The recent meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science had two presented papers on the role of maritime voyaging in the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas. One by Dennis Stanford addresses the Atlantic side and another by Jon Erlandson addresses the Pacific. Let me start by saying that these aren’t new theories, …
Author: Reid Farmer
The Bears Next Door
A few weeks back I posted on my impressionistic views of wildlife coexisting with California suburbia. Today’s LA Times has an interesting piece on the effect of suburban expansion into black bear habitat throughout the state. The bears are loving it. California Department of Fish and Game estimates that black bear populations state-wide have increased …
Kennewick Man Study Released
Since the anthropologists won their lawsuit in 2004 and obtained the right to study Kennewick Man’s remains, I have been waiting for the studies to come out. In today’s press release it appears that Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian is first out of the gate. Here’s a quick run-down of some findings. This was an …
The Book of Mormon, DNA, Native Americans, and Archaeology
This story in last week’s LA Times chronicles another collision between science and religion, a type of story much in the news these days. The story deals with one of the basic tenets of the Mormon Church – Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints – or LDS as they often refer to themselves. …
Something Completely Silly
Pluvialis found it first.: a site in which you can portray yourself a la South Park. Looks rather like her, complete with Camel (cigarette not mammal). Then Peculiar picked it up from her. How appropriate: an angry Crusader with a Tuareg (or is it Ninja?) turban and a chainsaw: So of course I had to …
People Watching Orcas
I’ve given up trying to link to the Santa Barbara News Press, but I have borrowed these pictures from them that accompanied a short report on a pod of five orcas sighted in the Santa Barbara Channel earlier this week. The sightings were made and these pictures taken on a local whale-watching tour boat, the …
Mushroom Rustlers
The LA Times reports that the Santa Barbara County Sheriff has made three arrests in connection to a ring of high-tech mushroom thieves from the Pacific Northwest who have been slipping into local ranches and stealing chanterelle mushrooms. These prized mushrooms grow wild in the oak woods in the north part of our county. This …
Intact Tomb in the Valley of the Kings
Egyptian Antiquities authorities announced yesterday that a team of American archaeologists from the University of Memphis (how appropriate!) have discovered an intact tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings. It dates to the 18th Dynasty (1500-1300 BC) and is the first intact tomb found there since the discovery of Tutankhamen tomb in 1922. It …
Airman in the Glacier Identified
Last fall I posted a couple of times on the body of a WWII era airman that was found preserved in a glacier in the central Sierra Nevadas. Today the LA Times reports that the Department of Defense’s forensics lab in Hawaii has identified it as Leo Mustonen of Brainerd, Minnesota. Mustonen was 22 when …
Rebecca Webb Carranza, RIP
Ms. Webb died in a hospice in Phoenix on January 19 at age 98. We are all in her debt, as her El Zarape Tortilla Factory pioneered the commercial manufacture and sale of tortilla chips.