Eerie Circle Built From Mammoth Bones Reveals New Clues About Survival in The Ice Age, Global : Today Indya

Eerie Circle Built From Mammoth Bones Reveals New Clues About Survival in The Ice Age

Global

sciencealert

Long before the comfort of modern amenities, ancient human communities were capable of living in some truly harsh and frigid environments.

Eerie Circle Built From Mammoth Bones Reveals New Clues About Survival in The Ice Age

On the central Russian Plain, a mysterious ring of mammoth bones has been dated to the peak of the last European ice age, when winter temperatures regularly reached -20 degrees Celsius or lower.

The site where this ancient structure was found - on the west bank of the Don River, about 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of Moscow - is known as Kostenki 11. The area has a long history of excavation, dating back to the 1700s; early structures were found there during digs in the 1950s and 60s.

Thanks to radiocarbon dating, a new study has revealed the discovery of the oldest known bone circle built by modern humans on the Russian Plain; there are about 70 of these mysterious structures littered throughout the area.

At more than 20,000 years old, this one particular site would have just started going up as the last ice age reached its coldest and most severe yet.

"Archaeology is showing us more about how our ancestors survived in this desperately cold and hostile environment at the climax of the last ice age," says palaeolithic archaeologist Alexander Pryor from the University of Exeter.

"Most other places at similar latitudes in Europe had been abandoned by this time, but these groups had managed to adapt to find food, shelter and water."

Of course, even these few remaining communities didn't last forever. Eventually, the bone circles were abandoned. But for a while there at least, they were important sites for humans.

The oldest continuous bone circle, which stretches 12.5 metres in diameter (41 feet), appears to be made almost exclusively of mammoth bones, along with a smattering of bones from reindeer, horse, bear, wolf, red fox and arctic fox; the archaeologists have identified a total of 51 lower jaws and 64 individual skulls from mammoths.

At the edge of the circle, three large pits were revealed as well, filled with large mammoth bones.

Using radiocarbon dating of fragments of charcoal found among the remains, the research team confirmed there was a human presence on the Russian Plain during a time when similar latitudes in Europe were already abandoned.

"Yet despite this cold, the widespread distribution of charcoal and burnt bone at Kostenki 11 indicates the availability of wood fuel and the sustained use of mixed-fuel (wood and bone) fires," the authors write in their study.

In fact, this is only the second mammoth-bone circle at which habitual wood burning has been identified. And it's some 5,000 years older than the other one.

The discovery adds weight to the idea that conifer trees survived on the Russian mammoth steppe throughout the last glacial cycle. Wood to burn is a prerequisite for many modern hunter-gatherers in high-latitude cold climates, and the availability of trees in this part of the world is a possible reason for why humans persisted here for so much longer than other areas of northern Europe.

Apart from burned wood, the team also identified several plants which could have been used for poisons, medicines, string or fabric, as well as over 50 small, charred seeds. It's still unclear if these were brought by humans or dropped here by randomness, although other remains were clearly manufactured.

More than 300 tiny stone and flint chips suggest the people here once used to knap stone tools, likely for butchering animals and scraping hides.

"What might have brought ancient hunter gatherers to this site?" asks Pryor.

"One possibility is that the mammoths and humans could have come to the area en masse because it had a natural spring that would have provided unfrozen liquid water throughout the winter - rare in this period of extreme cold."

For now, the purpose of this bone circle remains a mystery.

Article Original Source : https://www.sciencealert.com/palaeolithic-humans-built-these-weird-rings-of...

Is Paying for Sex a Disease?

Global

psychologytoday

Many U.S, jurisdictions send men to “John Schools” for treatment.

Like many folks, I will admit that I have been to traffic school. That’s where you get a speeding or traffic ticket, and are offered an option to attend a course of driving safety, as a means to get the ticket dismissed.

This makes sense, right? It gives more information and safety awareness to people on the street, including people like me, who sometimes have a lead foot.

When I attend driving school for speeding, coursework never suggests that my tendency to drive too fast is a disease–but in “john schools” around the country, men are being taught exactly that, that their desire to purchase sex is evidence of a sex addiction and a disease needing treatment.

In recent years, there has been a shift from prosecuting the (mostly female) people charged with prostitution, solicitation, and selling sexual encounters, to charging the (mostly men) people who attempt to purchase sex.

In 2010, data from the U.S. DOJ shows that 43,000 women were arrested for prostitution-related charges, compared to only 19,000 men, leading to legitimate criticisms that this reflects sexist and misogynistic social and legal attitudes towards females.

In New York, “Operation Flush the Johns” in 2013 led to the publication of 104 men’s pictures after they were arrested for “patronizing a prostitute.” The arrests included two physicians, as well as numerous lawyers, including one 79-year-old attorney. Their names and pictures were then published in a local newspaper, sending shockwaves through families, businesses and clinics. This effort was part of an attempt to publicly shame these men (not all public interventions use shame, though this is an often criticized element), a strategy used across the country in an effort to suppress the demand for sex for sale.

John school curricula typically includes information about the laws against sex work, as well as information about the exploitation experienced by many involved in sex work. "It is about changing attitudes," Jacquie Aitken, a director of a John school in Canada said. "We have to look at the attitudes of the people who are purchasing and their understanding of what purchasing sex means."

Most John schools are based on a model developed in 2008, called the “First Offender Prostitution Program” or FOPP, implemented in 2008 in San Francisco, and included these elements:

• Prostitution Law and Street Facts, focusing on the legal consequences of subsequent offenses and addressing johns’ vulnerability to being robbed or assaulted while involved in prostitution.

• Health Education, describing the elevated risk of HIV and STD infection associated with prostitution, and stressing that many STDs are asymptomatic and/or difficult to detect and have long term negative impacts on health.

• Effect of Prostitution on Prostitutes, focusing on numerous negative consequences for women serving as prostitutes, such as vulnerability to rape and assault, health problems, drug addiction, and various forms of exploitation.

• Dynamics of Pimping, Recruiting, and Trafficking, featuring discussions of how pimps and traffickers recruit, control, and exploit women and girls for profit, and the links between local street prostitution and larger systems of human trafficking.

• Effect of Prostitution on the Community, describing the drug use, violence, health hazards, and other adverse consequences that co-occur with street prostitution.

• Sexual Addiction, focusing on how involvement in commercial sex may be driven by sexual addiction, and where help for this condition can be sought.

Article Original Source : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/201807/is-paying-se...