The first evidence for domesticated dogs has just got earlier with the recent dating of a dogs skull and teeth from Kesslerloch Cave in Switzerland. That puts the transition from wolf to dog to over 14,000 years ago. Previously, the earliest date was from a single jawbone that was found in a human grave at Oberkassel, in Germany, dating to about 13,000 years-ago. (There are earlier dates claimed for the first definite identification of dogs but these are usually discounted by experts). The finds from Switzerland were uncovered in 1873 but it was only last year that archaeologists at Tubingen…
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Shamanism a practice by which a person communicates with the spirits can be found throughout the ancient worlds. Although shamanism takes many and varied forms around the world, what a shaman actually experiences whilst in trance is remarkably uniform. Almost all report leaving their bodies to journey to an otherworld where they meet and interact with spirits. The reason for such similarity lies within the mind itself and the shared neurobiology of every human. In fact, any one of us could have the same experience as a shaman if we put ourselves in trance. Shamans have varied ways of entering…