Archive for the ‘Ancient World’ Category
By: The Scribe on June, 2011
When someone thinks about shrimp they usually think about cocktails and skewers made up of small pink bodies. Now, a fossil belonging to a prehistoric ancestor of modern crustaceans has been found in southeastern Morocco. At just over three feet in length, it is a full foot longer than previous specimens. Experts believe that this creature was edible and that it would have produced enough meat to feed a large group of individuals for a month. This is certainly not a creature that could be hung on the side of a glass and then dipped in sauce.
The massive prehistoric creature is called an anomalocaridid. The name actually means “strange shrimp” due to the fact that they look much like a shrimp or a cuttlefish. Their remains are usually found with fossils that date from the Cambrian period (542 million to 488.3 million years BCE) and these specimens usually max out at around two feet in length. This new specimen, which was discovered in rock from the Ordovician period (488 million to 443 million years BCE), is not only younger than previous specimens it is also a full foot longer.
It was believed that this massive creature was actually a predator and that it likely dominated the waters where it lived. The creatures had many of the features that modern shrimp do, including a similar body shape and two appendages that extended out from the mouth area. They were able to swim freely thanks to swimming lobes located along each side of the body. This made them extremely agile swimmers.
The creatures were thought to live on hard-shelled creatures such as trilobites and that 
they had developed a ring shaped mouth full of sharp, hard teeth in order to do so. They also had large eyes which enabled them to see their prey.
This discovery raises a lot of questions and issues for scientists who are studying the Cambrian and the Ordovician eras. They want to know whether other animals also grew larger than the fossil records would indicate. The fact that the anomalocaridid was a full foot longer than previous specimens suggested that other animals from the same time might also have been somewhat larger as well.
The discovery of the fossil in the Ordovician period is causing scientists to also rethink when these creatures might have lived. Originally, it was believed that these creatures were not present in rock dating from before about 510 million years CE although there are many examples that have been found in Cambrian-era rocks.
The problem with finding anomalocaridid fossils is that they had soft bodies. This means that there was little remaining to become fossilized the way the bones and exoskeletons of other creatures could be. It took a sediment cloud to protect and preserve these fossils to preserve these anomalocaridids enough that they could be studied.
Anomalocaridids did eventually become extinct although not as soon as scientists had first thought. Although they look like modern shrimp there is no relationship between shrimp and anomalocaridids.
By: The Scribe on June, 2011
Regular posts will be resuming on Monday, thanks for reading!
By: The Scribe on May, 2011
When archaeologists opened an 18th Dynasty Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings, they made a startling discovery. There, amid furniture, vehicles and other funerary artifacts they discovered vessels full of honey. It had crystallized but was still edible. Honey that was over three thousand years old was not only still in the tomb it was still edible and had not spoiled in any way.
Honey was used in many different ways by the ancient Egyptians. As well as being used as a natural sweetener for baked goods and other food, it was also a component in the mummification process used by the Egyptians to preserve their dead. Honey was also a part of the religious life of ancient Egypt. It was used as an offering to Min, an Egyptian god of fertility.
Honey was also used in other cultures besides the ancient Egyptians. People have been searching for this natural sweetener for at least ten thousand years. Cave paintings that were discovered in Valencia, Spain showed the process of collecting honey. In the painting, two women are collecting both honey and honeycombs from the nests of wild bees. The painting has been dated to the Mesolithic period.
While many cultures simply looked for honey in the nests of wild bees, the ancient Chinese actually developed beekeeping. It has been mentioned in texts dating from the Spring and Autumn period which lasted from 771 BCE to 453 BCE. In the books, which were written by Fan Li, tips for keeping bees successfully were mentioned. Fan Li, an advisor living in the Chinese state of Yue, stated that the quality of the wooden box used to house the bees was important. He stated that it could affect the quality of the honey that the bees produced.
Honey was used as more than just a sweetening agent or as a food. It was put on wounds by Roman legions as a way to speed up the healing process. Honey contains natural antibacterial properties that can help prevent infection so it was no wonder that it would be used for healing. Even now, many ointments and skin creams contain honey because of its healing properties. Honey was also used to treat skin rashes and burns for the same reason. In Mesoamerica, stingless honey bees have been revered by the Mayan people for thousands of years. They considered the bees to be a sacred animal and cultivated them, a practice which has continued to the present day. 
Honey has also appeared in many different ancient religious texts including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an. In Buddhism, honey plays a major role in some religious festivals. One in particular, Madhu Purnima, celebrates the retreat of Buddha into the wilderness as a way of making peace among his various disciples. During this retreat, religious legends state that a monkey brought honey to Buddha so that he could eat. The gift that the monkey brought is one that is common to many pieces of Buddhist art.
By: The Scribe on May, 2011
The first encounter that most people have with lice is when they get a call from their child’s school. They find that their son or daughter is being sent home with a head full of bugs or eggs. The process of combing through hair and treating the scalp will begin. It can be an uncomfortable and embarrassing situation for everyone.
What they may not realize is that head lice are not the only kind of lice that infest humans. They may also not realize that several discoveries about head lice and body lice have taught us many things about evolutionary history and even the migratory journeys that early humans took part in.
Lice are small, wingless insects that feed off of the blood of their host. They tend to stick to one type of host. For example, the lice that are found on apes, monkeys or other animals would not make their home on a human and vice versa. Lice fall into two main groups: those that chew on their hosts to get blood, and those that suck blood from their hosts. The lice that live on humans are of the sucking rather than the chewing variety.
The lice that live on humans can be further divided into three varieties. The most common is the head louse, which is the plague of school children and their parents in many countries. Body lice live on body hair and in the folds of clothing. They are also quite common and tend to flourish where people are living in crowded conditions. The third type is known as crab lice and these live in the genital region of humans. They are spread from one human to another through sexual contact.
It is believed that lice first split into chewing and sucking varieties between 100 and 145 
million years ago. The chewing lice made up the largest group. Sucking lice only have about 500 species including the species that make the lives of human hosts miserable. Further testing showed that head lice found on humans separated from the head lice that are found on chimpanzees about 5.6 million years ago. Using that evidence as well as human DNA evidence, it was possible to prove that human and chimpanzee ancestors also split from one another at the same time.
Head lice are not the only lice that have helped scientists find out more about early humans. For example, scientists who have studied body lice have been able to tell that the invention of clothing only happened about 107,000 years ago. Lice need a place where they can live and breed in between feeding off of the blood of their hosts. Humans do not have enough body hair to support body lice and so body lice evolved to live in clothing. Since they did not exist before about 107,000 years ago, it shows that clothing appeared around the same amount of time.
Although lice continue to plague humans throughout the world they have been useful in helping scientists determine many facts about the lives of ancient humans and how they evolved over time.
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When someone thinks about shrimp they usually think about cocktails and skewers made up of small pink bodies. Now, a fossil belonging to a prehistoric ancestor of modern crustaceans has been found in southeastern Morocco. At just over three feet in length, it is a full foot longer than previous specimens. Experts believe that this creature was edible and that it would have produced enough meat to feed a large group of individuals for a month. This is certainly not a creature that could be hung on the side of a glass and then dipped in sauce.
they had developed a ring shaped mouth full of sharp, hard teeth in order to do so. They also had large eyes which enabled them to see their prey.
