Early Austronesian Migration To Luzon

In the northern Philippines, interaction between the foragers of the Peuffffablanca cave sites and the early Austronesian farmers of the Cagayan Valley (northern Luzon) was established by at least 3500 years ago. Farmers exchanged earthenware pottery, clay earrings, spindle whorls and shell beads with foragers, possibly for forest products. This exchange, however, did not, on present evidence, include cereal-based foods such as rice. The botanical evidence from the cave sites shows a heavy reliance on wild and arboreal food sources.

BIPPA Article

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is a medieval romance (it inherits a body of Arthurian legends that had circulated in England for a couple of centuries) but also an outlandish ghost story, a gripping morality tale and a weird thriller. It is a sexual teaser that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s easy to imagine huddling around the fire to listen to it. You can tear through it in a night or two — I couldn’t put down Simon Armitage’s compulsively readable new verse translation — and linger over it for years.

NY Times Review

Egyptian Festival Of Drunkenness

But back in 1470 B.C., this was the agenda for one of ancient Egypt’s most raucous rituals, the “festival of drunkenness,” which celebrated nothing less than the salvation of humanity. Archaeologists say they have found evidence amid the ruins of a temple in Luxor that the annual rite featured sex, drugs and the ancient equivalent of rock ‘n’ roll.

MSNBC Story

Coming Home To The Pleistocene

“When we grasp fully that the best expressions of our humanity were not invented by civilization but by cultures that preceded it, that the natural world is not only a set of constraints but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams, we will be on the way to a long overdue reconciliation between opposites which are of our own making.”