Lex Anteinternet: "If this is a time to rest and recover, then be su...

Lex Anteinternet: "If this is a time to rest and recover, then be su...: 

"If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt."

If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt. God made rest a part of His commands to us.  Enjoy the joy and remember that He made us human beings, not human doings. 

Fr. Joseph Krupp.

Fr. Krupp's Facebook post here was synchronicitous for me.

I didn't take much time off last year.  And my not taking "much", what I mean is that I took three days really off, just off, because I had surgery and was laying in the hospital.

That's not really good.

I'd like to claim that it was for one reason or another, but truth be known, i'ts something I imposed upon myself.  And I do this every year.

Indeed, I'm much worse about it than I used to be.

All the things you hear about not taking time off are 100% true, if not 200%.  You become less efficient, for one thing.  And if you work extra hours, sooner or later, you'll acclimate yourself to working the extra hours to the point where you need to. That's become your work life.

Christmas in my work place essentially always works the same way.  We work, normally, the day before Christmas, December 24, until noon. At noon, we dismiss the staff and all go to a collective lawyer's lunch.  That institution is, I think, a remnant of an earlier era in our society in general, when it could be expected that most professional institutions would remain a certain size and everyone who worked there would have a sort of collegiality.  It sort of recalls, in a way, the conditions described by Scrooge's original employer in A Christmas Carrol, in the shop run by Mr. Fezziwig.

This use to really prevail in firms when I was first practicing.  I recall being at lunch on December 24 at a local club restaurant in which other firms would also be there.  Everyone was doing the same thing.  I haven't seen another firm at one now, however, for years.  Maybe they just go somewhere else, but I sort of suspect that they're not doing it.

Well, good for us. It's hard not to have a certain feeling of sadness about it, however, as three of the lawyers who once were part of that are now dead.  Others have moved on long ago.  New faces have come, of course.

Anyhow, that institution sort of ties up the afternoon of December 24, but it's an afternoon off.   If you are a Catholic with a family, it's always been a bit tight, as we normally go to Mass on Christmas Eve and then gather after that. Christmas is obviously a day off, as is Boxing Day, December 26, although most Americans don't refer to Boxing Day by that name.

This year Christmas came on a Sunday, which was nice as it made December 23 the day of the lunch and effectively an extra day off.  We took, of course, Boxing Day off.

Sometime in there, I began to wonder why I hadn't taken the whole week off.  With just three days off, beyond Sundays, and having worked most of the 52 Saturdays of the year, I should have.  I had the things done, pretty much, that I needed to get done.

What was I thinking?

If this is a time to rest and recover, then be sure and do so without guilt. God made rest a part of His commands to us.  Enjoy the joy and remember that He made us human beings, not human doings. 

Well, I'm actually at the point, in spite of myself, that I'm so acclimated to going to the work that I feel guilty if I take time off.  And frankly, the Internet hasn't helped much.  On the afternoon of the 23d, I received a text message asking me if I was working that afternoon.  I wasn't, and they were gracious about it, but this is how things tend to be. It's hard to actually escape the office.

On Boxing Day I went goose and duck hunting.  Conditiond were great.

I should have had my limit of geese and ducks, but I shot like crap.  It'll be part of an upcoming post, maybe, but my hunting season has been messed up due to surgery.

I was going to go with my son, but events conspired against it, so it was just me and the dog.  

Earlier this year, my wife had us buy a bigger smoker. We had not had one until fairly recently, when we won one at a Duck's Unlimited banquet.  That one is a little traveling one, sort of a tailgating smoker, and can work from a car's battery system.  You can plug it in, and we've enjoyed it, but due to its size, we decided to get a bigger one and did.  It's been great.

This was my first occasion actually using it, something necessitated by the fact that our oven is more or less out due to some sort of weird oven thing that happened to it which will not get addressed until sometime this week.  Besides, I'd been wanting to try smoked waterfowl.

It turned out great.  I should have taken a picture of the finished bird, but I didn't.  Maybe one of the top two roasted geese I've ever had.

Anyhow, I should have taken this whole week off, but didn't.  I may take some time later this week, however.  

It's been a really long year.

Italy expand wild boar hunting.

Italy is going to expand the hunting of wild boars in the country, including allowing the culling of the animals in urban and protected areas.  The wild pig is a common animal throughout Europe and Asia and, like all pigs, is destructive.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathew...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathew...:   

Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathews, Osage Council Member, author, historian, and Rhodes Scholar, seated at home in front of his fireplace, Oklahoma, 12/16/1937.

 

John Joseph Mathews, Osage Council Member, author, historian, and Rhodes Scholar, seated at home in front of his fireplace, Oklahoma, 12/16/1937. 

Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Series: General Photographs of Indians

Image description: Mr. Mathews sits in an armchair in front of a fireplace, with a dog at his feet. The fireplace and walls are made of stone. Next to the fireplace is a table with smoking pipes on it, and a filing cabinet; on the wall is a framed cover of Mathews’ book SUNDOWN. The mantelpiece has candles, framed photos and certificates, and taxidermied animals. The mantel bears the Latin words VENARI LAVARI LUDERE RIDERE OCCAST VIVERE (To hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh, is to live).

Source: catalog.archives.gov

Too good not to repost in its entirety.  

And a great motto!

Lex Anteinternet: A Nature Party and a question. Does this comport with nature?

Lex Anteinternet: A Nature Party and a question. Does this comport w...:   

 

Altered from imagine done by Di (they-them) - This SVG flag includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this flag:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114863039

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.

The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.  Aldo Leopold

I wish there was a political party whose first principal was a question; "does this comport with nature?"

And asked that question, as its first principal, honestly.  Not seeking to ask it in some preconceived of manner in which the answer to the question is known before the question is posed.

And not in a way that always aligns with the questioners personal interest and economics.

One that posed it honestly, and went from there.

Such a party would make nearly every political pundit and national politician today squirm.

Senators who come on Fox News every other week, or on Twitter every week, who are from the State of Extraction would disappear behind the dour looking Mitch McConnell rather than answer the question first, and go on honestly from there.

So would left wing politicians who take to the floor in Big Green Rectangle to proclaim allegiance with "gender care", having undergone "gender care" themselves, without answering this question first.

It'd be a step towards sanity in a major way.

Indeed, the very fact that such a question is not the first posed is responsible, in no small measure, for why American politics are as stupid as they currently are.  The rational middle is gone, with the irrational agenda driven extremes in control.

This is why discussions on economics and production are totally divorced from reality on the right and the left.

And this is why discussions on existential biological issues devolve into anti-scientific diatribes that are linked with ill-informed world views rather than reality.

And this is also why those same issues become attached to extremist whose world view is ground not in science, but in ideologies of all type that are of their own fantastical creations, or those whose fantastical creations match a world the way they wish to see it, causing it to become impossible to debate or discuss any issue, as all issues all end up lashed to the philosophy, rather than the science, and reality.

Primum non nocere, first do no harm, we are told, is the first and most ancient rule of medicine.  Perhaps for politics, that branch of philosophy which is applied in the same way that engineering is applied physics, should consider  An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, does this comport with nature. This should be added be added to philosophy of all types, applied and not, as the first principal.

Related Threads:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us

The Aerodrome: Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. The Waking Up Edition (Vol 1).

The Aerodrome: Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Ses...: And here's one that pertains to manned aircraft.

SENATE FILE NO. SF0033

 

 

Defining aircraft for purposes of hunting prohibitions.

 

Sponsored by: Joint Judiciary Interim Committee

 

 

A BILL

 

for

 

AN ACT relating to game and fish; providing a definition of "aircraft" for purposes of the prohibition on the use of aircraft for hunting and other purposes as specified; and providing for an effective date.

 

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

 

Section 1.  W.S. 23‑3‑306(a) is amended to read:

 

23‑3‑306.  Use of aircraft, automobiles, motorized and snow vehicles and artificial light for hunting or fishing prohibited; exceptions; penalties.

 

(a)  No person shall harass, pursue, hunt, shoot, or kill any Wyoming wildlife except predatory animals with, from, or by use of any aircraft, automotive vehicle, trailer, motor‑propelled wheeled vehicle, or vehicle designed for travel over snow. No person shall use any aircraft, to aid in the taking of any Wyoming wildlife, except predatory animals, whether by spotting or locating the wildlife, communicating with any person attempting to take the wildlife, or by providing other aid to any person taking the wildlife. Nothing in this subsection shall apply to the use of any aircraft by governmental agencies, their employees, contractors or designees performing any lawful duties. The commission may exempt handicapped hunters from any provision of this subsection. For purposes of this section "aircraft" means any machine or device capable of atmospheric flight including but not limited to an airplane, helicopter, glider, dirigible or unmanned aerial vehicle.

 

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2023.

 

(END)

Dirigible?

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: How a Popular Hunting App and a Conservation Group...

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: How a Popular Hunting App and a Conservation Group...: Sample OnX map. An article on "corner-cutting," public access, and whether landowners own airpace over property corners makes it t...

Lex Anteinternet: Rights of Nature

Lex Anteinternet: Rights of Nature: 

Rights of Nature

I support reintroducing grizzly bears.

To the Cheesman Park neighborhood of Denver, more specifically.  And nobody can talk me out of it.

Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.: 

Saturday, December 2, 1922. Kuwait gets axed.

Lex Anteinternet: Some feral threads in the fabric.

Lex Anteinternet: Some feral threads in the fabric.: 

Some feral threads in the fabric.

I'm not going to take this too far, and you definitely could, but a couple of odds and ends I've run across recently.

One is this Agrarian blog I recently located:

Foothill Agrarian

There are only handful of really worthwhile agrarian blogs around.  That's at least better than the situation with the distributist situation, where there's nothing worthwhile whatsoever.  Of the handful that are out there, the two best ones are linked in here.  A third one that is also worthwhile (which is a successor to two prior blogs, just as this blog also is), is also linked in, but it's not quite as good.  I'll do a thread on them some other time, or on all of these together. A fourth one would get a link for its actual agrarian posts, but it descends into "Southern Agrarianism" of the Lost Cause variety, and we're not going there.  Nope, no way.

Anyhow, I thought that this entry by an agrarian California sheep rancher, who is an adult entrant into hunting, really interesting.  He's also a self professed agrarian.

Persistence

We've posted a lot about hunting here, from the prospective of the nearly feral agrarian who has been a hunter his entire life.  It's interesting to see some similar views come about from the thoughtful agrarian adult who came to it late.

I haven't made it all the way through the back entries on Foothill Agrarian. Not by a long shot, but I was also struck by this entry:

Coming to Terms with Being Part-Time

This is a little like reading my own thoughts.  Indeed, this guy is just about the same age as me (I'm a little older), and he's a rancher, not a "homesteader", which anymore conveys something else, and frankly something less serious, or perhaps less realistic.  I'll be looking forward to perusing his prior entries.

I'm glad I found his blog.

Here's the other thing that caught my eye.

Helsinki says no meat will be served, single-use cutlery used at its events

This quite frankly is a deceptive headline, but that's how it generally reads, even in English language editions of Finnish newspapers.  What it really means is that the City of Helsinki will be changing what it serves at official state and municipal functions, and venues it owns, and it actually still will be serving meat.

What it will serve is local fish and also local game.  We don't see wild game as a restaurant item much in the US, and indeed its subject to very strict statutory provisions everywhere.  Why peole make the distinction between fish and "meat" baffles me, but they have here.

This is being done, maybe, by Helsinki (its drawing a lot of criticism) to reduce, it claims, its carbon footprint.  There's a certain "m'eh" quality to this as frankly the concept that bovines are farting the plant into a climate crisis is not really well thought out.  Humans are omnivores and meat is part of our diet, including meat that is raised by farmers and ranchers.

Having said that, I've long been an advocate for getting your own meat directly, and therefore I'm somewhat applauding Helsinki here, probably surprisingly to those who might know me. They're emphasizing local fish, which is something that people of that city probably mostly subsisted on until the mid 20th Century. And hunting wild game has always been a big part of Finnish culture, and still is.

Now, I'm not advocating for what Helsinki did, and I suspect that the Woke city counsel of the city, or whatever its administering body is, won't have this in place long.  I'm a stockman and I'm hugely skeptical of the cow fart accusations on the climate.  Depending upon how cattle are fed, this is not the problem its made out to be, and so to the extent its a problem, and there's always been ungulates around all over, it can be addressed.  But I find it really surprising that in 2021 I'll occasionally find even ranchers and farmers who don't hunt.

People should get their meat locally if they can, and included in that, is getting it directly from the field.  Its healthy, and honest, and connects you with reality in a way that going to the stocked shelves at Sam's Club doesn't.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PR...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PR...:   

Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR

 

KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...:  

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

 This major public access story hit the news here Thursday.

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

I'm quite familiar with this stretch of property. As a kid, before the recent owners who owned transferred it, I used to hunt part of it.  I never asked for permission, even though I'm sure I should have.  In those days, in the 70s, we asked for permission a lot less, and it was granted by fiat a lot more.

This is a real boon to sportsmen.  It'll open up miles of river to fishing, and miles and miles to hunting.  I've passed by deer and doves in this area a lot as I didn't have permission to go where they were.  Now I'll be able to, although I hope the BLM makes as much of this roadless as possible.

I hope they also lease it out for grazing.

Indeed, I have some mixed feelings about this as I really hate to see a local ranch go out of production.  The family that owned it had started off as sheepmen in Johnson County and moved down to Natrona County when their land was bought for coal production.  Now they'll just be out of agriculture entirely, and I really hate to see that, even though I'm glad to see this didn't go to out of state interest.  Indeed, what occurred is more in keeping with the purpose of the original Federal land programs, including the Homestead Act, than what often does occur with land sales now days.

I will note that, of course, in the age of the internet this of course resulted in moronic comments, including the blisteringly ignorant comment that its somehow unconstitutional for the Federal Government to own land. That comment is so dense that it should disqualify a person from going onto land in general until some education occurs.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.: 

Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.

There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer.  Here's a National Park Service item on it:

Updates

• Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
• Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
• The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
• To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
• All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
• There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
• The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
• Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
• At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding. 
• Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
• The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
• Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.

Here's an idea.

Don't rebuild the roads.

For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become.  A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that.  For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.

Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.

Well, nothing now, so to speak.

Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park.  It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now.   Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.

Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority.  Things are much different today than they were then.

Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar.  To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area.  To others, it's a sort of theme park. 

The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood.  The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do.  Early camping parties travelled there.  People fished there, and still do.  Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else.  This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.  

Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite.  Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie.  All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.

But they don't all have the same value.

Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness.  Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it.  And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.

A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.

Don't rebuilt the roads.

That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly.  And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general.  And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.

But that's exactly what should be done.

Lex Anteinternet: In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.

Lex Anteinternet: In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.:

In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.

For those who follow this blog somewhat, you might have noted that in recent months there were a lot of comments from "Tom" "in Sheridan".

You may also have noticed that his last comment came when I got out of the hospital recently.  His thoughtful post stated:

Three years ago, I had a surgery and four weeks n the hospital while the incision healed.

The hospital really pushed me to head to Casper to do the recuperation, but I could not understand the idea that I would want to be 140 miles from home to essentially lie in a bed. (This was pre-Covid, so patient space was not a consideration; at least I couldn't see that as a reason.) In any case I received excellent care right in the hometown. I think you know that the friends who visit you are the true ones.

Matthew 25:34-40
King James Version

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Tom
Sheridan, WY

Tom from Sheridan was Thomas McIntyre, a writer and big game hunter who lived in Sheridan.  The reason for his sudden departure is his sudden departure from this life.  Tom has passed on at age 70.  He left us on November 3.

I'm indebted to the Stephen Bodio blog, linked in at the side as one of the outdoor blogs we follow, for posting the news.   Tom commented so frequently that the sudden cessation of his comments made me wonder if I'd said something to offend him somehow, or if he just realized that he'd be in the category of "my betters" and just chose to pursue more worthwhile pursuits.

Tom's entry onto our pages here was due to a recommendation from another reader, I don't know who.  He sure improved the blog with his comments, and on one occasion improved a post by correcting some of my writing.  He was an obviously highly educated and thoughtful man.  

He was also a big game hunter, and writer on the topic.  I'd been looking forward to a book he was finishing on wild cattle, which apparently he did finish before his death.  The book is entitled Thunder Without Rain.  He quoted a few snippets of it here in some of his comments. Tom and I, therefore, shared that vocation, hunter, although he is much more traveled than I ever will be.  My only experience with cattle is with the domestic kind, which are of course occasionally wild.

Tom and I were also co-religious, although in his comments here he was vague on the topic.  I had the sense, although I didn't know him personally, that something had caused him to become nonobservant in our faith, although he obviously retained a deep knowledge of the faith and its traditions.  In response to a question of mine, he'd only noted that if Mass was still being held in the catacombs, he'd be there.  I noticed on his Sheridan funeral home listing, there was a short comment from "Fr. Jim", so he was obviously in contact somehow with a man of the Catholic cloth somewhere.  Whatever his status was, and it wasn't clear, I hope and pray that he was reconciled in the end and that this cheerful man passed with the peace he clearly daily exhibited.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish...: 

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...A few observations.

A few odds and ends on this story:

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...:   Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel Yup.  And. . .  The early Middle Pleistocene site of Ge...

By most reckonings, the humans, and they were humans, who were grilling up the carp were not members of our species, Homo sapiens.

They likely would have been Homo Heidelbergensis or Homo Erectus, the former having at one time been regarded as a subspecies of the latter.

No matter, these people were a lot closer to you than you might imagine.  Their brain capacity, for one thing, is just about the same as modern humans at 1200 cc.  FWIW, the brain capacity of archaic Homo Sapiens was actually larger than that of current people, members of the species Homo Sapien Sapien. Our current brain sizes are pretty big, in relative terms, at about 1400 cc, although Neanderthals' were bigger, at 1500cc.  

About the "archaic" members of our species, it's been said that they're not regarded their own species as they have been "admitted to membership in our species because of their almost modern-sized brains, but set off as ‘archaic' because of their primitive looking cranial morphology".¹  Having said that, some people say, no, those are Homo Heidlebergensis.  It can be pretty difficult to tell, actually, and as been noted:

One of the greatest challenges facing students of human evolution comes at the tail end of the Homo erectus span. After Homo erectus, there is little consensus about what taxonomic name to give the hominins that have been found. As a result, they are assigned the kitchen-sink label of “archaic Homo sapiens.”

Tattersall (2007) notes that the Kabwe skull bears more than a passing resemblance to one of the most prominent finds in Europe, the Petralona skull from Greece. In turn, as I mentioned above, the Petralona skull is very similar to one of the most complete skulls from Atapuerca, SH 5, and at least somewhat similar to the Arago skull.

Further, it is noted that the Bodo cranium from Africa shares striking similarities to the material from Gran Dolina (such as it is). This suggests that, as was the case with Homo erectus, there is widespread genetic homogeneity in these populations. Given the time depth involved, it is likely that there was considerable and persistent gene flow between them. Tattersall (2007), argues that, since the first example of this hominin form is represented by the Mauer mandible, the taxonomic designation Homo heidelbergensis should be used to designate these forms. This would stretch the limits of this taxon, however, since it would include the later forms from Africa as well. If there was considerable migration and hybridization between these populations, it could be argued that a single taxon makes sense. However, at present, there is no definitive material evidence for such migration, or widespread agreement on calling all these hominins anything other than “archaic Homo sapiens.”²

 Regarding our first ancestors, of our species, appearance:

When comparing Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, and anatomically modern Homo sapiens across several anatomical features, one can see quite clearly that archaic Homo sapiens are intermediate in their physical form. This follows the trends first seen in Homo erectus for some features and in other features having early, less developed forms of traits more clearly seen in modern Homo sapiens. For example, archaic Homo sapiens trended toward less angular and higher skulls than Homo erectus but had skulls notably not as short and globular in shape and with a less developed forehead than anatomically modern Homo sapiens. archaic Homo sapiens had smaller brow ridges and a less-projecting face than Homo erectus and slightly smaller teeth, although incisors and canines were often about as large as that of Homo erectus. Archaic Homo sapiens also had a wider nasal aperture, or opening for the nose, as well as a forward-projecting midfacial region, known as midfacial prognathism. The occipital bone often projected and the cranial bone was of intermediate thickness, somewhat reduced from Homo erectus but not nearly as thin as that of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The postcrania remained fairly robust, as well. To identify a set of features that is unique to the group archaic Homo sapiens is a challenging task, due to both individual variation—these developments were not all present to the same degree in all individuals—and the transitional nature of their features. Neanderthals will be the exception, as they have several clearly unique traits that make them notably different from modern Homo sapiens as well as their closely related archaic cousins.³

Well, what that tells us overall is that we were undergoing some changes during this period of the Pleistocene, that geologic period lasting from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago.

And that, dear reader, points out that we're a Pleistocene mammal.

It also points out that we don't have yet a really good grasp as to when our species really fully came about.  We think we know what the preceding species was, but we're not super sure when we emerged from it.  And of course, we didn't really emerge, but just kind of rolled along mother and father to children.

Which tells us that Heidlebergensis may have been pretty much like us, really.

Just not as photogenic.

On that, it's also been recently noted that the best explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals, which are now widely regarded as a separate species that emerged also from Heidelbergensis disappeared as they just cross bread themselves out of existence.  Apparently they thought our species was hotter than their own.

Assuming they are a separate species, which I frankly doubt.

Here were definitely morphology differences between Heidelbergensis and us, but as we addressed the other day in a different context, everybody has a great, great, great . . . grandmother/grandfather who was one of them.

And another thing.

They ate a lot of meat.

A lot.

I note that as it was in vogue for a while for those adopting an unnatural diet, i.e. vegetarianism, to claim that this is what we were evolved to eat. 

Not hardly.  With huge brains, and cold weather burning up calories, we were, and remain, meat eaters.

Foonotes:

1.  Archaic Homo sapiens  Christopher J. Bae (Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Hawaii-Manoa) © 2013 Nature Education  Citation: Bae, C. J. (2013) . Nature Education Knowledge 4(8):4

2. By  James Kidder, The Rise of Archaic Homo sapiens

3.  11.3: Defining Characteristics of Archaic Homo Sapiens

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...:   

Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel

 

Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel

Yup.  And. . . 

The early Middle Pleistocene site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel (marine isotope stages 18–20; ~0.78 million years ago), has preserved evidence of hearth-related hominin activities and large numbers of freshwater fish remains (>40,000). 

People like to eat fish, and save for the oddballs who like to eat sushi, for which there is no explanation, they like their fish cooked.

Most places, people like to eat carp too.  For some odd reason, there's a prejudice against carp in at least the Western United States, but elsewhere, not so much.

So, our human ancestors 780,000 years ago. . . put another carp on the barbi. . . 

 

The Joy of Closed Roads

 

Lex Anteinternet: Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries tha...

Lex Anteinternet: Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries tha...: 

Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries that aren't.

The famous journal, The New Yorker notes:

During the coronavirus pandemic, pediatric endocrinologists saw a new surge of referrals for girls with early puberty—the number of these referrals doubled or even tripled during the lockdown periods of 2020, recent studies show.

newyorker.com

Why More and More Girls Are Hitting Puberty Early

So their conclusion?

Well, I don't know, as I couldn't get past the paywall.  I think I know the answer, and I'll get to that in a moment.

Mostly I'm posting this, however, due to the stupid anti-scientific comments that followed the Twitter article.  

Witness:

Nov 7

Replying to @NewYorker

Wonder how many were vaccinated- i think that's an honest and fair question no one is willing to ask

Mark Yerger@yerger224

Replying to @HoltonMusicMan and @NewYorker

its fair to ask anything.  it is a fact that this all occurred during the Trump presidency! its fair to ask what his administrations involvement was in all this.  yet he continues to evade this issue. I havent seen any denials or documents showing me otherwise.

Well played Yerger.

The same dipshittery appears in this comment:

BiancaD 🇺🇦🌻🤪❣🐷@rigbydan

Nov 8

Replying to @NewYorker

How many were vaccinated, since it was now confirmed that those of us who said the vaccine affected our cycles were proven correct?

Janice's Magic Wand@leighleighmw

Nov 8 

Replying to @rigbydan and @NewYorker

There was no vaccine available to children under 12 in 2020.

Again, good, if obvious, comment there to the apparent memory impaired and scientifically bereft BiancaD.

And:

Nov 8

Replying to @NewYorker

One reason is the hormones in the milk. I always bought organic milk and my daughter did not have early puberty like some of her friends.

Lone Stranger@LoneStr06411351

Nov 9

Replying to @Persona49820853 and @NewYorker

You got taken for a ride, then. Pediatric associations have firmly established the actual reason in the vast majority of situations is abundant nutrition. Puberty is delayed in environments of food scarcity. Which predominated much of human history until the last 100 years.

And that is exactly it.

In reality, the onset of puberty ages for girls isn't getting depressed due to hormones in your GMO cheese or mystery chemicals in your Blue Bunny, it's because human beings, or at least girls (one poster raises the good point that these stories seem to omit boys) are genetically programmed for lower onset of puberty ages in times of:1) high nutrition and 2) low physical output.

What were people doing during the pandemic?

I submit to you, they were sitting at home, eating.

In a state of nature, if girls are sitting around eating, their genes think "wow, we're in a super abundant period right now. . . move her up on the reproduction scale".

Now, I'm not claiming that's a good thing, but I am claiming that it's obviously the opposite of this?

Nov 8

Replying to @NewYorker

Does that indicate our future ability to reproduce is questionable?

Lone Stranger @LoneStr06411351

Lone Stranger, did you skip biology class?  Girls going to puberty earlier has the polar opposite effect.

Sheesh.

And that's why it's not a good thing.

What this is really evidence of is; 1) too much food, much of which is high calorie bad food, and 2) too little exercise.

Feed girls real food and get them involved in physical activity, the onset age will go up.

Better yet, get them out hunting and fishing, and learning how to produce their own food, and the onset age will go up, their health will improve, and the few who will be taken advantage of will decline in number.

Or, as noted:

Depends. In mammals at least the drift is to delay reproductive capability in times of stress or famine, so as to limit the population numbers straining already critical shortages.

When nutrition is abundant & ubiquitous is when sexual maturity manifests earlier.

Rage quitting this timeline@kesskessler401