Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Article - What Killed the Neanderthals? PAST: The Newsletter of the Prehistoric Society Number 85 Spring 2017

An interesting article on environmental change perhaps being part of the story of the demise of the Neanderthals. Myself I think they died out because their birth rate dropped off for unknown reasons. When the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens produced offspring only the female children appear to have survived although this would definitely need proof but have noted that thought being expressed. Perhaps this loss of male children wasn't exclusively when they bred outside of their community; perhaps they already had declining birth rate for reasons unknown to us at the moment (this paper proposes environmental change as a possibility). Environmental change is taking its toll on our own species and that is not likely to change unless we alter our much too tardy attitude towards protecting the environment in a very drastic way.  

Back to my research time and I will continue formatting the Siderfin book - 11th Generation. The 12th Generation will be the last one as it has the births of individuals in the early 20th century including my mother Helen (Pincombe) Blake daughter of John Routledge Pincombe son of William Robert Pincombe son of Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe who was the daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) (Siderfin) Rew. Normally as a one-namer I would not follow the female lines after marriage beyond the first generation but I came across this book by James Sanders on the Siderfin family and discovered eventually that there were some difficulties with his Pedigree Chart. Being a novice when I first found the book I had no idea that there were inconsistencies with the actual historical documents and his book. He did a great job of amassing a great deal of information including transcribing some latin documents so do not want to lose that part of his book and it is included in my revisiion,. But the errors in the Pedigree Chart do need to be removed and the Chart upgraded with the documents that have been located in both the Somerset Archives and the National Archives of the United Kingdom. I await one more item from the National Archives due around the middle of August. 

I also want to clean the bricks once again alongside the pavement in the laneway and around the patio and porch then we can add the hardening sand before the fall comes so that is ready for the winter once again. That will be my outside chore for this week. Towards the end of August I will start to clear the weeds here and there although will need to wait for a good frost so that I can cut down the plants for spring. Another lovely sunny day and a fresh August morning greeted us today. 

Gradually my very full house is emptying as more books and material went to the local genealogical library. Hopefully some of it will be useful to people visiting the library. We also have another set of paper data this time to give to one of Edward's half first cousins for their mutual Link line. That is yet another box of information that will go to someone also interested in that particular line that they shared. We are gradually concluding our summer of redistribution with another six boxes prepared to go to researchers and descendants. Yesterday we packed up three old teapots that belonged to various members of Edward's maternal line to go to his niece (the eldest grand daughter). Another small pile of saleable objects for Salvation Army that will interest some. We are left with about twelve boxes now and next summer we will work on the original images of the Kipp family that were early in the Chilliwack area of British Columbia and of the Allen-Parlee-Folkins families that were Loyalists living in what eventually became New Brunswick. That will be an effort to create a small fonds for these families at the archives so that those original images are not lost to time but are available to researchers. That will basically leave us with our own family stories - eight years before children, all the years with children and then our travels back to Europe and the British Isles as well as many extensive trips into the Northeastern United States following the trails of Edward's ancestors which we did do for most of our marriage. That is still a huge amount of material as there are more than 50 large binders full of images. All of this material back into the mid 60s is indexed and recorded in excel files. Edward was a very careful researcher. 

His online published tree has all of the information in it which he gleaned from the records over time. 

Breakfast awaits and another beautiful day on God's earth. A very slight rustling in the leaves to show His presence but He only watches and waits for us to become the kind of people that we need to be to survive on this earth; follow the commandments brought to us by Jesus - love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. When we do that we can find that uplifted plain of peace.

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