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Oldest Nuclear Family Found Murdered In Germany
Pickens writes "The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany where the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and their two children. 'We're really sure, based on hard biological facts not just supposing or assuming,' says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, from The Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords. The children and adult males had the same type of strontium in their teeth — which was also found locally, but the nearest match to the women's teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area. 'They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken,' says Dr. Alistair Pike from Bristol University. He noted that one victim even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra. 'You feel some kind of sympathy for them, it's a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them. ... We don't know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love,' added Dr. Haak."
How the heck did they survive 4600 years? Was it from all the radiation?? Were they zombies? That is so awesome
Did anyone else read this as "the woman's teeth were found 50 km away from the rest of her body"? That would be one hell of a sucker-punch!
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
I figured they were talking about the murder of the, erm, oldest people in Germany living in this current age... So I clicked through out of curiousity, wondering what it might have to do with technology.
Oh well. My curiousity got the better of me and they still got the pageview. Maybe that makes it a good headline... :3
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
The perpetrator of this monstrosity must be caught and brought to justice!
Love seems to be embedded in the very genetic fabric of mammals on some level. I'm sure there was space for love, in a way that made sense back then anyway.
.: Max Romantschuk
Murder is a legal construct from relatively modern times; and even the modern definition excludes such things as killing of enemies. The ideas about who is your enemy has shiftet somewhat since that time, I imagine.
For a moment, I thought Otto Hahn's family had fallen victim to a fanatic bent on turning back the clock of nuclear proliferation....
it's a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them
Big holes in the head, broken limbs, bits of stone axe in the back? someone must have really cared for them, but in a Charlie Manson sort of way...
I like bad taste.. but then again, I'm German.
they were murdered because they didn't weave their hair the "right" way, or their clothes looked funny
before being glad you don't live in such barbaric times, recall that nationalists and religious bigots rule the age you live in. russians, chinese, indians, americans: plenty of ultranationalists would murder to preserve their tribal geographic region. plenty of muslims would murder christians, plenty of christians would murder muslims
you live in the same era this family was murdered in: a dark age of tribalism. that's all national pride and religious pride is
this world is not at peace until all nations and all religions have been defeated. we are many centuries from that glorious time
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Oldest Nuclear Family Found Murdered In Germany"
Usually when an anthropologist says "oldest" they mean the oldest evidence of the current topic of discussion. Maybe that and the links above will help you provided you were serious and not joking. They aren't going to be testifying in court over this, so don't need the certification mentioned in the wiki. Make more sense now?
Technology comes from applied science and science advances its store of information with the help of applied technology.
Well, they had a good innings.
Is that the tip of a stone weapon embedded in your vertebra or are you just happy to see me?
i read this story on the bbc a few days ago, and again here today. but one thing i still dont get, what is a nuclear family?
portfolio
I often wonder, when we put characteristics on people when we name them are we making a huge mistake.
Imagine, if you will...
Here's Guntherisk, master of all he surveys, wielder of the mighty stone ax of Guildergrump, slayer of men and ravisher of women - confident that his greatness will be remembered in tales and song for thousands of years to come.
Well apparently not, he will be remembered for his brilliant idea of putting cord marks into pottery (which was actually Mrs Guntherisk's idea).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
No space for love? I'd assume that there was a form of love present between the family members. As for their deaths, it was probably similar to why people fight now: over territory, "stolen" mates, etc. I'm not trying to make a zillion assumptions, but I find it hard to believe that the crux of human behavior has changed that much, things like specialization of workers, writing, extensive schooling etc. seem more like cultural changes that have been building on one another for ages. I've heard from books that the Cro Magnon of many millennia ago if born and raised today would likely be able to function like the rest of us. Even animals such as dogs exhibit behavior that I would call "love". Am I missing something?
Well there's my rant, I think I just need some love...
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
i know plenty of people fear or loathe this idea, but why?
what horrendous crime can one world government be capable of that is not already being committed right now, and worse?
lets put it this way: why is democracy such a great form of government? why can't the same template apply to the entire world? why can't government checks and balances work on a world stage like it works on national ones?
one world government is an idea that does not automatically include despotism or communism. so when you react to the idea of one world government, your reaction is invalid if you are really just reacting to your fears of the worst kind of government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"We don't know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love"
"there are big holes in their heads"
Hell yeah. Mod me nasty, but you're feelin it.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
But then, the small scale of the atrocity strikes me rather Ungerman, sorry for the taste, I'm German too.
And just for the record, a quotation, attribute, of Margret Thatcher after a German football (soccer) victory:
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
he understands government is a necessary evil
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, we're talking only 4600 years old. Codes of laws included murder in the same age, e.g., in Messopotamia or Egypt.
And even by tribal warfare standards, it sounds as an atrocity. You don't take the time to smash someone's fingers _after_ they're already stone dead. Doing that to women and children? Oooer. (Women used to be taken as spoils of war anyway, since a disproportionately shorter life expectancy gave primitive people -- and by that I mean at least as late as 100 BC Roman Empire! -- a chronic shortage of women.)
I wouldn't be surprised if someone tortured them to death to make them say where they hid their wealth, which they probably didn't even have. Of course, we'll never really know, but as I was saying, I wouldn't be too surprised. Ever since humanity discovered killing each other, suspiciously around the discovery of ranged weaponry, about 20,000 years ago, that's the kind of thing that kept happening.
I wouldn't even chalk it up to "human nature," since I don't think most people were that way. The biggest psychopaths rose to the top like shits in a septic tank, and got others to kill each other for their glory, and the dumbest psychopaths became brigands and thieves and did it personally.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
gays were destroying the family. Oh wait, there must have been gays destroying the family back then too. Hmmm... But how could they? They can't reproduce. Oh I know, they recruited children... But the children here are dead so...
Gays are the problem. Yep that's it.
then your vote is but one in millions. your vote should not be worth more than that, nor less than that. what is this influence you speak of? you think you deserve more influence than the next person? i don't understnad your point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because we all live on one tiny piece of rock. we are already in the same boat. what happens in beijing matters in new york matters in moscow matters in london. regardless of national divisions. there is no law, no border guard that protects you if they screw up rorally in beijing. there is no escaping the consequences of the poor choices someone somewhere else makes. already. regardless of world government or not
and as for culture, we are part of the same culture. human culture. the differences betwen cultures are minimal and arbitrary and ultimately inconsequential
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i don't know where you came from or where you went. but assume you left new york and went to vancouver. you could have left new york and gone to chicago and you'd still be escaping whatever melodrama you were running from, and you'd be in the same country
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fellow readers,
Keep in mind that the world back then was a much more dangerous place than it is now. 4600 years ago, nearly anything could have been considered a weapon of mass destruction; rocks, branches, fresh poop on a sharpened stick, et cetera, et cetera. We can proudly say that now the only weapons of mass destruction are nuclear bombs and biological/chemical weaponry...but this simply wasn't so back then.
What has not been outlined in this report, but is a subject of speculation, is that these people were preparing weapons of mass destruction a bit too close the Georgedubyaenthal Valley and were dealt with as what they were/may not have been doing.
I'm not an expert on Paleolithic Politics, but as history has taught us, the victors write the history books that their leaders are too illiterate to read.
And yes, the article is correct in that they are the first known Nukular Family, their homestead was found on what is now known as the Nukular Plateau which is far the the right of the older archeological dig known as the Nuclear Region. Sadly, evidence of that was wiped out by the Georgedubyaenthals... ...so we speculate.
Duh. This is obvious sampling bias. Of course the oldest find of the skeletons of a complete family is that of a family died suddenly and violently. If they had died separately, it'd be less likely that they'd be found in exact same location.
Please forgive me commenting on a moderation, but who am I flaimbaiting here?
Sorry, but we Germans have earned quite a reputation of going large-scale berzerk in the last centuries and every neighbouring country of us has suffered from it. Every sane German knows this and won't argue about this. And, I think, I hope, we changed much of our political attitude during the last sixty years. Making fun of our inglorious history may very well classify for bad taste - and bad jokes doubly so - but how can it be flamebait?
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Sorry, but we Germans have earned quite a reputation of going large-scale berzerk in the last centuries and every neighbouring country of us has suffered from it.
Exactly. You worked hard for that reputation, so you earned it. I'd hate it if you had to start all over again. (Particularly since I'm one of those neighbours.)
Don't you understand that political correctness requires us to criticize those who mention any shared ethnic trait in any context not involving a Muslim or Barack Obama?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Bloody murder... or bloody LIE? Four mysterious skeletons found with holes in their skulls: join us as we delve into this shocking tale. Archaeologists say they were murdered... but could the truth be far more horrible?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Huh?
You are welcome on my lawn.
go to kabul, go to lesotho, go to la paz, go to anchorage...
what's common?
murder is wrong. respect is important. love is important. rape is wrong. etc. etc. etc.
the sum total of our differences, of any difference you can tell me about japan versus anywhere else in this world, any culture, is trivial and orders of magnitude smaller
than the similarities
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The problem with one world government is this: there is no one right way to govern.
That's it.
With lots of different governments running lots of different countries, there is hope for those who feel oppressed or uneasy with their government, because they can dream of the day that they can leave the place where they are currently suffering, for a better place.
You cannot assume that the one world government will remain a democracy, any more than you can assume that our rights and freedoms will not be chiselled away within our current system ( ID cards, no free speech, CCTV on every corner ).
I dread some worldwide organisation getting hold of that kind of power.
If you think they'll care about what you want, any more than the IMF cares about my overdraft, then you are kidding yourself.
For the family to be identifiable as a family and not a bunch of adult graves miles and years apart, they'll have all had to die at the same time. Doesn't mean it was necessarily common back then, though.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
"If you were around this area in germany 4600 years ago and have information about this murder that could lead to th earrest of suspects, please the dial number at the bottom of your screen. I'm Robert Stacks, and this is Unsolved Mysteries."
These people were almost certainly biologically completely modern humans - 4,600 years ago is pretty much the same time as the great pyramids were being built in ancient Egypt; people had already been farming for something like 5000 years, and city-building for about 3000. In the middle east this time wouldn't have been stone-age, it would have been early Bronze age. Technology and culture may have moved on a lot, but it's only 150 generations or so...
The Sun and the Mail are demanding that the Germans of 4600 years ago rise up and attack the local Social Services Department, who did nothing to prevent it. They want to know why nobody has been sacked.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
A nuclear family simply means a father, mother, and kids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family
rape: low-level, unimportant issue
that the japanese frown on leaving your chopsticks standing up in their rice, oooh! of massive import!
anyone who is truly wordly and cosmopolitan will tell you how striking our similarities are. anyone provincial, or, more likely in your case, suffering from a massive case of ethnic fetishism, will think that the people living over in the next valley are trolls and orcs
if you wish to dispel the utter contempt in which i hold you, prove your case: show me one aspect of japanese versus american culture that is massive importance and intransient alien difference, upon which all cross-cultural understanding is impossible
you can't
you're wrong
and quite silly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the candle stick
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
Sorry for my ignorance, but what exactly about this family makes them nuclear? Did they have glowing laser eyes, or some other superpowers?
I read through the articles waiting for the crazy scifi-ish punchline (this is slashdot), but I was highly disappointed.
as such, our cultural differences are simply cruft. in every culture of every society that has ever existed are mean people, thoughtful people, madmen, philosophers, ascetic monks, etc. the range of human existence is writ small in every town in every nation now and forever
you say otherwise
and i asked you to give me an example where some aspect of culture is somehow of fundamental import, and you can't find one single example
you lose. not that it expect you to admit that. but you shouldn't fancy yourself a worldly or cosmopolitan person anymore. you're not
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
which is greater?
our differences?
or our similiarities?
lets cut through the bullshit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So it wasn't two gay "dads" and their adopted children? And here I thought that a Nuclear Family had to include at least one gay parent...
*Chick-jacking*
"broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle"
"the nearest match to the women's teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area"
>>The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords We have come a long way since then to the Wireless Ware Culture... this is not much progress for 4,600 years!
When stone weapons are outlawed, only outlaws will have stone weapons. Just sayin...
And just for the record, a quotation, attribute, of Margret Thatcher after a German football (soccer) victory:
And both times they've needed to import American 'players' to get the job done.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Looks like some krauts got modpoints.
Sorry, but we Germans have earned quite a reputation of going large-scale berzerk in the last centuries and every neighbouring country of us has suffered from it.
Exactly. You worked hard for that reputation, so you earned it. I'd hate it if you had to start all over again. (Particularly since I'm one of those neighbours.)
As an American let me say - please, go berzerk on your neighbors! We could use the opportunity to improve our global image doing what we do best - freeing the shit out of people!
Poor family. Maybe they were late on their protection payments.
Who cares if some ancient race of skeleton people were unburied from their beds? Does the sun get angry at the moon for stealing its light in the night?
God created man to be male and female. Adam being female man, was sired a child unto Eve, whom he had declared and dedicated her to be woman as mother of the living.
Nowhere does God ever create human. Such indexes to man as human, woman, seaman, german, are conditions of the mind after the fact of there having created a man.
Look up human in the earliest American Heritage Dictionary back in 1816 and you'll read the definition as either "sea monster, less than man, disgusting, unrepentant, a sailor"
We could use the opportunity to improve our global image doing what we do best - freeing the shit out of people!
What, like with laxatives?
I'm so excited I just made water in my pantaloons!
Define "murder"
Define "respect"
Define "love"
Define "rape"
Once you have done this you begin to see what Koiu Lpoi is saying, your answers for all of these questions will have a distinctive western slant on them, my answers will be very western but the difference is that I acknowledge and understand my bias in this argument.
Take respect, for one. The differences between how an Asian and a Westerner would describe respect will be massive, and definitely not in the "orders of magnitude smaller" that you describe. For one, the concept of Face is never used in western societies and we have done away with the "crimes of the father" type thinking, each person is responsible for generating their own respect and it does not affect their family very much. In Aisa where the concept of Face is prevalent a child's actions will have far reaching effects on the family and not just the immediate family, in addition to this the methods of getting respect are far different, in Western society it is acceptable to gain respect through force, the methodology is less important than the result but in Asian (Buddhist) societies to become angry or violent is a major loss of face and will result in a loss of respect rather than a gain in it, so the methodology is more important than the result. This no matter how much little you think of it is a fundamental difference which radically alters the definition of respect.
The problem you are suffering is that you are looking at a complex problem from a very very simple angle. You are attempting to look at an extremely grey problem in black and white. You cannot simply say that x is wrong (note that this is based on your own perceptions and bias, weather you admit it or not) without providing context to both, what is "x" and what is "wrong" need to be answered in detail and this is where you will find the critical differences between people which are not minor.
Another prime example is the issue of Sin Soht (Thai: a dowry paid on a virgin bride), in western sensitivities this is considered slavery and is condemned as wrong. However this is based on a limited understanding of the issue, Sin Soht is only paid when a couple decides to get married and only applies to a virgin bride. The big difference is that its an accepted tradition amongst Thais, the tradition was originally put in place to ensure that a husband could take care of their wife by being capable of raising the money for Sin Soht. This class division is also considered wrong by many Westerners but is accepted by the extremely nationalistic Thai's.
Put simply your example is wrong because it relies on the world being black and white, its not black and white.
Further more, I have to ask weather you've been to Kabul, Lesotho or La Paz?
I can guarantee that you have not been able to learn anything about Afghan culture in the last 20 odd years and without an in-depth first hand knowledge of their culture you are just making generalisations. In case you were wondering, I'm an Austrian and spent months in Thailand.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
More importantly, it may hasten the end of the recession :)
I'd be surprised if it was Thatcher, she was not really noted for her wit and humour (whatever your opinion of her otherwise).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I was making a cynical and karma lethal comment about systems that are called social - german word 'sozial' is used in its basic law to describe characteristic of a system. Yet it is known that having children in Germany is one of the best methods (besides maybe being an immigrant) to reach poverty. Statistics seem to confirm that. This seems to coincide with so called conventional wisdom like the two items that are my favorites:
1. having a baby/breast feeding makes mother stupid
2. having more than n (where n is usually bigger than 2) children is asocial
Of course we do not have stoning today which means people change and that is good so.
Now explain your huh please.