Posts Tagged ‘they’

Are FEMA camps good vacation destinations? Where are they located?

Why would Glenn Beck lie about them?

Did they have global warming 5,000 years ago? Why couldn’t they prevent it (like we’re doing)?

Ancient cemetery found in ‘green’ Sahara Desert

By Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A tiny woman and two children were laid to rest on a bed of flowers 5,000 years ago in what is now the barren Sahara Desert.
The slender arms of the youngsters were still extended to the woman in perpetual embrace when researchers discovered their skeletons in a remarkable cemetery that is providing clues to two civilizations who lived there, a thousand years apart, when the region was moist and green.

Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and colleagues were searching for the remains of dinosaurs in the African country of Niger when they came across the startling find, detailed at a news conference Thursday at the National Geographic Society.

Some 200 graves of humans were found during fieldwork at the site in 2005 and 2006, as well as remains of animals, large fish and crocodiles.

“Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don’t live in the desert,” said Sereno. “I realized we were in the green Sahara.”

The graveyard, uncovered by hot desert winds, is near what would have been a lake at the time people lived there. It’s in a region called Gobero, hidden away in Niger’s forbidding Tenere Desert, known to Tuareg nomads as a “desert within a desert.”

The human remains dated from two distinct populations that lived there during wet times, with a dry period in between.

The first group, known as the Kiffian, hunted wild animals and speared huge perch with harpoons. They colonized the region when the Sahara was at its wettest, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago.

The researchers said the Kiffians were tall, sometimes reaching well over 6 feet (1.83 meters).

The second group lived in the region between 7,000 and 4,500 years ago. The Tenerians were smaller and had a mixed economy of hunting, fishing and cattle herding.

Their burials often included jewelry or ritual poses. For example, one girl had an upper-arm bracelet carved from a hippo tusk. An adult Tenerian male was buried with his skull resting on part of a clay vessel; another adult male was interred seated on the shell of a mud turtle.

And pollen remains show the woman and two children were buried on a bed of flowers. The researchers preserved the group just as they had been for thousands of years.

“At first glance, it’s hard to imagine two more biologically distinct groups of people burying their dead in the same place,” said team member Chris Stojanowski, a bioarchaeologist from Arizona State University.

Stojanowski said ridges on the thigh bone of one Kiffian man show he had huge leg muscles, “which suggests he was eating a lot of protein and had an active, strenuous lifestyle. The Kiffian appear to have been fairly healthy — it would be difficult to grow a body that tall and muscular without sufficient nutrition.”

On the other hand, ridges on a Tenerian male were barely visible. “This man’s life was less rigorous, perhaps taking smaller fish and game with more advanced hunting technologies,” Stojanowski said.

Helene Jousse, a zooarchaeologist from the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, reported that animal bones found in the area were from types common today in the Serengeti in Kenya, such as elephants, giraffes, hartebeests and warthogs.

The finds are detailed in reports in Thursday’s edition of the journal PLoS One and in the September issue of National Geographic Magazine.

While the Sahara is desert today, a small difference in Earth’s orbit once brought seasonal monsoons farther north, wetting the landscape with lakes with lush margins and drawing animals and people.

The research was funded by National Geographic, the Island Fund of the New York Community Trust, the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Fellow Liberals, Forgive them for they know not what they do?

Here’s the scoop for the right wingers: In 1962 American spy planes took actual photographs of armed nuclear missiles stationed 90 miles from the coast of the great state of Florida. Guess where they were aimed. Without the loss of a single life, the island hell with a ruthless dictator and the support of a superpower, with nuclear weapons and missiles on a par with us; backed down. Compare that leadership to 2003. A president invades a third world dictatorship thousands of miles away, thinking that they have WMD. With much more advanced technology this son of a president is mistaken. He is duped. Even if there were WMD, so what? Where is the capability to deliver them thousands of miles? When did we become such fearful cowards that we have to invade a country based on such sloppy intelligence?The threat in Iraq, was minuscule compared to threats we’ve defeated in the past without a bullet being fired. What ever happened to having balls enough to not let fear rule your actions? But, the right wingers are happy because they got everything they voted for: 2500 lost soldiers, thousands of amputees, 300 Billion plus deficits, global warming, inept Federal Agencies like FEMA, a president on vacation while an American city is destroyed, on and on and on. They have it all – Congress, The Supreme Court and the President. Fellow liberals let them have their fun, sleep with a clear conscious for we are not to blame!
Werk2much, what a bunch of hogwash, where specifically am I rewriting history?
Talking Points? What in the name of God are Talking Points? Dawn Darling, our dumbass mayor presided over the biggest orderly evacuation in the history of this country. While our President was scratching his a$$ in Texas.
And don’t even get me started on the cuts to the Army Corp of Engineers budget that came about because of your Conservative fiscal mess. Our city flooded because of the negligence of the Fed Govt. in reducing funding to the Agency supposed to protect us.
Where in God’s name would someone get the idiotic notion that Liberals are complaining against spy planes? How much brainwashing can the conservative media do?
If you want to know about Pres Kennedy go read An Unfinished Life, by Robert Dallek. Kennedy died in 1963. Don’t even think of blaming him for the Vietnam Fiasco.
I’m gonna go eat a big fat breakfast burrito!Then fart in honor of the idiots.
Freedom of Speech. It ain’t Freedom of Speech if you have to throw it in my face about the sacrifices of so many in order for me to earn it. How the fuhq do you know what i’ve sacrificed to earn it?
Hey Mainiac: you sound like you want a resume. Yes, I did graduate from high school, I took some music courses after that in a community college, then I went to the University of New Orleans. I took about 90 hours of courses. Then I went into Rehabilitation Counseling, it took another 2 years and I got my B.S. from LSU Medical Center, School of Allied Health Professions. I paid my own way through this, not a penny from my parents or my country. Then, listen dude…I went to law school. I worked my a$$ off for three years. My specialty is Constitutional Law. I’ve been licensed to practice here in the U.S. for going on 19 years. You sound like you could have the makings of a good litigator. Think about it. Good Luck and I didn’t mean to offend anyone. God Bless, Goodnight
Disclaimer: I misspoke, I do not have a specialty in Con. Law, I meant to say its my passion.
Some try to minimize the magnitde of the problem by calling it “whining”. Sorry, that doesn’t fly. Then they call for solutions. That’s like the Captain of the Exxon Valdes saying, “duh, I spilled the oil – now you clean it up”. If you want a solution how bout cleaning up the mess in Iraq like one big oil spill. Double or triple the number of troops there. Get 20 or 30 other countries to each send as many troops as possible to help. Blanket the whole country with troops, like the National Guard is doing down here with crime. Break the country up into sectors. One other country is each assigned a sector. Just get the freankin mess you created cleaned up. There’s your solution.
For the anal spelling fanatics, sorry I misspelled “magnitude”!

I recently won 7 thousand dollars at a Rhode Island casino. They took out no taxes.?

I live in MA. Can I offset the taxes with losing MA scratch tickets?

Where are the 1000 Islands that they talk about on salad dressing?

I want to take vacation there cuz paul newman told me so