Sunday, December 8, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


Female politicians taking over Latin America's land of machismo – NB
By Simeon Tegel, GlobalPost contributor

LIMA, Peru — For a region famous for “machismo,” Latin America is about to take an unlikely step: elect a record number of women presidents.
In Chile, moderate socialist former President Michelle Bachelet — whose admirers include Hillary Clinton — is widely expected to crush her conservative opponent, also a woman, in a runoff vote on Dec. 15.

With women leaders already in power in Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica, that means Latin America will boast four female heads of state for the first time.
The breakthrough comes as women’s issues are going global, from Malala Yousafzai demanding education in Pakistan to a campaign for more female board members in the United States. Many countries are also grappling with how to include more women in politics, while a few still want to exclude them.

It turns out the inclusionists could look to Latin America for answers.
Irune Aguirrezabal, of U.N. Women, the United Nations agency that promotes female political participation, said Latin America’s women presidents are “historic” in a region where extreme sexism — including horrific violence against women — has deep roots.

The achievement also strengthens democracy, she said, allowing women to buy into a system that has often left women out, or worse.
“When women are elected to high office, they become inspiring role models for others,” Aguirrezabal said in an interview.

“They show that women can be empowered and that allows other women to view themselves not just as vulnerable or victims, but as true citizens.”
The effect could be particularly profound in Central America, given the intensity of “machista” abuse there, said Melida Guevara, a gender campaigner for international aid group Oxfam in the region.

She was speaking before the results of Honduras’ Nov. 24 presidential election, in which another woman, Xiomara Castro, came second after leading her male rivals for months in the polls.

Xiomara Castro, presidential candidate of the Liberty and Refoundation party (LIBRE) and her husband, Honduras' former president Manuel Zelaya, participate in a protest against the results of the presidential election in Tegucigalpa on Dec. 1, 2013.
A political newcomer and the wife of deposed President Manuel Zelaya, Castro has shaken up an entrenched two-party system with her new left-wing Libre coalition.
She claims the vote was fraudulent and has now succeeded in pushing election authorities to review the results.

“The political class in Honduras still needs a lot of work before it will accept that everyone has an equal right to participate in government,” Guevara said. “Castro has been very tough just to be in contention.”

The rise of Latina candidates and presidents may not be such a surprise thanks to quotas in 16 Latin American nations that have helped achieve record numbers of female lawmakers in the region.

Roughly 1 in 4 legislators here is a woman. Only Scandinavia has a higher proportion.
The U.S., by comparison, is some way behind, with women making up just 17.9 percent of the House of Representatives and 20 percent of the Senate.

While critics claim quotas lead to women being elected based on sex rather than merit, proponents say they merely level the playing field. Either way, Latin America needs more decision-makers intent on remedying bleak realities for many women here.
According to U.N. Women, 69 percent of Latin American women have been physically abused by their partners and 47 percent have been victims of sexual violence at least once.

Perhaps even more disturbing, Latin America has high rates of “femicide,” the act of killing a woman simply because she is a woman.

Ten of the 25 countries in the world with the highest femicide rates from 2004 to 2009 were Latin American, with El Salvador and Guatemala Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, according to the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based think-tank.
That partly reflects a broader wave of violence engulfing much of Central America, with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador each besieged by drug cartels and deadly street gangs known as “maras.”

But the trend is also rooted in deep-seated cultural attitudes that see women as servile to men — and even blame them for being female.
Some 70 million women joined the Latin American workforce in the last 20 years, helping reduce regional poverty by 30 percent as a result. But even women with higher education and formal employment still earn 17 percent less than their male counterparts.

“We have not got to that point yet,” said Guevara, who is based in El Salvador, when asked about equal pay. “Right now, the most important issue here is protecting women against violence.”
Nevertheless, Latin America is slowly changing, with both women and men benefiting from more egalitarian views of the sexes.

Elba Nunez, the Paraguay-based coordinator of CLADEM, a nonprofit working on gender issues across Latin America, cites how men increasingly take on household chores. Some even change their children’s diapers, something that would have been unthinkable in much of the region 20 years ago.

And El Salvador has just passed a law mandating three days of paternity leave. If that sounds like peanuts, it’s worth recalling that the US is one of just a handful of countries that does not even recognize maternity leave as a legal right.
“We have made significant advances,” Nunez added. “Most constitutions in Latin America now recognize gender equality. But we still have a long way to go, especially for reproductive and sexual rights.”

But there still remains a long way to go before many women in the region are able to actually enjoy rights they’ve already won on paper.
“We have super beautiful laws but the question is how do we manage to get them enforced when there are so few resources and so much resistance?” Guevara asked.
The answer may well come from the new generation of female leaders, who, like the woman many tip as the next U.S. president, Hillary Clinton, haven’t shied from championing women’s issues.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, tweeting to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on Nov. 25, described her country as still being “sexist and prejudiced.”

Meanwhile, Bachelet has spent much of her time since stepping down from her first term as Chilean president in 2010 by heading U.N. Women.
Although change may still seem slow, it’s likely to pick up as more women politicians come to the fore, a regional trend that may have seemed impossible just a few years ago.


Machismo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Women can be said to be "machistas", meaning women who do not support gender equality, mainly as a pejorative term used by other women who see themselves as more liberated or by pro-feminist men, or less often so those that support the macho culture, and they are seen not just as a natural part but a vital one to the life expectancy of this gender role, as women, as mothers, are usually the first and main socializers of children of both sexes, so some of the most important social norms of the future generation of a society, even in a patriarchal system, are learned most commonly from the female members of one's family environment.[6]


This news article points out the many instances of female subjugation in Central and South America, and mentions it as an ongoing North American problem as well, even though change has been occurring here since the 1920's. The “machistas” in human society are one of the key elements, because they bring up the children, shaping their minds. The so-called “conservative” turn of mind which reinforces societal strictures in order to maintain the dominance of men over women and the wealthy over the poor is still active in the US, though not as strongly as when I grew up.

It often emerges as a discrimination against independently inclined women as being “fast” or “trouble makers,” and therefore unfeminine. This was especially true in the South. It has always been enforced within the home by means of the fist in too many cases, especially among blue-collar families. All it takes is an angry and “spoiled” man, who grew up seeing his sisters doing all the helpful things around the house while he lay on the couch watching football. It takes a conscious effort on the part of both parents to reverse this trend. Many more American men are enlightened now, but we still have far to go. Hillary Clinton will help us in 2016 if she runs, I think, whether she wins or not. I hope she runs and wins.





UN decries 'low, uneven' use of law protecting Afghan women – NBC

By Dylan Welch, Reuters

KABUL - Afghanistan is failing to use a law designed to protect women from violence in a country regularly voted one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, the United Nations said on Sunday.

The plight of women in Afghanistan captured the world's attention during the 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban when women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male relative, girls were barred from school and adulterers were shot or stoned to death.

Women have since won back rights to education and work, but there are fears these freedoms are shrinking as NATO-led forces prepare to leave Afghanistan by the end of next year. 

The United Nations examined the Elimination of Violence Against Women law, enacted as a presidential decree in 2009 and passed by parliament earlier this year. 

"The landmark law was a huge achievement for all Afghans, but implementation has been slow and uneven," U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said in a report released on Sunday. 

There had been an increase in reporting violence against women but a failure to prosecute, said the head of the U.N. human rights office in Afghanistan, Georgette Gagnon. 

Registration of reports of violence had risen 28 percent over the year, but use of the law had increased by only two percent. 
"This suggests that use of the law to prosecute perpetrators of violence against women remains low," she said. 


This is a case that is different from the US in that the laws of the country, especially where sharia law is in force, are made to exclude women from public life and legal equality. In the case of Afghanistan they have made some advance in the laws, but the police are failing to prosecute cases of violence. As much as I want the US to be at peace, I really feel for the women in these Middle Eastern countries.

A liberal Islamic man said, in one news article, that the Sharia laws are a function of the national culture rather than of Islam, but there is no question that under Christianity women do better in general. The complete covering of women's bodies and restriction of their movements outside the home are the most unfair conditions of life in the modern day world. The Middle Eastern countries tend to be “conservative” to the point of being primitive, in my view. They haven't advanced with the rest of the world.





Fasting for immigration reform: Strikers go hungry in push for change – NBC
By Miranda Leitsinger, Staff Writer, NBC News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – When the hunger headaches get strong, Lenka Mendoza focuses on why she is fasting and dreams of what she would do if she won the right to legally live and work in the U.S.: She would return to her home country, Peru, to hug her cancer-stricken mom.

Mendoza, an undocumented mother of three who works as a motel housekeeper, is one of about a dozen activists fasting on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol. The fasters want the House of Representatives to vote on legislation that would grant some 11 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. The bill was approved earlier this year by the Senate but has met stiff resistance in the GOP-controlled House.

The “Fast for Families,” organized by faith, immigration and labor groups, began on Nov. 12. Four activists who went nearly 22 days without eating ended their fast last Tuesday. About a dozen others, including Mendoza, are carrying on with the strike, some fasting for one to several days at a time, others indefinitely, in the hope that they can compel Republican leadership in the House to bring the bill to a vote.
Resting in one of the group’s tents last Wednesday, Mendoza said their location near the Capitol was important because Congress holds “the power that moves this country.”
“And us being here, we are moving the power of God's hands for this country, for good things, for a good change,” Mendoza, 42, of Dumfries, Va., said in Spanish through a translator on her fourth day of fasting.

The other fasters come from various activist backgrounds: labor, faith-based (such as Franciscan clergy), immigrant rights as well as youth from a human rights group, the Dream Defenders, which is protesting laws such as the Stand Your Ground statute used to defend the fatal shooting of Florida teen, Trayvon Martin.

“The time is now for us to be under this big tent and talk about the issues that affect our communities because if we keep trying to fight the battles separately, we’ll never win,” the group’s executive director Phillip Agnew, 28, of Miami, Fla., said on the second day of his fast.

The activists have had a slew of visitors, including President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, many members of Congress and some from Obama’s Cabinet. One tent is adorned with cards written by well-wishers who have stopped in (“Adelante companeros” or “Keep going, friends,” one of the missives reads), and a table is lined with items found in border areas believed to belong to migrants, including a worn sneaker.

Outside the tents, a few hundred wooden crosses dot the lawn to represent the nearly 480 people who died while trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico last year. Inside, a tally notes that since the hunger strike began on Nov. 12, 36 people have died crossing the border.

Some who visit the tents are on their way to lobby lawmakers, especially House Speaker John Boehner (his number is posted in the tent, urging visitors to phone him). The hunger strikers said Boehner has not visited them, but they keep their spirits high despite the approach of Dec. 13 -- the final day of this congressional session.

Rosa Maria Soto, a 60-year-old undocumented mother from Mexico living in Glendale, Ariz., said she has faith that Boehner and others will change their position. Since coming to the U.S. 14 years ago in search of a better life for her children, she says she has lived in fear of arrest and possible deportation. Before her parents died, she couldn’t travel to Mexico to bid them a final farewell.

“As my mother was dying, she told me that it’s better that you stay with your children than come home,” Soto, of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, said in Spanish on the fifth day of her fast. “It's been a lot of suffering, but seeing that there are many families going through the same thing motivates me to be able to contribute and fight on their behalf.”

Boehner’s office did not respond to questions on the hunger strike or the news that Rebecca Tallent of the Bipartisan Policy Center was joining his office last Wednesday to work on immigration reform in the House.  

But earlier in the week, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said: “The speaker remains hopeful that we can enact step-by-step, common-sense immigration reforms – the kind of reforms the American people understand and support.”

The hunger strike comes after years of increasing protests and lobbying by immigration activists for lawmakers to create a legal way for undocumented immigrants to stay in the country. Last year, undocumented youth won deferred action – a reprieve from deportation proceedings for two years – by executive order. But those older than 30 weren’t eligible, leaving out parents and grandparents who can still be deported.

House Republicans are opposed to an overarching, comprehensive immigration package, arguing it could end up with the challenges of Obamacare. Instead, they insist on splitting the reform into pieces to address issues like border security and employment verification separately.

The House has long maintained it will not blend any legislation it passes with the Senate’s comprehensive bill, and it’s far from clear that Boehner would defy conservative opponents of reform by bringing legislation to the House floor that would address citizenship for most of the 11 million undocumented.

Immigration activists’ hopes had been raised after the Senate passed legislation in late June that would create a 13-year path to citizenship for those undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. before Dec. 31, 2011. House lawmakers introduced a similar bill in early October, but it has since stalled – compelling activists to try another approach.

The hunger strikers have a permit that allows them to maintain their encampment through year’s end, and there are no plans to stop the fast (some fast a few days, while others say they won’t eat indefinitely). A medical team monitors the health of the strikers and tells them when they should resume eating. The group stays at a hotel since sleeping is prohibited on the Mall.

Hunger striker Rudy Lopez, who entered his 16th day without food on Friday, joined the strike indefinitely after seeing the commitment of the initial four activists who fasted for 22 days (organizers say the four are recuperating after a brief hospital stay).

Lopez, a 43-year-old senior organizer for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement from East Chicago, Ind., has lost 20 pounds, and has endured headaches, abdominal pain and bouts of dizziness. Hunger, he said, was his constant companion. “My body is breaking down, but as that happened, my spirit keeps building up,” he said.
The group is “all proud Americans, if not through the documents we have, but the spirit we bring,” Lopez added. “And we want this country to live up to its fullness.”


Illegal immigrants may soon be legitimized if the House moves on its bill. “Step-by-step, common-sense immigration reforms” would be helpful. These people are already working in the US and taking low paid jobs that some say Americans won't take. I don't think that's true. There are some Americans who would take that work, but they would be protected by minimum wage laws. Some of those very low paid jobs are illegal, and are thought to require an illegal immigrant to fill them, such as migrant farm workers or workers in “sweat shops” of various kinds.

The following study is from a blog on the subject at this web site: http://cis.org/illegalImmigration-employment. If we have laws allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens those large farms and construction firms will have to pay minimum wage. That can't be a bad thing. People should be able to eat and have shelter on the money they earn. It will be interesting to see what happens on this law that is going through Congress.

Jobs Americans Won’t Do? A Detailed Look at Immigrant Employment by Occupation
By Steven A. Camarota, Karen Zeigler August 2009

This analysis tests the often-made argument that immigrants only do jobs Americans don’t want. If the argument is correct, there should be occupations comprised entirely or almost entirely of immigrants. But Census Bureau data collected from 2005 to 2007, which allow for very detailed analysis, show that even before the recession there were only a tiny number of majority-immigrant occupations. (Click here to see detailed table.)

Among the findings:
Of the 465 civilian occupations, only four are majority immigrant. These four occupations account for less than 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans comprise 47 percent of workers in these occupations.
Many jobs often thought to be overwhelmingly immigrant are in fact majority native-born:
Maids and housekeepers: 55 percent native-born
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born
Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born
Grounds maintenance workers: 65 percent native-born
Construction laborers: 65 percent native-born
Porters, bellhops, and concierges: 71 percent native-born
Janitors: 75 percent native-born

There are 93 occupations in which 20 percent or more of workers are immigrants. These high-immigrant occupations are primarily, but not exclusively, lower-wage jobs that require relatively little formal education.

It is worth remembering that not all high-immigrant occupations are lower-skilled and lower-wage. For example, 44 percent of medical scientists are immigrants, as are 34 percent of software engineers, 27 percent of physicians, and 25 percent of chemists.
It is also worth noting that a number of politically important groups tend to face very little job competition from immigrants. For example, just 10 percent of reporters are immigrants, as are only 6 percent of lawyers and judges and 3 percent of farmers and ranchers.






AT&T says it doesn't have to disclose NSA dealings – NBC
Martha Mendoza The Associated Press


SAN JOSE, Calif. — AT&T, under fire for ongoing revelations that it shares and sells customers' communications records to the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence offices, says it isn't required to disclose to shareholders what it does with customers' data. 

In a letter sent Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, AT&T said it protects customer information and complies with government requests for call records "only to the extent required by law." 

The telecom giant's letter was a response to a shareholder revolt sparked on Nov. 20 by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the ACLU of Northern California and others. The groups are demanding that AT&T and Verizon be more transparent about their dealings with the NSA. 

In the letter, AT&T said information about assisting foreign intelligence surveillance activities is almost certainly classified. The company said it should not have to address the issue at its annual shareholders meeting this spring. 
Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of Northern California, said AT&T has overstepped its bounds. 

"It's outrageous that AT&T is trying to block the shareholder proposal," she said. "Customers have a right to know how often their private information is ending up in the government's hands." 

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said "the letter speaks for itself. We have no comment beyond it."

After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S agencies established a warrantless program to monitor phone calls and e-mail between individuals in the United States and other countries who are suspected of having links to terrorism. But disclosures in recent weeks from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have exposed the breadth and depth of U.S. government surveillance programs on the Internet and over other telecommunications networks. The Washington Post reported this week that the NSA tracks locations of nearly 5 billion cellphones every day overseas, including those of Americans. 

Companies are responding to the revelations in a variety of ways. Tech firms including Yahoo and Google are pushing back, adding encryption, filing motions in the FISA court, and arguing that the NSA is overstepping its bounds. 
But telecommunications firms appear to be cooperating fully. 

"AT&T is trying to prevent the vital issue of customer privacy from coming before its shareholders. This issue is an important one for customers and shareholders alike and we feel strongly that it should be on AT&T's ballot this spring," said Eric Sumberg, spokesperson for New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
DiNapoli co-signed the AT&T shareholder resolution on behalf of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which holds assets totaling about $161 billion. The fund owns more than 15 million shares of AT&T valued at roughly $517 million. 

"Customer trust is critical for any business, but nowhere is it more so than for those corporations that handle our personal data and communications," DiNapoli said. 
AT&T shareholders Trillium Asset Management in Boston and Durham, N.C.-based Arjuna Capital/Baldwin Brothers were also part of the revolt, which demands that AT&T publish semi-annual transparency reports similar to those from Microsoft, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Yahoo. The companies disclose the number of government requests for information and whether they comply.

But AT&T noted that those transparency reports don't disclose details about the requests or even separate out the number of National Security Letters companies receive. That information is withheld by the companies because they are barred by the federal government from revealing it, a prohibition many companies are fighting in court.

"In fact, all six Internet companies referenced in the (shareholder's) proposal state that they are not allowed to publicly disclose any such information in their Transparency or Law Enforcement Request Reports," said AT&T. "Therefore, because the proposal is over-broad, it is excludable."

AT&T also argues that the issue of their disclosure practices with the NSA has not been a topic of "sustained debate over the last several years," a standard they say must be met to require public reporting.

Securities and Exchange Commission spokeswoman Christina D'Amico said the agency declined to comment.


AT&T is my telephone company and my Internet also, and I sometimes call a friend who lives in Germany. Hopefully, they don't suspect me of being a spy or terrorist. We have to have some kind of telephone service to stay in touch with the world, and I don't know who would really be better than AT&T. I think all the companies are cooperating with the NSA. I would feel more comfortable if they wouldn't give my data to the government or to any third party, though I probably am safe enough – it just doesn't feel right.






Cold-loving snowy owls migrate from Arctic to ... Boston?! – NBC
Wynne Parry LiveScience


The visitors from the Arctic have shown up as far south as North Carolina, on the island of Bermuda and in unusually large numbers in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes. On Thusday, 15 were counted at Logan Airport in Boston.
For reasons no one understands, snowy owl sightings are spiking in eastern North America this winter.

"Maybe this is starting to shape up to be an irruption year," said Denver Holt, founder of the Owl Research Institute in Montana. 'Irruption' refers to the unpredictable migrations the birds make.

This wouldn't be the first snowy owl irruption in recent memory; it would be the third. Two years ago, the birds showed up in unusually high numbers from east to west across the continent. One was even spotted in Hawaii for the first time. The following year’s snowy owl irruption was less widespread and more directional, with birds showing up in the northern Great Plains, northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest, according to the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count. This year, owls appear to be drawn to another part of the continent.

In the central plains of North America, some owls, particularly young ones, appear to show up regularly. Likewise, most of the birds that arrive during an unpredictable irruption are young ones that hatched over the summer, Holt said.

Historically, people have thought the owls flew south because they weren't able to find food up north, but this does not appear to be the case, said Norman Smith, who catches and relocates snowy owls attracted to the tundralike expanse of Logan Airport in Boston. The arriving birds seem to be in good condition, and transmitters attached to them have revealed they are capable of returning to the Arctic. One flew back to the airport the following year for a round trip of more than 7,000 miles (11,265 kilometers), Smith said.

And, not surprisingly, it’s unclear what’s driving the owls' attention-grabbing appearances in recent years. "That's one of those things that is a good question," said Smith, who works for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. "Is it something that is happening in the Arctic habitat?"

Since beginning to study the birds at Logan in 1981, Smith has seen seasons with as few as one bird and as many as 43.
Male snowy owls can be almost completely white, while females have more brown flecks on their feathers and young birds have even more brown and can blend into the dead grass of a marsh, a location they are likely to turn up, said Geoff LeBaron, the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count director.

"It often looks like a Clorox bottle on a fence post, and when it turns its head and looks at you, there are these glowing yellow eyes, and of course, they can turn their heads most of the way around," LeBaron said.

Snowy owls are included in the Christmas Bird Count, an annual survey that begins on Dec. 14. Anyone can submit a snowy owl or other bird sighting anytime at eBird.org. 


Well, the scientists don't appear to be particularly worried about these “irruptions,” so maybe it's not another sign of global warming or starvation in the Arctic. Maybe they have lost their instinct about where to migrate to, or never really had one. Maybe they have always been wanderers and the scientists just hadn't been studying the pattern. Going to the Bahamas or Hawaii is really surprising, though, since the climate is so different from the Arctic. Maybe they have too high a birth and survival rate in the Arctic and need to come south seeking prey – they need “elbow room,” as was said about human migrations from Europe to the early American colonies.






Well-organized Neanderthals tidied up around the cave – NBC
Megan Gannon LiveScience

Archaeologists excavate Neanderthal levels at Riparo Bombrini in northwest Italy.
New research suggests that Neanderthals kept a tidy home. During excavations at a cave in Italy where a group of our closest known extinct relatives once lived, scientists say they found a strategically placed hearth and separate spaces for butchering and tool-making.

In recent years, researchers have discovered that Neanderthals made tools, buried their dead, used fire and maybe even adorned themselves with feathers, bucking our ancient cousins' reputation as stocky brutes. The new findings add to that growing list of intelligent behaviors similar to those of humans. 

"There has been this idea that Neanderthals did not have an organized use of space, something that has always been attributed to humans," study researcher Julien Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver, said in a statement. "But we found that Neanderthals did not just throw their stuff everywhere, but in fact were organized and purposeful when it came to domestic space." [Image Gallery: Our Closest Human Ancestor]

Riel-Salvatore and colleagues discovered that Neanderthals may have been rather domestically inclined while the scientists were digging at Riparo Bombrini, a collapsed rock shelter on the coast of northwest Italy. Excavations revealed some "provocative patterns" of artifact distribution, the researchers wrote in their study detailed in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology.

The scientists think the cave's ancient occupants divided the space into sections for different activities: a top level for butchering and preparing animals, a middle level for long-term living and a bottom level for use as a short-term base camp.
In the main living level, a hearth was positioned near the back wall of the shelter, which likely allowed warmth to circulate among the living space. Meanwhile, stone tools and animal bones were concentrated at the front of the cave, the researchers say.

"When you make stone tools there is a lot of debris that you don't want in high-traffic areas or you risk injuring yourself," Riel-Salvatore said.
Alongside a hoard of animal remains in the back of the top level, the researchers also uncovered evidence of ochre, a natural brownish pigment.

"We found some ochre throughout the sequence but we are not sure what it was used for," Riel-Salvatore explained in a statement. "Neanderthals could have used it for tanning hides, for gluing, as an antiseptic or even for symbolic purposes — we really can't tell at this point."

The authors note that other Neanderthal sites in the archaeological record, such as Italy's Grotta Breuil, are not so tidy, suggesting that spatial organization of living spaces might not have been common to all Neanderthals.

"This is ongoing work, but the big picture in this study is that we have one more example that Neanderthals used some kind of logic for organizing their living sites," Riel-Salvatore said. "This is still more evidence that they were more sophisticated than many have given them credit for. If we are going to identify modern human behavior on the basis of organized spatial patterns, then you have to extend it to Neanderthals as well."

Neanderthals roamed Eurasia from at least 200,000 years ago until they went extinct 30,000 years ago. For a period of time, they overlapped with humans, and some studies suggest the two even interbred. 


I have always been interested in Neanderthals, especially since I read Clan Of The Cave Bear by Jean Auel. Her book came out at a time that archaeologists tended to consider them to be too primitive for Homo Sapiens to interbreed with them. Now since the DNA research on early humans has discovered Neanderthal DNA, and also that from one other early human type, in the modern Homo Sapiens gene pool, there is evidence that they probably weren't so very different from each other after all.

This use of ocher in association with the burial of the dead is common to early Homo Sapiens, and survives as body paint and in the production of art among the Australian Aborigines and Maori today. It must have been as highly prized down through time as flint. The survival of such a specific cultural characteristic as that shows how old some human practices are. Very intriguing!