Nobody quite knows where the Hawaiian “shaka” (or “hang loose”) came from; it has many origin stories with varying moods. One of these is the mythic story of Hamana Kalili, an Indigenous Hawaiian who worked the sugar cane plantations. He had allegedly lost his three middle fingers in a work accident, leaving only his thumb and pinky. He was given a new job as a security guard, and whenever he waved, his hand looked quite similar to the “shaka” hand gesture we know today. Read full article here
Oddities
The Curious Case of the Ancient Brain
In 2008, archaeologists examining the University of York discovered something strange: the decapitated head of an Iron Age man and his very shrivelled but very much intact brain. How a centuries-old brain was preserved is still unknown, but research suggests that it could have been because of brain diseases like dementia. The Yorkshire man’s brain’s proteins were bunched up together, much like how dementia causes brain proteins to bunch up into plaques. This bunching up, or aggregation, could continue even after death, turning regions of the brain into hard masses. Read full article here
Merv
September 30, 2022
