“I’m here to fight,” said Sylvia Kizer, Environmental Services Worker at Stroger Hospital. “They’re doubling our health insurance. Forcing me to choose between paying for my healthcare or putting food on my table. That’s not right!”
Reconstructions made from the ancient skeletons found at archeological sites:
The Whitehawk Woman. She lived in England around 5,000 years ago and was buried with great care. She was also buried with a newborn infant, and died aged between 19 and 25 years old. Researchers believe she died during or very soon after childbirth. Her bones indicate she was otherwise in good health.
Adelasius Ebalchus. He lived in Switzerland 1,300 years ago, and was in his late teens/early twenties at the time of his death. His gravesite indicated he came from wealth, and his bones showed he was well-nourished. His bones also showed that Adelasius suffered a lingering infection; archeologists believe he most likely died from lung inflammation.
The Slonk Hill Man was found semi-crouched in a grave near the seaside town of Brighton, England — in the same area as the Whitehawk Woman. Their lives, however, were separated by nearly 3,000 years. The Slonk Hill Man lived during Britain’s Iron Age. The reconstruction artist (an archeologist and sculptor) described him as being “very good looking”, tall, muscular, and in robust health at the time of his death. There were no obvious signs of what caused his death.
The Wari Queen. She was found in 2012 by a Polish-Peruvian archeology team, entombed in an underground mausoleum in El Castillo de Huarmey, Peru. She lived approximately 1200 years ago and died in her sixties. Her bones indicate she led a leisurely life, and her decayed teeth indicate a diet high in sugar (most likely she regularly drank the sugary corn-based beer, chicha). Other artefacts in her chamber suggest she was an expert weaver — a very highly-valued craft.
Almost 90 years ago, Japanese soldiers occupying northern China forced a Chinese man to help build a bridge across the Songhua River in Harbin. While his supervisors weren’t looking, he found a treasure: a remarkably complete human skull buried in the riverbank. He wrapped up the heavy cranium and hid it in a well to prevent his Japanese supervisors from finding it. Today, the skull is finally coming out of hiding, and it has a new name: Dragon Man, the newest member of the human family, who lived more than 146,000 years ago.
In three papers in the year-old journal The Innovation, paleontologist Qiang Ji of Hebei GEO University and his team call the new species Homo longi. (Long means dragon in Mandarin.) They also claim the new species belongs to the sister group of H. sapiens, and thus, an even closer relative of humans than Neanderthals. Other researchers question that idea of a new species and the team’s analysis of the human family tree. But they suspect the large skull has an equally exciting identity: They think it may be the long-sought skull of a Denisovan, an elusive human ancestor from Asia known chiefly from DNA. Read more.
Half the 64.3 million people who sought help through the regular unemployment program from March 1, 2020, through March 31, 2021, were rejected or not paid, the data show. That’s twice the rate during the Great Recession. Many of them then applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a program designed by Congress to provide a cushion for gig workers and the self-employed, only to be turned down for that as well.
