Science is looking into the early history of language, which is difficult because spoken words left no trace before the 19th century, and written words are only a few thousands of years old. But when we look into the ancient history of counting, we actually have physical evidence of prehistoric numbers. A South African cave held skeletons dated to the Middle Stone Age, some 42,000 years ago. In the 1970s, a baboon bone was found there, with 29 deliberate markings, evenly spaced but made at different times with different tools. This was a tally stick, used to record a number of something. This stick is not only evidence of human counting, but the earliest known use of an external object to record information.

Human counting appears to have arisen naturally and independently, because it is so useful for keeping track of allies, enemies, threats, and possessions (not to mention children). Different cultures came up with different numerically-based systems. The most obvious is base ten, because we have ten fingers. But there are also systems based on five, for one-handed counting, or twenty when you include toes, or other numbers based on handy body parts. It is believed that ancient Sumerians, who bought and sold goods, developed writing as an extension of keeping accounting records, which began with numbers. Read how these early tallying methods came about at Lapham's Quarterly. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Roger McLassus)

Dustin Ballard has a particular talent for taking iconic musical masterpieces and showing us how common they really are by presenting them in a completely different and nonsensical musical genre. Since he discovered artificial intelligence programs, this has been made easier and even seems strangely more authentic. The band Nine Inch Nails had a depressing song called "Hurt" that was famously covered by Johnny Cash in 2002. If you liked the song, you thought of it as deep. If you didn't, it was pretentiously angsty. Ballard, as YouTuber There I Ruined It, does just that by having The Beach Boys render the song in their good time surfer rock style. The results are completely ridiculous.  -via Laughing Squid  

When you try to determine superlatives, the first thing is to define your terms. Are we looking for the world's oldest language that is still in use? The world's oldest written language? Or the first spoken language? Actually, all three are being studied, but not yet determined. Linguists and historians are fairly sure that spoken language is much older than written language, and should be old enough that no one uses it anymore. It's even possible that the first representative language was gestural. And all that makes finding it very difficult.

But linguists are searching. They are working backwards to find the point in history where a language splits into two or more in different populations who no longer understood each other. Human migration and cultural changes also figure in. For example, Hebrew and Aramaic have written records going back 3,000 years, but both belong to the Afroasiatic family of languages, which may stretch back 10,000 to 20,000 years. But some Asian languages may be just as old, we just don't have the evidence. And there is the possibility that all humans once spoke the same language and every language is descended from that one. Read how this research is being carried out and some of the contenders for the title at Scientific American. -via Digg

(Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

WRCB channel 3 news anchor Cornelia Nicholson was recording some promo clips for the 11 o'clock news last weekend when a story popped up on the teleprompter that she hadn't read. She almost lost it when she saw the image of herself and her boyfriend, reporter Riley Nagel, on the screen. Nagel had arranged a surprise proposal to be taped for posterity. His initial idea was to do it during the live newscast, but his supervisors decided a taping session would be better in case anything went wrong. Nothing went wrong, outside of both broadcasters being visibly nervous, and the recorded proposal was shared with the television audience on the late news that night.

The two had met while working together in Billings, Montana, and when Nicholson landed a job at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, TV station, Nagel followed her, taking a job at FedEx until he was also hired at WRCB. -via Fark

Writers get their inspirations from many places. It could be a real-life incident that happened to them or that they read about, or maybe previous literature. Get more than one writer involved, and you've got multiple inspirations. Small details are added to flesh out the story, and those details may have come from somewhere completely different. Stories are changed, added to, and sometimes improved as they move from book to movie to TV spinoff. And it's fun to find out how far an idea traveled to get on our TV screens.

I must admit that I expected something supernatural when I first read the prophesy.

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him

Tolkien's disappointment became Treebeard, and possibly Groot as well. That itself could become your inspiration for a new story- if you don't see what you want in pop culture, write it yourself!

Now that's a story worth looking up! Read about 28 of the inspirational origins of what you see in movies and TV, from the main story arc down to the smallest details, coming from different sources, at Cracked.

Tech video producer Marques Brownlee tells us about Cleo, a healthy dog who only has three legs. Four-legged animals can get along on three legs, but it puts a long-term strain on the leg that has to support twice the weight on its own, leading to joint pain and bone deterioration in old age. What Cleo needs is some support for her weight. The company 3DPets makes custom-designed prosthetics for pets using 3D scanning and 3D printing. No two dogs are alike, and neither are their amputations, so the scanning, printing, and fitting are crucial. The technique of 3D printing is perfect for this application, because if an animal's prosthetic doesn't fit and work perfectly, you can't explain to them how they should just put up with it. Cleo went through a breaking in period to get used to her new leg, but is coming to trust it and use it.  -via Laughing Squid

Honestly, you don't have to be a taxonomy geek to enjoy playing this game, but it helps if you understand a bit about animal classification. In Metazooa, you have 20 guesses to find the mystery animal of the day. Each wrong guess will give you another branch on a taxonomy tree. You will find out if your guess fell into the same phylum, clade, suborder, etc. as the real answer, or if not, you can look in another direction. The taxonomic tree pictured here is what they presented as an example, and has nothing to do with today's animal. Be warned that there are a lot of common animals that aren't in their database, but guessing one will not use up a turn. Oh yeah, they keep track of your wins, too.

I got today's answer in ten guesses, but it wasn't easy. In every taxonomic rank, I confronted words I had never seen before, and had to look them up. It's a good thing the game doesn't have a time limit. They have an option for a practice round that I didn't see before I played; just click the head-and-shoulders on the right. A new mystery animal will be loaded at 8 PM EDT tonight, and maybe at the same time every day. I will give it another try then. Maybe I'll learn a few things about taxonomy! -via Metafilter

Brights Zoo in Limestone, Tennessee, had a blessed event about a month ago when a reticulated giraffe gave birth to a healthy female calf. The six-foot-tall baby looks very different from her mother, though. She has no spots, just a coat of smooth brown fur.

The last known giraffe with no spots was born in 1972. At the time, there were three plain brown giraffes in the world. Now, this new baby may be the only one on earth. Fred Bercovitch of the organization Save the Giraffes says the spotless coat may be due to a genetic mutation, most likely inherited from the mother, but the phenomenon is so rare that it's difficult to study.

The zoo is holding an online poll to decide the calf's name. The four names to select from are:

1.  Kipekee - Unique
2.  Firyali - Unusual or Extraordinary
3.  Shakiri - She is most beautiful
4.  Jamella - One of great beauty

The winning name will be announced on Labor Day, September 4. -Thanks, WTM!

(Image credit: Brights Zoo)

During the 1980s and '90s, New York City parks commissioner Henry Stern insisted that all new city playgrounds incorporate animals to climb on. But over the years, that playground equipment was replaced by more modern, accessible designs, and the concrete animals were discarded one by one. But no more. From now on, they will be taken to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where the “Home for Retired Playground Animals” has been established. The first inductees are two dolphins, one aardvark, one elephant, one camel, and one frog from all over the city. Last Friday, the Parks Department held an official retirement party for the first group of concrete creatures installed there. Children who grew up playing on these animals can now visit them anytime, and even take their children to see them. However, a sign asks visitors not to climb on them, because they've had enough. That's what retirement is all about. See pictures of the new park installation at Time Out. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Daniel Avila/NYC Parks)

We understand why bird embryos depend on a yolk sac for nourishment, as they are in an eggshell. But human embryos also develop a similar sac, beginning about a week after conception. A few weeks later, it atrophies and disappears, without ever containing yolk substance. Could this be an evolutionary leftover from creatures who were hatched from eggs? That doesn't make much sense, because that was a long way back down the evolutionary path. We left eggshells behind, so why not yolk sacs?

A new study reveals that scientists have learned a lot about the function of a human yolk sac. This is where the very beginnings of blood cells are developed, both red and white cells. It's also the place where enzymes and other parts of what will become the human immune system are manufactured. Those important cells are made and sent to the embryo's developing liver, where they will divide and multiply (as biology bends mathematics) to populate the body. Once those cells are "seeded," the sac is no longer needed. Read more about what we've learned about the human yolk sac at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Goh et al., Science, 2023)

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (previously at Neatorama) catalogued more than a thousand stars before the telescope was invented. For his service, King Frederick II of Denmark gave him an island to use for his studies. There, Brahe had an observatory built, which he called Uraniborg. It may seem strange to have an astronomical observatory with no telescope, but he had other instruments, and a stable spot to observe the heavens was a boon to his studies. Uraniborg was a walled haven with a strictly laid out geometrical design. It had observation points, towers, a fruit orchard, and an herb garden. It also had a three-story house with living quarters on the ground floor, and a second floor for Brahe's 16th-century astronomical instruments: astrolabe, quadrant, sextant, and armillary sphere. The third floor was for students. Oh yeah, there was an alchemy lab in the basement. Science was going through some changes.  

A change in the monarchy left Brahe without the funds to run Uraniborg, and it was abandoned, then destroyed after Brahe's death. But archaeological excavations in the 1950s unearthed enough of the original foundation that it has been partially restored and recreated. Read about the observatory without a telescope at Amusing Planet. 

Roundabouts, sometimes called traffic circles, are safer, more efficient, and environmentally-friendly than intersections with stop signs or stoplights. They are everywhere in the UK, so much that there's a club for them. In this video we get to hear from their delightful leader, who goes by the title the Lord of the Rings. But the US has been slow in adopting roundabouts for several reasons. Many drivers don't understand them at all, like the people who suddenly had to deal with one in Kentucky a couple of years ago. This video will not help you in that area, as they switch back and forth between British and American roundabouts, with people driving the "wrong" way in one or the other.

But the US is slowly installing more and more of them. I hope road designers will learn from their mistakes. There is an interstate exit in my area that has low visibility and fast traffic on the cross highway. The reason for the low visibility is that the ramps had to be carved into rocky hills, and there wasn't enough carved away. So they installed roundabouts, but still didn't carve more of the rock away. Therefore, even though the signage is good and people know how to use a roundabout, the circles are way too small, visibility is still low, and those intersections are now effectively four-way stops. There are some kinks to be worked out before US traffic flows through roundabouts from sea to shining sea. -via Laughing Squid

Although the dates are not strictly documented, it is believed that Leonardo da Vinci worked on painting the Mona Lisa for years. We can do better than that, now that we have computer paint programs! And like anything else, we can make a competition out of it. Matt Round brings us the game Clone-a Lisa, in which you have 60 seconds to recreate Da Vinci's Renaissance portrait. When your time is up, you will be given an automatically-generated percentage score. Apparently filling the frame with color goes a long way. Those who painted the background first tend to score higher than those who drew a face and then ran out of time (like me). I should have read the Mastodon thread on how the game was created. That might have given me a heads up before I dived in. Members of Metafilter were kind enough to share their attempts.

Mine, with a very low score somewhere in the 20% range, is at the bottom right. I lost track of time. Sixty seconds goes by fast! I'm sure I can improve upon that if I tried it more than once. You will do better.

The World Yo-Yo Contest 2023 took place over the weekend in Osaka, Japan. Hajime Sakauchi won the 2A division with this amazing performance. I would have ended up with two yo-yos bound for the trash, hopelessly tangled, and that would have been after the first few seconds. If this is the winning performance in the 2A, what did the other divisions do? It turns out that the divisions are all different styles of yo-yo performance. 

There’s different classifications of yo-yo trick routines. 1A is your standard yo-yo trick. One yo-yo, the string is tied to both finger and yo-yo.

In 2A, you get two yo-yos, one for each hand, independently doing tricks at the same time. 3A is two yo-yos, but the two yo-yos interact. In 4A, the string is attached to the finger, but not to the yo-yo. The player attaches and detaches the yo-yo several times during the routine, and just does amazing things with the string.   

Continue reading to see the champions of each division.

At just about the time my two daughters were outgrowing their Disney princess obsession (and their homemade costumes), the Disney Princess group was born. Andy Mooney took over as the head of Disney's consumer products division, and saw the value in building a new franchise with all the Disney princesses from the classic animated films together. Strangely, the company had tried to keep them separate previously for both artistic and economic reasons that seem to make no sense now. Mooney's idea took off, and the Disney Princesses were a juggernaut. The group not only encouraged a rewatch of the older movies, but also boosted the profiles of the newer princesses, like Moana and Rapunzel, as they joined the gang. And they sold a lot of Disney merchandise.

The original group of Princesses were Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan. The inclusion of Mulan indicated that a character didn't have to be even a fictional princess to be a Princess. Tinkerbell (from Peter Pan) and Esmerelda (from The Hunchback of Notre Dame) were later added, then were quietly removed. Elsa and Anna from the 2013 hit Frozen were never invited to the group, even though they were royalty. There are now 13 Disney Princesses, from different countries, different time periods, and even different animation styles. But what about Tinkerbell, Esmerelda, Elsa, and Anna? Find out why some princesses are not Disney Princesses at Mental Floss.