This was sent to me by a friend in USA a
propos the recent elections in Northern Ireland (and is completely off the point) but intriguing .....
(and yes the reference to Ry Cooder's new CD is a good one, if completely off-topic!
)
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Here are a couple of articles from the NYT that report some new evolutionary
ideas resulting from DNA analysis. The first recasts the traditional story
that the Celtic native inhabitants of Britan were pushed to the edges of
Scotland and Ireland by Anglo Saxon invaders.
As far as the second is concerned, I'm glad I read an explanation before I
understood the problem. The problem is this: Human head lice are most
closely related to the chimpanzees; Public hair lice are most closely
related to gorillas.
I offer this in case you run out of conversation about the relative
benefits of the PDSLP and the DUPed in the Ulster election.
(and btw and completely unconnected with anything else in this email - I
just got Ry Cooder's wonderful new CD 'My Name is Buddy'. The sleeve notes
say, "Let's join Buddy Red Cat, Lefty Mouse, and Reverend Tom Toad as they
journey through time and space in the days of labor, big bosses, farm
failures, strikes, company cops, sundown towns, hobos, and trains... the
America of yesteryear.")
NYT Article 1...
'Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there
is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians
teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from
the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern
Europe and drove the Celts to the country's western and northern fringes.
'But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging
toward a different conclusion.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html
NYT Article 2...
'One of the more embarrassing mysteries of human evolution is that people
are host to no fewer than three kinds of louse while most species have just
one.'
'Louse specialists now seem at last to have solved the question of how
people came by their superabundance of fellow travelers. And in doing so
they have shed light on the two major turning points in the history of
fashion: when people lost their body hair, and when they first made
clothing.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/sc...ml?ref=science
Linear Mode
