Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

13 discoveries in the last year have fundamentally altered our understanding of human history

Even amid the pandemic, anthropologists and archaeologists around the world have continued to make mind-boggling discoveries about our human ancestors this year.

One analysis revealed that the earliest known example of interbreeding between different human populations was 700,000 years ago — more than 600,000 years before modern humans interbred with Neanderthals. Findings from a Mexican cave, meanwhile, offered evidence that the earliest humans came to the Americas via boat, not land bridge. And researchers also found new reason to believe climate change was responsible for the extinction of many of our ancestors.

Taken together, these discoveries and others bolster and complicate our understanding of human history — the story of who our ancestors were, where they came from, and how they lived.

Here are some of the most eye-raising anthropological findings of 2020.

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The Top ‘Owners’ Of America’s President-Elect Joe Biden

Top Contributors, federal election data for Joe Biden, 2020 cycle

totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

  1. Bloomberg LP [Michael Bloomberg] $56,796,137
  2. Future Forward USA [largely Dustin Moskowitz] $29,917,229
  3. Priorities USA/Priorities USA Action [Hillary backers] $25,841,199
  4. Asana  [Moskowitz & Rosenstein] $21,937,902
  5. Sixteen Thirty Fund [dark money] $19,874,655
  6. Democracy PAC [George Soros] $19,000,000
  7. Senate Majority PAC [Democratic billionaires] $12,371,874
  8. American Bridge 21st Century [largely Soros] $10,260,573
  9. Paloma Partners [Donald Sussman] $9,016,248
  10. Euclidean Capital [James Simons] $7,006,805

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NASHVILLE BOMBING: RV Was Playing Song “Downtown” Before Blast

Before a warning message and countdown was broadcast from the RV that exploded in downtown Nashville on Christmas day, the 1964 hit song “Downtown” by Petula Clark was playing.

“The music started, and I notified over the [police radio] air to notify other officers,” Officer James Luellen said, speaking alongside four of his fellow cops in a Sunday press briefing. “Then, after the song, it continued to go back to the announcement for a little while.”

“What I remembered was, ‘Downtown, where the lights shine bright,’ ” he said.

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Unsolved Murders On The Rise In 2020 Due To COVID-Related Challenges

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the last year that police are solving less murders as a result of new challenges that have been created by Covid-19. 

In fact, homicides rose almost 40% for the country’s 10 largest police departments in the first 11 months of 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend. The report noted that detectives across the country have been “overwhelmed” by the rise in homicides after the rate had been falling since the 1990s.

Covid has made traditional police work, including face to face interviews, difficult to undertake. This comes amid a year where civil unrest has been high and the public’s trust of police has sunk. 

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