flipping channels the other morning

as i've mentioned i am up at 12 or 12:30 am most every day. i'm at my laptop with the tv on in the background. sometimes i strike gold

like with this: secrets of the dead: amazons

the little girl above, neiramgul, was found in mongolia. she is blond and she is a decendent of warrior women. yup, she is (not all warrior women were blond mind you. it is just unusual to come across a blond in mongolia. but you do from time to time)

if you ever see a listing for this episode of secrets of the dead. i highly recommend it. wicked cool

which leads me to this......

It Wasn't Feminism That Killed the Neanderthals

in recent days there has been a LOT written about why neanderthals perished. of course it was blamed on WOMEN. of course i don't buy that for ONE second and neither does the author of the piece linked above

.........By Caryl Rivers, Women's eNews

Did Homo sapiens survive because they were a prehistoric version of "Leave It to Beaver," while Neanderthals perished because they practiced an early brand of feminism?
Did unisex hunting doom the big bipeds, while male Homo sapiens played the part of Ice Age Ward Cleaver, marching off to hunt big game while June tidied up the cave in her pearls? Did this behavior ensure that humans would take over the world?
Is it true that, as a headline in the Toronto Star put it, "Equality Killed the Caveman?"
A study in this month's issue of Current Anthropology argues that division of economic labor by sex helped early humans win the survival race.
With Neanderthals, so this story goes, both men and women hunted big game to fuel their large bodies, got themselves whacked too often and went on their unisex way to extinction. Scientists Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, both of the University of Arizona, authored the article, after examining skeletal remains of Neanderthals, male and female, that bore the marks of rough wear and tear........

...........It's likely that Neanderthals, like early humans, scavenged kills by other predators and often set their sights on the most vulnerable prey. They ate shellfish and tortoises, and probably hunted game like ibex and wild horses. They needed to take in many calories for their large bodies, and communal hunts in which men, women and children took part may have been the most effective way to fend off starvation. They only had stone weapons, which were not optimal for the sort of male pack hunting that developed when iron weapons were invented.
It probably wasn't equality, but climate, that killed off the Neanderthals, some scientists say. Recent deep-sea core research shows that temperatures dropped sharply around 24,000 years ago. This could have created a severe drought that could have reduced the number of prey Neanderthals could catch. This would have been especially damaging to a species that needed a lot of food..............

Tech Tags: neanderthals feminism women homo+sapiens