Author name: Yourwellness

Human activity thousands of miles away managed to reach Himalayan glaciers contaminating them even before humans set foot on them, research from the Ohio State University shows. The study indicates that the byproducts of burning coal in Europe in the late 18th century made their way to the Dasuopu glacier in the central Himalayas, some 6,400 miles from London, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. And so the use of coal combustion also started to cause emissions that we think were transported by winds up to the Himalayas. The team found higher-than-natural levels of a number of toxic metals, including cadmium, chromium, nickel and zinc, in the ice starting at around 1780 — the very start of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom. Those metals are all byproducts of burning coal, a key part of industry at the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

For decades, an ancient Egyptian known as Merit Ptah has been celebrated as the first female physician and a role model for women entering medicine. Yet a researcher from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus says she never existed and is an example of how misconceptions can spread. Researcher Jakub Kwiecinski played detective and discovered that no such woman physician ever existed. Instead, when in 1929-30, an excavation in Giza uncovered a tomb of Akhethetep, an Old Kingdom courtier, a false door depicted a woman called Peseshet, presumably the tomb owner’s mother, described as the `Overseer of Healer Women.’ She was mistakenly called Merit Ptah, the healer – the rare female physician in ancient Egypt.

Archeologists say that people chewed gum as far back as 5,700 years ago. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have not only found an ancient chewing gum but have also managed to get a hitherto untapped source of DNA. The gum, which was found at the archeological site Syltholm in Denmark, was made of birch pitch and the chewer was a woman. She was genetically more closely related to hunter-gatherers from the mainland Europe than to those in central Scandinavia at the time. They also found that she probably had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes. The team have named her Lola and done an artistic reconstruction of how she looked. They have also identified traces of plant and animal DNA in the pitch. Looks like Lola liked having hazelnuts and duck. Visit University of Copenhagen website at https://healthsciences.ku.dk/

Scientists at Cardiff University have reconstructed the cooking techniques of the early inhabitants of Puerto Rico by analysing the remains of clams. With cooking temperatures getting up to around 200oC according to the new analysis, the team believe the early Puerto Ricans were partial to a barbeque rather than boiling their food as a soup. The results also provide evidence that ceramic pottery technology was not widespread during this period of history — it’s likely that this would be the only way in which the clams could have been cooked. Says researcher Dr Philip Staudigel, “In many parts of the world, written records extend back thousands of years, which often includes recipes. This is not the case in the Caribbean, as there were no written texts, except for petroglyphs. By learning more about how ancient Puerto Rican natives cooked their meals, we can relate to these long-gone peoples through their food.”

If you’re a man reading this, thank your stars that you don’t live in the mid-19th century! Apparently, men of that time, who had problems in the bedroom, had a drastic cure offered to them – electric shock therapy to the ‘weak’ body part! When that happened, your performer was supposed to be ‘shocked’ back into life with the help of electrical currents and do the needful. Later, some physicians offered men special galvanic baths. Another popular solution was to wear an electric belt specifically designed to send a shock wave to the genitals. However, applying electrical currents directly to the sexual organs had many unfortunate consequences.

Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago — about the same time that anatomically modern humans began migrating into the Near East and Europe. So, did modern humans cause their extinction? No, says a study published in the journal PLOS ONE by researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Apparently, small populations, inbreeding, and random demographic fluctuations together could have been the cause Neanderthal extinction. The authors add: “Did Neanderthals disappear because of us? No, this study suggests. The species’ demise might have been due merely to a stroke of bad demographic luck.”

An ancient Aztec agricultural technique could benefit 21st century horticultural needs, says the American Society for Horticultural Science. The Aztecs used chinampas or floating gardens, which were raised fields on small artificial islands on a freshwater lake, usually surrounded by canals and ditches, where vegetables can be produced throughout the year. The researchers at the Montana State University have found that irrigation needs of chinampas was low and the productivity extremely high. In a chinampa, the canal water rises through capillary action to the plant roots, which reduces irrigation demand. Additionally, a considerable portion of the soil fertility is generated in the canal floors. In addition, the recreational benefits are tremendous: Today, chinampas generate even more money from tourism than by horticultural production.

The Romans were some of the most sophisticated builders of the ancient world. Over the centuries, they adopted an increasingly advanced set of materials and technologies to create their famous structures. New research published in ‘EPJ Plus’ (The European Physical Journal Plus) has found that successive phases of modification to the building saw even more improvements, including higher quality raw materials, higher brick firing temperatures, and better ratios between carbonate and silicate building materials. The optical and electron microscopy techniques employed by the researchers to know more about the Roman building techniques could unlock further mysteries concerning the technologies employed by ancient civilisations.

Fire starting is a skill that many modern humans struggle with in the absence of a lighter or matches. The earliest humans likely harvested fire from natural sources, yet when our ancestors learned the skills to set fire at will, they had newfound protection, a means of cooking, light to work by, and warmth at their fingertips. A team of University of Connecticut researchers has found compelling evidence that early humans like the Neanderthals not only controlled fire, but also mastered the ability to generate it. So even though fire was presumed to be the domain of Homo sapiens, other ancient humans like Neanderthals could already create it before them.