Category: archaeology

Another Jesus relic goes down the drain

March 21, 2020 • 12:30 pm

UPDATE: Greg found the debunking paper from J. Archaeological Science Reports (Science got the name wrong), and a judicious inquiry will land you the paper.

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I’m about to start reading the book below, which was published on March 1 and was kindly sent me by the author, Andrea Nicolotti, a professor at the University of Turin: specifically “Professor of History of Christianity and Churches”. That’s ironic because, according to Andrea, the Shroud of Turin is a bogus relic—something that most people acquainted with the evidence have realized for a while. As Andrea wrote me:

There is no evidence that the shroud comes from the time of Christ. On the other hand, there are three major contrary proofs: 1) the historical documents, which points to the 14th century (that was showed for the first time by a serious French historian more than 100 years ago); 2) the radiocarbon analysis, which points to the 14th century; 3) the study of the type of fabric, which points to the 14th century. Obviously these three arguments are ignored or manipulated by believers in authenticity. In my book you will find a detailed discussion of the historical matter (point 1) and the story of the C14 radiometric dating (point 2). I have also published an in-depth study about the type of fabric, but in another book (point 3)—unfortunately only in Italian. In the book you will receive I can’t go deeper into all the scientific aspects, because it remains a history book. In any case, I know all the literature about the argument, and if you will have any doubts on some issues I can provide you with the bibliography.

It’s a long book—524 pages—but I’m looking forward to finally seeing all the arguments collected in one place.

As the cover says, the Shroud is “the world’s most famous relic” (at least of Christianity), but another famous one has just bit the dust, at least according to Ann Gibbons’s new article in Science (click on screenshot). Her piece recounts a new analysis published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, a journal I can’t access through my library.

It’s a short piece about what was thought to be the “Nazareth Inscription” a Greek inscription on a piece of marble acquired in 1878 by a curator at the Louvre, and left behind with a note that the stone “came from Nazareth”. The Greek inscription is an “Edict of Caesar” that threatens death to anyone who robs the grave that the marble presumably topped.

Naturally, Biblical scholars—often faithheads who want to prove the truth of the Bible rather than question it—took the curator’s note and the inscription to mean that, yes, Jesus himself was in that tomb. The article, says epigraphist (one who studies inscriptions) John Bodel of Brown University, was “considered by many Biblical scholars to be the oldest physical artifact connected to Christianity.”

Well, rational people should abandon that view, according to the new article in the journal by Kyle Harper. Chemically analyzing the marble, Harper showed that it was a close match to the chemical composition of rock from a marble quarry on the Greek island of Kos. That doesn’t rule out that the marble was mined in Kos and transported to Nazareth, but Bodel considers that unlikely.

Further, says Gibbons, other epigraphists argue that the kind of Greek used on the inscription “was rare outside of Greece and Turkey.”

So what is this thing, if not a warning to leave the bones of Jesus alone? Gibbons summarizes the paper’s conclusions:

Based on the style of the inscription and the age of the quarry, Harper and colleagues propose the object was carved in the first century B.C.E. for a ruler on Kos known as Nikias the Tyrant. Sometime after his death in about 20 B.C.E., angry citizens of Kos pried open his tomb and dragged out his corpse, according to an ancient Greek poem.

Then-Emperor Augustus, who knew of Nikias, may have ordered the tablet to re-establish law and order in the region, Harper says, although that inference has not yet been proved. Harper’s team plans to use stable isotope analysis on other Roman and Greek marble artifacts, too, he says. “We want to apply this to other tales.”

And another beautiful idea destroyed by ugly facts.  It’s curious, but not surprising, that every time a bit of evidence offered to support Jesus’s existence is debunked, “Biblical scholars” and believers don’t reduce their belief in a Bayesian way. But when evidence is adduced in favor of Jesus (e.g., they once thought the Shroud of Turin was real because they said it contained pollen from spring-blooming flowers of the Holy Land), they strengthen their belief. This is no way to deal with evidence. But it’s Christianity, Jake!

h/t: Ken

 

Ilhan Omar about to introduce pro-boycott (read: pro-BDS) resolution in Congress

July 18, 2019 • 9:00 am

If you had any doubts about Ilhan Omar’s Islamist and anti-Israel agenda in Congress, have a look at her latest attempt at legislation: House Resolution 496 (see pdf here).

The two screenshots below, which link to the articles, are from the Al-Monitor and the Forward, respectively.


From the Forward:

The bill was prepared by Omar, her fellow Muslim Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and Democrat John Lewis of Georgia, an African-American with a long history of civil rights activism. (This underscores the sad fact that the black community is becoming increasingly dismissive of Israel’s right to exist. The Black Muslims became explicit anti-Semites a long time ago.)

If you read the resolution, you’ll see that it’s clever, not mentioning BDS but instead describing boycotts that were harder to criticize; and also affirming Americans’ civil rights to boycott nations or companies—which doesn’t need affirming. But it also criticizes recent legislation created by several states to punish companies that cut ties with Israeli companies operating from the West Bank. (I happen to agree that states shouldn’t be regulating companies in this way.) That legislation has been declared unconstitutional several times, and so it’s up to state governments and then the courts to confect such legislation and then adjudicate its legality. Congress, as far as I know, can’t make a law that prohibits states from penalizing countries via boycotts.

To support the “social justice” of her resolution, Omar uses several examples of boycotts, of course leaving out BDS resolutions:

“(1) attempting to slow Japanese aggression in the Pacific by boycotting Imperial Japan in 1937 and 1938;

(2) boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust;

(3) the United States Olympic Committee boycotting the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the preceding year; and

(4) leading the campaign in the 1980s to boycott South African goods in opposition to apartheid in that country;”

How convenient of Omar to use boycotts of Nazi Germany as a way to leverage boycotts of Israel!

But the legislative proviso is largely irrelevant, for the real point of Omar et al.’s legislation is exactly what you’d think: to publicly punish Israel by affirming BDS and to give a Congressional imprimatur to that punishment.  In fact, Omar has made that explicit in interviews. From the Forward (my emphasis):

Representative Ilhan Omar introduced on Tuesday a Congressional resolution defending the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

The resolution does not explicitly mention Israel, but does state that “all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad” and criticizes anti-boycott legislation that has been passed in more than half of the 50 states. (Some of those laws have been overturned for violating the First Amendment.)

“We are introducing a resolution … to really speak about the American values that support and believe in our ability to exercise our first amendment rights in regard to boycotting,” the Democrat from Minnesota told Al-Monitor. “And it is an opportunity for us to explain why it is we support a nonviolent movement, which is the BDS movement.”

The Al-Monitor quote is exact, and can be seen at the first link above.

Now this resolution doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of passing, much less even making it to the House floor: as the Forward says, “Democratic leaders are reportedly planning to soon introduce their own resolution condemning the BDS movement. That resolution has 340 co-sponsors.”  If you want to say that Omar is indeed making legislation rather than tweeting and making speeches, here’s one example of that “legislation”.

And the 340-Democrat-sponsored condemnation is just: BDS is basically an anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist movement, its leaders deeply infused with the desire to get rid of Israel as a nation. If you don’t already know that, I’ve already adduced lots of evidence in previous posts.

At any rate, let there be no mistake about Omar and Tlaib’s aims in Congress: to undermine and destroy Israel and, I think, to push an Islamist agenda. While I defend their right to do this, and condemn Trump’s racist remarks about the four Justice Democrat—who include Tlaib and Omar—I see these two as anti-Semites who will use their time in Congress to forward an agenda of Islamism.  (You could claim that, at least for Omar, this reflects the will of her constituents, but I don’t know what their will is, and of course their are non-Muslims in her district as well.)

Elder of Ziyon analyzes this call for boycotts and explains why it’s more anti-Jewish than anti-Israel:

Even if this resolution gets defeated, their underlying logic that implies that Israel is a violator of human rights on par with Nazi Germany will be debated in Congress and enshrined in the proceedings of Congress forever. As I have recently noted, the debate itself is what BDS is after, not the boycott – they want to normalize anti-Zionism and its antisemitic components as a mainstream opinion.

As I have noted in the past, BDS is explicitly antisemitic. The call to boycott “Israeli” goods does not extend to good created by Arab Israelis. The call to boycott “settlement” goods only applies to goods created by Israeli Jews, not Israeli Arabs. A look through the businesses in industrial parks in Mishor Adumim, Barkan, Atarot and other “settlements” show quite a few with Arab names, like Radwan Brothers Refrigeration and Air Conditioning or Khaled Ali Metals or the Shweiki Glass Factory.

None of them are on the lists of “Israeli” companies to boycott. Because they are not owned by Jews.

Note well that these companies are owned by Israeli Arabs, who are citizens of Israel and live behind the “Green Line”. But they’re not called “settlers”—only the Jews in that area are given that name. Regardless of what you think about Israelis in the West Bank—and I think that any two-state solution will have to displace some of them—the fact that the targets are Israeli Jewish but not Israeli Arab companies bespeaks not an attempt to undermine Israel, but to undermine Jews.

Just as I (and Omar) contend that Trump is racist, I also contend that Omar and Tlab are anti-Semitic, and have behaved in accordance with that view since taking office. It will be interesting to see how Ocasio-Cortez votes if this bill ever comes to the floor. One thing is sure: although she may vote in favor of it, or may abstain, she won’t vote against it. After all, that would cause fissures in “The Squad.” In the past, Ocasio-Cortez has avoided answering all questions about BDS, and has waffled on Israel, about which her knowledge seems sketchy, and has also waffled on a two-state solution, which she once approved but then babbled incoherently when asked if she still supported it.

The usual anti-Semitic organizations are of course in favor of Omar et al.’s bill: here’s the odious and ill named “Jewish Voice for Peace”, known for their anti-Semitic activities on college campuses.

National Geographic touts a 3-D film on the “tomb of Christ” (now with bonus comment by Alvin Plantinga)

April 25, 2018 • 12:30 pm

UPDATE: Note that an “Alvin Plantinga” has commented favorably on the National Geographic fiction (comment #14 below). I can’t be sure that it’s the Alvin Plantinga, known for convoluted Sophisticated Theology™, but I’m guessing it is. If you respond to him, be polite!

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What the bloody hell is happening with National Geographic? Article after article is about religion—often Christianity—and all of these latter assume that Jesus was a real person (the implication is a divine person). Is this the way the Murdochs, who now have a controlling stake in the magazine, expect to turn a profit?

Reader Scott called my attention to a new exhibition at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. Here, Ceiling Cat help me, is the announcement (click on screenshot to go to page):

At the bottom of the photo you can read this: “PLAN YOUR VISIT: Exhibition features a short 3-D film with active 3-D glasses. Exhibition not recommended for guests susceptible to motion sickness or dizziness.”

Not recommended for those susceptible to fairy tales, either!

The whole page and its accompanying pdf pamphlet cast no doubt on the claim that this is indeed the tomb of Christ, nor, indeed, on the existence of Christ himself. The only nod to skepticism is this brief statement in the pdf file:

EVERYONE, WHETHER DEVOUT OR NOT, can feel a spiritual power when visiting holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, home to what many Christians believe is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection.

“Can feel”? Or “will  feel”? (There’s a difference.) At any rate, the whole allure of this exhibit is the claim that it really is Jesus’s burial spot, something that couldn’t be verified unless there were some contemporary information inside the tomb.

But as we all know, and which Biblical scholars are loath to admit, there is no evidence for the existence of a Jesus person outside of Scripture—and if he existed, there should be. I’d love for National Geographic to publish a scrupulously honest article: “Jesus: Did he really exist?” Imagine how subscriptions would drop!

For example, in the first video below, produced by the magazine, it exhorts you at 40 seconds in to “Team up with conservation experts and historians as they race to restore the tomb of Christ.” Really? Is there no doubt about this? And get a load of the “science and faith” bit at the end, as if they are complementary ways to establish the provenance of this tomb.

In the second video, also by National Geographic, they open the sealed tomb! At 1:34, the caption appears: “This is the first time that anyone alive today has seen the holy bed.” That, of course, presumes it’s the holy bed. Do they expect to find an engraving that says “Jesus slept here”?

Of course there are no remains or other indications of what was in this spot, but that of course is just what the Bible predicts! In this case, the absence of evidence IS evidence.

At best the archaeologists might be able to date the cavity to around the time Jesus is supposed to have lived, but that will convince only the credulous. There’s a reason they’re called “sheep.”

When did National Geographic completely abandon its scientific bent to pander to the faithful? If you still subscribe, why?

National Geographic again osculates Christianity: touts possible discovery of Jesus’s tomb

November 28, 2017 • 10:30 am

For several years I’ve been pointing out National Geographic’s increasing descent into religious osculation, its lips placed firmly at the level of the Christian tuchas.  They love, for instance, to write articles about connecting Mary and Jesus to archaeology, which, though hardly conclusive, act as confirmation bias for Christians who aren’t comfortable accepting the Gospels based on faith alone. Those people need evidence and National Geographic gives it to them. If Christians didn’t want real empirical evidence, articles like this one wouldn’t be published.

Here, for instance, is one of those articles that gives succor to Christians who are encouraged to think that Jesus’s tomb has been located. Despite the site’s disclaimers (“purported tomb”), everything in the piece, including a video featuring an enthusiastic pro-Jesus professor, points toward the conclusion that yes, Jesus’s tomb has been found (sans bones, of course).

What, exactly was found? Well, a limestone tomb beneath Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre that was apparently discovered by the Romans and supposedly turned into a shrine around AD 326. The evidence for its site as Jesus’s burial place?? A marble slab (engraved with a cross) over the cave, which is taken for evidence of a shrine (e.g., Jesus), and the dating of the mortar affixing the slab to the limestone to about 345 AD.  That’s about it. Since this was either during Constantine’s reign (the Roman emperor who became a Christian) or shortly after he died, one can confect a story that Christian Romans were making memorial of Jesus’s tomb.

Against this conclusion are the facts that the “tomb” contained several niches for different bodies (this is a bit unclear), that there is no dating that it existed around 33 AD (when Jesus was supposedly crucified), the absence of any writing on the slab to indicate that Jesus was buried within, any evidence of the bones (and of course there wouldn’t be any since he was bodily resurrected), and the nonexistence of extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus’s existence as a person.  Christians would argue, of course, that Jesus wouldn’t get a new tomb, but his body simply dumped with others, and of course would scoff at the paucity of evidence for a real-life Jesus.

Regardless, what’s clear here is that National Geographic has abandoned any journalistic objectivity or skepticism, assuming that Jesus really existed and was crucified, and and has failed to point out the weaknesses of its case. I wonder why any atheist or science-minded person would even subscribe to this rag any more.

Here’s the memorial over “Jesus’s tomb”; the article doesn’t show the “tomb” itself.

 

h/t: Graham

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 8, 2017 • 7:30 am

I have a comfortable backlog of photos, but please keep them coming in—I can never have too many. Today we have an unusual contribution documenting ancient human activity in Africa. The photos come from Richard Bond, and his notes are indented:

I have wavered for a couple of years over whether these photographs would interest you, but in view of the recent stir about possible humans beings in North America 130K years ago, I thought that I might as well submit them. The photographs are of an excavation site at Olorgesailie in the eastern Rift Valley in Kenya that has yielded a huge number of stone tools. The site was occupied for possibly as long as a million years until about 200K years ago, almost certainly by Homo erectus.

Entrance to the site is through a tiny but excellent museum. This has examples of stone tools that one may actually handle: photos #1 & #1b. The hand axe in #1 is dated at 780K years old.

Photo #2 shows the first humanoid fossil found at the site. The source of the rock for most of the tools was Mount Olorgesailie, a now-extinct volcano shown in photo #3.

The shallow depression in the foreground used to be a lake. (Sorry about the haze; this appears to be a feature of the Rift Valley during the burst of very hot weather just before the end of the dry season.) The area used to be very volcanically active. Photo #4 was taken a little south of Olorgesailie while flying on an earlier visit to the Masai Mara, and, despite the haze, shows clearly several extinct volcanos.

Photo #5 shows an igneous dyke: note the erosion of the softer sedimentary rock that covered and preserved the site.The tools were first discovered spewing from erosion channels.

Photos #6 & #7 show some of these tools, laid out more or less to represent them as they were discovered.

Photo #8 shows a current excavation; the darker bands across the middle are ash from two of the many eruptions that allow accurate dating of the finds.

Photo #9 gives an idea of the depth of the erosion that exposed the tools, and photo #9b is one example of the many animal fossils found on the site.

One curious aspect is that obsidian tools (now in the Nairobi National Museum) have been found, despite the nearest source of obsidian being 50 km away. This might imply some sort of trading structure based around Olorgesailie.

I have visited many historical sites from the mundane to the spectacular, but this is my favourite. I actually became quite emotional in a couple of places, most unlike me. When I visited in 2013, I was shown round by the curator, a charming, softly spoken man who would dearly like more visitors. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get there. For a start, few Kenyans know about it, and it took a most helpful porter at the Panafric (my favourite Nairobi hotel) about half an hour to find a taxi driver who would take me. Although it is just off the direct Nairobi-Magadi road, the bus takes an alternative route that passes through more villages. (I would not risk the dreaded matatus even though they are better than they used to be.) Taxi (not cheap for one person!) or hire car are the only real options. I did not begrudge the expense, because the drive itself is fascinating, not least for the spectacular views of the Rift Valley. My driver had never known about the place previously, and from his comments on our return drive he was considering the possibilities for lucrative future business, so perhaps by now the Panafric might lay on much cheaper trips by minvan. Incidentally, like most Kenyan taxi drivers, mine was excellent company, very informative, and spoke fluent English.

Nature paper suggests humans inhabited North America 130,000 years ago

April 27, 2017 • 5:43 pm

by Greg Mayer

As Jerry noted yesterday, in a new paper in Nature, Steven R. Holen and colleagues report finding the remains of a butchered 130,000 year old mastodon in San Diego. (If you haven’t already done so, do go take a look at Jerry’s post, which includes a video press release, and illustrations from the paper.)

The key words in the first sentence are ‘butchered’* and ‘San Diego’. The first word indicates that people had taken the bones of the 130,000 year old mastodon apart– which in itself would be a “neat, but what’s the fuss” result. It’s ‘San Diego’ that’s the cause of the fuss. The peopling of the Americas has been a contentious topic for some time, but virtually all the debate has concerned a relatively slim time interval– 12-30 kya (see here for a previous discussion at WEIT, and this news piece in Science about two recent papers with contrasting conclusions). The San Diego find is thus 100,000 + years earlier!

So what evidence do they have for this early arrival? First, they have the mastodon, whose bones were fractured in ways which they find inconsistent with damage by carnivores or the environment, but which appear consistent only with being struck with implements. They did a lot of breaking of elephant bones in order to try to simulate the damage to the mastodon, and concluded that tools alone could do the trick. The mastodon’s remains were radiometrically dated at 130.7 ± 9.4 kya. In addition to the mastodon, they also found stone tools, which they interpret as hammerstones and anvils.

These results would have many important implications for human evolutionary history; but first we must ask, are the results correct?

I must admit I’m dubious. The anvil and hammerstones are not the sorts of objects which are unquestionably manufactured– they are not like finely fluted spear points, whose human origin cannot be doubted. The breakage patterns in the bones do indicate that the breaks occurred perimortem, but I’m not sure the breaks could not be due to non-human causes. The dating is directly on the mastodon, which is good– they’ve not dated some possibly extraneous item which could have been redeposited from earlier strata. But, nonetheless, dating is subject to various artifacts.

As Carl Sagan used to say, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” What makes the current claim extraordinary is that there’s no other evidence of human presence in the Americas for ca. 100+ K years after this find. And it’s not like the late Quaternary of America is an unstudied or poorly known stretch of time! I don’t regard fracture patterns and crude tools to be sufficiently extraordinary evidence to overcome, in a single go, the weight of that 100,000 year absence. It is much more reasonable to think that the new data can be reconciled with all the past data in a way that does not require us to discount the past data. And, thinking, “they must have made a mistake somewhere with the new data”, is a perfectly plausible way of reconciling the two. This conservatism in the face of anomalies is a key part of the method of science– it properly proportions belief to the evidence.

On the other hand, the new data do not threaten to overturn any fundamental principles, merely a seemingly well-attested fact of evolutionary history, and such facts have been overturned before. So, we must ask, but what if they’re right?

The most interesting implication, to me, is that if there were people here 130 kya, they went completely extinct.  It means that human habitation of an entire hemisphere is an iffy thing. The real first Americans got wiped out by something– disease, predators, climate, competitors, whatever. Who would these now extinct people have been? Well, if they got to America not too long before the radiometric date, they would probably be Neanderthaloid (by which I mean the varied archaic Eurasian subspecies of Homo sapiens with which anatomically modern humans interbred after their spread from Africa). If they came much earlier, they might have been Homo erectus (which would make Harry Turtledove’s A Different Flesh, in which the first European settlers of America encounter not Indians, but “sims“, prophetic!).

There would also be a possibility that these first Neanderthaloid Americans survived, and that the anatomically modern human colonizers of ca. 20 kya, interbred with them in the course of replacing them, just as their forebears did in Asia. However, because American Indians are not, as far as I know, enriched for Neanderthaloid alleles relative to other Eurasians (who are 1-4% Neanderthaloid; a bit higher in Melanesia), this seems unlikely. (There are claims out there that Indians are enriched for Neanderthaloid genes, but I don’t know how that got started; East Asians, from which, at least generally, American Indians descend, are Neanderthaloid enriched relative to Western Europeans, which seems to indicate more than one episode of interbreeding on the course of their migration from Africa.)

* I use “butchered” here in the sense of “processed for eating”, as the bones were presumed broken apart to get at the marrow. The paper uses “butcher” in the narrower sense of “cut with a knife or similar implement”. The paper does not say the mastodon was cut with a knife or other sharp tool.

Holen, S. R., T. A. Deméré, D. C. Fisher, R. Fullagar, J. B. Paces, G. T. Jefferson, J. M. Beeton, R. A. Cerutti, A. N. Rountrey, L. Vescera, and K. A. Holen. 2017. A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA. Nature 544:479-483.

Breaking science news: humans in North America 130,000 years ago?

April 26, 2017 • 2:15 pm

I’ll just put this up here without analysis, as I haven’t yet read the paper. But it’s big news if true. A new a new report Nature by Holen et al. (reference below; free access) claims to have found human tools associated with crushed and cracked mastodon bones at a site in southern California, with the date a full 130,000 years ago! 

Conventional wisdom puts the arrival of humans in North America about 15,000-20,000 years ago, coming from Siberia across the Bering Strait. These hominins are nearly ten times older, and well older than those individuals who left Africa about 60.000 years ago to colonize the globe.

Who were these hominins? Were they a species that went extinct? Or is it a mistake? If this is true, it’s a remarkable and game-changing discovery.  Have a look at the paper, below, but first here’s Nature’s video:

And here are some of the tools:

a–d, Anvil (CM-281). a, Upper surface. Boxes indicate images magnified in b–d; dashed rectangle, magnified in b, small dashed square, magnified in c and solid square, magnified in d. b, Cortex removal and impact marks (arrows). c, Striations (arrows) on the highest upper cortical surface ridge. d, Striations (diagonal arrows) and impact marks with step terminations characteristic of hammer blows (vertical arrows). e–i, Hammerstone (CM-383). e, Impact marks. The box indicates the magnified images in g and h. f, Upper smoothed surface. g, Deep cracks and impact scars (arrows). h, Impact scars from g, showing results of three discrete hammerstone blows on an anvil (arrows). The large flake scar (central arrow) has a clear point of impact with radiating fissures. The small scar (right arrow) has a negative impact cone and associated scars and fissures preserved beneath a layer of caliche. i, Striations (arrows) and abrasive polish on upper cortical surface (near black North arrow in f). Scale bars, 5 cm (a), 2 cm (b, g, h), 1 mm (c, i), 2 mm (d), 10 cm (e, f).

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Holen, S. R., T. A. Deméré, D. C. Fisher, R. Fullagar, J. B. Paces, G. T. Jefferson, J. M. Beeton, R. A. Cerutti, A. N. Rountrey, L. Vescera, and K. A. Holen. 2017. A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA. Nature 544:479-483.