20,000 Year Old (?) Pottery From China

“Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say.

The findings, which will appear in the journal Science on Friday, add to recent efforts that have dated pottery piles in East Asia to more than 15,000 years ago, refuting conventional theories that the invention of pottery correlates to the period about 10,000 years ago when humans moved from being hunter-gathers to farmers.”

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“Scientists took samples, such as bones and charcoal, from above and below the ancient fragments in the dating process, Wu said.

“This way, we can determine with precision the age of the fragments, and our results can be recognized by peers,” Wu said.

Shelach said he found the process done by Wu’s team to be meticulous and that the cave had been well protected throughout the research.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/pottery-20000-years-old_n_1635079.html

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Christians Are Whiners

The Christian complains about an increasingly secular world, but the Republican Party is controlled by right wing evangelical fundamentalists.  No atheists allowed

The Air Force academy in Colorado is run by right wing evangelical fundamentalists. You either bend to what they want or you are an outcast and stand to lose your appointment.

“Evangelical Christians are at it again. The proselytizing only-through-Christ bunch have now taken up desecration of non-Christian religious sites: Not Jews this time but Wiccans. What the hell goes through the minds of these evangelicals who think they can tell other religions—at a military academy no less—what to believe? At their core, evangelicals who despise pluralism are infantile.”
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/02/03/christians-desecrate-wiccan-religious-site-at-air-force-academy/

The troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq are of the same family group of fundamentalists and they threaten the lives of atheist troops.

In most of the South and especially throughout the “Bible Belt” you are mostly a social outcast if you don’t fall into the dominant Christian group of your town- i.e. Baptist, Pentecostal, etc.

In the Middle East and Much of Asia if you decline membership in the Islamic religion you are a social outcast to 98 percent or more of the population…if you’re Jewish you are dead-meat.

In China the Christian believing population is exploding so fast the government is scrambling to keep up and control it.

In Australia the churches have access to school classes and it is smiled upon by the government.

So I’m just wondering where the hell Christians are getting this bit about secularism is getting worse and worse.  Maybe in Europe, where it is predicted that nine countries will go atheist in the next few years, but I certainly don’t see it in the rest of the world.

Christians are just a bunch of whiners anyway. 🙂

“None of today’s problems are caused by Atheists – just think about it.” Cobourg Atheists

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A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome-the Abstract

A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome abstract

“Neandertals, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans, lived in large parts of Europe and western Asia before disappearing 30,000 years ago. We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals. Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans, including genes involved in metabolism and in cognitive and skeletal development. We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other.”

The abstract of the article is in Science here (subscription may be required for full article)

So this is one more checkable, reproducible, peer reviewed, scientific proof that modern man has been around for way more than 50,000 years.  This is in total contradiction to the Biblical assertions that the world/humans are 6,000 years old and that there was an Adam and Eve who were the progenitors of the human race.  DNA/genome research had already proved that all alive on earth today did not come from a male and female who lived 6,000 years ago or even 60,000 years ago.

Quote of the day

Religion easily has the best bulls__t story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money. George Carlin

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Egypt, Ethiopia and the Beginning of Biblical Time

Recent DNA Genome studies of the human race, from all over the world, have shown that, long ago, we all came out of Africa.  From North and South America, Australia, China, Asia, Europe, India–All the world’s bloodlines converge in Africa, and the approximate time they came out of Africa can be tracked. This technology is less than three decades old now and it has changed genealogy and criminology forever. Looking into our human past is now very easy and I’m sure many more uses will be discovered.

Below are some short excerpts from a very smart lady writing of Egypt and Ethiopia in 1920’s/1930’s that I think is remarkably prescient. Science and archaeology seems to continue verifying her conclusions, as scientists have been saying for some time now that the Ethiopian area is probably the ‘Cradle of Life’, and we know that Egypt is the first truly great civilization. Much evidence coming out now that Libya, Egypt, and Ethiopia have been populated more than 10,000 years.

“Out of anthropology, ethnology, geology, paleontology, archaeology, as well as history, I have dug up an irrefutable arsenal of facts that Harvard or Yale or cowardly scholarship in our race dare not refute. How can a leadership point the forward way that is utterly ignorant of the past?”

“Stephanus of Byzantium, voicing the universal testimony of antiquity wrote, “Ethiopia was the first established country on earth and the Ethiopians were the first to set up the worship of the gods and to establish laws.” The later ages gained from this ancient empire, the fundamental principles upon which republican governments are founded. The basic stones of that wonderful dominion were equality, temperance, industry, intelligence and justice.”
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“The priests of Sais said to Solon, “You Greeks are novices in all the knowledge of antiquity. You are ignorant of what passed here or among yourselves in the days of old. The history of eight thousand years is deposited in our sacred books, but we can ascend to much higher antiquity and tell you what our fathers have done for nine thousand years. I mean their institutions, their laws, and their brilliant accomplishments.” Baldwin points out that neither Solon nor Plato thought this improbable. The Greeks could tell nothing of their progenitors and but little of the Pelasgian race that preceded them in Hellenic lands. “There can be no doubt,” says Baldwin, “that the Egyptians preserved old records of the early period of their history extending beyond Menes.” This knowledge was lost to our times by the destruction of the Alexandrian library and the fanatical zeal which destroyed all pagan manuscripts.”
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“Egypt falls into natural divisions, Lower and Upper. Lower Egypt stretches from the Mediterranean to the limit of the Delta. Upper Egypt extends six hundred miles south of the Delta to the first cataract. The broad plains of the Delta and the comparatively narrow valley higher up make up the divisions of Egypt. In the primitive days Upper Egypt was wholly Ethiopian. Bunsen says that the early monuments reveal the primitive Egyptian, with head low and elongated, the forehead not amply developed, the nose short, thick, the lips full and large, the chin short and receding. In those days the rulers of Egypt were wholly Ethiopian. Look at authentic plates of early Egyptian Pharaohs, they are undeniably Cushite. The Great Sphinx, emblematic of an earlier king, is the full featured Ethiopian type. Look at the astounding countenance of Cheops. The counterpart of such a face can only be found among Ethiopians today. He is a perfect representation of the Cushite Ethiopian race that cast such giant shadows on time’s dawn.”  Drusilla Dunjee Houston, writing in late 1920’s to early 1930’s, in public domain.

This is a pretty fascinating read for anyone interested in human beginnings and our path to civilization.  One thing I found interesting was that the Egyptians and Ethiopians were circumcising male children-before the Hebrews and their gods even thought about it.

“Circumcision was a rite universally practiced as a part of the religion of the old Egyptians, as long as the native institutions flourished. It was a rite of the ruling Ethiopian element. Under Greek and Roman rule it fell into disuse but was always retained by the priesthood and those who desired to cultivate ancient wisdom. Herodotus said that all Ethiopians circumcised. Lenormant calls it original with them. The Coptic Church practices it to this day. Abyssinians do the same. They did not adopt it from the Jews for they circumcise both sexes. Oldendorpe finds the rite in western Africa. It must be a relic of ancient African customs. It is older than Mohammed, who did not regard it as a religious rite. Southern Arabia had the rite from Ethiopia. Himyartic Arabs (Cushites), circumcise their children on the eighth day. Pocock found that other Semitic Arabs circumcise between the tenth and fifteenth years.”

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Migratory Humans in North America

Very interesting site with a long list of dates and probable happenings up and down the Mexican, California, Oregon, Washington, and British Colombian coast from a Veeerryyy long time ago. Evidences of Man/Women traveling around this part of the planet from more than 20,000 years ago…way more. The Chinese, Japanese, and other Asiatic people were no doubt visiting and settling in North America, long before the white Europeans came to the East coast.  http://www.telusplanet.net/dgarneau/indian2.htm

I don’t think the last story has been written about the many travels and accomplishments of ancient man/women across the time stream of this earth.

The Biblical story of human Genesis purported to be some 6,000 years ago in the Middle East has occupied and limited our vision for way too much time.  It has caused so much doubt of what the scientists have been saying for hundreds of years. We need to listen to them, as they are telling the real story of humanity.

Humans have accomplished so much more than a lot of people think. We have traveled the globe from early on; invented so much, so early on, but religion keeps trying to hold us back, to stop the advances, to saddle us with non-existent magic and supernatural and demons and the sins (?) of our fore-fathers.

Well anyway, check out the site when you have time, it has some really interesting time-lines. When you come across the geological sea level data, think about all the Native American flood myths.

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Humans Came Out of Africa

It is now pretty much accepted that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and spread north and east along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and then split into groups that migrated in every direction. Some went to Australia; some went north into the Asian steppes, thence into Europe, where they eventually displaced the Neanderthals. Evidence is primarily mutations in mitochondrial DNA found in the descendants not of a single woman, Eve, but rather a “core” of 2,000 to maybe 10,000 Africans who lived around 190,000 to 200,000 years ago. This puts science once again in the cross-hairs of the religious right or visa-versa. The religionists will thoroughly deny that the scientists know what they’re talking about, and continue to insist that the Biblical Adam and Eve were born 6,000+ years ago somewhere in the middle-east.

I suspect it’s really hard to be a Christian nowadays. As much as they would like to muzzle the continuing new knowledge that disproves their beliefs…they can’t. If they just ignores the news and don’t read anything but select Christian literature, they can keep their cores beliefs I suppose, but I would have to believe that it would make one rather one dimensional and boring to talk to. I mean the Bible stories have been passed around and talked about so much that you get tired of repeating the same thing over and over.

If you are one of the rare Christian birds that can somehow read and listen to the daily bombardment of advancing knowledge and somehow rationalize it as not applying to your faith, more power to you. I find it rather sad though that real knowledge is filtered out of your consciousness.

That leaves the even rarer Christian that hears and reads about the real world science going on and on and thinks he or she can somehow make their beliefs fit. Better yet, get a scientifically trained person who wimped out of real science because you actually have to prove and defend your position, and goes and gets a Doctor of Divinity degree, and writes books that sound scientifically plausible to the layman, but are thoroughly debunked by the practicing scientist. I have found so many Christian sites on the Internet that just lie to try to make their religious beliefs make sense in light of the real world knowledge out there.

I have talked in person to Christians who profess to believe in the inerrant Bible and they are really ignorant. They look surprised when you bring up facts to them. Don’t misunderstand me, I still respect them as unusually nice persons, but I can’t understand their being that uninvolved in the world. Christians without a doubt accept the science that underlies modern living…they believe in that and know it works. That’s as far as it goes though. Science is under the control of Satan if any of it impinges on their ‘beliefs.’

This is all well and good as long as these Christians are established and productive citizens, but as I wrote about yesterday, what happens to their children if those children are brought up believing that modern science is wrong and unacceptable to believe in? Some secular colleges are turning down Christian school graduates for not being able to think critically and logically enough to survive college teaching.

“Information is religion’s greatest enemy, and in an age when information is just a few keyboard strokes away from anyone with a computer, this is going to pose a greater threat to Christianity than anything it has yet ‘survived.‘ “–Farrell Till

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