Wanderlust

Tag: years

  • Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art

    Image copyright Maxime Aubert

    The artworks are in a rural area on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi.

    Until now, paintings this old had been confirmed in caves only in Western Europe.

    Researchers tell the journal Nature that the Indonesian discovery transforms ideas about how humans first developed the ability to produce art.

    Image copyright Maxime Aubert

    Australian and Indonesian scientists have dated layers of stalactite-like growths that have formed over coloured outlines of human hands.

    Image copyright Maxime Aubert Image caption This painting, from Bone, is of a variety a wild endemic dwarfed bovid found only in Sulawesi, which the inhabitants probably hunted

    There are also human figures, and pictures of wild hoofed animals that are found only on the island. Dr Maxime Aubert, of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, who dated the paintings found in Maros in Southern Sulawesi, explained that one of them (shown immediately below) was probably the earliest of its type.

    Image copyright Maxime Aubert Image caption At the top of the worn painting is a faint outline of a human hand. Below it is possibly the earliest depiction of an animal

    “The minimum age for (the outline of the hand) is 39,900 years old, which makes it the oldest hand stencil in the world,” said Dr Aubert.

    This find enables us to get away from this Euro-centric view of a creative explosion that was special to EuropeProf Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum

    “Next to it is a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old, and this is one of the oldest figurative depictions in the world, if not the oldest one,” he told BBC News.

    There are also paintings in the caves that are around 27,000 years old, which means that the inhabitants were painting for at least 13,000 years.

    In addition, there are paintings in a cave in the regency of Bone, 100 km north of Maros. These cannot be dated because the stalactite-like growths used to determine the age of the art do not occur. But the researchers believe that they are probably the same age as the paintings in Maros because they are stylistically identical.

    The discovery of the Indonesian cave art is important because it shows the beginnings of human intelligence as we understand it today.

    1. Click on links that appear in the video below to explore the story in more depth with Pallab on location in caves in Britain.

    2. Return to the main video by clicking on the box/image, bottom right.

  • Drawback playing: Is it emerging and how so much is it costing?

    Malcolm George saying: These machines were introduced 15 years ago. Since that time the levels of problem gambling in the UK have not risen.

    As The govt regarded as what to do approximately fixed-odds making a bet terminals last week, Malcolm George, chief executive of the Affiliation of British Bookmakers was once discussing whether or not they had been in point of fact a problem.

    “These machines were introduced 15 years ago. Because that time the levels of problem playing within the UK have not risen,” he said.

    The machines turned into popular after changes to the taxation on gambling in October 2001. There are actually greater than 34,000 of them. They generated a gross gambling yield (GGY) of £1.8bn between October 2015 and September 2016 (GGY is the degree of all money staked minus the amount paid out).

    To put that into context, it is about 13% of the GGY of the uk gambling trade as a complete.

    Every Other declare came from Labour deputy leader Tom Watson who mentioned figures display that gambling habit costs the economic system £1.2bn a yr.

    The figure in fact comes from the IPPR assume tank and is the top end of an enormous vary. “people who are problem gamblers are related to among £260m and £1.2bn a 12 months of additional cost to executive,” the file says.

    Such a big vary would already be atmosphere off alarm bells if the file did not warn: “due to boundaries within the available information, those findings can not be taken because the excess monetary value caused by downside gambling.”

    there’s plenty of fascinating analysis of the prices created by means of downside playing together with things like crime and additional benefits, nevertheless it is not cheap to make use of this as an excess cost to the federal government and positively not just to make use of the top of the variety.

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  • Nashville within the MLS: How do you construct a team from scratch?

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  • Point Of View: Pakistan’s dirtiest election in years

    Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), chant slogans and wave flags during a campaign meeting ahead of the general election in Multan on July 22, 2018. Image copyright AFP Symbol caption PML-N supporters and others accuse the military of seeking to rig the election

    The run-as much as Pakistan’s common election on Wednesday has been marred through allegations of pre-ballot rigging, intimidation and the muzzling of the media, writes Gul Bukhari, who was briefly abducted by masked males in Lahore’s military cantonment space in June.

    Until a couple of months ago, protest chants accusing Pakistan’s powerful army of terrorism were rarely heard within the country’s primary cities.

    But they got here to principal Lahore on 13 July, the day former Top Minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam returned from London to start out their jail sentences.

    Through ultimate Friday, the mantra – “ye jo dehshat gardi hai, is ke peehchay wardi hai” (“the army uniform is at the back of this terrorism”) – could be heard on the streets of Rawalpindi, not removed from army headquarters.

    In a stunningly brazen move, a hearing for a seven-yr-vintage narcotics case involving Mr Sharif’s PML-N birthday party stalwart Hanif Abbasi was moved forward from August to 21 July, and a lifestyles sentence handed down at 23:30 on Saturday, four days sooner than the overall election, effectively knocking him out of the race.

    Image copyright EPA Symbol caption Imran Khan is seen because the favorite of the military

    Contrary to the establishment’s expectations, the recognition of Mr Sharif and his birthday celebration held its floor after he was ousted on corruption charges in July remaining 12 months. His accusations of military interference caught the public’s creativeness.

    To counter this, a fierce crackdown at the media was unleashed. Market leader Geo Tv was once taken off air in April, and the distribution of Pakistan’s oldest newspaper, Dawn, has been disrupted for the reason that Might.

    After months of economic losses, Geo reportedly agreed to the security establishment’s calls for to self-censor and abide via strict pointers. After this surrender, the trade as a complete fell into line and none of the media houses dared show Mr Sharif’s political rallies or his daughter’s fiery speeches.

    More on Pakistan’s election

    Why the election issues The acid attack survivor working for parliament The attack on Pakistan’s media

    With the media on its knees, it used to be left to activists on Twitter and Facebook to continue the struggle. The voices here remained feisty and openly indignant on the judicial-army nexus, accusing them of violating their mandate and fighting electorate from exercising their will within the general election.

    The conversation on social media keeps to survive and thrive amid a terrifying onslaught of threats and abductions. Reporters, too, have taken to social media to air what they cannot on their screens or of their newspaper stories and op-eds.

    Mr Sharif seems to have received this round of the fight. Seen as a person who will have lived a cosy life in exile and attended to his severely sick spouse, he has again to Pakistan to stand certain incarceration in his struggle for civil supremacy.

    Successive opinion polls placing him beforehand against all opponents, and the social media backlash, indicate he has controlled to win sympathy for himself – and resentment at attempts via the judicial-army nexus to re-engineer the political panorama.

    With two days to head ahead of the election, sudden public defiance, especially in Punjab, a PML-N stronghold and hitherto a bastion of military energy, has resulted in redoubled efforts to tip the scales in favour of the security establishment’s favourite, Imran Khan.