Britian's Early Inhabitants

Archaeologists have unearthed 600,000-year-old evidence of Britain’s early inhabitants near Canterbury, England.

The discovery, led by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge has found evidence of early humans that date from between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago during the Palaeolithic Period.

The site was first identified in the 1920’s when labourers found handaxes in an ancient riverbed, which researchers have now applied modern dating techniques through radiometric dating, infrared-radiofluorescence (IR-RF) dating and controlled excavations of the site.

In a study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers have confirmed the presence of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene and an ancestor of Neanderthals. 

Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have descended from the African Homo erectus during the first early expansions of hominins out of Africa beginning roughly 2 million years ago.

Early humans are known to have been present in Britain from as early as 840,000, and potentially 950,000 years ago, but these early visits were fleeting due to cold glacial climatic changes driving populations out of northern Europe which colonised Britain during a warming phase between 560,000 and 620,000 ago. 

During this period, Britain was connected to Europe on the north-western peninsular of the European continent, allowing populations to migrate to new hunting grounds probably during the warmer summer months.  READ MORE...

Diplomatic Boycott of Beijing

AFPImage - Protesters have targeted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over the Games


While concern over human rights has become almost a constant theme in international sport in recent years, few hosts of major events have provoked quite as much controversy as Beijing.


The venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics has been hit by a flurry of diplomatic boycotts from countries including the US, Australia, and Britain, because of widespread allegations of Chinese atrocities against the Uyghur community.


Human rights groups and Western governments have accused China of genocide in the Xinjiang region. China denies this, saying its network of detention camps there is for "re-education" of the Uyghurs and other Muslims.


Relations are also strained over a crackdown on political freedoms and pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, and more recently concerns over tennis player Peng Shuai, who disappeared from public view after she accused a top Chinese government official of sexual assault. Although the Chinese authorities have criticised "malicious speculation" over her case, there remains significant concern about her.


For the few Western governments who have said their representatives will not attend, such a move is a relatively easy way to be seen to issue a rebuke, while avoiding the much more contentious step of preventing athletes from competing via a full boycott.


It is not a new tactic. Three years ago some European countries, including Britain, announced diplomatic boycotts of the Russian football World Cup after the Salisbury Novichok poisoning.


The risk with sending politicians to Beijing to attend the Games is that inevitably it would be viewed as offering tacit approval of the government of President Xi Jinping, for whom the event is a matter of significant prestige.


While China accused the US of using the Games for political manipulation and vowed "resolute counter-measures", it is unlikely to have been too dismayed, or indeed surprised, especially given the likes of Italy and France have declined to join the boycott, with President Macron describing it as "symbolic and insignificant". Certainly it will make very little difference to the spectacle of the event for those inside venues or watching from afar.  READ MORE...