Appalled after reading vitriolic comments against indigenous people online, a Canadian man has invited them to share his land, rent-free.

Joel Holmberg, who lives with his family on a five-acre property in northern Alberta, wrote a Facebook post offering to share the land with an indigenous family. “Any First Nations family that just wants to live on the land, hunt, fish, grow food and spend their life immersed in their culture, raising their kids traditionally, should get a hold of me,” he wrote.

Image: Neil Rosenstech

“We have a home for you here. Seeing as how my five acres, though it constitutes my life’s work, in reality is stolen land and I know that.”

Holmberg, who lives near Barrhead, a town that is 100km north-west of Edmonton, explained that First Nations people had helped him frequently throughout his life. “This is my way to help bring about change, and hopefully with similar efforts from like-minded folks, we can rewrite the story of Canada, and share this land with love and respect.”

This article is featured in issue 93 of Positive News magazine.

Subscribe now to get the magazine delivered to your door each quarter.

The post Canadian man offers to share his land with First Nations family appeared first on Positive News.

An exhibition examining key moments in Britain’s migration history is to open next week at the Migration Museum in London. No Turning Back: Seven Migration Moments that Changed Britain aims to show visitors how migration has shaped society here.

The exhibition opens at a time of ongoing Brexit negotiations, which have sparked a national debate about the movement of people to and from Britain. But, say the organisers of No Turning Back, Brexit is by no means the first pivotal moment in the UK’s migration story.

“Brexit is currently the centre of attention, but Britain has faced many moments throughout history which have had a major impact on the movement of people to and from these shores,” said Sophie Henderson, director of the Migration Museum Project, the organisation behind the museum.

“Some brought people together, others moved people apart. All had a profound effect on individuals who lived through them – and on the country as a whole.”

Positive News was the first media organisation to take good news seriously.

Please support our pioneering journalism

Moments highlighted in the exhibition include the expulsion of England’s entire Jewish population in 1290, the large increase in the number of people defining themselves as mixed-race in the 2011 census, and the first East India Company voyage to India in 1607.

Each of the moments is explored through a combination of personal stories, photography and art from a range of British and international contributors.

No Turning Back features the UK premiere of Humanae, a global photography project by Angélica Dass, which aims to document every shade of human skin tone. Other exhibits include work by London-based collage artist Hormazd Narielwalla responding to the pieces of yellow felt that all Jewish people in medieval England were required to wear prior to expulsion. Original artwork, memorabilia and photography from the Rock Against Racism marches and concerts in the late 1970s, which featured performances from bands including The Clash, Sham 69 and Generation X, are also included.

Against the current backdrop of fierce national debate, the need for exploration of this important theme could scarcely be greater

The Migration Museum opened in April 2017 and aims to explore how migration has influenced British society. Currently a temporary space, those behind the project hope to find a permanent home for beyond 2018.

Barbara Roche, chair of the Migration Museum Project, said: “No Turning Back encapsulates what the Migration Museum for Britain that we are creating is all about – providing a cultural space to explore how immigration and emigration has shaped who we are today as individuals, and as a nation.

“And against the current backdrop of fierce national debate, the need for exploration of this important theme could scarcely be greater.”

No Turning Back: Seven Migration Moments that Changed Britain runs from 20 September – 25 February 2018 at the Migration Museum in Lambeth, south London. Admission is free.

Image: Angelica Dass / Juan Miguel Ponce

Our reporting uncovers solutions to society’s challenges.

Support inspiring journalism, as a Positive News member

The post Migration nation: exhibition highlights key moments that have shaped Britain appeared first on Positive News.

Archaeologists have discovered stone artefacts in Kenya dating back over three million years, making them the oldest stone tools yet discovered. The finding pushes back the record of stone tools by 700,000 years. While the tools predate the earliest known representative of our own genus, Homo, it is not yet possible to pin down exactly which species created the tools.

However, the artefacts may provide a link between the kinds of stone tool used by chimpanzees and other primates for pounding and nut-cracking but which lack intentionally removed flakes and more sophisticated edged stone tools created by hominins. The findings, which add to a number of recent discoveries of the use of stone tools by early humans, could mean that the time has come for us to start considering whether all hominins used tools.

Unmodified stones of a suitable size can be used as tools, for example as hammers to break open nuts. But the use of sharp-edged flakes, hammered from the edge of a large rock, shows a sophisticated understanding of how rocks break and the fine motor skills to break them usefully. That’s why sharp-edged tools are so important as markers in the archaeological record and why they mark out hominin technology as distinct to that of other primates.

“The tools could be our first glimpse of a previously unknown phase in technological evolution.”

Until now, the oldest known stone artefacts are from around 2.6m years ago, discovered in Gona, Ethiopia. Tools from about 2.3m years ago have also been discovered at the sites of Hadar and Omo (both in Ethiopia) and Lokalalei in Kenya. The recent discovery was made not far from there at the archaeological site Lomekwi 3, situated to the west of Lake Turkana in Kenya.

While it is currently unknown which species of hominin made the ‘Lomekwian’ (the name the researchers have proposed for the find), the early human ancestor Kenyanthropus platyops was present in West Turkana at this time, and Australopithicus Afarensis remains have been found in east Africa from this period. Perhaps it’s now reasonable to consider that all hominin species used tools, made of either stone or other perishable material.

Given how common tool use is in other contemporary primates such as chimpanzees, we should consider that stone use might have a very deep prehistory. Perhaps back to, and maybe before, our evolutionary paths diverged. The tools from Lomekwi are significant as they provide a snapshot of early tool use.

In fact, the authors suggest that the tools could be our first glimpse of a previously unknown phase in technological evolution. This is because the tools produced at Lomekwi look different to the stone tools from the other sites, and also from the Oldowan, the early technologies from Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania, which are about 1.9m years old.

One of the reasons Lomekwi tools are different from Oldowan technologies is that they are larger. It also seems like the Lomekwi produced their sharp flakes by pounding stones against a passive hammer or anvil, rather than through a freehand technique more often used in Oldowan technologies. The Lomekwi flakes also show more errors and indications of poorer flaking technique than that recorded for later Oldowan assemblages.

These features are compelling and provide a link between the kinds of gestures we see in the nut-cracking activities of chimpanzee stone tool-use behaviour, and the more precise and controlled freehand flaking of the later Oldowan technologies.

Like what you’re reading? We want our readers to #OwnTheMedia. Support Positive News by becoming an owner now: www.ownthemedia.org

The authors are clear in stating that this discovery, however significant, only “marks a new beginning to the archaeological record” of stone tool use. When flaked stone tool use by primates began, or indeed how the makers of the Lomekwian might be related to our own genus Homo, are questions that remain to be answered.

History shows that studies that push back archaeological frontiers of knowledge are always, as they should, met with scepticism from fellow scientists. It will be interesting to see what scrutiny the Lomekwi finds come under now that they have been published. In fact, a study in 2010 reported bones exhibiting cut marks consistent with stone tools dating to 3.3m years in the Lower Awash locality of Dikika, Ethiopia. This would have pushed back the age of stone tool use at that time by 800,000 years.

However, these claims were confronted, with critics saying that other factors, such as trampling by herbivores, could have been responsible for the observed damage to the bones. Even a small degree of uncertainty was enough to place the finds under a cloud of ambiguity. Without the stone tools themselves or supporting evidence from other localities at the time, it simply wasn’t enough to push the widely accepted archaeological record of tool use beyond 3m years.

Five years on the landscape has changed. The genus Homo has now been dated back to 2.8m years, half a million years older than previously thought. Recent work has also indicated that it would have been possible for these early hominins to makes such tools, as they could use their hands in a manner similar to modern humans.

The ‘Lomekwian’ will no doubt come under close examination in the days and months ahead, but it arrives into a wider discipline which can accommodate it theoretically and, to a degree, expected its arrival.

In light of the finds, we might see a reassessment of the Dikika bones, and more focus on deposits of this age more generally across east Africa, and beyond. The immediate impact of this new work will be to reinvigorate research which pushes boundaries, searching in the places and in the time scales where the archaeological record is currently unknown.

First published by The Conversation

The post Three million-year-old tools discovered in Kenya are oldest ever found appeared first on Positive News.

When a German fisherman saw an old brown beer bottle floating in the Baltic Sea, he could never have predicted that it was more than a century old. Even greater was his surprise when he found out there was a message in the bottle, dated 1913.

The International Maritime Museum in Hamburg, Germany, analysed the worn postcard hidden inside the beer bottle and discovered that it was written by a baker’s son, Richard Platz. Though much of the ink had faded, a return postal address was readable. The museum tracked down the sender’s 62-year-old granddaughter, Angela Erdmann, in Berlin.

Like what you’re reading? Positive News depends on your support to continue delivering high-quality inspiring content. Please donate here if you want to see more.

Erdmann never knew her grandfather, and was ‘very surprised’ when a genealogical researcher knocked on her door to deliver the message from her grandfather, who was 20 years old when he threw the bottle into the sea. “He included two stamps from that time that were also in the bottle, so the finder would not incur a cost. But he had not thought it would take 101 years,” she told the Guardian.

“In our age of high-speed communications, time stands still for a moment”

Researchers believe it is the oldest message in a bottle ever found. The Guinness World Record for the previous oldest one dated from 1914 and was discovered after 98 years. The bottle and message are on display in the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg, where experts will attempt to recover the full message.

Holger von Neuhoff, curator at the museum, said: “Why are people all over the world moved by a plain, handwritten postcard in a bottle? Because in our age of high-speed communications and great uncertainty, time stands still for a moment. It is a message from the past, reaching us now. For many visitors in our museum, this was a short journey back in time, combined with the question: what will people in 101 years think about us?”

The post World’s oldest message in a bottle found appeared first on Positive News.