Tag: europe

From Peas to Prosperity: Researchers Discover the Diet that Shaped the Oldest Cities

You are what you eat! A team of researchers from Kiel University has delved into the nutritional aspects of Trypillia mega-sites in the forest steppe northwest of the Black Sea—today the territory of the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. These mega-sites emerged approximately 6,000-years ago and were the largest settlements globally during this period, covering areas of up to 320 hectares. The Neolithic settlements during this period had farmers cultivating a diet of primarily beans, grains and peas, the research shows.

The study is part of the latest investigations into Trypillia societies, which boasted populations of around 15,000 people. They’re regarded as the oldest ‘cities’ in Europe, predating even the urbanization of Mesopotamia.

The research and study is led by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1266 at Kiel University (CAU), was published in Proceedings of Natural Academy of Sciences. It was spearheaded by archaeologist Professor Johannes Müller, in collaboration with researchers from Ukraine and Moldova.

The food supply system supporting these settlements has been a source of numerous inquiries among researchers. Previously, it was understood that many small Neolithic settlements relied on subsistence farming for sustenance.

“The provisioning of the residents of the mega-sites was based on extremely sophisticated food and pasture management,” says Kiel paleoecologist Dr. Frank Schlütz, one of the authors of the study.

The modern tales of Popeye, the sailor, and his legendary strength derived from spinach are well-known to almost everyone. However, modern science has revealed that the nutritional value of spinach was overestimated. In stark contrast, peas emerge as a highly beneficial component of human nutrition due to their rich protein content. Surprisingly, the significance of peas has been greatly undervalued by scientific understanding, according to a press release by Kiel University.

Isotopic analysis provides a valuable tool for understanding the practices of maintaining domestic animals, the fertilization methods employed in cultivating crops, and the role played by plants and animals in the dietary habits of ancient societies thousands of years ago.

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Europe is ‘Entering an Era of Wars’, Top Security Forum Warns

The comfortable era of prosperity and the welfare state under the protective umbrella of American defence is ending and Europe needs to “switch to a war economy”, the director of a top European security forum warns.

The United States is drifting away from Europe as a new generation of voters and politicians focus on the Asia Pacific region rather than over the Atlantic, and European states need to start urgent work to prepare for a future era of increased conflict without American firepower to fall back on, Professor Katarzyna Pisarska of the Warsaw Security Forum has told a top German newspaper.

The political scientist painted a bleak picture of the future for Die Welt, noting that fundamental changes in American society — like demographic change, for instance — is going to make holding Washington’s attention in the future more difficult. She told the paper: “For many younger Americans, including a generation of politicians, Europe is little more than an open-air museum. You feel and are actually closer to Asia and the Pacific region. China is the biggest geopolitical threat for them.

“…The USA is changing, demographically. There has been hardly any immigration from Europe for many decades, but from Asia and of course Latin America. This also changes the priorities of politics.”

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31,000-YEAR-OLD ARTIFACTS REVEAL USE OF ADVANCED PROJECTILE WEAPON MILLENNIA EARLIER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

A forensic examination of 31,000-year-old artifacts has revealed the potential use of advanced spearthrowers by Stone Age Europeans, according to the results of a controversial new study.

Archaeologists previously believed that spearthrowers, which are sometimes called atlatls, were first put into use sometime around 17,000 or 18,000 years ago based on evidence of their use found in European caves, primarily located in southern France.

However, the results of the recent study appear to put those original findings in doubt by showing that these advanced weapons may have been in use millennia earlier than previously believed.

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Archaeologists Discover Vast, Complex Prehistoric Society That Rewrites History

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of a highly complex prehistoric society in Central Europe that thrived in a region experts previously believed was abandoned in 1600 BC. This sophisticated society was one of the “major cultural centers of southern Europe” and exerted “regional scale influences across the continent and into the Mediterranean,” they report in a new study. 

The Pannonian Basin is a region that centers on modern-day Hungary and touches upon multiple nations in Central Europe. Thousands of years ago, Bronze Age humans settled there and built a complex and influential society that lasted for centuries before it was mysteriously abandoned in 1600 BC. Ancient sites examined by experts show signs of depopulation over several decades, leading to the theory of a “regional scale collapse” and a relatively “abrupt end” for this prehistoric social order. However, the authors of a paper published this month in PLOS One write, based on a remote survey and excavations “a fully opposite trajectory can be identified–increased scale, complexity and density in settlement systems and intensification of long-distance networks.” Rather than disappear, ancient people adapted. 

“In many ways it provides a missing link,” lead author Barry Molloy of University College Dublin told Motherboard in an email. “We know that societies in Europe in the later second millennium BC were interacting at a continental scale. We also knew that material and symbols from this area were influential within Europe, but we had not identified the kind of sophisticated society that would be a driver in those communication networks. This find changes this.” 

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Achtung! US Travel To Europe Will Require Prior Approval, Biometric Scanning

Traveling to most European countries is about to get more complicated and invasive for American citizens: In spring 2025, you’ll have to first request permission.  And you’ll be saying adieu to passport stamps and ciao to facial and fingerprint scans — and having your biometric data stored in an enormous government database. 

On Friday, an agency of the European Union announced the updated timing for the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS), which has first set to roll out in 2024. It applies to travelers from more than 60 countries that are currently exempt from visa requirements. Those countries have an aggregate population of 1.4 billion. 

As is the case today, Americans won’t need a visa, but they will need to apply in advance for permission to visit any of 30 EU countries for stays lasting up to 90 days. It will cost about $8 to apply, with requests submitted via the official ETIAS website or ETIAS mobile app. With activation of the process more than a year away, neither is yet configured to collect applications. ETIAS assures the public that most applications will be processed in minutes. 

The approval will be tied to your passport, and will be valid for up to three years or until your passport expires, whichever comes earlier. Once you have it, you’ll be able to visit as much as you want, so long as it’s a “short-term stay,” which generally means up to 90 days in a 180-day period. 

ETIAS recommends applying for permission “well in advance” of your trip, but doesn’t specify what that means. The agency does caution that the approval period “could be extended by up to 14 days if you are requested to provide additional information or documentation, or up to 30 days if you are invited to an interview.” There’s no indication where such interviews would be conducted or by whom. 

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Enigmatic human fossil jawbone may be evidence of an early Homo sapiens presence in Europe – and adds mystery about who those humans were

Homo sapiens, our own species, evolved in Africa sometime between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Anthropologists are pretty confident in that estimate, based on fossil, genetic and archaeological evidence.

Then what happened? How modern humans spread throughout the rest of the world is one of the most active areas of research in human evolutionary studies.

The earliest fossil evidence of our species outside of Africa is found at a site called Misliya cave, in the Middle East, and dates to around 185,000 years ago. While additional H. sapiens fossils are found from around 120,000 years ago in this same region, it seems modern humans reached Europe much later.

Understanding when our species migrated out of Africa can reveal insights into present-day biological, behavioral and cultural diversity. While we Homo sapiens are the only humans alive today, our species coexisted with different human lineages in the past, including Neandertals and Denisovans. Scientists are interested in when and where H. sapiens encountered these other kinds of humans.

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‘Is Washington still our ally?’: EU accuses US of PROFITEERING from Ukraine war through sales of guns and gas and threatens trade war – as top diplomats moan Biden’s green subsidies mean European businesses are relocating to US

The EU has accused the US of profiteering from the Ukraine war by selling guns and gas at ramped up prices.

Several high-ranking officials within the Bloc accused Joe Biden of capitalizing on the brutal Russian invasion by marking up the cost to import the vital products.

One senior official told Politico they believe America was standing to gain the most from the continuation of the fighting, nine months after soldiers first invaded.

‘The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,’ the official said.

In recent months, Europeans have weaned off Russian energy and gas with the countries forced to look to the US for their oil.

EU countries however pay roughly four-times as much for gas as it costs in America, with cheaper energy becoming hugely competitive in the states.

Businesses are looking to pump cash into the US fuel market with new investments – as some even relocate their firms to the other side of the Atlantic.

It has sent some world leaders in Europe into a frenzy, with French President Emmanuel Macron recently saying it was not friendly of the US to treat allies as it is.

Meanwhile European countries are suffering an arms shortage due to huge shipments that have been sent to Ukraine – with them racing to replenish supplies over the winter.

Yet the Americans continue to send more, with the cost of supplying Ukraine to the US now at over $19billion as another $400million was added earlier this week.

It comes at an already tumultuous moment between the Americans and several nations as Europe grapples with the fallout from Biden’s green subsidies.

‘The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,’ one EU official said. ‘Is Washington still our ally or not?’

Tensions came to a boil on Friday as EU trade ministers met and branded the act ‘discriminatory’, ahead of it coming into force in just over a month.

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Scientists Are Investigating Signs of Ancient Human Civilization Underwater

Archaeologists are trying to piece together the mystery of an underwater trail of ancient rock piles, or cairns, that stretch for miles under the shimmering waters of Lake Constance, a glacial lake that lies between Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and which appear to have been made by humans who lived some 5,500 years ago, according to a 2021 study.

The huge cairns have attracted public attention and expert debate ever since they were first discovered in 2015 by the Institute for Lake Research in Langenargen. Roughly 170 of these rock formations are arranged in a line under the shallow waters of Lake Constance, several hundred feet from its southwest Swiss shore. 

A team led by Urs Leuzinger, an archaeologist at the Museum of Archaeology of the Canton of Thurgau, have amassed compelling evidence that the rock formations were made by humans who lived in the area during the Neolithic period. 

The piles are several dozen feet wide, with heights of up to six feet, distinguishing them as impressive structures that would have required a lot of effort and time to build, though “the function of this 10-kilometer long prehistoric feature remains enigmatic,” according to a 2021 study published in the Annual Review of Swiss Archaeology. The findings of this study will be presented in a pop-up exhibit this week called “Bodensee Stonehenge” (meaning Lake Constance Stonehenge) at the Office for Archaeology Thurgau.

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The digital euro may have spending limits

Fabio Panetta, an Executive Board Member of the European Central Bank (ECB), has proposed that users of the digital euro should only be allowed to spend €50 per transaction and have a maximum monthly spending limit of just €1,000 if they want to avoid having their transaction data recorded by the ECB.

The digital euro is the European Union’s (EU’s) proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) and officials involved with the project have already confirmed that it will have less anonymity than cash.

But during an appearance at a “Towards a legislative framework for a digital euro” event (which was jointly organized by the European Commission (EC), the executive branch of the EU, and the ECB), Panetta and other officials discussed further restrictions that they hope to impose when the digital euro rolls out.

Panetta proposed that the ECB should be able to see data on payments between digital euro users but that it wouldn’t hold personal data about those users. He indicated that the only way for digital euro users to possibly avoid having their payment data recorded would be to stick to “very small value payments.”

“If we allow users to do transactions up to say €50 with a maximum…volume of transactions in a given timeframe that is monthly not more than €1,000…transaction not more than 50, then one might discuss that this could not be recorded but this is a discussion which would take place,” Panetta said.

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Sabotage Again Suspected As More European Internet Cables Cut

Two European fibre optic cables have been severed in the last week, fuelling speculation of possible sabotage with both phone networks and internet traffic disrupted.

The first incident took place in the North Sea last week and saw an underwater fibre optic cable cut, shutting off the internet and mobile phone networking to the Shetland Islands, the northernmost islands of the United Kingdom for an entire night.

The incident affected the SHEFA2 submarine fibre optic cable, which was deployed in 2007 and connects the Shetlands, the Orkney Islands as well as the Faroe Islands, to mainland Scotland. Another cable connecting the Shetlands and the Faroe Islands had also been damaged the week prior, an incident which was blamed on a fishing ship.

According to a report from French broadcaster BFMTV, a second fibre optic cable severing incident was reported by the security firm Zscaler, which claimed that damage had been detected at a fibre optic hub in Aix-en-Provence, near Marseille last week.

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