Humans Thrived - Neanderthals Perished

Why did humans take over the world while our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, became extinct? It's possible we were just smarter, but there's surprisingly little evidence that's true.

Neanderthals had big brains, language and sophisticated tools. They made art and jewellery. They were smart, suggesting a curious possibility. Maybe the crucial differences weren't at the individual level, but in our societies.


Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, Europe and western Asia were Neanderthal lands. Homo sapiens inhabited southern Africa. Estimates vary but perhaps 100,000 years ago, modern humans migrated out of Africa.


Forty thousand years ago Neanderthals disappeared from Asia and Europe, replaced by humans. Their slow, inevitable replacement suggests humans had some advantage, but not what it was.     READ MORE...

Global Markets Moving Apart

The world's biggest economies are seeing a "decoupling," Bank of America says.
The US is showing surprising resilience, European growth is weak, and China is faltering.
Global stocks have reflected the shifting tides in trade and supply chains.

The biggest players in the global economy are on different trajectories, and markets around the world are reflecting the shifting landscape.

In Bank of America's view, the US economy continues to show remarkable resilience, European growth has faltered, and China faces the most challenging outlook amid real estate woes, deflation, and demographic headwinds.

"Signs of decoupling are present in global growth, trade, and equity markets," Bank of America strategists wrote in a Friday note.  READ MORE...

Trans Rights in Europe

While a number of European nations have been praised by leading trans organisations for their commitment to improving rights for the marginalised group, others - including Slovakia and the UK - have been told they still have a long way to go.

Rights for transgender people are always a hot topic of discussion - dividing friends, colleagues and ruining the legacies of the rich and famous.

This week in Japan, the Asian nation’s Supreme Court ruled that a law requiring transgender people to have their reproductive organs removed in order to officially change their gender was unconstitutional.  READ MORE...

Publishing House Replaces Jobs with AI

Bild, the German tabloid owned and operated by major European publishing house Axel Springer, is expected to replace over a hundred human editorial jobs with artificial intelligence, a leaked email first obtained by the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) has revealed.

The tabloid will "unfortunately be parting ways with colleagues who have tasks that in the digital world are performed by AI and/or automated processes," the email reads, as reported by FAZ and translated by The Guardian.

According to the report, the email detailed that those who will be replaced by AI include "editors, print production staff, subeditors, proofreaders and photo editors," and that these time-honored human careers "will no longer exist as they do today."

The decision appears to be part of broader cost-cutting efforts across Axel Springer brands, including Insider, which also cut a large chunk of employees amid its own AI pivot earlier this year.

Though several publications across the media industry have experimented with incorporating AI into their workflows, the choice to fully automate hundreds of essential editorial roles with AI feels like a significant escalation. Bild might be a messy, politicized tabloid, but Axel Springer is the biggest publisher in Europe and others could be following suit soon.  READ MORE...

In Case You Missed It - Amazon to Layoff 18,000

Amazon has announced it will cut more than 18,000 jobs from its workforce, citing “the uncertain economy” and the fact that it had “hired rapidly” during the pandemic.

“Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles,” said CEO Andy Jassy in a statement to his staff. The company had announced 10,000 layoffs in November.

The jobs to be slashed under the plan amount to 6 percent of Amazon’s roughly 300,000-person corporate workforce, the largest among recent workforce reductions that have impacted the US tech sector.

Jassy said the company’s leadership was “deeply aware that these role eliminations are difficult for people, and we don’t take these decisions lightly.

“We are working to support those who are affected and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support,” he said.

Some of the layoffs would be in Europe, Jassy said, adding that the impacted workers would be informed starting on January 18.  READ MORE...

Tesla Turns Up The Heat

Jan 13 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has slashed prices globally on its electric vehicles by as much as 20%, extending an aggressive discounting effort and challenging rivals after missing Wall Street delivery estimates for 2022.

The move marks a reversal from the automaker's strategy over the last two years when new vehicle orders exceeded supply. It comes after CEO Elon Musk warned that the prospect of recession and higher interest rates meant it could lower prices to sustain growth at the expense of profit.

Musk acknowledged last year that prices had become "embarrassingly high" and could hurt demand. Shares were down 2.6% on Friday, following the stock's worst year since its inception due to delivery issues and growing competition.

Tesla lowered prices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, following a series of cuts last week in Asia, in what analysts saw as a clear shot at both smaller rivals that have been bleeding cash and legacy automakers aggressively ramping up electric vehicle production.  READ MORE...

Europe's Most Misunderstood Country

Stretching 192km, the Peak of the Balkans Trail bridges three previously war-torn nations and crosses through some of the continent's least-explored landscapes.

Hiking through the green valleys and wildflower-strewn meadows under blazing sunshine, with the gunmetal-grey Albanian Alps towering overhead, I was struck by the utter remoteness of this landscape. Unlike Europe's more famous alpine resorts, there were no hotels or ski lifts in sight. 

Instead, the sweeping setting evoked a startling sense of isolation, and I couldn't help but feel I'd entered a back-of-the-wardrobe secret land that had somehow evaded the attention of the outside world.

Stretching from Northern Albania into southern Kosovo and north-eastern Montenegro, the Albanian Alps are better known by their local Albanian (Bjeshkët e Nëmuna) and Serbo-Croatian (Prokletije) names – both of which mean "The Accursed Mountains". 

Yet, the question of how these serrated limestone slopes got their unusual moniker remains something of a mystery.

According to local legend, the devil escaped from hell and created the jagged glacial karsts in a single day of mischief. Some say the alps' name stems from a woman who cursed the mountains when she was trekking through them with her children on a scorching-hot day and couldn't find any water. 

Others claim Slavic soldiers gave the mountains their name as they struggled to march through them. In a way, the peaks' puzzling origin story is something of a metaphor for Albania as a whole.  READ MORE...

Just About Italy

Italy, country of south-central Europe, occupying a peninsula that juts deep into the Mediterranean Sea. Italy comprises some of the most varied and scenic landscapes on Earth and is often described as a country shaped like a boot. At its broad top stand the Alps, which are among the world’s most rugged mountains. Italy’s highest points are along Monte Rosa, which peaks in Switzerland, and along Mont Blanc, which peaks in France. 

The western Alps overlook a landscape of Alpine lakes and glacier-carved valleys that stretch down to the Po River and the Piedmont. Tuscany, to the south of the cisalpine region, is perhaps the country’s best-known region. From the central Alps, running down the length of the country, radiates the tall Apennine Range, which widens near Rome to cover nearly the entire width of the Italian peninsula. South of Rome the Apennines narrow and are flanked by two wide coastal plains, one facing the Tyrrhenian Sea and the other the Adriatic Sea. 

Much of the lower Apennine chain is near-wilderness, hosting a wide range of species rarely seen elsewhere in western Europe, such as wild boars, wolves, asps, and bears. The southern Apennines are also tectonically unstable, with several active volcanoes, including Vesuvius, which from time to time belches ash and steam into the air above Naples and its island-strewn bay. At the bottom of the country, in the Mediterranean Sea, lie the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.

Italy
Italy’s political geography has been conditioned by this rugged landscape. With few direct roads between them, and with passage from one point to another traditionally difficult, Italy’s towns and cities have a history of self-sufficiency, independence, and mutual mistrust. Visitors today remark on how unlike one town is from the next, on the marked differences in cuisine and dialect, and on the many subtle divergences that make Italy seem less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting.

Across a span of more than 3,000 years, Italian history has been marked by episodes of temporary unification and long separation, of intercommunal strife and failed empires. At peace for more than half a century now, Italy’s inhabitants enjoy a high standard of living and a highly developed culture.  READ MORE...

Surrealism

Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the “rationalism” that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I. 

According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained by poets and painters alike.

Characteristics
In the poetry of Breton, Paul Éluard, Pierre Reverdy, and others, Surrealism manifested itself in a juxtaposition of words that was startling because it was determined not by logical but by psychological—that is, unconscious—thought processes. Surrealism’s major achievements, however, were in the field of painting. Surrealist painting was influenced not only by Dadaism but also by the fantastic and grotesque images of such earlier painters as Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya and of closer contemporaries such as Odilon Redon, Giorgio de Chirico, and Marc Chagall. 

The practice of Surrealist art strongly emphasized methodological research and experimentation, stressing the work of art as a means for prompting personal psychic investigation and revelation. Breton, however, demanded firm doctrinal allegiance. Thus, although the Surrealists held a group show in Paris in 1925, the history of the movement is full of expulsions, defections, and personal attacks.

CHECK OUT TOMORROW'S POSTINGS FOR 

5 SURREALISTIC PAINTERS AND THEIR ARTWORK

Slave Traders Cheated

Copper manilla bracelets from a late 17th-century Royal African Company trader in the Western Approaches. Photograph: Seascape Artifact Exhibits Inc.

Early English enslavers sourced copper from Cornwall to create manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slavery trade, and used an impure mix to maximise their profits, according to a study.

Dr Tobias Skowronek, a German scientist, has conducted a scientific analysis of horseshoe-shaped bracelets that were exchanged over hundreds of years for enslaved people from Africa who were transported to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean.

His study revealed that copper had been sourced from Cornwall decades earlier than previously thought, overturning assumptions that it had come primarily from Sweden and Flanders until the 1720s.  READ MORE...

Nomadic Horse Warriors That Invaded Europe

The charge of the Huns led by Attila (lived circa A.D. 406 to 453). 

(Image credit: SPCOLLECTION via Alamy Stock Photo)

The Huns were nomadic warriors, likely from Central Asia, who are best known for invading and terrorizing Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. and hastening the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. They were expert horsemen known for their ferocity in battle and their ruthlessness toward conquered peoples.

Under their brilliant military leader Attila (A.D. 406 to 453), known by Christians of the time as "the scourge of God," the Huns carved out a huge empire that encompassed large swathes of present-day Russia, Hungary and other parts of Europe, including Germany and France. 

Attila's army became so powerful that both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires regularly paid tribute to keep these warriors from attacking and plundering Roman provinces. But the Huns' empire didn't last. After Attila's death, the empire was divided between his three sons, who fought one another and were unable to keep the empire intact.



Today, the name "Hun" is synonymous with any barbaric, uncouth and destructive person, and the term conjures up images of mounted warriors involved in acts of abject cruelty, brutality and bellicosity. 

For centuries, this stereotype, which originated with Roman writers who suffered from the Huns' depredations, was the dominant image of the Huns. But the story of the Huns is much more complex than these images suggest.  READ MORE...

Spanish Stonehenge Emerges out of Water

Last week we told you about the flurry of recent coverage resurfacing 2018 news stories about the re-emergence of so-called "hunger stones" due to extreme drought conditions in Europe. 

We also noted that Europe is once again in the midst of a historically severe drought. Now an ancient site known as the "Spanish Stonehenge"—submerged underwater by a reservoir for decades—has been fully exposed for the second time since 2019 due to low water levels in the reservoir.

The site is also known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, a circular grouping of 150 large vertical granite stones (called orthostats) dating back to between 2000 and 3000 BCE. However, some artifacts recovered at the site suggest it might have been used even earlier. 

A team led by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier discovered the monument in 1926 near a town called Peraleda de la Mata.

Among the recovered artifacts were 11 axes, flint knives, ceramics, and a copper punch. A nearby settlement likely housed the people who built the monument, given the presence of houses, charcoal and ash stains, pottery, and stones to hone axes. 

Obermaier restored some of the granite stones to their rightful places and made reproductions of the engravings, which were published in 1960.  READ MORE...

Americans Relocating to Europe

With rising interest rates, the COVID-19 pandemic that gave many a new perspective on life and the sting of inflation, more Americans are now looking to Europe for a more relaxed lifestyle.

Countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece are luring in overseas buyers seeking more of the calm, sun-filled beach days, according to a report by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

The rising interest in moving to these countries can be contributed to many workers who are still working remotely since the onset of the pandemic.

“We don’t expect activity to be near the levels we saw in 2021 or the first part of 2022, but the Spanish market has been very resilient,” Ugo Bagration, head of business expansion at the agency’s office in Marbella, said in the report. “It’s proving to be a hub and destination for foreign investment within the real estate market.”

Spain has seen an influx of buyers from North America due its affordability, Bagration explained. That being said, because of the high property taxes in the country, others are opting for countries with less of a burden, such as Italy.

Rome in particular, is seeing more high-net-worth families investing in property, as many residences have been updated in recent years, according to Marcus Benussi, managing partner at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.  READ MORE...

Robots in 2030

Robots are already all around us, whether it’s the automated machines that assemble our vehicles or the virtual assistants that use conversational interfaces to help us around the house. Yet as we’ve seen, they’re not currently suitable for all areas of life. But will that change in the future?

Despite fears of an AI takeover, where machines replace humans as the dominant intelligence on the planet, such a scenario seems unlikely. However, business network PwC predicts that up to 30% of jobs could be automated by robots by the mid-2030s.

Other reports suggest that the stock of robots worldwide could reach 20 million by 2030, with automated workers taking up to 51 million jobs in the next 10 years. So, while they may not take over the world, we can expect to see more robots in our daily lives.
How robots will change the world

According to a report from McKinsey, automation and machines will see a shift in the way we work. They predict that across Europe, workers may need different skills to find work. Their model shows that activities that require mainly physical and manual skills will decline by 18% by 2030, while those requiring basic cognitive skills will decline by 28%.

Workers will need technological skills, and there will be an even greater need for those with expertise in STEM. Similarly, many roles will require socioemotional skills, particularly in roles where robots aren’t good substitutes, such as caregiving and teaching.

We may also see robots as a more integral part of our daily routine. In our homes, many simple tasks such as cooking and cleaning may be totally automated. Similarly, with robots that can use computer vision and natural language processing, we may see machines that can interact with the world more, such as self-driving cars and digital assistants.  READ MORE...

Wonders of the World

Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Iraq

The seven wonders of the ancient world were a selection of exceptional pieces of architecture and art in the Middle East, North Africa and southern Europe.

A number of ancient and medieval writers from Europe and Middle East debated and described what are today called the seven "wonders" of the world (not all writers used the term "wonder" to describe them). The ancient Greek writer Herodotus, who lived from 484 to 425 B.C., was one of the earliest writers to discuss them, and while his writings on the wonders did not survive, they were referenced in later texts.

The wonders that should be included in the list were debated over millennia, with different authors proposing different sites. The list that we have today "only became fixed in the Renaissance," archaeologists Peter Clayton and Martin Price wrote in the book "The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" (Routledge, 1988).

The Great Pyramid at Giza is both the oldest ancient wonder on the list and the only one still standing today. It was built as a mausoleum for the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Khufu nearly 4,600 years ago and was the world's tallest structure until Lincoln Cathedral's central tower was completed in England in 1311.

The Great Pyramid was 481 feet (147 meters) tall when it was first completed, but today, due to the loss of some of its stones, it stands 455 feet (139 m) high. The interior of the pyramid contains a system of passageways leading to a "grand gallery" that travels up towards a room with an empty sarcophagus — often called the "king's chamber."

Additionally, the passageways in the Great Pyramid lead to two other chambers including what is sometimes called the "queen's chamber" (although it likely did not hold a queen) and a subterranean chamber located beneath the pyramid. The purpose of these two chambers is a matter of debate. In 2017 scientists scanning the pyramid also detected a large void above the grand gallery that could contain one or more chambers.  TO READ ABOUT THESE OTHER WONDERS OF THE WORLD, CLICK HERE...

China's COVID Crisis

The COVID wave crashing across China right now not only threatens the billion-and-a-half Chinese. It also poses a serious danger to the rest of the world.

Leaving aside the risk to already fragile global supply chains, there’s a chance that the surge of infections in China will give the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen ample opportunity to mutate into some new and more dangerous variant. If that happens, the progress the world has made against COVID since vaccines became widely available in late 2020 could slow, if not reverse.

“There’s the distinct possibility that things will get out of control in China,” John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California-Berkeley's School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast. “If that happens,” Swartzberg added, “there will be a remarkable amount of viral reproduction occurring in people and this will increase the possibility of problematic variants being produced.”

Experts disagree just how likely it is that the next major variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—might emerge in China. Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at The University of Hong Kong, said the next major lineage may come from countries where the virus has already swept through the population. Somewhere in Europe, or the U.S.

But there are unique dynamics that boost the chances of a new SARS-CoV-2 lineage appearing in China. The Chinese population is huge—and might be way less protected against infection and thus viral mutation than, say, Americans or Europeans.

This disparity is partly the consequence of China’s earlier success against COVID. For more than two years, the Chinese government and health establishment managed to suppress the novel-coronavirus. This despite the pathogen likely originating at a meat market in Wuhan in east-central China in late 2019.

Thanks to China’s frequently severe limits on crowds and travel daily, the country went two years with practically no COVID. Yes, there were a few tens of thousands of cases across the vast country during the initial wave of infections in the spring of 2020. But after that, almost nothing. So few cases that the 150 or so daily new infections authorities logged in mid-January 2021 qualified as a surge.  READ MORE...

Friends in High Places

(CNN)After weeks of failing to divide Europe over his war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin enjoyed two small diplomatic victories this weekend.

In both Hungary and Serbia, openly pro-Russian parties comfortably won legislative elections, providing Putin with a welcome reminder that despite the international community's firm and largely united response to the invasion, he does have some friends to his west.

The most significant victory came in the form of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist Fidesz party winning a landslide. Hungary is a member of both the European Union and NATO, meaning Putin can claim to have a friend with seats at the top table of two of his most-hated institutions.

On Sunday night, during his victory speech, Orban goaded not only the EU but Ukraine.

"We have such a victory it can be seen from the moon, but it's sure that it can be seen from Brussels," he said, adding that Fidesz "will remember this victory until the end of our lives because we had to fight against a huge amount of opponents." Included in that list of opponents were Brussels bureaucrats, international media and, pointedly, Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky has directly criticized Orban for failing to support Ukraine as enthusiastically as many of his European counterparts have over the past weeks.  READ MORE...

Malta's Cannibis Rules

Malta’s new cannabis rules should serve as a model for other European states of how to end the unnecessary prosecution of low-level drug users and strike a blow against organised crime, according to the minister responsible for the law, Owen Bonnici.

Bonnici, a former justice minister and now minister for equality, research and innovation, said the new law, passed by the Maltese parliament in December 2021, prevented recreational users from being dragged through the courts or tribunal process for possession of small amounts of cannabis.

But it also allows for users and, eventually, non-profit organisations to grow cannabis plants and distribute it to other smokers via cannabis associations, meaning they no longer have to source the drug via the black market and put money into the pockets of international criminal gangs.

Malta’s law allows users to carry seven grams of the drug and store up to 50 grams at home, making it the first EU state to legalise cannabis.

German Chancellor Olof Scholz is in favour of legalisation but the country’s new government has not set a time limit on the reforms.

Although the Netherlands is world-famous for the availability of cannabis, it remains illegal for individuals to sell or possess it and the "coffee shops" that are licensed to sell it have to buy their product in bulk on the black market, incentivising criminals that grow and traffic it.

A number of European states, including Italy, Spain, Belgium and Ireland, have done away with prison sentences for marijuana possession, but in 14 of 28 European states -- including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria -- minor cannabis possession can still lead to jail time.

Even in European states where cannabis has been “decriminalised”, meaning that those caught with small amounts of the product are not be arrested, users still need to buy the drug from dealers.  READ MORE...

Will Putin Shut Off Europe's Gas?

Berlin, Germany – Determining the front lines of Europe’s potential energy conflict with Russia is no mean feat. Because should Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government decide to use what analysts often call Moscow’s “gas weapon”, the fallout would impact some European Union nations far more than others.

The variations in potential impacts stem from how different national energy markets are organised and legislated.

Around 35 percent of the EU’s natural gas comes from Russia. And as political tensions have mounted around the build-up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, there has been much discussion of whether Russia, the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas, might weaponise that dependency to get its way.

Of the 167.7 billion cubic metres of natural gas Europe imported from Russia in 2020, Germany bought the most – 56.3 billion cubic meters – followed by Italy, with 19.7 billion, and the Netherlands, with 11.2 billion.

But what really determines a country’s vulnerability to Moscow’s energy export policies is not how much it buys but what part Russian gas plays in its national energy mix.  READ MORE...

The Eastern Mediterranean Changing

Image courtesy of Aris Messinis / AFP

Earlier this month, the United States surprised Greece and its two primary partners in the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, Israel and Cyprus, by withdrawing its backing for a natural gas pipeline that would have connected them to Europe. 

The American change of heart was ostensibly justified by the need to focus on clean energy sources and that this project did not align with Europe’s green energy plan.

Instead, Washington urged the countries to consider two alternative electricity transmission projects; the EuroAfrica interconnector intended to deliver electricity from Egypt through Cyprus and then onwards to Greece and Europe via Crete, and its sister EuroAsia project that starts in Israel and connects to Europe through Cyprus. 

Both projects integrate these countries’ electricity grids with Europe’s.  The EastMed gas pipeline idea emerged after significant findings of gas deposits in the territorial waters of Cyprus, Egypt, and Israel. 

The pipeline, which would have cost an estimated $6-7 billion, was seen by many as an unrealistic project given the potential changes in the European energy consumption patterns, its sheer complexity and cost and the financing needs. Chances were that it would not get off the ground much less be completed by 2025 as projected.

The US State Department withdrew support for the project through the delivery of a non-paper – an informal manner of expressing a government’s preferences or requirement without direct attribution. Presumably the content could have been delivered orally except that Washington may have tried to avoid a situation where its message was diluted.

Even if the US may have thought it had a responsibility as part of the 3+1 mechanism of meetings with Cyprus, Greece and Israel designed to encourage regional cooperation, the fact remains that the decision to build a pipeline rests with those three countries and the Europeans and not Washington.  READ MORE...