On 20 December 2013, at its 68th session, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) proclaimed 3 March – the day of signature of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973 – as UN World Wildlife Day to celebrate and raise awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants. The UNGA resolution also designated the CITES Secretariat as the facilitator for the global observance of this special day for wildlife on the UN calendar. World Wildlife Day has now become the most important global annual event dedicated to wildlife.

World Wildlife Day (WWD) will be celebrated in 2022 under the theme “Recovering key species for ecosystem restoration”. The celebrations will seek to draw attention to the conservation status of some of the most critically endangered species of wild fauna and flora, and to drive discussions towards imagining and implementing solutions to conserve them. All conversations will be inspired by and seek to inform efforts towards the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals 1 (No Poverty), 2 (Zero hunger) 12 (Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns), 13 (Climate Action) 14 (Life Below Water) and 15 (Life on Land).

According to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, over 8,400 species of wild fauna and flora are critically endangered, while close to 30,000 more are understood to be endangered or vulnerable. Based on these estimates, it is suggested that over a million species are threatened with extinction.

Continued loss of species, habitats and ecosystems also threatens all life on Earth, including us. People everywhere rely on wildlife and biodiversity-based resources to meet all our needs, from food, to fuel, medicines, housing, and clothing. Millions of people also rely on nature as the source of their livelihoods and economic opportunities.

In 2022, World Wildlife Day will therefore drive the debate towards the imperative need to reverse the fate of the most critically endangered species, to support the restoration of their habitats and ecosystems and to promote their sustainable use by humanity.

https://wildlifeday.org/

Paris, 24 February 2022

ICOMOS deplores the lives already lost and threatened by the deterioration of the situation in the Ukrainian territory. ICOMOS also fears that serious threats weigh on Ukraine’s heritage. As one of the foremost organisations in the heritage field and Advisory Body to the World Heritage Committee, it reminds all involved of the extreme fragility of the cultural heritage during armed conflict, even to unintentional damage, and the commitments of care they have made under the UNESCO Cultural Conventions – in particular the 1954 Hague Convention and its two Protocols, the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage – and their absolute duty to do everything in their power to preserve all heritage, in all its components and layers, from damage. ICOMOS is at the disposal of its colleagues and the authorities in Ukraine for any support or advice it may be able to give in safeguarding cultural heritage or risk preparedness measures.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—Cosmos Magazine reports that a vertebra unearthed at the site of ‘Ubeidiya, which is located in the Jordan Valley, has been dated to 1.5 million years ago. When compared to the remains of other early humans, the fossil is evidence of human dispersal out of Africa in successive waves, rather than as a single event, according to Alon Barash of Bar-Ilan University. Palaeoanthropologist Ella Been of Ono Academic College suggests that the bone belonged to a male child between six and 12 years of age who stood about 70 inches tall, making him relatively tall when compared to the 1.8-million-year-old remains of early humans found at the Dmanisi site in Georgia. “Due to the difference in size and shape of the vertebra from ‘Ubeidiya and those found in the Republic of Georgia, we now have unambiguous evidence of the presence of [at least] two distinct dispersal waves,” Barash said. The two species also produced different stone tools, and lived in different types of habitats, he added. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports

According to a statement released by the University of Huddersfield, a DNA study of remains unearthed at the Links of Noltland site on the island of Westray indicates that immigrants to Scotland’s Northern Isles in the Early Bronze Age replaced much of the local population. It had been previously thought that the Neolithic cultural center on Orkney became more isolated as Europe entered the Bronze Age. The immigrants, who descended from pastoralists from the steppes north of the Black Sea, likely spoke Indo-European languages. DNA studies of remains in Europe suggest this wave of migration was led by men who mixed with local women. But in Orkney, Martin Richards of the University of Huddersfield and his colleagues found that the newcomers were mostly women who mixed with male lineages from the local Neolithic population. These male Neolithic lineages dwindled during the Iron Age, however, and are very rare today, Richards explained. Archaeologists Graeme Wilson and Hazel Moore suggest that Orkney’s self-sufficient farmsteads may have been stable enough to survive and negotiate with the new arrivals. “This shows that the third-millennium B.C. expansion across Europe was not a monolithic process but was more complex and varied from place to place,” concluded team member George Foody. 

By Jane Recker

Researchers excavating the ancient Egyptian city of Athribis have discovered more than 18,000 ostraca—inscribed pottery shards that essentially served as “notepads,” writes Carly Cassella for Science Alert. Ranging from shopping lists to trade records to schoolwork, the fragments offer a sense of daily life in the city some 2,000 years ago. Per Newsweek’s Robert Lea, the trove is the second-largest collection of ostraca ever found in Egypt.

Ancient Egyptians viewed ostraca as a cheaper alternative to papyrus. To inscribe the shards, users dipped a reed or hollow stick in ink. Though most of the ostraca unearthed in Athribis contain writing, the team also found pictorial ostraca depicting animals like scorpions and swallows, humans, geometric figures, and deities, according to a statement from the University of Tübingen, which conducted the excavation in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

A large number of the fragments appear to be linked to an ancient school. Over a hundred feature repetitive inscriptions on both the front and back, leading the team to speculate that students who misbehaved were forced to write out lines—a schoolroom punishment still used (and satirized in popular culture) today.

There are lists of months, numbers, arithmetic problems, grammar exercises and a ‘bird alphabet’—each letter was assigned a bird whose name began with that letter,” says Egyptologist Christian Leitz in the statement.

Around 80 percent of the ostraca are written in demotic, an administrative script used during the reign of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII (81 to 59 B.C.E. and 55 to 51 B.C.E.). Greek is the second-most represented script; hieratic, hieroglyphics, Greek, Arabic, and Coptic (an Egyptian dialect written in the Greek alphabet) also appear, testifying to Athribis’ multicultural history, per Science Alert.

“We will be able to make a case study of daily life in late Ptolemaic/early Roman time[s] once we have analyzed all the texts or at least a larger part of it, which will take years,” Leitz tells Newsweek.

Tübingen archaeologists began digging at Athribis—located about 120 miles north of Luxor—in 2003. Initially, excavations were focused on a large temple built by Ptolemy to honor the lion goddess Repit and her consort Min. The temple was transformed into a nunnery after pagan worship was banned in Egypt in 380 C.E. More recently, the team has shifted focus to a separate sanctuary west of the temple.

According to the statement, Leitz and his team found the ostraca near a series of “multi-story buildings with staircases and vaults” to the west of the main dig site. Prior to the excavation, reports Science Alert, the only comparable collection of ostraca discovered in Egypt was a cache of medical writings found in the workers’ settlement of Deir el-Medineh, near the Valley of the Kings, in the early 1900s.

“This is a very important discovery because it sheds light on the economy and trade in Atribis throughout history,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Egyptian antiquities ministry’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, tells Nevine El-Aref of Ahram Online. “The text reveals the financial transactions of the area’s inhabitants, who bought and sold provisions such as wheat and bread.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-18000-ancient-egyptian-ostraca-180979543/

Heidemarie Koch studied mathematics as her major between 1963 and 1966. Subsequently, she worked was a teacher until 1972 in Hannover.

In 1972, she started Iranian Studies at the University of Gottingen and received her doctorate in 1976. The topic of her dissertation under Walther Hinz was Religious Conditions under Darius I with Reference to the Elamite Tablets of Persepolis. Koch took as her minor subjects Classical Archaeology, Byzantine Art History, and Christian Archaeology.

From 1977 to 1986 she was employed at the Department of Iranian Studies and Near Eastern Archaeology in University of Gottingen. In 1986, at the University of Marburg, she worked on the labor administration and the economy in the Persian heartland at the time of the Achaemenids. Then she taught as a lecturer. In 1990-91 Koch worked on research projects funded by German Research Foundation. Between 1993-94 she taught for two semesters as a substitute professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Since 1995 she is a professor of Iranian Studies in the context of ancient history at the University of Marburg.

Her main subject areas are the Persian history and Persian languages of the pre-Islamic period. She puts special emphasis on the cultural and economic history, the management and the religion. She utilizes both written sources and the archaeological remains. A second research focus is the exploration of Elam and its neighboring regions, especially in terms of the influences that they exerted on the subseq

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 that established the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, also designated 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust – observed with ceremonies and activities at United Nations Headquarters in New York and at United Nations offices around the world.