More like NOT-swana

No offence to the fine citizens of the Republic of Botswana, which is one of the nicer countries in the old Old World. But there's hype about humanity coming from that region sooo....

There's an interesting side-note in the Silver Siberian Fox's thread; that the bio-arxiv might be putting Nature (and peer-review generally) out of business, but... ehhh. The mathematicians are already there with the regular arxiv, I'm told. I do think there's a case for forcing authors to get editors. So bioRχiv shouldn't pop the champagne yet.

Anyway, although Europeans will preach at you that mtDNA is only half a population, that counts mainly for Europeans. We're the ones with the taboo against cousin-fracking. Outside Europe, tribes tend not to outmarry; they just move, and bring their women. So I'm not paying too much attention to the naysayers. Okay... maybe a little.

Business Insider, much as I have distrusted them in the past, offers the most cogent critique (or quotes the best, anyway), from Ryan Raaum at Lehman College. He points out that the study did not find the common ancestrix of Botswana "L0" and everyone else. They just found L0. So the ancestrix could have come from elsewhere, sent L0 across the Zambezi (where she stayed), and multiplied at home.

Also by that time there were already humans all over Africa and, indeed, in Eurasia. Not least, the so-called Ghost Populations, like the Neanders. So although the L-crew were the baddest bitches in Africa, such that no other mtDNA survives, they did subsume others. By the time they got to the northeast Horn of Africa, which is what I as a nonblack care about, they'd already absorbed a lot of these populations en route. This bubble-graph is pretty cool.

An aurora in Nuaym bin Hammad

A couple weeks back I found “The Earliest Candidates of Auroral Observations in Assyrian Astrological Reports: Insights on Solar Activity around 660 BCE”. Further, I found its draught on the arxiv for Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) and History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph). With all that, I have a new project: "Observations of an aurora in Islamic apocalyptic subsequent to the 774 CE carbon anomaly".

I usually post my work as part of the "zimriel project": Google Docs, linked on my site. But this one, I wanted to upload to the arxiv. I have created an account... but I find that the arxiv has special rules to keep the, er, dross out. To post in an area, I need an endorsement from someone else who is active on that area. The areas I want are, of course, the areas "astro-ph.SR" and "physics.hist-ph". Although I also considered "astro-ph.HE".

Until that happens (or, unless that happens...), feel free to read my work as a freely-available Google Doc, here.

How America defeated the Nazis

Ineffable Island: On 2 October, Takaaki K. Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Watanabe, Atsuko Yamazaki and Miriam Pfeiffer linked a Sahara sandstorm to 2100 BC Oman coral damage and then... "Oman corals suggest that a stronger winter shamal [wind] season caused the Akkadian Empire (Mesopotamia) collapse", Geology. doi 10.1130/G46604.1

Over the 1930s there was a dustbowl in North America, famously. The western edge of our Great Plains - where I live - is intermittently a Gobi, when you get out of the mountains. Nebraska is particularly surreal; in early summer you can see green mesas and even green dust-dunes. Back when irrigation was not yet finished, and Wall Street investment sank, on the first drought this area went full Sahara. The driest part was in the rockier Texas panhandle... but the affected area spread to the dustiest part north of that.

The early 1940s featured one of the worst winters ever to envelop Eastern Europe. The winter had a hand in stalling Stalin's takeover of Finland; and its early onset slowed Hitler's takeover of Russia.

If you look at a globe, the dust-prone parts of Parias I'm talking about cover, in "affected area", from 30-45 degrees latitude. The Wehrmacht had to reach Moskau, so had to range 50-55 degrees. The winds blow west-to-east, and more strongly the more north of 40 degrees.

Once Nebraska dust had entered the atmosphere, it took a few years to reach sufficient concentrations over eastern Europe to chill the place.

BACKDATING 10/26.

The end of the British Bronze Age

Over the ninth century BC, the presumed-Celtic people of the Thames brought their broken bronze implements to the river delta (*Londunum, I guess). Mostly these were weapons but also some jewelry. There the Londoners carefully arranged all the bronze. And then they quit doing that (h/t Saraceni).

I know of no population turnover in this region at this time. UPDATE 12/31/21: This coincides with a gene-flip along the Thames, although - this far southeast - this flip will have finished by the ninth century.

Population changes or no, this tells us bronze became (sharply) less valuable. For weapons, iron became a competitor locally; and I expect also that the Continent had lightened up on its demand for British tin. And since bronze was cheaper now the ladyfolk didn't see as much value in its jewelry, either.

Anyone still wanting some old-fashioned bronzework for, I dunno, a nice looking crock-pot could, now, go make a new one from new bronze. Those running the recycling centre simply quit their jobs. Probably as soon they noticed that they'd started getting jewelry now.

The frog model

Ineffable Island reports on "First Four Legged Creatures". Amphibians of course.

The report sketches out an "amphibian" that was perhaps a couple feet long and still, at base, a water creature. They poked their heads above water to spot prey on land. The land prey will be arthropod - the report cites millipedes. Given the upper jaw strength on the amphibian, the arthropodic prey will have had hard upper carapaces already (guarding against other bugs I guess).

One possibility which the report doesn't note yet: mating-calls. A tetrafin/-pod water-breather like Ichthyostega might have got the ability to lock down its breathing-apparatus, to move from pond A to pond B. The next stage will be to take in and expel air - for music, that the sound might carry across ponds. No point in pond B if there aren't any females there. But if pond C calls back - go for it.

The Cult of the Singing Flame - in press

I have wiped the bulk of "The Cult of the Singing Flame" from its present posting-ground. The good news: a much-improved version is set to be published: in The Averoigne Legacy, under Pickman's Press. Last I heard, the e-book is going out in the next week (for All Saints' Eve, when else) and a paperback soon after.

Some contributors had announced their notices earlier. And that's great! My situation, I feel, differs from most contributors', so I dared not say aught until now.

The publisher and I negotiated an agreement where I'd take a lower fee - for a few reasons: this is a small publisher, and the story demanded more editorial help than most on account of it being my first. In return I got the right to republish the story, which technically would include its pre-publication over there. But I am so pleased with the editorial help that, really, I don't want that original hanging out anywhere else. Also, based on the list of other authors, Simon Whitechapel in particular, I think this volume as a whole is going to be worth all of the time and money it requests of us.

FanFiction.net might delist the stub I left, for "advertising", which I hope they don't do, but if they do then I'll accept their decision.

REVIEW 11/10 - of the collection as a whole.

Death from the mountains

Vesuvius erupted in its usual horrendous fashion during the Early Bronze Age, around 1900 BC. This event delivered an “Avellino Pumice” layer throughout coastal and northeast Campania.

Per Claude Albore Livadie, Mark Pearce, Matteo Delle Donnede, and Natascia Pizzano, "The effects of the Avellino Pumice eruption on the population of the Early Bronze age Campanian plain (Southern Italy)": the eruption didn’t do all that much harm… at first. Livadie et al. note that the same people (well, people speaking the same language, anyway) resettled the region. For the most part.

Livadie et al. do note more tree pollen after the event. They think that the bulk of the resettlement aimed at such regions as weren’t so prone to forest – like hills. The motive the scholars ascribe is defence.

Another eruption, labeled “AP1”, was less intense but triggered more tree pollen. “AP2”, around 1700 BC, was weaker still; it didn’t even reach the coast. But AP2 coincided with the end of the Campanian farming culture, to be replaced by the “proto-Apennine” cattle culture (which I think is OscoUmbrian).

So what did the Campanians speak before all that? Although a farm culture they did use cattle (the Bronze Age tractor). Candidates I’d entertain include an Italic branch, a pre-Italic IndoEuropean outlier, some relative of Etruscan, a language-family now unknown, even a Berber offshoot. But I don’t think there is any way for us to know as yet.