Technology reveals King Tut's Mystery

The kingdom of King Tut was one of the most extraordinary kingdoms. The late18th dynasty gave rise to Akhenaten. This was a very special pharaoh. Before Akhenaten became the pharaoh, Egypt was a polytheist country. However, when he became the king, he made Egypt to switch to a single religion and change the main capital (Thebes) to Tel-el- Amarna. He introduced a new capital and a new god, Aten.

The change of religion and capital made a huge impact in the country. Some people didn’t like Akhenaten; some people refer to him as the “heretic pharaoh”. He became the father of Tutankhamun. When Akhenaten died, Tutankhamun became the new pharaoh at the age of about 9. He switched back to the old religion and switched back the main capital of Tel-el-Amarna to Thebes.

For many years, the cause of death of King Tut and the identity of his ancestors was not well known. In fact, archeologists have found many royal mummies, but technology was not able to reveal their identity and relationship to King Tut.

A multidisciplinary scientific approach based on molecular and medical Egyptology was used to determine the identity and relationship between royal mummies, health problems and their provable cause of death.

It is very impressive how now technology can be used to reveal very specific information of 11 mummies that lived in a period, circa 1410-1324 and 5 mummies that lived in a period, circa 1550-1479 BC. That is like 3,500 years ago.

Results

King Tut’s family tree

Genetic fingerprinting created a 5 generation pedigree of King Tut’ lineage. They look for similar microsatellites in the mummies DNA. Microsatellites are repeats of 1-6 units of DNA. The mummies that had the same repeats are related by blood.

I. Yuya and Tuya were the great-grandparents.

II. Amenhotep III and Tiye were the grandparents

III. Akhenaten and mummy KV35YL (unknown) were the parents and siblings.

IV. Tutankhamun, his wife and KV21A (unknown)

V. Fetus 1 and 2 (unknown) were King Tut’s children

According to the microsatellites they found out that King Tut was the product of a consanguineous marriage. The double line between Akhenaten and his unknown wife represents consanguinity. Inbreeding brought many health problems to king Tut.

King Tut’s foot

King Tut was examined radiologically and a CT reconstruction of his feet reveals that the left foot was deformed and had bone necrosis (bone tissue dying). The image below shows the deformed left foot and the normal right foot. This finding explains why numerous walking sticks were found in King Tut’s tomb.



King’s Tut’s cause of death

The scientist did genetic testing to look for DNA of plasmodium in King Tut. They found that King Tut had plasmodial DNA. Plasmodium is the agent of malaria. According to the study, King’s Tut had the most aggressive form of malaria.

Generally, African populations that are exposed most of the time to malaria develop a self defense mechanism that reduces the mortality of malaria by decreasing the symptoms of the malarial inflammation. When the organism reduces the response to the inflammation, there is enough time to fight and clear the disease. People that cannot reduce the response to the inflammation usually die.

Scientists believe that King Tut died of malaria. He was too week to reduce the response to the malarial inflammation because of the severe bone necrosis.

In addition to malaria tropica, scientists found that King Tut had a leg fracture, cleft palate, pes planus, oligodactyly (fewer than 5 fingers or toes), and kyphoscoliosis (abnormal curvature of the spine). He got a mixture of scoliosis (curvature of the spine) and kyphosis (hunchback). Akhenaten and his sister had scoliosis. When they got married they provably gave King Tut a severe type of scoliosis and many other health problems due to a consanguineous marriage.

Facebook Overtaking Google

My earliest post, explains how Facebook is getting more market visits than Google. This proves that the social network Facebook is getting much more ads from businesses than Google. In fact, if Facebook keeps getting so many adds, Google will go down the hill like a soccer ball and will end up in second place.

“According to a new study, when it comes to consuming news online, users are more loyal to Facebook than they are to Google News—leading brands to shift their online marketing dollars”(Rubin).

A study shows that companies will get more profit if they place their ads in Facebook, not in Google. A few weeks ago Facebook surpassed Google and won the title of the most visited site in the U.S. However, time flies online. Today, in addition of having more ads than Goggle, Facebook has also more loyal news readers than Google.

Hitwise says that 78% of Facebook users returned to the site to read more news, but only 67% of Google users returned to the site to read news. In addition, 77% of Facebook users returned to watch online news, compared to 64% of Google users. “The results are based on the click stream data for the week ending March 6 for the five top news media sites” (Rubin).

Companies prefer to put their ads in Facebook because they need to now that the visitors will come back many times. We can see that the results described above clearly show that Facebook users come back all the time. They are surrounded by a big network of friends and family all over the world.

In addition to being surrounded by friends, they are also surrounded by a network of virtual worlds. In my previous post, I explained how virtual worlds are created to make people come back again and again. Virtual money and ads are definitely contributing to the fast growth of the Facebook Empire.

The way Google can target ads is by using keywords and the users search history. As a result, it uses a minimum budget. However, Facebook can use the age, location, interests, education level, connections, etc. In fact, Rubin says that “there's no minimum budget – are ultra-refined.”

Carmen Nobel says that “Advertisers looking to target a specific audience can't do much better than Facebook, which collects personal information about its customers as a matter of course.” Advertisers can not do better than Facebook, but they can do better than Google by choosing to put their ads in Facebook.

Companies are shifting their ads from Goggle to Facebook. In fact, Lara Sinclair wrote, “social networking website Facebook is expected to suck more than $2 billion out of the global advertising market over the next year or two with television, website development and Google among its targets.”

Facebook is a global social network. Before Facebook, there was not a global social network that could reach every country around the world. Today, Facebook’s network is all over the world. Everybody is connected with Facebook and the advertisers can target a specific audience all over the world at the same time.

King Tut's Curse

In 1922, Lord Carnarvon sponsored the archeological expedition of the archeologist Howard Carter. The purpose of the expedition was to discover the tomb of Tutankhamen. The tomb of Tutankhamen was very special because the seal was not broken. The difference with other tombs is that thieves broke into the tombs to steal everything they could. However, Tutankhamen tomb was not desecrated. Tutankhamun was found with all his treasure in the same location where the old Egyptians left him in 1323 BC. Before Carter entered the tomb, he noticed a warning that said: “They who enter this sacred tomb shall swift be visited by wings of death.” He ignored the warning and broke the seal, entered into the tomb and collected everything that was inside. He even kept some of Tutankhamun’s furniture and used it to decorate his home for a while.

It is not clear that the curse that Carter found at the tomb entrance was exactly the same as the one described above. He denied the fact that there was a curse. Some people think that as soon as he found the inscription, he hided it that way the workers did not leave the excavation. At the time of the pharaohs, Egypt was a very religious and a polytheist country. In fact, Tutankhamun was the one that returned to Egypt the polytheism that was taken away by his father Akhenaten. Religion was a very important part of Tutankhamun’s life and regime. It is possible that an inscription was put at the entrance of the tomb to protect the Pharaoh from thieves or desecration and that Carter found it.

The discovery of Tutankhamun was one of the most important discoveries of the twenty century. According to the curse people thought that when someone breaks the seal will be cursed and die. Maybe that was one of the reasons why the tomb of Tutankhamun was intact when Carter found it. According to the curse, everybody that enters the tomb will die. The curse became even scarier when Lord Carnarvon and his dog died six weeks after the official opening of the burial chamber of Tutankhamun. He died of an insect bite infection.

“Even more strange, when the mummy of Tutankhamun was unwrapped in 1925, it was found to have a wound on the left cheek in the same exact position as the insect bite on Carnarvon that lead to his death.”

The archeologist Zahi Hawass says that the reason why most of the Egyptian artifacts are taken to the museums is because they want to prevent people entering the tombs. The reason why is the Egyptian curses. If tourists keep entering the tombs, they will be cursed and bad things will happen to them.

The following chart and data shows some of the people who died after entering the tomb.

EVENT	NUMBER OF PEOPLE THERE	NUMBER OF DEATHS AFTER 10 YEARS
Burial chamber opening	26	6
Sarcophagus opening	22	2
Mummy unwrapping	10	0

Lord Carnarvon:

Carnarvon had been in poor health for over 20 years following a motoring accident in Germany. Less than two weeks after the official opening of the burial chamber, Carnarvon received a mosquito bite which became infected after he cut it while shaving. Carnarvon fell ill and, with his resistance lowered, came down with pneumonia and eventually passed away at the age of 57.

Howard Carter:

As discoverer of the tomb, Carter should have been Number 1 on the curse's "hit list", but he survived until March 1939, just short of his 65th birthday and nearly 17 years after entering the tomb - about a decade of which was spent working in the tomb itself.

Lady Evelyn Herbert:

Lady Evelyn, Lord Carnarvon's daughter and one of the first into the tomb, died in 1980 at the age of about 79.

Harry Burton:

Burton was the photographer loaned to Carter by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to document the work done in Tutankhamun's tomb. Many of the magnificent black & white photographs of the time were taken by Burton who died in 1940.

Alan Gardiner:

Gardiner studied the tomb's inscriptions and was still very active working on Egyptian grammar for many decades until his death in 1963.

Dr D. E. Derry:

Derry carried out the original autopsy on Tutankhamen’s mummy. If anyone should have been cursed along with Carter, it probably should have been Derry, but he didn't die until 1969.

The Facebook Empire and Virtual Worlds

"We think that if you can build one worldwide platform where you can just type in anyone's name, find the person you're looking for, and communicate with them. That's a really valuable system to be building."( Zuckerberg).


Mark Zuckerberg built a system that CNN, political campaigns, schools and everybody uses in every country around the world. Today, Facebook has more than 400 million users. According to blog post by Tony Bradley, "the market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185 percent last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9 percent during the same time frame."

In the following chart we can see how Facebook’s market visits increased while Goggle’s market visits remains like a plateau.




The difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook is a social network. All Facebook users are connected by the network most of the time. Investors and business noticed that people spends more time in Facebook than in Google and prefer to put their adds in Facebook.

Another reason why people spend so much time in Facebook is the virtual worlds or games that Facebook applications offer. Virtual worlds are games created to make people spend more time online and to get profit. These games are among the strategies that Facebook and other businesses use to grow financially. The businesses increase their profit and the Facebook empire gets stronger and surpasses their opponents.

There are many virtual worlds or games that Facebook users can play. For example, YoVille is a virtual world created by Zynga. The game is a free application that can be used in Facebook. Many people spend many hours in Facebook playing and sending invitations to play YoVille.




In fact, when people play the game, they can become addicted to it and spend many hours online. When people use the application, they become yovilleans. The game lets them create an avatar that looks like them, provides them with an apartment and coins. Yovillians can chat with other yovillians, decorate their homes, buy different kinds of houses, send gifts, send messages, dance with their friends, and attend live events. For example, parties, sales, etc.

Facebook users can add other people that play YoVille to their Facebook friends to get more coins and friends. That is how the network of YoVille grows. There are some groups in Facebook with the only purpose to add YoVille friends. Some groups try to convince you to fill surveys to get virtual money (yocash) to play YoVille. There are thousands of people that join that kinds of groups that are asking “add me, crew me, etc” to the contact list of other Facebook users that play YoVille.

FarmVille is another virtual world created by Zynga. It is another free application that can be used in Facebook. The game lets people build their own farm. They can buy cows, chickens, horses, seeds, etc. In this game people can have plantations and grow all kind of crops. Facebook friends that have the application can help fertilizing crops, feeding chickens or sending gifts.

PetVille is another virtual world application that people play in Facebook. In this game, people can create a virtual world for their pet. They can clean it, feed it and dress it. They can add their friends as neighbors and visit their pets. They can send gifts and invitations to all their Facebook friends.

These are some of the games that people play most of the time when they are in Facebook. Messages and gifts can be shared and posted in their profile’s wall. Game invitations are private and only the users that receive the invitations can see them. All the games are free and people can get coins by working in a factory or by visiting other yovillians.

However, some things in YoVille can only be purchased with (cash) yocash. People can only get yocash by buying it with a credit car or by buying trials in Netflix, Bestbuy, etc. If people want to get the latest stuff, they have to buy it with Yocash. If people don’t have yocash, they can only buy things that are sold in coins. The YoVille bank will only exchange Yocash for coins and not the other way around. That is the way Zynga gets money and can make the games better, fun and even more addictive for Facebook users.

Mobile Technology in a Wireless Era

After reading the article I can say that the behaviors discussed in Cellphones in public: social interactions in a wireless era still valid today. In five years technology has evolved and changed, but the human behavior to technology remains almost the same. People have adapted to the new technology, but their behavior almost did not change. Mobile phones still affect every aspect of our lives. People still use the technology to communicate with people in every city or country. New technology is advertised everyday by the media. Technology continues to be a blend between body image, fashion and popularity. This blend affects children, teenagers, and adults. In addition, restrictions to cell phone use remain almost the same. For example, theaters and classrooms still prohibit cell phone use.

The social terms defined by the study are not exactly accurate for our time, but I can say that they are very precise describing the human behavior and technology today. The concepts that Humphreys mentions in the study are still valid today. For example, there still people that prefer to be alone (singles) and people that prefer to be in a group (withs). I think that technology did not change the behavior of the “single” and “withs,” but instead reinforced them. For example, people that like to be alone, now have the chance to read the news, visit their social networks, check their email, chat with their friends, etc. This new technology reinforces the ‘single’ behavior by allowing people to spend more time alone without being bothered.

In the same way, the "withs" behavior is being reinforced by the technology. In fact, groups of people that share the same smart phones or iphones are likely to be together. If someone calls and disturbs the “withs” face-to-face communication, the other “with” could be chatting or surfing the web wile the other person finish the communication with the caller or the ‘cross talk’. The new technology helps the ‘withs’ not to feel alone when their friends are talking by phone. This new technology reinforces the relationship between the ‘withs’ because they spend more time together even if some of them are talking by cell phones or reading something online on their iphones.

The new cell phones allow people to respect even more the privacy of their friends’ conversations. When their friends are engaged in a “crosstalk” with someone else, they are distracted by their smart phones and are less likely to “listen in” the conversation. Equally important “dual front interaction” or gestures between friends might decrease. For example, if the person that is “cross talking” with a friend notes that his friend is distracted with a cell phone while he is talking, he wont even try to make a gesture and will keep talking. A “three way interaction” still happens today, but even higher. The better quality sound of iphones and the speaker function allows people to have a better three way conversations than five years ago.

Humphreys says that the concept of “caller hegemony” described by Robert Hopper in 1992 said that the caller has power over the answerer. This is because the caller always knows the identity of the answerer, but the answerer doesn’t know the identity of the caller. Humphreys says that Hopper’s concept became a less authoritarian interaction between the caller and the answerer because of the caller ID feature that comes with cell phones. The answerer can tell who is calling.

Today I think that a new concept of “caller hegemony” can be applied not only to cell phones, but also to landline phones. I would change the concept of “caller hegemony” to “dual hegemony” because today in the US every person knows who is calling them by caller ID. The caller and the answerer have the same option to decide if they will answer the phone or not to make a call. Today home phones and cell phones have caller ID. People know who is calling to their home or to their cell phone. However, the location and time can always prevent the person answering the phone.

Humphreys’ study does not mention text-messaging. Today, students in high schools or universities use text-messaging more than calling. They need to do another study to see how text-messaging affects the “single” and “withs” personality. In addition, the study did not mention how cell phone use affects interpersonal relationships. Will be interesting to see how emotional, family and professional relationships are affected by my concept of ‘dual hegemony’ or Gopper’s concept of “caller hegemony.”

I saw that the concept of “caller hegemony” still applies to some emotional relationships. For example, some people feel that they always have to answer their phones when their partner is calling. In this case the caller reinforces the authority over the answerer by influencing the emotional and psychological feelings. I am not saying that using emotions to making the person answer the phone is bad, but it definitely changes the answerer behavior. For example, I saw people to leave the whole reunion, classroom or party to answer phone calls from their partners. Studies of emotional relationships (good and bad) involving calling, and text-messaging will be interesting to analyze.

Picture source: mobile

No More Loyalty to a Single Media

Today, a new study reveals that “the days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone” (The New News Landscape: Rise of the Internet). According to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, 92% of Americans use many types of media to get the news every day. For example, local TV, national TV, internet, radio, local newspapers and national newspapers can be used simultaneously. 46% of Americans use four to six different types of media daily and 7% of Americans use a single media per day.

The internet and technology are creating the easiest and faster way for people to access the news anywhere. The study shows that 59% of Americans get their news online and offline every day. The internet gives people the opportunity to read news from many sources. However, some people get confuse and don’t know where to find the best information and use from two to five different internet sources. What is more impressive is that 65% of people do not have a favorite website. Only 21% of people have a favorite website.

The internet is not only letting people to navigate many sources at the same time, but along with technology is creating citizen journalists. The relationship between people and the media have changed and evolved a lot. According to the statistical study, the relationship between people and the media “is becoming portable, personalized and participatory.” The study shows that "33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones, 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them, 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites” (The New...).

Today, reading the news is fun and helps people to socialize better. For example, sending interesting links with emails, posting comments or news in social networks and tweeting about news help people to socialize even more. The study shows that 8 from 10 people that are online send or read emails that contain links.

The important point is that two kinds technology are transforming news into a social experience that people can use to learn and enjoy. First, the social media like blogs and social networks like facebook or twitter. Second, smart phones and iphones let users read the news and visit their social networks anytime and anywhere.

Other important findings of the study described by The New News Landscape: Rise of the Internet include:

“The internet has surpassed newspapers and radio in popularity as a news platform on a typical day and now ranks just behind TV.”

“The average online consumer regularly turns to only a few websites.”

“Internet users use the Web for a range of news, but local is not near the top of the list.”

“News consumption is a socially-engaging and socially-driven activity, especially online. The public is clearly part of the news process now. Participation by consumers comes more through sharing than through contributing news themselves.”

“News is pocket-sized.”

Picture source: advertais