheimer, while the latter is clearly an age-related problem, autism appears to have increased a lot in the last decades, precisely since food irradiation became common.

Source: Science Daily.
Another post on the importance of myelin, for the record.
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