Rare Undersea Discovery Could Extend Your Life by 10, 20 or 30 Years

Humans have made incredible health strides and are living longer lives than ever.  Many of the maladies that struck down our ancestors have for the most part been completely eliminated – everything from tuberculosis, to polio to malaria.

Today, the biggest killers stem as much from our lifestyles as from microscopic bacteria and viruses.  One of the worst of these is heart disease, and specifically high blood pressure.

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500 years old Inca girl

Well initially this might look to you like any normal girl being treated by a doctor,the girl in the photo is not any normal living girl but the mummy of a 15 year old child who has been dead for about 500 years. 

She was found in 1999 near Llullaillaco's 6739 meter summit. An Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved body and she was nicknamed "La doncella" which means “The maiden”. According to the Inca she was chosen to go and live with the gods. But in reality she was a sacrifice to the Inca Gods and had been brutally killed in the name of religion. 

Scientists say that her organs are intact and its as if she had died just a few weeks ago. From testing the samples of her hair they could determine the type of diet she was on before her death. This lead to the discovery that the Incan fattened their children before killing them. Months or even years before the sacrifice pilgrimage these children were given diets which were those of the elite, consisting of maize and animal proteins.

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Judging from the condition of the body, it is believed that she was drugged and left to die in the mountains. It would not have taken much time for her to die due to the high exposure. The Incan high priests took their victims to high mountaintops for sacrifice. As the journey was extremely long and arduous, especially so for the younger victims, coca leaves were fed to them to aid them in their breathing so as to allow them to reach the burial site alive. Upon reaching the burial site, the children were given an intoxicating drink to minimize pain, fear, and resistance, then killed them either by strangulation, a blow to their head or by leaving them to lose consciousness in the extreme cold and die of exposure. 

Many Inca children were offered as sacrifice during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca(who was the emperor) or during a famine. These sacrifices were known as capacocha. 


Why Only Children? 

Children were selected for sacrifice because they were considered to be the purest of beings. They were chosen for their beauty and possibly nobility. According to Inca beliefs such children were to serve as guardians to their villages from the heights of the mountains joining their ancestors and honoured in death. The children wore shoes or slippers and dressed in colourful clothing elaborately decorated with medal, bone and cords. More than 100 precious ornaments were found to be buried with these children in the burial site. They were loosely wrapped in shawls and were seated cross legged as they would have fallen asleep after being drugged. 

Early colonial Spanish missionaries wrote about this practice but only recently have archaeologists such as Johan Reinhard begun to find the bodies of these victims on Andean mountaintops, naturally mummified due to the freezing temperatures and dry windy mountain air. 

There are also some more information about Inca mummies on wikipedia.

In 1995, the body of an almost entirely frozen young Inca girl, later named Mummy Juanita, was discovered on Mount Ampato. Two more ice-preserved mummies, one girl and one boy, were discovered nearby a short while later. All showed signs of death by a blow to the head. 

In 1999, near Llullaillaco's 6739 meter summit, an Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved bodies of three Inca children, sacrificed approximately 500 years earlier, including a 15-year-old girl, nicknamed "La doncella" (The maiden), a seven-year-old boy, and a six-year-old girl, nicknamed "La niña del rayo" (The lightning girl). The latter's nickname reflects the fact that sometime in the 500 year period the mummy spent on the summit, it was struck by lightning, partially burning the preserved body and some of the ceremonial artifacts left with the mummies

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Hemp (weed) Cultivation Legal now in Colorado - free at last

In a major victory for US farmers, activists, and those who advocate the many uses of industrial hemp, the first commercial crop of hemp to be cultivated in the United States in almost 6 decades was recently harvested in Colorado. Although different from the psychoactive plant cannabis, due to federal marihuana prohibition during the early 1900′s, the nation’s last commercial crop of hemp was planted in 1957 in Wisconsin, after over half a million acres were grown during WWII to assist the nation’s war effort.

In November of 2012, Colorado passed Amendment 64 which revised the state’s drug-policy laws for cannabis, declaring that industrial hemp be regulated separately from cannabis. In June of 2014, the governor of Colorado signed legislation prescribing a limit to the amount of THC content in hemp, and establishing a committee within the State Department of Agriculture tasked with developing regulations for commercial hemp farming by 2014.

However, in anticipation of regulation and to test out the murky waters of State versus Federal drug law, some activists planted hempseed this year, and hemp activists and farmers recently met in Springfield, Colorado to celebrate this year’s cultivation of 60 acres of the fibrous weed:

The usefulness of hemp is widely documented and many other nations profit from its commercial cultivation, but, here in the US the wide range of hemp products available on the market are comprised of imports:

“The sale of hemp products in the U.S. — including food, cosmetics, clothing and industrial materials — reached an estimated $500 million last year, according to the Hemp Industries Association.

Yet because of a federal prohibition on growing, all hemp used in U.S. products is imported from foreign countries.

With the November passage of Amendment 64, which legalized hemp in addition to small amounts of marijuana, Colorado becomes a test case on the issue of how much muscle the federal government will flex against states with legal cannabis.” (Denver Post)

Hemp should be traded on the market exchanges along side corn, wheat and other commodities, as it offers an abundant, easily produced resource to a wide variety of industries. Hemp is used in quality textiles, in the production of bio-fuels, in insulation and building materials, rope, in cosmetics, soaps, and shampoos. Nutritionally, it is one of the most valuable plants for the human body and products include hemp oil,hempseed, hemp milk, hemp protein, supplements and more. As a replacement for wood pulp, hemp fiber holds untapped potential as a resource to replace the over-harvesting of trees, and it is being used as a renewable bio-fuel.

Long considered a useful and necessary part of the American economy, it has been observed by many that the outlawing of hemp in the US was the result of political intervention by insiders, bankers, an barons of the media, timber and the chemical industries who desired no market competition from this common-sense crop:

“Around the turn of the 20th century companies like DuPont created chemicals that were used in processing of paper; DuPont also created chemicals used for pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, which were used extensively by the cotton industry (cotton is MUCH more chemical and water intensive compared to hemp). While this was going on, William Randolph Hearst invested in timber and mills to produce the paper for his newspaper, which was the largest chain in the U.S. at the time. His investments in the timber industry were backed by Mellon Bank.

The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury at that time was Andrew Mellon, who happened to own Mellon Bank (and was one of the backers for DuPont as well). Mellon’s niece was married to Harry Anslinger who, incidentally, was connected to the alcohol prohibition campaign. He was out of a job (as were everyone else in that sector of the federal government) after the alcohol prohibition ended. To keep his family employed, Mellon created a new division of the federal government, the Bureau of Narcotics, and made Harry Anslinger the new head of that program.

Also during this time machinery was being developed to make hemp processing easier and more efficient. This was a threat to the paper, chemical, timber, and petroleum industries. Pharmaceutical companies were creating new medicines and drugs and were also threatened by the natural healing properties of the plant we know as hemp.” (Waking Times)

The history of hemp is rich, interesting and rather inspiring, dating back to first European colonies at Plymouth Rock in the 1600′s. Hemp enthusiasts like to note that it was also cultivated by the first president of the United States, George Washington, and that the Declaration of Independence was written on paper made of hemp fiber. Still, many Americans are unaware of the differences between hemp and cannabis, and know very little of its history or of its potential value. This is changing, however, as widespread support for the end of cannabis prohibition spreads and the outreach effort grows.

Conclusion

The possibilities for industrial hemp are vast and the significance of this year’s harvest is tremendous. In the quest for intelligent, common-sense solutions to the major issues facing mankind, the cultivation of industrial hemp is absolutely necessary. At a time when American farmers and entrepreneurs are struggling to meet the challenges of  a poor economy, and while the technology to support innovation with natural products is unprecedented today, hemp is akin to an open-source, free-range raw material for pioneers of energy, design, and nutrition.

It should be a human right to cultivate and use whichever plants an individual chooses to, and the news about the cultivation of hemp in Colorado is cause for celebration.

About the Author

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and an avid student of Yoga and life.

Resources:

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24259474/colorado-farmer-harvests-first-u-s-commercial-hemp?source=hot-topic-bar

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23066385/colorado-hemp-grower-plant-historic-first-u-s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Amendment_64

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history_of_cannabis_in_the_United_States

http://blog.norml.org/2013/06/14/colorado-governor-signs-law-regulating-state-hemp-production/

http://www.denverpost.com/news/marijuana/ci_22516321

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O4f7xu5Vs5s#t=14

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2013/07/hemp_advisory_committee_colorado.php

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The Family that Never Learned to Walk on Two Legs

By: Nicholas Day

I’m bipedal! You’re also bipedal. Who isn’t bipedal, really? No one brags about getting around on two legs. No one uses it as a pickup line (I presume). In our human-ruled world, bipedalism is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it, much less marvel at it.

But maybe we should.

In the herky-jerky world of infant locomotion, there’s a type of crawling that has long stood out for its unlikely grace and speed: bear crawling. It sounds ridiculous—hands and feet on the ground, knees and back off it—but it turns out to be strangely efficient. Toddlers who hit upon this style early on often stick with it for months or years, even after they learn to walk.

The bear crawl somehow seems to be heritable, too. It runs in families. The early anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička was so fascinated by the phenomenon that he published a book on it—Children Who Run on All Fours: And Other Animal-Like Behaviors in the Human Child—back in 1931, consisting mostly of correspondence with the parents of bear walkers. “I am so glad my six ‘monkeys’ are of interest to you, for I always insisted that it was interesting for a whole family to run about like that,” wrote a mother from Tennessee. A man from Chapel Hill wrote in about his nephew, who could walk perfectly well but loved to trot on all fours and “would cover ground at a rate somewhat faster than a man would ordinarily walk; he never seemed to tire.”

The accounts were not always strictly on topic—“As an interesting incident may be mentioned that once in running on all fours he picked up an apple with his teeth. Sincerely, Chester L and Mrs. Fordney”—but Hrdlička dutifully tabulated them, reprinted a few photographs of the bear crawl in the wild, and essayed a few conclusions. The basic cause, he wrote, “is apparently of atavistic nature, the whole phenomenon being thus one of the order of functional reminiscences of an ancestral condition.” Which means, basically: These children are acting like the apes their ancestors once were.

The subject of bear crawling hibernated for many decades until a couple of Turkish doctors, in 2004, made a discovery that was more science fiction than science. In a rural village, they happened upon a group of siblings who had never stood up. Members of a family with 19 children, all of whom bear-walked in their infancy, these five brothers and sisters had never lifted up off their hands. They had walked like bears all their life. The siblings actually wrist-walked, with their palms pressed flat against the ground. (Think of someone doing the downward-facing dog yoga pose while walking.) No one had ever seen an adult human move like this before.

The siblings were able to stand upright if they really concentrated on it, an early report on them noted, “but they become unsteady if they try to walk bipedally, and soon go down onto their hands.” They were quadrupeds. To help support the family, the lone male bear crawler ranged as far as a mile from home collecting cans and bottles. While bear-crawling, he was indefatigable. “This contrasts markedly with normal adult humans,” the report noted, “who find such a gait—if and when they try it—tiring and uncomfortable even after practice.”

The siblings all had a poorly developed cerebellum, the area of the brain that controls for balance, but some humans with no cerebellum still walk. (One of their brothers had the same poorly developed cerebellum but still walked.) So why did these siblings never stand up? Hrdlička presumably would have argued that they were reverting to “an atavistic nature,” and the Turkish scientists did too: They contended that the siblings were a case of “reverse evolution,” a missing link to our quadruped past.

There’s a less outlandish explanation, though. The bear crawl was efficient enough that if the siblings had floundered at walking early on, and they likely did, they might have just given up on walking. They lived in a rural village and kept to their own family. Their parents had accepted the children as they were; they’d never tried to teach them to walk. In this very proscribed world, walking on hands and feet made nearly as much sense as walking upright. They had created their own culture. And in fact the Turkish siblings were always capable of walking: After their story made the news, they received motor therapy. They soon became bipedal. (They also became the subject of a documentary: It is worth watching just to see adult humans move in this way.)

A perfectly healthy child will always, eventually, be bipedal. But there are many children with serious neural impairments, and the story of the Turkish siblings suggests that if these children were left alone, at least some might not find their way to their feet. Without social pressure and parental encouragement—just one more step, honey, one more step—the Turkish siblings might not be nearly as weird as they seem. Indeed, only a couple of years after the siblings were found, they were no longer complete anomalies: A family with three quadrupedal brothers had been discovered in Iraq, followed by another Turkish family and a couple of families in South America.

Bipedalism is fundamental to what made humans human. In the fossil record, it shows up millions of years before tool use or the explosion in brain size. As much as any other characteristic, walking is what shaped us into human beings. But we can still discard it. It can be our most profound inheritance and still be more flexible, less hard-wired than we assume. As the psychologist Esther Thelen argued, walking isn’t built-in, locked away in some inviolable part of ourselves and our genome. It’s discovered anew by every infant. And development, despite its constraints, despite its usual predictability, is a creative, highly sensitive process: It still has, in some isolated corners of the world, the capacity to surprise us.

Originally posted on: Slate

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INDEPENDENCE DAY- AMAZING INDIA (PICTURES)

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On the occasion of India’s 67th Independence day, here are some interesting and unknown facts related to India and independence.

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National flag was hoisted first on August 7, 1906 at the Parsee Bagan Square in Calcutta. The flag was composed of horizontal strips of red, yellow and green. The red strip at the top had eight white lotuses embossed on it in a row. The green strip had a white sun on the left and a white crescent and star on the right.

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It is said that the first version of the current national flag was made by Pingali Venkayya at Bezwada in 1921. It was made up of two colours-red and green-representing the two major communities. Gandhiji suggested the addition of a white strip to represent the remaining communities of India and the spinning wheel to symbolise progress of the Nation.

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The current flag has three colours in it. The top strip saffron stands for courage and sacrifice; the middle portion white for peace, truth, purity and green for faith, fertility and chivalry. The Ashok Chakra at the centre of the flag — righteousness.

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Khadi Development and Village Industries Commission is the only licenced flag production and supply unit in India. As of 2008, the Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukta Sangha based in Dharwad was the sole manufacturer of the flag. Earlier, flags were made with Jayadhar, a popular variety of cotton grown in Karnataka. But recently, Khadi Gramodyoga has started using Bt cotton instead of the indigenous 

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When India became independent on August 15, 1947 there was no National Anthem. Even though the Bengali invocation of Jana Gana Mana was written in 1911, it was not considered as national anthem till 1950.

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Controversy surrounding Jana Gana Mana claims that Rabindranath Tagore wrote the song ‘Jana Gana Mana’ for the British monarch. He later refuted this claim and said that he wrote the song as requested by his friend and the song pronounced the victory in ‘Jana Gana Mana’ of that Bhagya Vidhata of India and not of King George V.

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Mountbatten chose the day since Aug 15 as it also commemorated the second anniversary of Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces. North Korea, South Korea, Bahrain and Republic of the Congo share their independence day with India.

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On August 15, 1947, when India became free from the foreign rule, Mahatma Gandhi was in Calcutta. Gandhiji spent his day in prayers, fasting and spinning protesting the madness of communal hatred.

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Hindi is not India’s national language as many think or believe; it’s the official language. Article 343 of the Constitution states that Hindi in Devnagari script is the official language of India. But Hindi is the first official language of India and Hindi was declared the Official Language of the Union on September 14, 1949.

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Interestingly, Mahatma Gandhi wanted the Congress to be disbanded immediately after India’s independence in 1947. This constitution was drafted by Gandhiji for the Congress on the eve of his assassination. It said “Though split into two, India having attained political independence through means devised by the Indian National Congress, the Congress in its present shape and form, i.E., as a 

12/14After India’s independence, Portugal amended its constitution and declared Goa as a Portuguese state. Indian troops invaded Goa on December 19, 1961 and annexed it to India.

13/14The Sanskrit name for India is Bharat Ganarajya. That is the reason why it is also called Bharat. The name “India” comes from the Indus River, which is where earliest settlers made their homes. The Indus valley is one of the world’s earliest urban civilizations.

14/India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Lal was featured in Vogue magazine. His unique dressing style, single-breasted jacket, became an important fashion trend in the West. Nehru jacket was listed on Time list of 'global fashion statement.' Later, Nehru jacket was popularised by the Beatles and worn by such famous people as Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis Jr.

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