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Discussion on hypothesized ancestral human cyclical ARC dive-foraging

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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The photic sneeze reflex in the human newborn: A preliminary report
Rebecca B. Anderson 1 2 *, Judy F. Rosenblith 1 2
1Institute for Health Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
2Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts

*Correspondence to Rebecca B. Anderson, Box 1910, Institute for Health Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, U.S.A.

Keywords
Photic sneeze in neonates • Sneezing to light • Visual function in newborns • Visual stimulation

Abstract
In an ongoing, comprehensive study of newborn infants, visual following was tested by moving a shiny bicycle bell across the horizontal and vertical planes in front of the infant's eyes. During the course of this test, it was noted that many of the babies sneezed at the time the test object was presented. The race-sex distribution of this sneeze response in the infant population stuided was recorded and the phenomenon discussed as an early indicator of visual sensitivity.
Received: 26 December 1967
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AFAICT there would be no functional advantage for a newborn infant backfloating hydrostatically in sunlit seawater lagoon to have a photic sneeze unless it joined a parent during a dive, holding the scalp hair and/or riding on the parents' shoulders, then both photic exhaling at emergence. Frowning at direct sunlight is typical for human infants, less so for chimp infants and rarely for orangutan infants, sun sneezing is unique to humans and only occurs after dark adaptation (the infant may have kept the eyes closed at depth).

Functionally, the photic sneeze (or post-dark-adaptation respiration) would be (hypothetically) advantageous for apneic dive-foragers who rest at the surface with minimal energy expenditure after a couple swift emergent sun-triggered (small?) exhales and immobile relaxed sunwarmed posture would presumably enable cyclical diving to cold depths repeatedly.

Why some people sneeze when the sun comes out - health - 15 April 2009 - New Scientist

"The answer to that, Bhutta suggests, might lie in another one of Everett's hypotheses: that the confusion arises in the way the medulla regulates our reflex actions. Everett originally proposed this idea to explain just photic sneezing, but Bhutta thinks it could explain all the strange sneezing conditions, since all of the triggers involve stimulation of a parasympathetic nerve response controlled by the medulla. When bright sunlight hits our eyes, our pupils contract involuntarily - a parasympathetic response. When our stomachs are full, the parasympathetic system kicks in to start our gastric juices flowing. When we think of sex, parasympathetic action stimulates blood flow to our genitals.

All these nerve responses flow to and from regions of the medulla close to where the sneeze centre is located. This suggests that far from being a neat system of discrete responses to individual stimuli, our reflex systems at their base in the medulla are often a tangled web of cross-talking nerve wires. Sometimes when bright sunlight hits our eyes, the parasympathetic system responds appropriately and our pupils constrict. But for certain people whose medullas are wired differently, sunlight triggers a different reflex response, such as a sneeze."

"About 20% of people sneeze because of reflex action when exposed to sudden, bright light. The Guthrie Journal, 64(3):104-105 (1995)

A 1987 study in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, for example, estimated its prevalence at 17 to 35 percent of the population.

A 1983 study in Human Heredity found a 24 percent prevalence among 460 blood donors.
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Between 20-30% of Europeans have sun sneeze tendencies. That is much higher than left-handedness, and must have had strong natural selection in the past. Since the gene is found on Chromosome 2 (a fusion of 2 ape chromosomes into one human chromosome), parsimony rules that it was functionally advantageous within the last 5 million years since the genetic split. What was that function?

Why would a savanna runner sneeze at the sun? No others do.

Why would a forest ground forager sneeze at the sun? No others do.

Why would a seashore forager sneeze at the sun? Ask a dolphin.

[But since dolphins also hunt at night, they are far more dependent on touch sensors around the blowhole and sonar reflection. Also, they breathe only through their blowhole nostril, not the mouth (because they eat fast-moving prey which might enter an oral breathing tube, while humans eat non-moving food), human sneezes are triggered by the nose/eyes but exhaled through the mouth, possibly indicating that during a dive sequence the paranasal sinuses and middle ears were saline-flooded but the mouth was not.]

Perhaps there is no easy answer, but thus far, all known physiological & genetic data which I have found plausibly fit the pattern of Aquaphotic Respiratory Cycle dive-foraging in human ancestors, remaining in various human populations as vestiges (after technological, geographic and climactic changes reduced dependence on dive-foraging for sustenance), just as wisdom teeth affect some populations more than others, or amylase duplication increases in populations which consume more starches.

Photic Sneeze Reflex The View From My Fishbowl
Many (not all) photic sneezers also sneeze when tasting dark chocolate (origin America) and peppermint (eg. altoid).

Origin of peppermint: It is a native of the Mediterranean...It is a perennial herb that grows up to 1 meter (3 feet) high...It has underground runners by which it easily propagates. This herb has many species, and peppermint piperita is a hybrid of water-mint (M. aquatica) and spearmint (M. spicata). (wikianswers)

Spice Pages: Peppermint (Mentha piperita, spicata, arvensis, nane, mint)
Whenever high*ly concentrated menthol is used, one must consider that menthol is toxic to infants(?) and can (allegedly) induce apnoea. Charac*teristically pure and refreshing odour, pungent and burning taste (insecticide?). The typical "mint scent" is most pure in peppermint...
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Interesting, possibly there was early selection for (food/medicinal?) herb consumption which was flavorful (minty) that repelled insects (like lemongrass/citronella/citrus) in the Mediterranean during the MSC (when the Medit. mostly dried out 6-5ma and humans separated from chimps). Having a habit of snacking on waterside water-mint, spearmint and hybrid peppermint leaves, other aquatic herbs and seafood might have improved apnea diving, and the sneeze reaction to strong mint thus correlated to sunlight offshore foraging. (Consider that airborne allergies and asthma may have been alternative reactions which developed inland.)

Water Mint (Mentha Aquatica, L.)
Water Mint (and similarly spearmint/peppermint) is a hygrophyte, luxuriating in the moisture of riversides, wet places by ditches, pools, and (beaver) ponds, around the margins.. a spring issues from a hill-side, one will also find it. It is a regular component of marsh and bog floras. [I suspect the water-mint herb may signify a pure water source (not overly acidic, stagnant or briny), a double-blessing for a thirsty hungry hominin in Europe, central Asia etc.]
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Apparently dark chocolate co-incidentally contains similar phytochemicals to peppermint, probably as anti-herbivore armour.
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That does make interesting the possible complementary use of isotonic saline sino-nasal rinses and mint/menthol vapors for nasal clearing, in association with cyclic dive foraging.
 
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(Forgot the ignore switch)

No, that is so old school. No one does science like that these days. Did you not get the notice?

And ruin all our fun? Please no! I need it for my daily dose of madness. And to get a few good laughs of the good recaps that others make from time to time.

"science"? This is the beach bar! cheers! gan bai! yam sing! bottoms up! :friday rofl
 
Parachuting whales have a BIG mouthfull
... humans are able to swallow small live fish whole (eg. goldfish).

I guess, you wet have HAD goldfishes...

I will say nothing about a BIG mouth, I will not say nothing about a BIG mouth, ...
:head
.
 
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Breath-hold champs: Naked Mole Rats - 30 minutes (virtually cold-blooded hairless social rodents which live in underground colonies for 20 years)
Naked mole rats may hold clues to surviving stroke
"Two University of Illinois at Chicago researchers report in the Dec. 9 issue of NeuroReport (now on-line) that adult naked mole rat brain tissue can withstand extreme hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, for periods exceeding a half-hour -- much longer than brain tissue from other mammals. But naked mole rats studied were found to show systemic hypoxia adaptations, such as in the lungs and blood, as well as neuron adaptations that allow brain cells to function at oxygen and carbon dioxide levels that other mammals cannot tolerate. "In the most extreme cases, naked mole rat neurons maintain function more than six times longer than mouse neurons after the onset of oxygen deprivation," said Larson. "We also find it very intriguing that naked mole rat neurons exhibit some electrophysiological properties that suggest that neurons in these animals retain immature characteristics."

That would be THE LAB RAT for freediving :blackeye
Maybe we trust more to EricF and Herbert though.
They are more like other freedivers and looks out a lot nicer than


File:Naked Mole Rat Eating.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(it looks so bad that DB cencored it ?! Maybe the word "naked" is too bad in .jpg, i guess...)

But must to say, that these in the pic (i hope you can open the pic-link above) are tough people:
"As vulnerable as naked mole rats seem, researchers now find the hairless, bucktoothed rodents are invulnerable to the pain of acid and the sting of chili peppers." Naked Mole Rats Can't Feel Burning Pain - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com
 
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hmmmm????? as i scratch my head pondering what this means.

DD (DivingDane....):confused:

Dribbling? That's for ball games!

Anything to say relevant to the nature of this thread? I'd certainly appreciate some sensible feedback, especially in reference to Diving and Surfacing efficiently, optimizing human capability in dive-foraging by considering the genetic vestiges and behavioral/social/technological artifacts of aqua-marine littoral ancestors.
 
That would be THE LAB RAT for freediving :blackeye
Maybe we trust more to EricF and Herbert though.
They are more like other freedivers and looks out a lot nicer than


File:Naked Mole Rat Eating.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(it looks so bad that DB cencored it ?! Maybe the word "naked" is too bad in .jpg, i guess...)

But must to say, that these in the pic (i hope you can open the pic-link above) are tough people:
"As vulnerable as naked mole rats seem, researchers now find the hairless, bucktoothed rodents are invulnerable to the pain of acid and the sting of chili peppers." Naked Mole Rats Can't Feel Burning Pain - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com

Pain is not so useful in underground colonies, they don't fight, avoid temperature extremes, eat only tubers, too deep and dark for predators which need normal air, no thorns, etc. All they do is chew dirt and roots, no need for pain or scent or vision sensation, probably small brains (mice have relatively large brains).

In a dive they might accidentally hyperventilate and pass out due to the rich O2 in surface air. They do have hair between the rear toes which help move dirt behind them, it might also work as flippers in water, like inter-digital skin webbing, but I've never heard of them swimming.
 
Taking a break, drinking some Muddy Waters deep blues organic coffee, admiring the coastal scenes of the bay and the giant redwoods portrayed by the local artists for this years' Artist's Challenge, rainy season beginning, reading Critical Path by Bucky Fuller (designer of the geodesic dome), and considering how archaic humans may have moved from the Mediterranean basin 4.5ma through the Peri-Tethys seas (beaver lodges, peppermint, salix) along the Caucasus & Himalayan foothills to the east Asian coasts (sea otters, salt water) and south to Sunda (dense boned Java man), then west to India 3ma (malaria genes) and on to Arabia (no retrovirus) and Djibouti/Rift Valley by 2ma (TB genes). Thats a lot of traveling! But humans are well balanced for long walks on the beach, even-paced jogging on the firm wet sand, wading & swimming when the shore is rough.

One last piece of the puzzle remains, the group size. Loss of canine fangs indicate a change in sociodynamics, predation & diet, loss of laryngeal air sacs indicate altered vocalization, basic stick/stone use becoming hydrodynamic spears & tomahawks indicate time spent crafting but not yet task specialization. Housing as beaver lodge, becoming lightweight huts, as opposed to ape tree nests.

Group size: 5ma, 3ma, 2ma, 1ma, .5ma, .1ma, .01ma?

Perhaps not answerable, humans tend to be adaptable to both "permanent" rigid hierarchy and fluid nomadism (featuring both herd mentality and individuality), before the advent of stored-seed agriculture this would have been even more true. Pair bonding is only slightly hard-wired into humans, serial monogamy is more typical, but societies produce many varieties of social relationships.

Aquatic dive-foraging would have benefited from both partner/parent diving and small group diving (buoyancy-ballast-breath), shore-side gathering/ambushing might advantage larger whole groups, while inland hunting/gathering might have split into divisions based on gravity (child, water-stone carrying)/aerobic pace...

generalist omnivores + basal technology + flexible sociality + early complex communication (vocal/gestural) + herbal medicants + vitamin deficiencies (vit C, Iodine/Selenium, Iron/copper, Omega 3 oils for brain, complex carbs, etc.) + selection for anti-pathogens (thallasemia, lemongrass, mints, salix cambium...) + cave cliff climbing but not rainforest canopy climbing...

(tidbits)

Muddy Waters Coffee - Buy Specialty Organic Coffee Roasted in Humboldt County
Your private sky: R. Buckminster ... - Google Books
(* THE-ARC *): Search results for spiral garden
 
More on milk composition, re earlier posts:

Yahoo! Groups
"Watery it may be in comparison to the milk of other mammals, but we have to remember that human milk is formulated for the needs of a human infant with an energy hungry brain. Human milk is good brain food for a newborn, it contains about thirty times more DHA than cow's milk, and has almost twice the lactose of the milk of other mammals (lactose is thought to facilitate myelination - the thermo/electro-insulative sheaths around nerve fibres)."

reference source:
Both EPA and DHA occur naturally in the body, where they have been shown to be important in membrane structure and function. They are found in especially large amounts in brain cells, eyes, nerves and andrenal glands. In particular, DHA is one of the most abundant constituents of brain structural lipids, where it has important effects on membrane order(fluidity), the activety of membrane-bound enzymes, and signal transduction. DHA is considered to be essential for the visual and neurological development of infants. The fraction of human mother's milk contains DHA-to-EPA ratios of 4:1, with DHA content being 30 times more than the amount of DHA observed in cow's milk lipid."

Processing of Fish Oils by Supercritical Fluids
Wayne Eltringham and Owen Catchple
(Amazon books)

Lactose (milk sugar)-rich & protein-poor milk: Milk composition in the same species varies greatly according to the newborn¹s age, the time of the day, the beginning or end of the feed etc., so that fat contents of human milk can range from 3 to 180 g/l (Ribadeau-Dumas 1983).

Diet, the maternal diet, is a factor in the DHA content of human milk, studies show those with fatty fish as a staple of their diet have the highest DHA content in their milk, higher in Japanese women, lower in Congolese women ( coastal communities versus those living inland, far from the coast?) [Bill/m3d @ AAT]
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Seawater & salt retention/excretion in active athletes:
(h/t Frank at Greg's site on ocean crossing in pedal boat)

"a recent study in ultra-marathon runners (100 mi) found that they lost between 11.2 and 144 g of sodium during the event. Obviously the range is huge and it really depends on the person. Total water loss in the same event ranges from 14 to 36 liters.

A liter of seawater contains approximately 35g of salt. One liter of blood contains 9g of salt. For every liter of seawater you drank you would need to add 2.8 liters of fresh unsalted water to be “even.”"
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We need clearer data, compare to: Morphological evidence of (vestigial) marine adaptations in human kidneys' by Marcel Williams:

"While the precursor fluid of eccrine sweating is isotonic with the blood plasma, the sweat excreted by humans is actually hypotonic relative to their intracellular fluids, Hypotonic sweat is produced because the duct of human eccrine glands are extensively supplied with blood vessels that reabsorbs most of the salt and returns it to the body. It is, also, interesting that a significant number of the eccrine glands distributed over the human body no longer function. So there appears to have been a selective trend in human evolution to reduce salt loss from the body through the venuous reabsorption of salt and through the deactivation of a significant number of eccrine glands. While sweating excessive amounts of salt would be deleterious to humans inhabiting hot and humid inland environments, sweating large quantities of salt that was isotonic with the blood stream would be advantageous in a hot and humid coastal marine environment where significant quantities of marine invertebrates were consumed."
 
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Researchers finds hidden sensory system in the skin
Elsevier
In the article, researchers at Albany Medical College, the University of Liverpool and Cambridge University report that the human body has an entirely unique and separate sensory system aside from the nerves that give most of us the ability to touch and feel. Surprisingly, this sensory network is located throughout our blood vessels and sweat glands, and is for most people, largely imperceptible.
(Do dolphins, seals, dugongs, naked mole rats have this?)

The research team discovered this hidden sensory system by studying two unique patients who were diagnosed with a previously unknown abnormality by lead author David Bowsher, M.D., Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool's Pain Research Institute. These patients had an extremely rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain, meaning that they were born with very little ability to feel pain. Other rare individuals with this condition have excessively dry skin, often mutilate themselves accidentally and usually have severe mental handicaps. "Although they had a few accidents over their lifetimes, what made these two patients unique was that they led normal lives. Excessive sweating brought them to the clinic, where we discovered their severe lack of pain sensation," said Dr. Bowsher. "Curiously, our conventional tests with sensitive instruments revealed that all their skin sensation was severely impaired, including their response to different temperatures and mechanical contact. But, for all intents and purposes, they had adequate sensation for daily living and could tell what is warm and cold, what is touching them, and what is rough and smooth."

The mystery deepened when Dr. Bowsher sent skin biopsies across the ocean to Dr. Rice's laboratory, which focuses on multi-molecular microscopic analyses of nerve endings in the skin, especially in relation to chronic pain conditions such as those caused by nerve injuries, diabetes, and shingles. These unique analyses were pioneered by Dr. Rice at Albany Medical College (AMC) along with collaborators at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. "Under normal conditions, the skin contains many different types of nerve endings that distinguish between different temperatures, different types of mechanical contact such as vibrations from a cell phone and movement of hairs, and, importantly, painful stimuli," said Dr. Rice. "Much to our surprise, the skin we received from England lacked all the nerve endings that we normally associated with skin sensation. So how were these individuals feeling anything?"

The answer appeared to be in the presence of sensory nerve endings on the small blood vessels and sweat glands embedded in the skin. "For many years, my colleagues and I have detected different types of nerve endings on tiny blood vessels and sweat glands, which we assumed were simply regulating blood flow and sweating. We didn't think they could contribute to conscious sensation. However, while all the other sensory endings were missing in this unusual skin, the blood vessels and sweat glands still had the normal types of nerve endings.
 
Myoglobin & Nitric Oxide reductase (synthesis metallo-protein model)

Nitric-oxide reductase is a key enzyme in the nitrogen cycle that is critical for life. Nitric oxide plays a key role in cell signaling and host-pathogen responses. Therefore, study of nitric-oxide reductase is an important step toward understanding these physiological and pathological processes.

It has been difficult to study nitric-oxide reductase, however, as it is a membrane protein that is not water soluble.

To mimic the structure and function of nitric-oxide reductase, the researchers began with myoglobin, a small muscle protein. Although smaller than nitric-oxide reductase and water soluble, myoglobin can reproduce key features of the native system. Into this scaffold protein the researchers engineered a new iron binding site consisting of three histidines and one glutamate.

In addition to their structural roles, the histidines and glutamate in the active site may also provide the two protons required for nitric oxide reduction.
Synthetic protein mimics structure, function of metalloprotein in nature
 
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Paranasal sinuses: in humans, each pair of sinuses drain downwards when standing upright, except the maxillary sinuses which drain upwards. This makes sense for a backfloater/dive-forager that used the salinated sinus technique, if the maxillary sinuses and middle ears were saline-filled during the horizontal resting periods to maintain a hypothyroidy 'cold-blooded' body at the warm surface (to maximally absorb solar heat) since the trigeminal nerve would remain immersed and relatively cool, allowing eupneic breathing and humming. After the dive-series was finished, wading to shore plucking items the head would tilt forward and the saline would drain out, a mandibular extension would release the saline in the middle ears for drainage.

(Again, this would need to be tested for verification and compared with archaic skulls.)
 
Just ducky | john hawks weblog

Spanish cave: Duck hunting, cooking, 155ka, -- genus Aythya/canvasbacks

"Something like 155,000 years ago, some hominins brought 8 ducks into the cave, cut them up (leaving cutmarks) and roasted some of them (leaving bone with burned and charred ends where the meat isn't)"....Which makes it interesting that, in these rather recent archaeological levels with clear evidence of cooking, there is good evidence that several of the ducks and tortoises weren't cooked before humans ate them".

[Before boats/nets, dive foraging-backfloating included waterside ambushes using spears, including diving beneath and leaping up from below flocks. The Saami people retain genes that protect them against high protein from a high meat diet, likely this was more common in human ancestors before the advent of early (sugar/starch) agriculture.]

'You are what your ancestors ate"
You are what your ancestors ate, part 1 | john hawks weblog

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Bugs didn't bother seashorelanders much (before sedentary agriculture changed lifestyle)

Natural mosquito repellents, many are scented/flavored edible herbs (taste good with seafood eg. lemon & fish) found around the Mediterranean region near water, some affect apnea or thermosensation. Some were eaten, others were chewed & spit into a salve lotion, perhaps mixed with oil or ochre clay, and applied to the skin, to protect against insects, eventually resulting in perfumes, incense, body paints, cosmetics.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_Myrtle]Myrica gale - Wikipedia [/ame]
Myrica gale is a flowering plant native to Europe, with sweet resinous scent, and is a traditional insect repellent, used by campers to keep biting insects out of tents. Sweet Gale can grow in a narrow band in the intertidal zone, especially if it has some logs, washed down into the estuary on which to establish itself. It is a favorite food of beavers and low beaver dams can be found in the intertidal zone if sufficient sweet gale is present. The ponds thus formed are often completely submerged at high tide but retain water at low tide and provide deep enough water to provide a refuge for fish, including juvenile salmon where the water is too deep for predation by wading birds. Myrica gale should not be consumed by pregnant women.[6][7] wikipedia

Swedish scientists have found that Achillea_millefolium/ yarrow extract repels mosquitoes.[1]

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvacrol]Carvacrol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] Carvacrol inhibits the growth of several bacteria strains, e.g. Escherichia coli[5] and Bacillus cereus. Its low toxicity together with its pleasant taste and smell suggests its use as a food additive to prevent bacterial contamination. The cause of the antimicrobial properties is believed to be disruption of the bacteria membrane. It is a potent activator of the human ion channels transient receptor potential V3 (TRPV3) and A1 (TRPA1). The TRPV3 protein functions in temperature sensation and vasoregulation. The thermosensitive members of this family are expressed in subsets of sensory neurons that terminate in the skin, and are activated at distinct physiological temperatures. This channel is activated at temperatures between 22 and 40 degrees C.

The TRPV3 channel is widely expressed in the human body, especially in the skin and brain. It functions as a molecular sensor for innocuous warm temperatures. TRPV3 channels seem to play a role in hair growth because mutations in the TRPV3 gene cause hair loss in mice.[4] The role of TRPV3 channels in the brain is unclear. The TRPV3 channel is directly activated by various natural compounds like carvacrol, thymol and eugenol. [Minty and savory herbs] Several other monoterpenoids which cause either feeling of warmth or are skin sensitizers can also open the channel.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_repellent]Insect repellent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
* Achillea alpina (mosquitos)
* alpha-terpinene (mosquitos)[17]
* Basil[18] Further information: Ocimum basilicum
* Camphor (moths)[20]
* Carvacrol (mosquitos)[17]
* Castor oil (Ricinus communis) (mosquitos)[21]
* Catnip oil (Nepeta species) (nepetalactone against mosquitos)[22]
* Cedar oil (mosquitos)[21] waterside
* Celery extract (Apium graveolens) (mosquitos)
* Cinnamon[24] (leaf oil kills mosquito larvae)[25]
* Citronella oil (repels mosquitos)[21] waterside
* Clove oil (mosquitoes)[21]
* Eucalyptus oil (70%+ eucalyptol), (cineol is a synonym), mosquitos, flies, dust mites[26])
* Fennel oil (Foeniculum vulgare) (mosquitos)[17] estuary
* Lemongrass oil (Cymbopogon species) (mosquitos)[21] shoreside
* Marigolds (Tagetes species)
* Marjoram (Spider mites Tetranychus urticae and Eutetranychus orientalis)[32]
* Neem oil (Azadirachta indica) (Repels or kills mosquitos, their larvae and a plethora of other insects including those in agriculture)
* Peppermint (Mentha x piperita) (mosquitos)[34] shoreside hybrid
* Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) (mosquitos,[26] fleas[35]), but very toxic to pets.[35]
* Pyrethrum (from Chrysanthemum species, particularly C. cinerariifolium and C. coccineum)
* Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) [32] (mosquitos)[21]
* Solanum villosum berry juice (against Stegomyia aegypti mosquitos)[37]
* Tea tree[38]
* Thyme (Thymus species)(mosquitos)[17]

Photic Sneeze Reflex The View From My Fishbowl
Many (not all) photic sneezers also sneeze when eating peppermint (eg. altoid).

Origin of peppermint: It is a native of the Mediterranean...It is a perennial herb that grows up to 1 meter (3 feet) high...It has underground runners by which it easily propagates. This herb has many species, and peppermint piperita is a hybrid of water-mint (M. aquatica) and spearmint (M. spicata). (wikianswers)

Spice Pages: Peppermint (Mentha piperita, spicata, arvensis, nane, mint)
Whenever highly concentrated menthol is used, one must consider that menthol is toxic to infants (external application only) and can (allegedly) induce apnoea. Characteristically pure and refreshing odour, pungent and burning taste (insecticide). The typical "mint scent" is most pure in peppermint...
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[Interesting, possibly there was early selection for (food/medicinal?) herb consumption which was flavorful (minty) that repelled insects (like lemongrass/citronella/citrus) in the Mediterranean during the MSC (when the Medit. mostly dried out 6-5ma and humans separated from chimps). Having a habit of snacking on waterside water-mint, spearmint and hybrid peppermint leaves, other aquatic herbs and seafood might have improved apnea diving, and the sneeze reaction to strong mint thus correlated to sunlight offshore foraging. (Consider that airborne allergies and asthma may have been alternative reactions which developed inland.)]

Water Mint (Mentha Aquatica, L.)
Water Mint(spearmint/peppermint) is a hygrophyte, luxuriating in the moisture of riversides, wet places by ditches, pools, and ponds, around the margins of which it forms quite a fringe in many places. Wherever a spring issues from a hill-side, one will also find it. It is a regular component of marsh and bog floras. [I suspect the water-mint herb may signify a pure water source, a double-blessing for a thirsty hungry hominin.]

Salmon/duck, crayfish/shrimp, clam/oyster, pond lily nut/water chestnut (instead of potato), with garnish of parsley/cilantro/fennel and sun-tea of peppermint/lemongrass/citrus peel, and sliced pith of papyrus (instead of bread) would be a fine nutritional meal and result in fresh lemony-minty breath (repulses mosquitoes). All of these were found at waterside, abundant around the Mediterranean-Black-Caspian Seas and tributaries long before cooking was practised.
 
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750ka Jordan Valley in Dead Sea Rift site shows use of waterside flora/fauna:
Yahoo! Groups

Fish & crabs on the menu 750,000 years ago at Sea of Galillee and the Hula wetlands
The fishy spaces of the Middle Pleistocene | john hawks weblog
"Fourteen archaeological horizons indicate that Acheulian hominins repeatedly occupied the lake margins, where they skillfully produced stone tools, systematically butchered and exploited animals, gathered plant food, and controlled fire.
"Edible plants include oak acorns, prickly water lily (Euryale ferox) seeds, and water chestnut (Trapa natans) fruits; these were probably staple foods because of the nutritive value of their starchy nuts. The 17 crab specimens...Of the seven pincers of the large cheliped present in Level 2, six occur around the hearth...

"The crabs aren't all around the fire because of a failed attempt to stay warm at night; the people brought them there and ate them. The fish remains are clustered around the fire and flintknapping areas because people were eating them.

"Here's a good moral of the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov story: It's now past time to stop talking about whether "pre-modern" humans used aquatic resources. They did, sometimes intensively. I never understood why this argument about seafood and modern humans ever got any traction. We've known for twenty years that coastal Neandertals ate shellfish. We also have known from the numbers in caves near the coast that people never seem to have transported them very far inland. So there was a good reason why you didn't see more evidence of seafood; there just weren't that many sites very near the coast. {The waterside sites have been washed out repeatedly with changes of sea level, obviously.} Well, here we have people eating crabs and lots and lots of fish, 800,000 years ago. We can add the paper by Jose Joordens and colleagues earlier this year about Trinil (I reviewed it in "The shells of Trinil"), a million years ago or more.

"Another reason why Gesher Benot Ya'aqov is interesting: outside Africa, Middle Pleistocene sites (and Late Pleistocene sites, for that matter) have a fairly extreme bias toward caves and rock shelters. Caves can preserve evidence of within-site spatial patterns, and certainly offer some exceptional opportunities to track human activity over long periods of time. However, humans aren't very likely to have schlepped hundreds of fish from a lakeshore into some remote cave. "
Filed under: * diet * Gesher Benot Ya'aqov * Levant * Middle Pleistocene

Crochet J-Y, Welcomme J-L, Ivorra J, Ruffet G, Boulbes N, Capdevila R, Claude J, Firmat C, Métais G, Michaux J, Pickford M. 2009. Une nouvelle faune de vertébrés continentaux, associée à des artifacts dans le Pléistocène inférieur de l'Hérault (Sud de la France), ver 1,57 Ma. C R Palevol 8:725-736. doi:10.1016/j.crpv.2009.06.004

"It's hard to imagine a nicer place for them to have lived 1.57 million years ago. The site is near the village of Lézignan-le-Cèbe, in the lower Hérault valley -- roughly between Montpellier and Béziers, France. { A few km upriver from the Medit. Sea shore} The lithic assemblage includes 20 artefacts of pebble-culture type. The supports and striking platforms are quartzitic pebbles, large basaltic flakes and fragments, and smaller flint pebbles." John Hawks
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Grain seeds (sorghum) and palm pith were cut with stone tools 105ka in Mozambique (boats, nets, netbags, baskets were developed by this time, allowing humans to disperse further from the shores sustainably, proof is marine shells brought far inland):
Yahoo! Groups
Seeds of MSA diet breadth | john hawks weblog

Livingstons' journey to the Zambezi lotus eaters:
Cuisines and Crops of Africa ? The Lotus Eaters of Central Africa Dianabuja's Blog

Foods and dining, lotus seeds, Batwa pygmy huts & marsh clay pots (originally from clam & ostrich egg shells for water carrying?), from the Zambezi, Rift lakes, Burundi, the Nile, along the Medit. to Georgia. (Bantu pastoralists arrived after Batwa in Burundi.)
Batwa Pots in Burundi: Traditional Clay Pot Cuisine, Pt. 1 of 2 Dianabuja's Blog
Using the Fruits of the Earth: Feasting in Burundi Dianabuja's Blog
 
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Dolphin jaw fat internal ear "pinnae" form = bat external ear pinnae form!

WHOI : Oceanus : How to See What Whales Hear
The inside story of dolphin ears
One of our first major discoveries answered the original mystery of the missing external ear: Without external pinnae and no obvious canal, how does sound enter dolphins’ heads and how does it get to the inner ear?

Researchers had speculated that since dolphin inner ear bones were located near their jaws, perhaps the soft tissues and bone of the jaw played a role. Unfortunately, that was hard to prove because fat tissue in the area deteriorated rapidly, and the relationships between tissues were disrupted as soon as they were cut during dissections.

CT scanning gave us the first undisturbed images of this region. In fact, it provided the critical clues: The fatty lobes near the jaw were connected to the ear and had shapes similar to bat pinnae. In effect, bats and dolphins seem to have parallel ear evolution. Dolphins have pinnae that are just as complex and large as bats, but they are internal—an advantage under water both hydrodynamically and functionally; these specialized fats have acoustic properties similar to seawater. Consequently, in terms of both shape and physics of sound in water, they are the aquatic analog of land mammal outer ears that were designed to capture and conduct air-borne sound.

The speed of sound in water
Scanning also allowed us to measure the locations of dolphin ears in situ, which explained why the ears are spread so far apart in dolphin heads. Dolphin ears are widely separated to accommodate the speed of sound in water, which is 4.5 times faster than in air.

One clue to determining the location of a sound source is the difference in arrival time between your ears. Humans have trouble locating sound sources under water, because, acoustically, our heads "shrink" nearly five-fold because of the increased speed of sound through water. As dolphins evolved, they expanded their heads and inter-ear distances to match sound speeds in water, which explains their extraordinary ability to localize sound sources three times better than humans.

Scanning also provided the first data on the inner ear of the true behemoths of the oceans. Blue and fin whale ears are massive. Their inner ear bones are approximately the size of a human brain case and are at least twice as dense. To demineralize these ear bones in order to dissect them by traditional methods would take more than two years. With scanning, we can digitally slice them to see inner ear features in less than one hour.

Anatomy reveals hearing capacity
Although all mammal ears have the same basic parts, there are important differences among species in some structures that account for differences in their hearing capacities. No two species have exactly the same hearing ability. Different animals can detect different frequency ranges and have different sensitivities at any one frequency. Most mammals hear frequencies well above the range of human hearing, termed ultrasonics. Some also hear well at very low frequencies, even at seismic sounds generated by earthquakes.

To study both normal and abnormal hearing, our laboratory has used the scanner to image all parts of the auditory system of more than 30 species of marine mammals. Each ear from an unknown hearer is compared with those from species with well-documented hearing characteristics. In particular, we construct “maps” of the stiffness and mass of ear components of animals whose frequency ranges are known and compare the stiffness and mass of newly imaged marine mammal ears to calculate their resonant frequencies. Thus, we can determine the critical commonalities for hearing in all mammals—as well as critical differences for specialized hearing like echolocation and for hearing under water instead of in air.

We also make maps this way for the few species of marine mammals for which hearing has been tested. These are our model controls, as our maps are consistent with audiograms or hearing curves of the tested animals. The new ear maps from untested species have led to the discovery that whales have some of the widest hearing ranges of any mammal and that some species are capable of hearing at seismic or hyper-ultrasonic frequencies.

We now know that some species of whales have a 12-octave hearing range, compared to eight in humans. Some whales hear well down to 16 hertz (or cycles per second), versus our lower limit of 50 hertz, while others hear as high as 200 kilohertz. The typical human high-frequency cutoff for humans is 16 kilohertz. For bats, it is 60 to 70 kilohertz.

The Dolphin Pod Cast: Clicks, tones

Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups

The speed of sound in water is around 1482 m/s approximately or 4.5 faster than the speed of sound in air: 331.5 m/s. Not only does sound travel faster in water, but it can travel farther. If it is loud enough and at the right frequency, and if the water conditions (like temperature and salinity) are just right, a sound may travel for thousands of kilometers. Given the ideal conditions that an undersea environment provides for sound transmission, it is no surprise that dolphins have evolved to be very vocal animals. Dolphins make a huge variety of sounds underwater, but they can be more or less put into two different categories: whistle; which are frequency-modulated pure tone sounds, and pulsed sounds; that sound like clicks, creaks, or rusty hinges. Generally, whistles are used for communication, and the pulsed sounds are used for echolocation, or dolphin sonar.
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Your breathing is controlled by parts of your brain called the medulla oblongata and the pons - they are located deep in your brain-stem down at the base of your brain. These little guys are in control of a lot of very important things that you do, including keeping your heart beating. And, you have them to thank every time you sneeze, swallow or blink - they control it all! Every second of every hour of every day the medulla oblongata and the pons are working hard to make sure that your body keeps trucking along.

1. Medulla oblongata

1. Lies between the spinal cord and the pons, anterior to cerebellum.
2. Vital centers that regulate heartbeat, breathing, vasoconstriction (blood pressure).
3. Reflex center for vomit, cough, sneeze, hiccup, and swallowing.

1. Pons

1. Bridge between cerebellum and CNS.
2. Helps with breathing
3. Reflex centers with respect to head movement in response to visual and auditory stimuli.


Here's an unsettling fact: for dolphins, the medulla oblongata and the pons do NOT control their breathing.

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Gulls, penguins, marine iguanas, and sea turtles all have the ability to sneeze out salt.
Noses
Whales and dolphins may also remove excess salt by their forceful blowing?
Ancient human seashore divers may have sneezed out excess salt as well, though not as effectively as reptiles. Possibly during chewing/suction feeding, the tongue acted as a piston squeezing out excess salt water before swallowing seafood.

Marine Vertebrates - MarineBio.org
Dolphins sneeze/exhale as fast as human photic sneeze
Galapagos marine iguanas sneeze on sunlit beaches - salt removal from nasal glands
Some marine birds (penguins?) sneeze - salt removal from nasal glands

"Salt glands allow marine birds to drink salt water and expel the excess salt from their bodies. Salt glands work by condensing salt from the blood into the sinuses allowing the bird to sneeze out the excess. Some marine birds push out salt directly from salt glands."
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Sneezing free diving iguanas

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Characteristics of Marine Life - Adaptations to Living in the Oceans
Whales can stay underwater without breathing for an hour or more because they make very efficient use of their lungs, exchanging up to 90% of their lung volume with each breath, and also store unusually high amounts of oxygen in their blood and muscles when diving.
 
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The Miocene was a relatively warm and wet period, allowing many species of hominoids to radiate from east Africa to EurAsia, many fossils are found from Kenya, Spain & Anatolia. It is hard to know which of these were ancestral to extant hominoids, if any.

IngentaConnect Magnetostratigraphy of the Vallesian (late Miocene ...
by M Garces - 1996 - Cited by 36 - Related articles - All 4 versions
The Vallesian spans 2.4 Myr, from 11.1 Ma (C5r.ln) to 8.7 Ma (C4An) and correlates to the early Tortonian. Keywords: Catalonia Spain; Vallesian; ...
www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/0012821x/1996/.../art00110 - Similar -

Climatically influenced interactions between the Mediterranean and the Paratethys during the Tortonian
The Paratethys was a separate branch of the Tethys Ocean that developed as a series of inland seaways, brackish lakes, and wetlands within the interiors of central-eastern Europe and western Asia during the Oligocene-Neogene. A short-lived connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Paratethys continental realm toward the very end of the Messinian salinity crisis is documented on the basis of the Paratethyan affinity of the brackish shallow water faunas in several Mediterranean localities. Nevertheless, there are at present only a few comparative studies on stratigraphy paleobiogeography and paleoceanography of these two contiguous Neogene provinces [e.g., Benson, 2000 ]. In this study we compare and integrate different stratigraphic data sets from middle-upper Miocene sequences of the central Mediterranean and the western Pannonian basins (central Paratethys) that are seen as parts of a complex paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic system. On the basis of this comparison we propose that the Paratethys had a long-lived influence on the large-scale oceanographic circulation of the eastern Mediterranean, at least since the Tortonian (between 9.7 and 7.5 Ma); that is, well before the onset of the Messinian Lagomare event (∼5.5 Ma). The integrated stratigraphy of coeval marine (Tortonian) and continental (Transdanubian) strata presented here suggests that mutual interaction and interdependence of climate subsystems ostensibly developed over the Mediterranean area and central-eastern Europe continent and were orbitally forced. Long-eccentricity insolation forcing is hypothesized to have exerted a broad control on the freshwater budget of the brackish Pannonian Basin and the consequent oceanographic setting of the Mediterranean region.

The MSC (Messinian Salinity Crisis) 5.5ma dried out much of the Mediterranian due to Africa colliding with Europe blocking the Tethys seaway. However the earlier Tortonian had similar effect when Africa collided with west Asia (Iran, Anatolia), providing a bridge form primate dispersal.

I think the LCA HP (Last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees) split in the Mediterranean basin during the MSC, the chimps moved west into Africa, humans went east to the Black-Caspian (Sarmatian), and some expanding east to Takla Makan-Turpan shallow seas to the Yangtze River, which they followed to the Pacific coast and then south to Sunda (Java) and back around India'/Arabia to Levant/Djibouti and Mozambique. During these post-MSC travels, pockets of early humans would stay in warm regions (H georgicus at south Caspian Dmanisi, H neadertalensis further west in Europe and Levant), some of these would hybridize, others went extinct.

ScienceDirect - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology : Palaeoecology and chronology of the Vallesian (late Miocene) in the Eastern Mediterranean region

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortonian]Tortonian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
ScienceDirect - Earth and Planetary Science Letters : The ‘Tortonian salinity crisis’ of the eastern Betics (Spain)

During the Miocene, human ancestors were not yet diving. Only after the LCA HP spllit 5.5 million years ago did human ancestors begin to submerge the face and breath-hold in shallows while foraging water plants and fauna, most likely this is when the Chromosome 2 fusion occurred in humans but not great apes.
 
Genes give Africans a better sense of taste - life - 02 January 2009 - New Scientist

New research suggests that Africans have more sensitive palates than Europeans and Asians - at least for bitter tastes. A survey of numerous African populations in Kenya and Cameroon found a striking amount of diversity in a gene responsible for sensing bitter tastes. "If they have more genetic diversity, there's more variation in their ability to taste," says Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who presented the findings at a recent conference. Europeans and Asians typically have only one of two forms of a gene called TAS2R38, which detects a bitter-tasting compound called PTC and similar chemicals in vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts. The gene makes the difference between people tasting a weak dilution of the compound or not, with little nuance in between.

However, the compounds that cause bitter tastes can be thyroid-damaging, notes Paul Breslin, a neuroscientist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. If you have a healthy thyroid you want to eat these things because they're packed with vitamins, he says.

Seafood benefits : A diet high in iodine - common in coastal-dwelling people - protects against such thyroid damage, but, iodine intake typically drops off the further people live from the ocean. So bitter-sensitive genes could help these people avoid toxic veggies, Breslin speculates. Tishkoff wonders why, then, Europeans lost some the ability to sense bitterness. Different diets and evolutionary forces offer one explanation, she says. Their lack of bitter taste diversity could also be due to a paucity of genetic variation in the small number of African migrants that became ancestors to the Europeans. In general, sub-Saharan Africans boast more genetic diversity than people native to Europe and other continents.

Avoiding potentially toxic plants might not be the only reason for diversity in bitter taste genes, says Theodore Schurr, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. His team found lots of variation in bitter taste genes in a Siberian population that has historically eaten few vegetables.
People with a gene variation that dulls their taste buds to bitter flavours drink twice as much alcohol as those with more sensitive palates, suggests a US study. The bitter chemical 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) is often used in taste tests and in 2003 a gene influencing the sensitivity to PROP was discovered. The gene, TAS2R38, codes for a taste bud receptor and has several natural variations.

TAS2R38. About half of the world's population have at least one copy of the low-sensitivity variant AVI, he says.

A new study of ancient DNA offers preliminary support for that conclusion. Neanderthals possessed a gene mutation that would have meant they couldn't taste bitter chemicals found in many plants. There has been speculation that this mutation, which occurs in a taste receptor gene called TAS2R38, is beneficial to humans because it makes vitamin-packed vegetables more palatable. It probably arose in the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals more than a million years ago. The gene encodes a receptor that detects a chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, which is closely related to compounds produced by broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts (cruxiform vegetables, related to mustard (which may have been consumed to repel mosquitoes around the Mediterranean?))
 
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