Revolutionary change in paleoanthropology and rumors of coverups

One of the attacks fringe belief enthusiasts (pick your poison, from creationists to conspiracy theorists to cryptozoologists) is that scientists won't overturn old ideas because it would endanger their egos, their grant money, and their jobs. I've heard the notion that astounding archaeological discoveries have been covered up and destroyed for this exact reason (IIRC, referencing all the 19th century reports of giants found in North American graves).

Paleoanthropology shows how absurd this notion is. Now, I'm something of a lay person in this field (my expertise is in Mesoamerican archaeology, early European colonialism, and ceramics). But it's pretty obvious that in the last decade or so, our picture of our hominid legacy has changed dramatically. We've got another species of hominid co-existing with humans right up to edge of the Holocene, in the form of Homo floresiensis. While the floresiensis case is still being investigated to better understand the nature and culture of these little people, the concept of another species of Homo existing so close to the present is fascinating. It now looks likely that Neanderthals did indeed contribute their genetics to modern humans, a long contentious question answered, though the exact nature of the interaction (besides the genetic mixing) with modern humans is still fiercely debated. In the 1990s, symbolic material culture and behavior was generally believed to be something that exploded with new tool technologies 40,000 years ago or so in a triumphalist conquest of the world by modern humans overtaking all the other versions of Homo due to some revolution. Now we know that such behavior is twice as old, wrecking the neat 40K modern package idea. I'm sure there are other earth-shaking discoveries I'm forgetting.

And now, stone tool use has been flung backwards a million years, before the existence of our genus, dramatically changing the picture of Australopithecus.

The story of humanity and its cousins has changed dramatically in only a few short years. And there is every reason to believe it will change even more as new discoveries are made, and new techniques are brought to bear. And yet, no anthropological men in black swept it under the rug, no cabal of status quoticians hid the fossils in Warehouse 23 (not a typo). Scientists like when their discoveries make comfortable ideas fall apart. Not surprisingly, those who accuse them of the opposite are often promoting a new-fangled version of a comfortable idea already blown apart by earlier discoveries.

On Lost Cities: Lost Inka City of Patiti Found ... Again

The legend of El Dorado, or this case the variant of the Inka city of Patiti, crops up about every six months when a new impressive stone ruin is found in the jungles of South America. Here's the current candidate.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080116-lost-city.html

I can't blame them, of course. I remember the false alarms around finding Copan royal founder Yax K'uk' Mo', before his tomb was finally identified for certain. El Mirador was overlooked for decades before it was rediscovered as the greatest of all Maya cities, transforming the picture of early Maya civilization, and Tikal has the Mundo Perdido or "Lost World" pyramid which has a similar history. And closer to Patiti, there is always the tantalizing memory of the lost city of Macchu Picchu, discovered right at the peak of popular interest in explorers and lost cities and other colonial-era fantasticalness.

Back in college, I remember being amazed by the discovery of Ubar using space shuttle imagery and remote sensing to find camel and foot paths. The Moskitia of Honduras has the enduring legend of the White City, Ciudad Blanca. It too is looked for (here's an example) and sometimes found time and again. Initially supposed to be a city of gleaming white stone buildings, in the 20th century viewed from the air in addition to the old tales, it has also taken on the meaning over time of being a lost city of White people. This of course brings to mind the older medieval stories of Prester John and later colonial myths and fiction of lost Roman legions that brought civilization to Africa, reflected in the treatment of Great Zimbabwe. The British Empire had a lost city of its own, Camelot, which has been identified several times, including at Tintagel in Cornwall.

EDIT: Looks like Patiti is still lost

Africans Brought Rice to the New World

Genetic markers suggest African slaves brought the best rice strains to America.

Ancient Religion?

Two recent discoveries address what may be early religious activities. The younger of the two discoveries have precedent, but are still extraordinary. Plastered skulls 11,500 years old were discovered in Tell Aswad, Syria. The skulls were coated with plaster, simulating flesh and skin, after death and painted to look more lifelike. Not only are these skulls earlier than those found at Jericho and elsewhere, they are far more impressive. Dating to the very beginning of settled life and the transition to food production, the uses of these skulls are uncertain. Guesses usually suggest family, ancestors, and ritual.

A find without precedent in Botswana dates back to what may be the beginning of modern human thought. Deposits of spear points around a rock sculpted into the form of a python appear to date to over 70,000 BP. The patterned deposition of these artifacts around a large image of an animal important to human concepts of nature and supernature may well be some of the earliest evidence of more complex ritual or religious behavior for Homo sapiens sapiens. Intriguingly, this is not far in time or space from the earliest evidence for human art. Blombos Cave, in neighboring South Africa, has produced the earliest evidence for symbolic creation of material culture. Shells were pierced for hanging on necklaces, and most intriguingly, zig-zag geometric patterns were carved into bars of red ochre, all around 77,000 BP. I would not be surprised to see other evidence of modern human behavior appearing in Southern Africa in the future.

Of course, other later hominids (such as Neanderthals) show some evidence of mortuary practices that may hint at symbolic thought. But so far not much evidence of symbolic material culture outside of mortuary practices. I'll leave the splitting between modern human behavior and other humans to those with more expertise in these fields.