

Sham M
1K posts






The EU has invited Taliban officials to Brussels to discuss a migration deal — and today I am shaken and deeply disturbed by this. This is the same Taliban that banned girls from secondary schools and forced them into marriage. The same Taliban that, earlier this month, arrested dozens of women in Herat for how they were dressed. The same Taliban that detains, beats and executes women who dare to speak out or break their rules. Through its system of gender apartheid, the Taliban have erased women and girls from public life. Europe must not legitimise a regime responsible for one of the worst human rights crises in the world. Any engagement with the Taliban must begin and end with the rights of Afghan women and girls.







































Facial reconstructions of three 2,500-year-old Scythians from the Dogehe-Baary II site in Tuva The Scythians, also known as the Saka, were an Iranic-speaking people who originated in the regions of Minusinsk, the Altai, Tuva, Mongolia, and Xinjiang. Dogehe-Baary II is located on the right bank of the Biy-Khem (Bolshoy Yenisey), 5 km upstream from its confluence with the Kaa-Khem, and 8 km north of Kyzyl. It belongs to the early stage of the Scythian Uyuk-Sagly culture (6th–4th century BC). The site was excavated between 1990 and 2000 by the Central Asian Expedition from the St. Petersburg Institute for Cultural and Natural Legacy, led by K.V. Chugunov (Chugunov, 1994, 1996, 1999a, 2001, 2007; Chugunov, 1998). Most Uyuk-Sagly males carry either R1a-PH1397 or Q1b-L330. Physically, they differed somewhat from earlier nomads in the region. Their skulls were generally longer in shape, and their faces were narrower, though still fairly tall. Their noses tended to project more and had more defined shape, suggesting a shift in facial structure compared to earlier groups. Overall, men and women looked more similar to each other than in some earlier populations, where differences between the sexes were stronger. (T.A. Chikisheva, 2008) The men, on average, had a medium-large cranial length/width/cheek width of 186/141/135 mm, and large nasomalar and zygomaxillary angles of 139.7° and 134°. The women, on average, had a medium-large cranial length/width/cheek width of 180/140/125 mm, and large nasomalar and zygomaxillary angles of 143° and 136°. At the Dogehe-Baary burial, an individual with likely pituitary dwarfism was found. Standing about 127 cm tall, he likely had a limping gait, a barrel-shaped chest, scoliosis, chronic joint pain, reduced mobility, and obesity. His skull bears healed injuries, indicating repeated violence, and he may have died from a traumatic brain injury. Despite these challenges, he lived to at least 45 years of age - an exceptional lifespan for someone with pituitary dwarfism complicated by epiphyseal dysplasia, even by modern standards (Aristova, E.S., Chikisheva, T.A., Seidman, A.M. et al., 2006).






