Sacrilege

Sacrilege

A group of Jews, including a small boy, is escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in this April 19, 1943 photo. The picture formed part of a report from SS Gen. Stroop to his Commanding Officer, and was introduced as evidence to the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945

To Jews, ever mindful of Jewish history and a never-ending plague of assaults on their presence by communities wherever diaspora Jews have put down alternate roots, after their second expulsion from Judea, their ancestral homeland in the Middle East, the Holocaust represents an unspeakable atrocity committed by Nazi Germany with the considerable assistance of eastern and western Europe and the determined oblivious attitude of the West in general to their plight. 

 

When Jews repeat in their minds 'never again' it means that they will do their utmost personally to fight back against the persecution and defamation they are endlessly subjected to. 'Fighting back' is a passion expressed in the struggle for survival. Slights, born of an inbred, taught and sought discrimination  expressed against the Jewish presence has a habit of becoming socially institutionalized. It ebbs and flows, like the oceans surrounding continents.

 

A German in a military uniform shoots at a Jewish woman after a mass execution in Mizocz, Ukraine. In October of 1942, the 1,700 people in the Mizocz ghetto fought with Ukrainian auxiliaries and German policemen who had intended to liquidate the population. About half the residents were able to flee or hide during the confusion before the uprising was finally put down. The captured survivors were taken to a ravine and shot. Photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial

 

And whatever continent Jews happen to populate, a minority group within much larger groups, they are always 'noticed' as outsiders. With that notice comes a degree of suspicion. A suspicion often a nudge away from contempt and hatred. For within the larger population there are always those whose antipathy toward Jews -- even and particularly if those haters know nothing about Jews, do not know any individual Jews, have never met Jews -- twists them toward rage against Jews.

 

There are Holocaust memorials erected in various geographies across the world, in a determined effort never to forget the stark inhumanity that humans are capable of exerting against other humans. Where governments and individuals embrace the opportunity to learn and to empathize, committed to ensuring as believers in elementary human rights that nothing of this dread magnitude will ever re-occur. And yet, on a smaller, and equally inexcusable scale, they do, and each time they do humanity is shamed and shocked anew.

 

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob

 

Start small? With ignorance about the fact that a fascist horde schemed to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, on its way to conquering the world for Aryan purity. That the organized industrial-scale mass murder succeeded to the degree that an estimated six million Jews were systematically slaughtered. The corpses were used to produce soap and fertilizer. Children and adults alike fed into death chambers where Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide, killed them, and their bodies were shovelled into vast, non-stop crematoria. The odour of burning flesh and the ash circulating as particulate matter lifted by the smoke exuded by the giant chimneys to fertilize the fields of Europe. 

Canada was late to erecting a memorial to the Holocaust; but one was finally built and opened to the public in 2017. On a number of occasions, the stark, grey angular walls of mourning attracted professional photographers on fashion shoots, as likely backgrounds to show off glamorous designer apparel featuring poised, sleek female models. The photographers in each instance appear not to have known, or really gave no thought to the fact that their commercial enterprise in artistry and mercantilism in a place sacred to the memory of millions of people was an assault on social morality and values.

In the latest of these events, the photographer was scathing in his response to criticism over his obtuse choice of backdrop for a photo shoot:

"If taking a photo with grey walls as a backdrop is a crime, lock me up."

"If you don't want people shooting at certain walls in the city, you should put on a reflective vest, get a whistle and go stand in front of them year 'round."

 

Surviving the Titanic

Luxury White Star Liner 'Titanic', which sank on its maiden voyage to America in 1912, seen here on trials in Belfast Lough, Jan. 12, 1912. Photo: Getty Images/ Topical Press Agency

He was a little boy who was witness to the extraordinary events of his time, a century ago. But like all small children his view of what occurred would resemble nothing an adult, haunted by an existential experience like none other would recall. At age six, he would have no idea that he was a child of privilege, of wealthy parents. To this singular child, and likely other children on board RMS Titanic on its first and only TransAtlantic voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States, there was nothing extraordinary about being on a huge ocean liner sailing across the Atlantic in the company of their parents, with a nanny responsible for their care.

When the great ship hit an iceberg and sank, 52 children in steerage lost their lives to the icy Atlantic. One child who had been on the top deck where first-class passage was located by comparison, perished. Six-year-old Douglas Spedden was hardly aware that something horrible was taking place when he found himself in a lifeboat of nine-metre-length alongside 37 other people, when his last memory was of falling peacefully asleep in his upper-deck stateroom. Among them was his father, his mother and his nanny, so all was well.

 

In this photo taken early in the Titanic's maiden voyage, passenger Douglas Spedden can be seen playing with his top on the ship's promenade deck. The photographer. Frank Brown, would disembark in Ireland and avoid the sinking.

 

It took an estimated half hour, or a little longer for about one thousand, five hundred people to freeze and drown, screaming their anguish, not among those in lifeboats as the ship slowly submerged on that moonless night. Their fear and misery expressed in loud cries for help, from those who had safely evacuated from the ship and floated around it, waiting for rescue, shivering in the dark and the cold. Not as cold as the -2C Atlantic, however.

Their Mayday had alerted all other ocean liners in the region, desperately speeding toward the Titanicm attempting to reach the scene to effect rescue. When recovery ships from Halifax steamed onto the ocean graveyard, they saw masses of human bodies, some of them clutching children to their frozen chests. Little Douglas had been promised, as he was bundled into a lifeboat, that he would soon see beautiful stars in the dark heavens above.

Special edition Polar bear  Steiff

Icebergs surrounded the lifeboats, creating another otherworldly experience for the child who turned to his nanny and remarked "Look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa on it!". All was well with his world, after all, in the presence of his father, his mother and his nanny. Oh, and his comfort-companion, "Polar", the teddy-bear.

A photograph remains of Douglas playing on the top deck with a spinning top, his father looking on. The photograph was taken by an Irish Jesuit priest, who briefly boarded the Titanic on its first leg, and taking a number of photos over succeeding days, then disembarking as the ship reached its last European stop, to carry on across the Atlantic. Douglas was immortalized, that photograph now among the historical memorabilia of a dreadful maritime disaster.

If Douglas was still alive, he could be asked what he thought of the stars he saw that night. He might, or he might not recall seeing the ship's lights still blazing an hour after its collision with the iceberg. He might remember hearing the band playing on the top deck with its remaining sparse crowds. There were 30 empty seats on the lifeboat that carried Douglas and the other passengers from the sinking ship.

First class hospitality did not in and of itself guarantee rescue, though it certainly did no harm. What did ensure that those in first class would survive while those in steerage mostly did not, was the fact that first class cabins were located on upper levels close to the boat deck for easy access to the lifeboats. Private stewards were in the service of most upper-deck families to efficiently guide them personally to safety.

Douglas Spedden in 1913

While below in steerage passengers were pretty well on their own, trying to puzzle out their way through a maze of corridors, and finding dead ends, as time sped by and opportunities were lost. Douglas, that bright child of privilege, survived the disaster that was the RMS Titanic. Three years later, when he was nine years old, still a child, still vulnerable, his luck ran out.

The little boy chased after a ball he had been playing with at the family vacation home in Maine. There weren't many private cars around at that point of the emerging history of motor vehicles, and their speed was not anything what modern cars can achieve, but the motor vehicle that hit Douglas was said to have been speeding. And Douglas became the first automotive fatality in the state.

The Origins of HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS

"During World War I, Germany had a number of colonies in Africa and the Allied forces decided to invade these colonies, one of which was Cameroon."

"Cameroon was invaded by a combination of British, Belgian and French soldiers from five directions. The soldiers spent three or four months in Moloundou before moving forward. When they were there, the main problem was not bullets from the enemy, but starvation."

"All of a sudden, you have 1,600 soldiers with rifles and plenty of ammunition, so the level of hunting in that area went up dramatically over these few months [in 1916].

"My hypothesis is that one of the soldiers got infected while hunting in the forest. A chimpanzee was killed and when cutting the animal to bring it back, there was an injury which got infected with the virus."

"Eventually the soldier, after the war, came back all the way to Leopoldville and probably started the very first train of transmission in Leopoldville itself."

Jacques Pepin, professor, Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University of Sherbrooke, Quebec

Professor Jacques Pepin says soldiers would have hunted chimps (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 

AIDS has been responsible for the death of over 32 million people globally. No vaccine has yet been developed for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Treatments are available that have the effect of reducing the severity of symptoms and to prevent transmission of the virus. Despite which in 2019 alone, 1.7 million people became infected with HIV. In that same year 38 million people globally were living with the virus, which has over time infected over 75 million worldwide since the epidemic began, according to UN AIDS.

Now, Professor Pepin who in 2011 published a book where he described the manner in which simian immunodeficiency virus occurring in chimpanzees crossed he species barrier to humans, causing AIDS. At that time he theorized that a native hunter in all likelihood was vulnerable to infection through a cut he had sustained and thus became the first person to have become infected with HIV. The professor has since, however, rethought his hypothesis and has arrived at a similar conclusion with a different scenario.

In publishing a new edition of his well-recognized book, Professor Pepin has set aside the "cut hunter" for what he considers to be a more likely event that relates to a "cut soldier". And as he now tells it, Patient Zero was one among 1,600 Belgian and French soldiers who had been dispatched to travel up the Congo River from Leopoldville capital of the Belgian colony (now Kinshasa, Congo), to arrive at Moloundou, a remote outpost in Cameroon. It is interesting to note that studies had previously identified the town as the probable site of the first infection of HIV.

The indigenous people located there were known to live off casava root along with other crops and bushmeat. The soldiers relied on food supplied to them from Leopoldville and Brazzaville, ferried up the Congo River, then carried overland up to 25 miles by foot through the local people. The problem was insufficient supplies reaching the soldiers who began suffering from malnutrition, some of whom died of starvation, convincing those left that their salvation lay in hunting for themselves.

 

Chimpanzees in the jungle of southern Liberia. Photo by ZOOM DOSSO/AFP/Getty Images

 

HIV spread gradually when the soldiers on the conclusion of the war returned to Leopoldville. The spread of the disease was doubtless hastened by hospitals making re-use of needles previously used, in reflection of medical equipment shortages. By the early 1950s an estimated 500 infections resulted. A decade on, the population of the city grew rapidly and as it did, the sex trade boomed and the virus took full advantage.

"Every year prostitutes would have up to 1,500 clients. That was perfect for the sexual amplification of HIV between these high-volume sex workers and their clients", explained Professor Pepin.

Eventually, the virus spread to Haiti, then was exported to the United States, in time spreading onward to Western Europe. And the history of the scourge of human immunodefiency virus shook the global community with the onset of a vicious deadly disease first identified among the gay populations of the world, but did not remain confined to gays, rapidly spreading within heterosexual communities where millions became infected and died slow, painful, gruesome, unstoppable deaths.

More than 33 million people have died from AIDS related illnesses (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Answering the Call to Patriotic Duty : World War II

Eva Konopacki . Ashley Fraser/Postmedia

"At my age, you remember  your younger years better than the present. My memories from that time [1944] are quite sharp."

"We were waiting for that day because our underground activities were all directed to that moment, when we throw out the Germans. I was Polish, and everyone was taking risks. Everyone was engaged, it was a national thing."

"The [commanding] officer thought it's so dangerous that he cannot order anyone to do it [make personal contact with trapped/besieged soldiers]. I knew this place very well. I was restless. I liked action so I just said, 'I'll go'."

"Death became our close companion."

"War, it marks you for life. But, when you put your life on the scale, you can be proud of that."

Eva Poninska Konopacki, 94, Ottawa resident, retired schoolteacher

This is a woman who has seen a lot, had unusual experiences at a time of high danger and stress, when survival was never assured, who chose to do her part to help her country surmount the most dreadful existential difficulties at a time of war and occupation. She emigrated to Canada ten years after her courageous participation in a peoples' struggle to free itself from German occupation during World War Two, moving to Montreal from Trinidad, where she lived for several years, teaching high school.

In Canada, she met her husband, Thaddeus Konopacki, himself a decorated veteran of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, whom she hadn't known in Poland, but found in Canada, post-war. While her husband was a professional architect, Eva Konopacki was a professional teacher. The couple had four daughters, whom their mother chose to raise as a housewife and mother. She returned to the teaching profession eventually and spent two decades teaching high school at the Ottawa Catholic School Board, while simultaneously mounting a career as an artist.

In 1944 however, as an 18-year-old she was herself a high school student, and simultaneously a soldier in the Polish Home Army -- the largest underground resistance movement in the country. An uprising against German occupying forces was launched on August 1, 1944 on instructions from the Polish government-in-exile, just as the Soviet Red Army was in the process of advancing toward Warsaw and the German military meant to stop their advance at the Vistula River on the outskirts of Warsaw.

Polish slave labour had been used to build defensive fortifications there, and it was the intention of the Warsaw Uprising to deny that opportunity to the Germans, and to impede the arrival of the Russians intending to bring communism under Soviet rule to Poland. The Home Army boasted 50,000 trained insurgents who were able to capture much of Warsaw in the first three days of the uprising, but in the end were no match for the reinforcements brought in by the German military even as planes and artillery units bombarded their positions backed by tanks and heavy machine guns, enabling the German forces to regain territory.

The Polish resistance dug trenches connecting buildings, and erected barricades against tank incursions while Russian forces restricted themselves to the Vistula River, prepared to wait out the insurgency against the German positions before involving themselves. While the Russians -- at that time part of the Allied response to the Axis forces they were once aligned with -- failed to offer air or ground support while fighting raged within Warsaw, the Allies themselves launched an airlift re-supplying the Polish resistance forces.

Based in Italy, the British-led Warsaw Airlift failed, as a reflection of the small payloads and the inaccuracy of the drop sites, where the aircraft flew long distances with no fighter support making the supply planes vulnerable to attack, resulting in over 300 Allied airmen perishing in the effort, Canadians included. For the resistance fighters, food and ammunition became scarce and the city was left without water or electricity. So many phone lines were damaged that Eva Konopacki's commanding officer decided on a course to use couriers in communication with other fighting units.

As a volunteer, Konopacki travelled through the war-torn city delivering messages, serving as a guide on nighttime missions to ammunition depots. Resistance fighters were using a fortified convent as a bulwark against German forces. By later September the convent came under assault, and an artillery shell collapsed a portion of the building and the communication line was severed. Eva Konopacki volunteered her services so that under fire she crawled through a tench to reach the convent's entrance, a gap in the foundation.

Eva Poninska Konopacki . Konopacki family photo

Within she found many dead and wounded soldiers. Returning to her commander she reported on the need for medical supplies and ammunition, and was again sent to deliver the message to those left in the convent to retreat. When she made her way back, she discovered what was left of the compound smoke-filled and silent. "I realized there was no one there". They had already retreated. She ventured toward another building adjacent, to discover two wounded soldiers in an abandoned coal cellar. Finding a stretcher and a nurse, they managed between them to evacuate the men to safety.

Eventually, the Home Army had no option but to surrender, laying down their arms on October 2. "We were terribly depressed, devastated", she recalled. Later, she was recognized for her part during the resistance and uprising, receiving the Silver Order of the Virtuiti Militari for "valour in the face of the enemy", induction. Up to 200,000 people were estimated to have died during the two-month uprising, most of them civilians. The city's 650,000 inhabitants were evicted and the Germans levelled what remained of Warsaw. By January 1945 the Soviets took possession of the empty ruins.

An Obscure and Timeless Manuscript

"Realistically, it's [the ambition to collect every book every published in a single, privately-held collection] not doable. There were too many cities printing too many books."
"It's great to have it all [an immense library representing the sum total of all the world's published books], but it's pointless if you can't find your way around it [know where each book is in its specialty niche, filed in order and readily retrieved]. That's one of the great things about his thoroughness, and how meticulous he was. He annotated all his books the same way."
"When you see a book that belongs to him, you know right away. He always puts the call number in the same place, int he same way. Any scholar that was not familiar with Columbus's library and its very unique cataloguing and referencing system couldn't have recognized it [the "book of summaries"].
"I didn't know it was THE missing catalogue. I had found the only surviving copy. I didn't think for a second it would interest anybody. Most of us [historian-scholars] go through our entire careers looking at documents that interest our colleagues, a relatively small circle of scholars. I didn't really realize  how important it was, the magnitude when I saw it."
Guy Lazure, historian, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario

The Libro de los Epítomes, a manuscript summarizing the contents of Christopher Columbus' son's library, was discovered at the University of Copenhagen. ( Suzanne Reitz/Arnamagnæan Institute)

"It's an extraordinary object. He was trying to prove himself his father's legitimate spiritual heir even if he wasn't his father's legitimate son by building a universal library which had every book in the world in it."
"He personally went around and bought books on these extraordinary book shopping sprees where he was purchasing thousands of titles at a time."

"How print really revolutionized the world was by making it possible to distribute cheap print — you know, information in news sheets and popular ballads and erotica and weather forecasts and things like that. But no one at the time actually thought of collecting this stuff."

"This was someone who was, in a way, changing the model of what knowledge is. Instead of saying ‘knowledge is august, authoritative things by some venerable old Roman and Greek people’, he’s doing it inductively: taking everything that everyone knows and distilling it upwards from there." "It’s much more resonant with today, with big data and Wikipedia and crowdsourced information. This is a model of knowledge that says, 'We’re going to take the breadth of print – ballads and pornography and newsletters – and not exclude that from the world of information'."

Edward Wilson-Lee, literature professor, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, U.K. 

Books have a special place in the human imagination; books that chronicle history, botany, medicine, science, geography, wars, and human experience. Novels are actually chronicles of human experience. One of the most serious crimes against intellectual freedom was to condemn certain books as unworthy of existence, and to destroy them. Bonfires to burn books proscribed by dictatorial regimes, libraries, like the fabled library at Alexandria, Egypt with its vast collection of manuscripts of the ancient world represented an irreplaceable loss when it was burned in 48BC as an act of war.

Bibliophiles and just ordinary people who love reading books aspire to own their own libraries of books. They provide education and entertainment for the fertile mind, eager to learn. Ownership of a vast store of books enables a busy mind to take its choice of stimulation at any given time, but it is entirely feasible that private libraries holding copies of classic literature as well as scholarly treatises, histories and technical books will never be entirely read; the human trait of acquisitiveness leads people to amass collections and take pride in them.

Printing Press - HISTORY

www.history.com 

 

Christopher Columbus's illegitimate son took his inner resources in a direction to explore that which appeals to the human mind and spurs the imagination, just as  his father used vast material resources in his exploration and discovery trips around the unknown Americas. He was said to have acquired a library of 20,000 books of his day representative of every book ever published, but not actually every book ever published was represented in his collection; some 4,000 volumes remain in existence now, housed in the cathedral in Seville, Spain.

Professor Guy Lazure had gone to Copenhagen for a research project looking for a manuscript in a Scandinavian archive, holding some 20 books from 15th-Century Spain. Known to be an expert in the history of Seville the archive's director asked if he would examine whether within that modest collection anything of note was represented. A massive book of 973 folded leaves of paper with close to 2,000 pages caught his interest, as perhaps representing an index but it had no title page, no author credit and no indication what the tome might represent, much less why it would be among old Icelandic and Scandinavian literature.

It took him a bit of thought before the realization struck that he had come across the only surviving copy of two originals of the collection of summaries of Hernando Colón's collection of summaries of his book collection, called the Libro de los Epitomes; "book of summaries". A Danish ambassador to Spain in the 17th Century bought it from a Spanish noble at a time of economic decline in Spain. It languished in obscurity ever since, its historical value and provenance unrecognized. This discovery was made in 2013, when Professor Lazure spent a few hours poring over the vast manuscript.

It was only much, much later, when his attention focused on a biography written by a colleague of his, Edward Wilson-Lee, in his The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books that focuses on this story of the vast book collection, that it dawned on Professor Lazure that his experience and discovery had great current importance. Out of this coincidental discovery has come a resolve to digitize the manuscripts for a virtual reconstruction. It will be done eventually, as long as the financing becomes available.

Hernando Colón was the son of Christopher Columbus, born out of wedlock and therefore not his father's heir. (Insitucíon Colombina, Seville)

Bottoms Up!

"With modern technology, some of the art of distilling has been lost. So to go back and see where it all came from was eye-opening."
"I thought, '[Plague water, how could that possibly taste good?' But in fact it tastes like the base for chartreuse."
"Some combinations of botanicals create surprising results -- they just make each other pop, in a way we didn't expect."
Jon Kreidler, founder, Tattersall Distilling, Minneapolis

"Herbs were the only medicine you had [in the Medieval era]. But plants are ephemeral and seasonal, so you'd put them in alcohol to have something shelf-stable."
"[As distilling became an industrial enterprise], a lot of amazing spirits went by the wayside."
Amy Stewart, author The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks

"As I was touring the space, people would ask me what type of alcohol they would have consumed at these parties."
"We thought it would be fun to not just talk about alcohol in the period rooms, but to offer a taste as well."
"We realized we needed to contact real professionals [to achieve that practical end]."
Nicole LaBouff, curator, Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gallery: Rare books and manuscripts from the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the U of M feature historic food and drink recipes.   Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune

So that's how it began; public curiosity twigging a curator's interest in collaborating with a local brewery to produce beverages that would reflect those available during a much, much earlier era as medicinals that later morphed into sociable party spirits. The collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Tattersall Distilling has brought an entirely new focus on potable alcoholic beverages.

It's a serendipitous twinning that has produced award-winning gins, bitters and liqueurs. Next up: plague water.

What's plague water? A tonic to ward off diseases, produced by apothecaries of the Medieval era; a combination of angelica root, gentian and other herbs. That alcoholic concoction has now been revived by Tattersall, in the spirit of re-discovery, enterprise and art. The craft distilling industry is expanding enormously, and as it does, it intersects with an alert and fascinated group of historians focused on the role of alcohol in everyday life of the times.

Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune   Plague Party is a cocktail made with the historic spirits Plague Water and Aqua Mirabilis, pineapple juice, lime juice and honey sage syrup at Tattersall Distilling.

Scholars are alert to the distiller's efforts enabling them to acquire a better understanding of how and what people ate and drank in the distant past. For their part, distillers are re-discovering their own history. Tattersall has made good use of the large inventory of the Wagensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, at the University of Minnesota where, among its 72,000 volumes -- some of which date back to 1430 -- are hundreds lingering on the curative properties of roots, weeds, seeds, metals and ... animal parts.

Rare books and manuscripts from the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the U of M feature handwritten food and drink recipes. Top Ð The Modern Art of Cookery Improved or Elegant, Cheap and Easy Methods of preparing moft of the Dishes in Vogue, Ann Shackleford, 1767. Middle Ð Book of Receipts, Ann Ward, c. 1724. Manuscript. Bottom Ð Art of Distillation.     Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune

The curative properties of these varied products of nature reflected the function of Medieval medicine in mixing and matching the ingredients into a concoction for optimum efficacy. When the ingredients were mixed with alcohol as a preservative, the resulting spirits led to combining sugar into the mix to create cocktails, leading to the industrial production of alcoholic beverages by distillers. In perusing the ancient recipes, a few dozen were chosen for re-creation.

Milk punch for example, currently a popular drink among bartenders, is made through adding citric acid to milk to have it curdle, them skimming off the solids so all that is left appears a yellowish, slightly sweet liquid mixed with alcohol. Plague water's renaissance saw some creative substitutions since some ingredients were simply unavailable or not to be used because they were discovered to be toxic. Plague water has a pleasant, earthy, herb-infused flavour.

Three cocktails made with historic spirits at Tattersall Distilling are Plague Party, Saffron Bitters Tonic and Clear Skies Ahead.   Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune

Preparing for a Pandemic

"Are we ready in 2018? The answer is we are better off than we were before 2009 but not where we need to be and vaccine readiness has a long way to go."
"The 1918 pandemic was exceptionally severe. A similar pandemic today would cause tremendous illness, death and economic cost [ranging between 105 to 110 million possible deaths]. That is a very sobering number."
Nancy Cox, past head, U.S. Centres for Disease Control Influenza Branch

Biologist Jason Plyler prepares to test how immune cells react to possible flu vaccines at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md. As scientists mark the 100th anniversary of the 'Spanish' influenza pandemic, labs are hunting better vaccines. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

"People think of 2009 [the H1N1 pandemic] as being very mild, but if the Olympics [Winter Olympics held in Vancouver the winter of 2009] had been planned for the fall of 2009, we would have had to cancel because we did not have [enough] ICU [intensive care] beds [to cope]."
"Many of us remember the challenges of not knowing when vaccines would come [be delivered from source]. A lot of things happened that we were not prepared for that led to inconsistencies."
"We are still not where we need to be [in preparation for the next pandemic]."
Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, British Columbia, chair, Canadian pandemic influenza task group

Flu vaccinations. Ed Kaiser / Edmonton Journal

Pandemic influenza represents an outbreak of influenza on a global scale, occurring when a new flu virus has manifested for which humans have little or no immunity and once having emerged, then rapidly spreads to infect great numbers of people. The deadly Spanish flu took the lives of millions of people around the world. Experts warn, as they have been doing for quite some time, that conditions leading to the emergence of yet another such deadly influenza strain are in place, and it is merely a matter of time before a dread pandemic emerges.

And the world is not prepared to meet the challenge of protecting itself against the inevitable; a viral strain of influenza so lethal that it will speedily cut a wide swath of death on populations unable to defend themselves. The Spanish influenza pandemic caused the death of between 50-million to 100- million people globally. Those gathered at the biannual Canadian Immunization Conference in Ottawa this week, heard leading international experts warning that more work is urgently required before the next severe pandemic arrives.

In this November 1918 photo from the Library of Congress, a nurse takes the pulse of a patient in the influenza ward of the Walter Reed hospital in Washington. Historians think the pandemic actually started in Kansas in early 1918. (Harris & Ewing/Associated Press)

Yes, there have been been wide-sweeping medical advances following the 1918 Spanish pandemic. Despite which, though vaccines and anti-viral treatments have been produced, none are as near to reliably effective as medical science would have hoped them to be, particularly as new strains of influenza constantly evolve in response to new vaccines whose efficacy at best is partial, but to which the virus responds by mutating and evolving, producing new threats.

Every year brings along new strains of influenza, some more powerful than those that erupt in other years. A universal flu vaccine in replacement of seasonal vaccines developed in response to science evaluating current strains of flu, remains an as-yet unattainable goal. Seasonal vaccines that are relied upon to armour society's vulnerable against the predation of the virus are only partially effective. Hope and progress go hand-in-hand even while concern over global surveillance and treatment availability remains high.

Should a severe pandemic arise, Dr. Cox emphasized, sufficient ventilators or reusable respiratory protective devices in support of protecting people world-wide would be in short supply. Dr. Cox revealed estimates of a current-day pandemic in terms of a universal death count and that number would range from 105-million to 110-million possible deaths. Dr. Henry spoke of medical authorities in Canada working to prepare the country for the next pandemic, leaning heavily on lessons learned from 2009.

Though there has been progress, she stated to delegates, should even a relatively mild pandemic erupt, responding health services would be overwhelmed. British Columbia's health system, for example, months before the Winter Olympics was to be held in Vancouver, was completely overwhelmed, so the task group aiming to minimize serious illness and disruption has a goal; the provision of a safe and effective vaccine along with the monitoring of the safety and efficacy of that vaccine.

One lesson learned during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak was the emergent uncertainty over vaccine supply. Canada, learning from that event, has contracted to ensure that two doses of vaccine for every Canadian would be instantly available in the event of a pandemic, and has strengthened that assurance with the redundancy of a backup contract. Along with ensuring that vaccine is available to remote communities, prioritizing who receives the more immediate vaccinations.

Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kansas during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic  PROVINCE Vancouver Sun

The Great Dismal Swamp : A Desolate Place for a Defiant People

The Slave in the Dismal Swamp
In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
  The hunted Negro lay;
He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse's tramp
  And a bloodhound's distant bay.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 "Dar is families growed up in dat dar Dismal Swamp dat never seed a white man, and would be skeered most to def to see one. Some runaways went dere wid dar wives, an' dar childres are raised dar."
"Dar are haps ob folks in dar to work. Most of 'em are fugitives, or else hirin' dar time. There is reefs ob land folks call de high lands. In dem ar canbrakes de ground is kivered wit leaves, kinder makin' a nat'ral bed."
"Dar be whar de wild hogs, cows, wolves and bars be found."
Charlie, runaway slave, 1859

"No one's saying nobody ever ran in there, but there's a difference between a slave running into the Dismal and slaves sustaining communities through generations. If you don't bring in archaeology, all you have is the documents and, if you're lucky, some oral histories. You're talking about a 2,000-square-mile swamp."
"They're not out there writing memos and sending them back to the local courthouse."
"Wait a minute, this is dry ground [2004 exploration]. Suddenly the ground is rising. The trees are 15 feet apart. It feels like a park. You could feel people here, almost."
"Anywhere I put my shovel, I was finding cultural features.  [Including the outlines of numerous cabins, where posts had rotted away but left circular stains where once they had been pushed into the ground]."
"There's so much focus on these benevolent, white, bearded guys [19th century Quakers]. Somewhere along the way, this radical black history got co-opted."
"We can talk good words about Quakers and abolitionists. But when they become the only point of conversation, we need to rectify this. The main agents were these maroons who took their lives into their own hands. They said, 'I'm getting the hell out of here'."
Dan Sayers, Chair of anthropology, American University, Washington, D.C.

"There's a lot that's unknowable, but I think we've finally been able to flush out the story. There are less than ten firsthand accounts of what life was like in the swamp, none of them exhaustive. We have to rely on conjecture a lot more."
"It was a peat swamp, which means it's highly acidic. Anything organic would not survive. They recycled these things down to disappearance. You had gun flints used down to the last possible spark."
J.Brent Morris, historian, University of South Carolina Beaufort

Sayers emerges from the Great Dismal Swamp near one of his research sites. (Allison Shelley)

A vast tract of marshy, peatland called the Great Dismal Swamp that existed on the border between North Carolina and Virginia was a mysterious place, a place where people hesitated to venture within, yet it captured the imagination. In 1859 reformer James Redpath published a book, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States, focusing on fugitive slaves helping other slaves to escape and find haven in Canada. His book described the swamp area as a "paradise of serpents and poisonous vegetation" but yet a place of haven for runaways. 

It is a place with a history of its own, most often described in hushed, fear-laden tones. But the swamp was not entirely unknown to some, as for example as a place where Native Americans were known to hunt since pre-historical times, where marginalized whites and European criminals found refuge from the 1600s forward. Where Africans who were forcibly enslaved joined maroons who had earlier settled deep in the bog unlike other inhabitants who lived and worked around the edges of the swamp.

It was characterized as a "vast body of mire and nastiness" in 1732 by William Byrd II, a planter, frustrated along with other colonials of the time that slaves were hiding themselves within its interior. George Washington was known to have extracted lumber from the swamp around 1760, planning to drain it for farming, without succeeding. In Dred by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Dismal maroon was the main character. Poets of the day, like Longfellow and Wadsworth immortalized the swamp in dismal verse.

Finally, 1805 saw the Dismal Swamp Canal built, 35-kilometres linked to other waterways and ultimately altering the environment leaving the swamp with 305 of its original 2,000 metres still unapproachably intact, though during the time of the Civil War it was ten times that size. Anthropologist Dan Sayers was certain examining areas of the Swamp would reveal more of its history, as a significant part of the heritage of Black Americans; verifying that many were determined to take the trajectory of their lives into their own hands, escaping slavery.

During more than ten years of field excavations, archaeologist Dan Sayers has recovered 3,604 artifacts at an island located deep inside the swamp. (Allison Shelley)

In 2003 he ventured three kilometres into the swamp discovering a part of the refuge's raised islands, particularly a 20-acre elevated area located deep in the swamp interior where he was certain whole communities had once lived. With students from American University his project grew to become the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study, between 2010 and 2014, receiving a $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. They ran into black bears and canebrake rattlesnakes and swarms of mosquitoes drove them beyond frustration.

But they discovered the kind of fragments they were in search of; tobacco pipe pieces, fire pits, stone tools, and bits of ceramic. The sand on which cabins were sited was gauged and dated between the 1600s and 1700s. And while Dr. Sayers and his students worked on location, Dr. Morris of the University of South Carolina undertook the documentation aspect of the project. Out of their work came an exhibit on the Great Dismal Swamp installed at the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, in the Slavery and Freedom gallery.

And Dr. Sayers produced a publication detailing the history of the place and his findings which he titled A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp.

Once 2,000 square miles in Virginia and North Carolina, the swamp today is perhaps one-tenth that size. (Allison Shelley)

Out of Africa

"The conventional timeline of human evolution and migration continues to crumble in the face of new research."
Gemma Tarlach, science writer, Discover Magazine

"That's just because of the way that the differences can accrue over time between the genetic lineage and the species, right? You're always going to have individuals and populations within a species that go extinct and leave no living descendants."
"So they represent basically lost lineages of people leaving Africa, and their descendants slowly expanding into parts of Europe and Asia, but then for whatever reason, those populations went extinct. And subsequently, somewhere around 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, we have groups of modern humans beginning to leave Africa again, and they're essentially the ancestors of all of us that are of non-African descent."
"The context of that find really challenged people's thinking, but now, 15 years later, it's not as challenging, because we really see this process of dispersal happening again and again for the past two million years."
"So likely Homo Florsiensis represents descendants of some of those earliest dispersals of humans out of Africa, long before even the common ancestors of humans and Neanderthals evolved and left Africa."
"[The signal of Neanderthal in modern non-African human DNA is] rather small, and there have been clear selective sweeps against Neanderthal DNA in our DNA. So what that means is essentially it wasn't really as compatible as any other two populations of modern humans breeding together." 
"The fact that [the Jebel Irhoud bones] date to that [early] time pretty much excludes them as a potential ancestor of anyone living today."
Matthew Tocheri, anthropologist, Canada Research Chair in Human Origins, Lakehead University

"The common myth that we drove them [Neanderthals] to extinction is just that, it's a myth."
"There's no evidence at all in the archaeological or fossil record of modern humans interacting with Neanderthals."
"There is no way to know from what part of that population [in Europe and Asia] the first modern humans did so [left Africa]."
David Begun, paleoanthropologist, University of Toronto

Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils.

Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig

At one time the scientific hypothesis called the multi-regional theory held that modern humanity resulted from an evolutionary process over the space of two million years taking place simultaneously in archaic human populations existing in Africa, Europe and Asia. That theory eventually surrendered to the more probable one that human origin could be traced to its beginnings in East Africa. More recent studies indicate that human and Neanderthal evolution diverged 500,000 years ago, scant Neanderthal DNA remaining in the human genetic code, of less than five percent.

The view that humans of today all share their origins from a small group of East African ancestors resulting in all of humanity essentially stemming from the same family tree and sharing an attractively theorized grandmother named Mitochondrial Eve, was seen as a great anthropological leveller; that we evolved as a single race. That the Caucasus did not produce Caucasians and nor did Asians originate in Asia; we all evolved from the original East African strain of humanity.

And the human record, thanks to new  strides in genetics and fossils along with biomechanics has led paleoanthropologists to believe humans as a species are older than believed to have been the case.

That the human species 'left' Africa on many occasions over the anthropological time record, evolving in different regions at variant rates, not in one fell swoop of an immense migration in a finite period of time. The Neanderthals and the littler-known Denisovans appeared, according to this new agreement between scientists, to have died out on their own, similarly to every other hominin population that once lived, with the exception of Homo sapiens.

The previously-subscribed-to timeline went back to 200,000 years earlier in East Africa when a small population of Homo sapiens, anatomically modern, having descended from an ape became behaviourally 'modern' in the last 100,000 years, colonizing the entirety of Africa, moving to the Middle East, Europe, Asia and in time, North and South America. An increasingly consistent fossil record of manufactured tools and a progression of artwork helped to tell the story of emerging conceptual thought.

The romance of the Great Rift Valley as the cradle of evolutionary humankind was the locus encouraging the shaping of the human mind and body and where the four "Fs" of evolution emerged: fighting, fleeing, feeding and mating. That is, in the popular imagination of paleontologists of the time. What has remained constant, however, while research advances a more accurate understanding of evolution is that origins in Africa remain certain, even though the scope has been recognized as somewhat more complicated.

The Moroccan hillside where anthropologists found the remains.

Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig

In June, a discovery reported in Nature initiated a wholesale re-think when bones from a site called Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, thought to represent Neanderthals, were later identified as human when additional bones were unearthed, augmented by an improvement in scientific dating techniques of the sedimentary layer in which they were discovered, shown to be up to 350,000 years in primitive antiquity. The traditional story of evolution underwent a transformation reflecting the presence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Morocco dating that far back.

The lead taken from that discovery was that the emergence of humanity was not confined to a certain East African savanna, more in all likelihood the entire continent of Africa, representing a full fifth of the planet's land mass. Most of those human populations, it seems, simply failed to survive. Similar discoveries have been unearthed in Europe with genetic combinations no longer existing in modern humans, indicating a pattern of ancient humans migrating out of Africa and in so doing becoming isolated and in time, extinct, leaving behind a fossil record.

Fossils discovered in Indonesia in 2003 known as Homo Floresiensis represent one example; those discovered in Indonesia overlapping with the fossils of modern humans as little as a few thousand years ago created a conundrum for anthropologists. That they simply failed to survive as a species lends a new air of discovery relating to Neanderthals as well, dispelling the long-held theory that the superior Homo sapiens involved in conquest of a challenger for resources, exterminated Neanderthals.

This is a schematic representation of the evolutionary scenario for mitochondrial and nuclear DNA in archaic and modern humans. Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA recovered in this study suggests an intermediate migration out of Africa before 220,000 years ago.

Credit: Annette Günzel, © Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Historical Retrospective

"It seems horrible to hang five men at once."
"Yet the blood of 21 whites calls for retribution."
Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie, 1864, British Columbia supreme court chief justice

"[The six chiefs were not  criminals and they were not outlaws."
"They were warriors, they were leaders, and they were engaged in a territorial dispute to defend their lands and their peoples."
B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Quesnel, B.C., 2014

The Law Society of B.C. will remove a statue of Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, known as B.C.'s 'hanging judge,' from its lobby because it’s a colonial symbol that offends natives. Arlen Redekop / PNG

The event named the Chilcotin War between Canada's First Nations tribes and the provincial government of the 1860s is seen at the present time through the lens of colonialist fault, when native peoples found themselves, their heritage and culture and the land they lived on in dispute by Europeans who claimed it for themselves as sovereign territory the original inhabitants had no right to. There were efforts at treaties that would defuse the hostilities between the two sides, but they were placatory in nature with little substance to support any recognition of equality.

At the-then provincial capital of New Westminster in 1964, news was received of a massacre, warranting the dispatch of two volunteer militias to seek revenge on a war party comprised of some 25 Tsilhqot'in warriors whose Chief Klatsassin lead an attack on a work camp. Three of the work camp members escaped the deadly assault. The crew had been building a road to the interior. The work crew had been fast asleep and when dawn broke found themselves facing a war party.

Fifteen of the work crew were killed in the attack, and a following attack killed another six. The volunteers dispatched to meet the war party in combat succeeded only in doing physical harm to each other in friendly fire. Five Tsilhqot'in chiefs offered to negotiate for peace. As they approached the white camp they were manacled, charged, convicted and hanged though one of the condemned chiefs explained "We meant war, not murder".

When another chief advanced toward authorities with gifts in a traditional method of seeking forgiveness for his part in the massacre, he was hanged in New Westminster. The chiefs had a defined and planned purpose for the attack, it was to influence the colonial authorities to move away from their ancestral territories. Their presence had brought epidemics of smallpox whose result was destructive to Tsilhqot'in communities.

Some of the road crew that had been slaughtered by the road party had contemptuously promised the Tsilhqot'in that they could expect an increase in the incidence of smallpox, thanks to the roads they were building to advance the presence of whites in the geography that the First Nations considered their own. And which brought not only whites with their hostile arrogance, but disease and exploitation to the indigenous communities their presence suffocated.

The Law Society of British Columbia has issued authorization to remove a statue of Justice Begbie from the lobby of their building for the purpose of making people "feel comfortable and included on the premises". In response, Chief Joe Alphonse, Chair of Tsilhqot'in National Government sang praise for the society's removal of "this monument to injustice and symbol of B.C.'s colonial past."

In one fell swoop phasing out the honours that historically fell to the first chief justice of the province for representing the tenor of the times. Also obliterated will be the school names in honour of the man, street names, and plaques dedicated to Justice Begbie located province-wide. The Tsilhqot'in Nation has called for the name of Justice Begbie to be removed "from all public places".

This politically correct move to assuage the present-day indignation of First Nations over past events perceived to represent wrongs against their ancestors leaves little room for negotiations. Writing into the record, for example, that matters might have taken a different turn but could not, reflecting the political/social tenor of the times. Justice Begbie was adhering to a code of conduct and laws enacted that reflected the values of those times in which he lived.

In any society at any time, a planned assault for the purpose of destroying lives whose presence and purpose were perceived to be potentially injurious to the interests of the attackers, would see them being held liable for murder in the first degree. Frontier, colonialist justice made quick work of exacting the ultimate penalty from those involved in the war party and the deaths of 21 human beings.

History attests that Justice Begbie officially represented a racist system, but he was himself inclined to be more socially liberal, representing a personage who acknowledged indigenous title, accepting indigenous testimony when the majority of British Empire colleagues would not hear non-Christian witnesses. Justice Begbie familiarized himself with a number of indigenous languages, giving him the capability of speaking with indigenous witnesses, including the chiefs and surviving work crew members.

Undated photo of Matthew Baillie Begbie, B.C.'s first chief justice. VANCOUVER SUN


He presided over courts in barns, cabins and fields of stumps. He became fluent in Secwepmc and Tsilhqot’in. He told the government in 1860 that First Nations held aboriginal title that had to be recognized. He opposed efforts to displace First Nations from land desired by settlers. He forced provincial legislation ensuring that First Nations women were entitled to a share of the estates of white partners. And often he commuted the expected death sentences for First Nations — something he never did for a non-aboriginal offender. Some of his best judgments thwarted racist provincial legislation directed at Chinese communities, which he denounced as infringing on their personal liberty and equality before the law. Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun, April 2017 

Getting Around to Agriculture and DNA Migration in Ancient Fertile Crescent Times

"It's a part of the story of civilization that we're just beginning to understand."
"There seem to be [early genetic traces in primitive farming peoples] expansions out in all directions."
Dr. Iosif Lazaridis, postdoctoral researcher, Harvard Medical School

"It's not like you had one Near Eastern population that developed farming that expands and overruns all the others."
Dr. David Reich, geneticist, Harvard Medical School

"This botanical find is really opening new windows to the past. You have to remember Ohalo is a unique preservation. Between Ohalo and the beginning of the Neolithic we have a blank. And when the early Neolithic arrives people start [agriculture again] from scratch."
"We’re not trying to say cultivation and an agricultural way of life started in Ohalo and then continued to the Neolithic. You can’t say that. What you can say is that this was perhaps a trial cultivation from which we can understand how humans were always sophisticated, trying to push borders and make life better."
Professor Ehud Weiss, head, archaeological botany lab, Department of Land of Israel Studies

JTB Photo/UIG via Getty Images

Ears of emmer wheat, a crop first farmed in the Fertile Crescent more than 10,000 years ago
Dr. Reich's leading theory that groups of farming communities erupted spontaneously, without having had contact with and inspiration from one another to turn to agricultural pursuits, does not find complete agreement with others of his colleagues. Dr. Melinda A. Zeder, senior research scientist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington does support the working idea that across the Fertile Crescent now known as the Middle East, independent farming arose as a new human enterprise.

On the other hand, an archaeologist at Harvard University, Dr. Ofer Bar-Yosef, feels it far more likely that agriculture on a wide basis had an initial evolution, whose success swiftly rippled from one group to another. It seems the oldest sites showing evidence of agricultural activity on a large scale appeared in what is now northern Syria and southern Turkey. Needless to say at that time in evolutionary history there were no Syrians and Turks to claim the land.

According to the research in DNA about eight thousand years ago there were presumably few tribal, religious or ethnic barriers existing between the people inhabiting the Fertile Crescent and they recognized one another as residents of a common area with the Near East presenting at that time -- according to the researchers who have interpreted the results of what they have discovered -- as a homogeneous mix of people. Usually homogeneity excludes a mixture of anything.

The Sea of Galilee in Israel. Archaeologists made their discovery at a site called Ohalo II which was occupied at the height of the last ice age. Photograph: Hanan Isachar/Alamy

But in this case scientists appear to feel that peace reigned at this ancient time in pre-history with one group of people viewing another with the equanimity of collegiality, as opposed to a spirit of challenge and offense, more in keeping with the older, larger theory of territorial imperatives leading one group to view another as competition for scarce resources. If indeed the greater Middle East at a time in ancient history represented a pacific area of human settlement, they have long since strayed far from this ideal.

Dr. Reich had hopes that he could find more evidence in his scientific explorations on early human settlements and emerging realization of land pasturage and agriculture. He thought of the possibility of accessing archaeological samples in a more systematic manner across the Fertile Crescent. His hopes temporarily dashed, in deference to extending his personal life expectancy rather than expose himself and his team to the dangers inherent in the conflict gripping Syria at the present time.

For the present, he and his colleagues will have to feel satisfied with what they have to date uncovered, that in central Jordan (long, long predating the current Hashemite Kingdom) the remains of a ten thousand-year-old village named Ain Ghazal lies, considered to be evidence of one of the world's first ever farming villages that arose at the dawn of agriculture.

Research has turned up evidence that farmers at Ain Ghazal took to raising barley, wheat, chickpeas and lentils, while others belonging to the village would trek off seasonally for long periods of time with herds of sheep and goats into the hills for them to graze and mature. This is a momentous discovery; the time in the mists of the primitive past when humans domesticated animals and grew plants from seeds in an organized fashion.

It was when humankind changed from wandering the land from season to season and began to settle in discrete places setting the template aeons into the future where we are today, as 'civilized' societies living urban lifestyles, long distanced from our nomadic beginnings.
 



DNA was extracted from skeletons found at Ain Ghazal along with other early settlements discovered in the larger area. It is now held as settled that agriculture originated in the areas that now include current-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, dating back to about 11,000 or even 23,000 years, according toIsraeli archaeologists who last year revealed the presence of what they believe are the earliest known attempts at agriculture, 11,000 years before the generally recognized advent of organized cultivation.

Their conclusion was based on a study that investigated over 150,000 samples of plant remains that were gathered for examination from an unusually well preserved hunter-gatherer settlement located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel.

A team of researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany reconstructed genomes from four early farmers extracted from the Zagros Mountains; bones dating back to around ten thousand years. David Reich and his colleagues managed to recover genetic material extracted from 44 sets of remains in the Near East, including DNA from early farmers who existed at that time in Iran, along with bones extracted from yet another site like the one at Ain Ghazal.

Even more ancient genetic material from early hunter-gatherers in the region was also discovered dating back as far as 14,000 years.

In the geography now known as Turkey early farmers appear to have crossed the Bosporus to travel into Europe some 8,000 years ago, encountering no other farmers, but rather hunter-gatherers who had existed there for over 30,000 years. The invading farmers took possession of much of the territory they had invaded, converting it into farmland.

The early farmers in Iran expanded easterly and their descendants ended up in India, there DNA now seen to provide a large proportion of the east Indian genomes.

The people of Ain Ghazal, on the other hand saw an expanded population moving into East Africa and where, in Somalia, a third of the DNA of people there was also inherited from the Ain Ghazel migrants. What research has established is that the people originally from Ain Ghazal show evidence of having scattered their DNA into East Africa; the first agriculturalists of the southern Levant made East Africans beneficiaries of both their genetic endowment and their agricultural skills.
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