Nailing down how exactly we humans are unique compared with the hominins who died out became harder this week with the discovery that Neanderthals could make three-ply string, indicating heretofore unsuspected levels of skills in our extinct cousins. Neanderthals who could cord could also potentially weave, archaeologists posit.
While the imagination can now run riot about Neanderthals in capes, one mystery bedeviling archaeologists may have been solved this week: what the hell archaic humans were doing with stone balls for more than two million years.
Even the modern custom of decorating eggs turns out to have ancient precedent, as was associating a premium with sourcing the eggs from dangerous wild ostriches rather than captive ones (today for instance apparently firing a high-powered rifle at a captive zoo animal isn't "sport").
Meanwhile in Peru, unexpected light was cast on early primate spread by the discovery of four tiny, baffling teeth, which were nothing like those of South American monkeys but were very much like those of African monkeys. Read on to solve this mystery.
And it came to pass some 35 million years later, in the year 491 B.C.E., that a letter was sent from Jerusalem to a Yahwistic garrison stationed on an island in the Nile in southern Egypt, handing down instructions on how to observe Passover – an indication that the holiday was firmly entrenched by then, but its rituals hadn't been formalized yet. What Jews were doing on Elephantine Island in the first place remains a mystery.
Finally, Haaretz wondered: if a virus was still infectious after 30,000 years in Siberian permafrost, why do they say coronavirus "dies" on surfaces after mere days? What happens if you spit in the fridge – will the coronavirus survive longer? You read it here first. And Elon Gilad provides a historic look at how Judaism related to epidemics over the ages. | | | |
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