Only Natural

…This intellectual revolution has infected anthropology (among many fields) with a dangerous, self-contradictory nihilism that rejects the possibility of objective Truth toward which we may move and posits many different truths held by different peoples — all equally valid. Yet they behave as if their belief in many truths must be treated as The Truth that must not be questioned.

Anthropologists insist on the relativity of knowledge, except when it comes to their own statements, which they take to be The Absolute Truth.…

…Conducting the first large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from the Near East, an international team led by Harvard Medical School has illuminated the genetic identities and population dynamics of the world’s first farmers.

The study reveals three genetically distinct farming populations living in the Near East at the dawn of agriculture 12,000 to 8,000 years ago: two newly described groups in Iran and the Levant and a previously reported group in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey.

The findings… also suggest that agriculture spread in the Near East at least in part because existing groups invented or adopted farming technologies, rather than because one population replaced another.…

…Archaeologists in Texas have found a set of 16,700-year-old tools which are among the oldest discovered in the West. Until now, it was believed that the culture that represented the continent’s first inhabitants was the Clovis culture. However, the discovery of the ancient tools now challenges that theory, providing evidence that human occupation precedes the arrival of the Clovis people by thousands of years.…

Mission to Mariana Trench Records Dozens of Crazy Deep Sea Creatures

The Okeanos Explorer has spent three months mapping the seafloor and recording deep sea life in the ocean's depths…

…The Juno spacecraft, which will orbit Jupiter from pole-to-pole and study the gas giant from a relatively low altitude, was launched nearly five years ago, in August 2011. It hurtled through the solar system before arriving near the largest planet Monday evening, firing up its engines, and switching its orbit from the sun to the gas giant.…

…Nasa's New Horizons probe flew close to Pluto last year, revealing clues the dwarf planet might once have had a liquid ocean sloshing around under its icy crust.

The ocean, which may have hosted alien life, was thought to have frozen over millions of years ago.

But new analysis shows the ocean beneath the surface is still liquid now - raising hopes that signs of life could yet be discovered on the dwarf planet.…

…In most cases, the dinosaurs would have needed lips to protect their teeth, as the majority of them weren't water dwelling creatures. They would have had scaly lips, just like reptiles such as the monitor lizard.

“It’s also important to remember that teeth would have been partially covered by gums. If we look at where the enamel stops, we can see that a substantial portion of the teeth would be hidden in the gums. The teeth would have appeared much smaller on a living animal." Reisz concluded: “In popular culture, we imagine dinosaurs as more ferocious-looking, but that is not the case.”…

…the Bohmian view of quantum mechanics—less fuzzy but in some ways more strange than the traditional view—may be poised for a comeback.…

…Their analysis revealed that atmospheric pressure 2.7 billion years ago was at most only half of its present value—a result that flies in the face of our understanding of the Earth during the Archaean period. … Now, scientists have to figure out what it means. … suggests something dramatic took place about three billion years ago to reduce the size of the atmosphere. And Som has a hunch as to what that something might be. … Other geochemical evidence suggests that around 3.2 billion years ago, bacteria developed mechanisms for transforming atmospheric nitrogen (N2 gas) into ammonia (NH3), a biologically-useful form. … nitrogen fixation, was utterly essential to the evolution of complex life. Without it, plants and animals would have no way of accessing the nitrogen our cells need to build proteins and DNA. Essentially, Som and others suspect that the ability to strip-mine the atmosphere for nitrogen caused air pressure to take a temporary nosedive.…

The evolutionary “out of Africa” theory—which holds that humans evolved in Africa and split off on different evolutionary paths as they migrated away from that continent—has been given yet another jolt by new DNA studies which have called the dating behind the belief into question.… involves measurements of the rate at which children show DNA changes not seen in their parents—the so-called “mutation rate”… authors calculate the last common ancestor for human mitochondrial lineages to around 160,000 years ago.…

Apr 23: A stunning and terrifying event has taken place in space surrounding our planet; for two hours today, earth's "Magnetosphere" COLLAPSED around the entire planet! …

The Popocatépetl volcano in Mexico erupted overnight, sending lava flying as far as a mile away from the mountain… There are approximately 25 million people who live within 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, of the active volcano.…

Climate change is an urgent topic of discussion among politicians, journalists and celebrities...but what do scientists say about climate change? Does the data validate those who say humans are causing the earth to catastrophically warm? Richard Lindzen, an MIT atmospheric physicist and one of the world's leading climatologists, summarizes the science behind climate change.