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Native Americans Voyaged to Polynesia Long Before Europeans Reached the Americas, DNA Study Shows @Gizmodo Misc. |
Indigenous South Americans reached islands in the South Pacific some 300 years before Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas, according to new genetic evidence.
New genetic research published today in Nature links indigenous South Americans to Polynesian Islanders. Incredibly, it seems a group from what is today Colombia voyaged to the South Pacific around 1200 ACE, reaching islands thousands of miles away.
Once there, they mingled with the local Polynesian population, leaving their genetic and possibly cultural legacy behind, according to the new research, co-authored by Stanford University biologist Alexander Ioannidis.
Archaeologists and anthropologists have been wondering about this potential link for decades, but evidence has been limited, inconclusive, and speculative.
While sailing through Polynesia during the 18th century, for example, Captain Cook documented the presence of sweet potatoes on South Pacific islands—a weird finding, given this root vegetable’s origins in South America.
Scientists took this as evidence of indigenous South Americans traveling to the Pacific Islands or Polynesians traveling to South America and returning home with their sweet potato stash.
This theory was challenged two years ago in a Current Biology study, in which the authors argued that the sweet potato arrived in Polynesia some 100,000 years ago, long before humans ventured to this part of the world.
But there’s other evidence to consider as well, such as traces of Polynesian DNA among members of the Brazilian Botocudos tribe.
What’s more, the word for sweet potato in the Polynesian language is “kuumala,” which is extremely close to “kumara,” how the Quechua people of northwestern South America describe it.
There’s also experimental archaeological evidence to consider. In 1947, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, along with five daring crewmates, traveled from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia aboard a large wooden raft called the Kon-Tiki.
It took them 101 days to travel the 5,000 miles (8,000 km). Pushed by the prevailing westerly trade winds, Heyerdahl showed that it was possible to reach Polynesia from South America on a rudimentary boat.
He subsequently argued that Native South Americans migrated to Polynesia, an idea for which he was heavily criticized, as conventional thinking had it that Polynesians were descended from Asian migrants.
So, there’s been interesting—yet undeniably flimsy—evidence. For the new study, the authors strove for more robust data. To that end, they studied the genomes of 807 people from 17 Pacific island populations and 15 Pacific coast Native American groups.
“Through this research, we wanted to reconstruct the ancestral roots that have shaped the diversity of these populations and answer deep, long-standing questions about the potential contact between Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, connecting two of the most understudied regions of the world,” said Andrés Moreno-Estrada, a co-author of the study and a geneticist at Mexico’s National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, in a press release.
With the help of computers, the authors identified key genetic markers known as identical-by-descent segments.
These markers can identify shared common ancestry, pointing to recent mating events among groups.
In this case, evidence admixture, or gene flow, among Polynesians and Native South Americans was pinpointed to a single contact event that happened at the turn of the 13th century, likely at some point between 1150 ACE and 1240 ACE.That these two groups managed to link up 800 years ago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is nothing short of astounding.
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''You felt the land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but had forgotten or ignored” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River Africa |
“Going home at night! It wasn't often that I was on the river at night. I never liked it. I never felt in control. In the darkness of river and forest you could be sure only of what you could see — and even on a moonlight night you couldn't see much. When you made a noise — dipped a paddle in the water — you heard yourself as though you were another person. The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder ... You felt the land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but had forgotten or ignored, but which was always there.You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
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They fancied themselves free wrote Camus ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences. Misc. |
―In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.
A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.
But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.
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China says ties with US at lowest point since 1979 @FinancialTimes Law & Politics |
A phase one trade deal between the world’s two biggest economies, which promised to pause a tit-for-tat tariff spat, has been largely forgotten in recent months.
Washington has sparred with Beijing over its imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong, militarisation of the South China Sea and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This week Beijing pledged to ban US officials who engaged in “vile acts” regarding Tibet, after Washington restricted visas for Chinese officials over policy in the region.
Mr Wang’s remarks were an unusually frank admission from a senior official on how far the situation has deteriorated and suggest that Beijing is eager to halt any further escalation of disagreement, analysts said.
The speech comes against a backdrop of growing alarm among China’s foreign affairs establishment about relations with Washington.
Jia Qingguo, dean of international relations at Peking University, said China was attempting to taijie — a Chinese term that translates literally as “to provide steps” and which means to give an out of an awkward situation — in order to allow the Trump administration to retreat from what Beijing sees as an “unreasonable” position.
“There is an acceleration of efforts to demonise China and China does not want to take that,” Prof Jia said.
A survey of 100 top scholars published this week by Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute found that 62 per cent of respondents believed the “US has indeed started a ‘new Cold War’ against China”, while 90 per cent said that China could handle the US in this new confrontation.
Liu Weidong, a scholar at the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in the report that only a firm approach by China would work with the US under Trump, which “will take a mile if you give them an inch”.
“In the past, the US was willing to respond to compromises from China. But Trump has broken with convention,” Mr Liu said.
China has signalled its willingness to hold to the phase one trade deal. But other issues, such as rising tensions over Taiwan, could “torpedo” the process, said Prof Jia.
“To challenge China on the Taiwan issue is playing with fire,” he added.
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Ethiopia’s Nile mega-dam is changing dynamics in Horn of Africa @FT @davidpilling Africa |
In a few weeks, Ethiopian engineers will start the multiyear task of filling with water the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant and the most ambitious attempt to harness the power of the Nile in history.
Eventually, the $4.8bn project will double Ethiopia’s generating capacity and provide a jolt of electricity that could energise what is already the most dynamic large economy in sub-Saharan Africa.
The dam has not only raised tensions with Egypt, which fears losing control over a waterway that has shaped its destiny for millennia.
It has also put the spotlight on a region, the Horn of Africa, that has become a magnet for outside attention, not to say interference, from a plethora of powers including the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, China, Turkey and the US.
Ethiopia had what Murithi Mutiga of the Crisis Group calls “a bad 20th century”. Its decline culminated in the Red Terror perpetrated by the Marxist Derg regime, which overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and the famines of the mid-1980s, which made proud Ethiopia a symbol of the failed African state.
The mega-dam on the Blue Nile, financed by patriotic bonds, is a potent symbol of Ethiopia’s renaissance.
Still, for all its potential, neither Ethiopia, nor the Horn in general, has been a story of steady progress. Far from it.
Ethiopia’s liberation from the Derg was swiftly followed by the loss of its coastline after the secession of Eritrea two years later.
In 1991, Somalia, a country of mainly nomadic pastoralists resistant to the concept of a centrally controlled nation state, plunged into decades of bloody anarchy after the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship, which had been supported first by the Soviets and later by the Americans.
Foreign powers have always been drawn to the Horn because of its proximity to the Red Sea, which controls access to the Suez Canal.
In recent years, Gulf states have revived their centuries-old connections. China has invested heavily, pouring billions into Ethiopia in spite of its lack of physical resources, and establishing a military base in neighbouring Djibouti.
Beijing also financed and built a semi-functional railway between Djibouti and Addis Ababa, helping strengthen Ethiopia’s link to the sea following its loss of Eritrea.
Yet political actors in the Horn have never been passive victims of external interference.
Instead, they have sought to profit from foreign interest by pitting one external actor against another.
The commercial hub of Djibouti, formerly French Somaliland, is a case in point.
Situated on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint separating the Gulf of Aden from the Red Sea, it now hosts the military bases (for a price) of the US, China, Japan, France and Italy.
In 2006, Dubai-based DP World constructed a container port in Djibouti only to have it seized in 2018.
Meanwhile, along the African Red Sea coast there has been a scramble for coastline with Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Ethiopia itself taking stakes in competing ports.
As if all these shifting allegiances were not enough, Ethiopia has undergone a political earthquake.
In 2018, after years of unrest, Abiy Ahmed became prime minister, promising democracy, a more open economy and peace with Eritrea.
Since then, the US has seen a chance to prise Addis Ababa away from what it regards as China’s malignant influence.
It has held out the prospect of big investments if the government goes through with market reforms.
Under pressure from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Washington is also urging Ethiopia to sign a water-sharing agreement to allay Cairo’s fears over the Nile.
Mr Abiy has a restive, fractured state to contend with. Soon he will need to fight a difficult election that was postponed because of Covid-19.
The last thing Ethiopia’s leader wants is to appear weak in the face of external pressure.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be filled, water-sharing agreement or not. In the Horn of Africa, outside interference only gets you so far.
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20-JAN-2020 :: The Intrusion of Middle Powers Law & Politics |
Since 2010 and over the last ten years, Middle powers like Turkey, the UAE [whom Mattis characterised as ‘’Little Sparta’’], Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey [Israel and Russia too but they cannot be characterised as Middle Powers] have all extended their reach into the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa.
The Horn of Africa exhibits enti- rely similar characteristics. In fact, from the Maghreb to the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, we are witnessing a surge in asymmetric warfare and the intrusion of Middle Po
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02-JUN-2020 :: Fast Forward On top of all that we know have an Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo Misc. |
On top of all that we know have an Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo
Congo declares new Ebola epidemic, 1,000 km from eastern outbreak Reuters
Democratic Republic of Congo declared a new Ebola epidemic on Monday in the western city of Mbandaka, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away from an ongoing outbreak of the same deadly virus in the east.
Health Minister Eteni Longondo said four people who died in Mbandaka were confirmed as positive cases following testing at the national biomedical laboratory in the capital Kinshasa.
“We have a new Ebola epidemic in Mbandaka,” Longondo told reporters. “We are going to very quickly send them the vaccine and medicine.”
The outbreak was confirmed by World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who tweeted: “This outbreak is a reminder that #COVID19 is not the only health threat people face.”
Congo has been struggling to put an end to a nearly two-year-old Ebola outbreak near its eastern borders with Rwanda and Uganda, which has killed more than 2,200 people, the world’s second-deadliest outbreak of the disease on record.
It was days away in April from declaring the end of that outbreak, its tenth since the virus was discovered in 1976, when a new chain of infection was confirmed in the east. However, no new cases have been detected there in over 30 days.
The first known emergence of Ebola Zaire—the hottest subtype of Ebola virus— happened in September, 1976, when the virus erupted simultaneously in fifty-five villages near the Ebola River. Ebola Zaire is a slate-wiper in humans.
It killed eighty- eight per cent of the people it infected. Apart from rabies and the human immunodeficiency virus, H.I.V., which causes aids, this was the highest rate of mortality that has been recorded for a human virus.
Ebola was spread mainly among family members, through contact with bodily fluids and blood. Many of the people in Africa who came down with Ebola had handled Ebola-infected cadavers. It seems that one of Ebola’s paths wends to the living from the dead.
These remain precarious times.
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COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is now reaching ‘full speed’ @AP #COVID19 Misc. |
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic in Africa is reaching “full speed” and it’s good to prepare for the worst-case scenario, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief said Thursday, after a South African official said a single province is preparing 1.5 million graves.
Just a day after confirmed virus cases across Africa surpassed the half-million milestone the total was over 522,000 and climbing, with more than 12,000 deaths.
With testing levels low, the real numbers are unknown.
South Africa has the most confirmed cases with over 224,000, and for the first time Gauteng province — home to Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria — has the country’s most cases with over 75,000, or 33%.
Provincial official Bandile Masuku, a medical doctor, startled South Africans when he told reporters Wednesday that Gauteng is preparing over 1.5 million graves.
“It’s a reality that we need to deal with,” he said, and it’s the public’s responsibility “to make sure that we don’t get there.”
The province in a statement Thursday sought to calm fears, saying it “does not have over a million already open dug graves” and the number refers to the potential capacity.
It also said six members of Gauteng’s COVID-19 War Room have tested positive for the virus.
Asked about the comments, Africa CDC chief John Nkengasong said “there’s absolutely no harm to think ahead” and prepare for the worst-case scenario.
’We’ve crossed a critical number here,” he said of the half-million milestone. “Our pandemic is getting full speed.”
He called for more mask-wearing, saying “this battle will be won or lost at the community level.”
He also called for more testing, as just 5.7 million tests for the new virus have been conducted across the continent of 1.3 billion people.
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02-MAR-2020 :: The #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word Africa |
We Know that the #Coronavirus is exponential, non linear and multiplicative.
what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world. Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing ... then cluster, cluster, cluster ... then BOOM!
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Cairo Badly Needed a Detox. Lockdown Supplied One, at a Steep Price. @nytimes Africa |
The coronavirus obliged. Three months of lockdown, including an 11-hour nightly curfew, imposed a rejuvenating deep cleanse on Cairo.
Roads once choked with honking cars ran free. The air, free of fumes, seemed to sparkle. Silence flooded the streets.
She saw the coronavirus as a message from God. “He wants us to look at life differently,” she said.
For much of Egypt’s history, its fate has been shaped by the Nile. The bridge of kites led to Roda Island, described in “One Thousand and One Nights” as a place of heavenly gardens, now a tight sprawl of dust-smeared apartment blocks.
At its southern tip, though, there survives a Nilometer built in the ninth century — a structure that measured the river’s seasonal flooding and thus predicted the annual harvest.
Now, disease was dictating the pace of life. As night fell and the curfew officially began,
I crossed into downtown Cairo, a jumble of old palaces, crumbling elegance and gaudy shop fronts where, in normal times, the traffic is so crazy that guidebooks offer tourists solemn advice on how to survive.
Egypt has over 77,000 known cases, and confirmed infections have grown by about 1,400 cases a day for the past month.
Egypt has registered more than 3,400 deaths, the highest toll in the Arab world.
In an ominous portent, Mr. el-Sisi last week opened a 4,000-bed field hospital to treat coronavirus patients.
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