#riotinto — Public Fediverse posts

Why Is Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) Reporting Simandou Ramp-Up?

Highlights Rio Tinto is in focus after its latest market disclosure clarified current operating priorities. The news is…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto #RioTintoresultsreleaseandMetalandMiningcontext
https://www.europesays.com/britain/119047/

Rio Tinto snaps up Aurukun bauxite project

Rio Tinto has agreed to acquire the Aurukun bauxite project on Cape York from Glencore and joint venture partner Mitsubishi…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118965/

Why Is Diversified mining major Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) in Focus?

Highlights The miner advanced alongside the materials complex while rate-sensitive sectors of the local board slipped A widening…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto #RioTintoTurnstoItsGrowthPipelineasBondYieldsClimb
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118909/

What Does Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO)’s Pilbara Iron Ore Partnership Mean for Market participants?

Highlights Rio Tinto signed a non-binding agreement to jointly develop neighbouring Pilbara iron ore deposits with a fellow…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto #RioTintoStrikesPilbaraIronOreTie-UpWithRivalMiner
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118899/

Rio Tinto stock strengthens after higher first half earnings

Rio Tinto stock (ISIN GB0007188757) is trading with support from improved profitability after the group reported its highest…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118664/

Has Rio Tinto Been Carried Higher By A Copper Price That Keeps Rewriting Its Own Ceiling?

Highlights Diversified miners finished the week just ended as the clearest engine behind the blue-chip index. Copper’s earlier…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118553/

What Is Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) Signalling?

Highlights Sector rotation is sharpening attention on business quality across the local market Rio Tinto provides a useful…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto #RioTintoandMetal&MiningStocks:sectorrotationontheASX
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118533/

Why Is Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) in Focus?

Highlights Reporting season is sharpening attention on business quality across the local market Rio Tinto provides a useful…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto #RioTintoandMetal&MiningStocks:reportingseasonontheASX
https://www.europesays.com/britain/118523/

Could Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) Reset Attention?

Highlights Earnings focus is sharpening attention on business quality across the local market Rio Tinto provides a useful…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto #RioTintoandMetal&MiningStocks:earningsfocusontheASX
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117938/

Up 57%! Should I still buy Rio Tinto shares today?

Rio Tinto Ltd (ASX: RIO) shares have been on fire over the past year. Recently trading for $173.18,…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117926/

The collapse of Bell Bay Aluminium smelter could destroy George Town’s local economy

George Town was meant to be reliant on manganese and aluminium smelting jobs for decades to come. Houses…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #bellbayaluminium #hydrotasmania #michaelcavanagh #Rio‌Tinto #tasmaniangovernment
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117909/

Rio Tinto stock holds firm as copper and aluminium drive earnings

Rio Tinto Group (ISIN GB0007188757) stock is trading close to recent highs, supported by a stronger earnings mix…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #GB0007188757 #Rio‌Tinto
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117856/

Eldorado Gold eyes mill expansion at McIlvenna Bay, Talamore Mining advances Northern Access Route and Rio Tinto chair lands a new Canadian role

This week, Talamore Mining secured a permit that will allow it to finalize the Northern Access Route that…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Agnico #alloy #Chile #CIM #copper #Eagle #expansion #gap #Labour #Mining #morel #News #partnership #quebec #recap #Rio‌Tinto #Roads #Stake #talent #U.S. #weekly
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117790/

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) Strengthens Earnings Base as Copper Growth Strategy Gains Momentum

Highlights
Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) reported stronger H1 2026 financial performance supported by favourable Commodity prices, productivity gains…
#EuropeSays #Britain #Europe #EU #RioTinto #Rio‌Tinto
https://www.europesays.com/britain/117637/

Boorloo, Perth, Western Australia

Got confidence that the WA state government will put any limits on mining companies that are not ok with said mining companies?

Juukan Gorge rock shelters.
46,000 years of Aboriginal history.
Destroyed by Rio Tinto in explosions to make exportable iron ore.
May 2020.
All legal in WA.
Premiers:
Collin Barnett 2008-2017
Mike McGowan 2017-2023
Corporate stooges.
#JuukanGorge #RioTinto #WesternAustralia #CorporateCapture #ColinBarnett #MikeMcGowan #AusPol

Good ol' #RioTinto. Building a dangerous #LithiumHydroxide plant near some of my ancestral lands (#Wolinak #Abenaki). They seem to have a pattern of polluting and destroying #IndigenousLands -- whether in #Canada, the #UnitedStates , #Australia, etc., etc.!

#RioTinto takes majority control of #Canada’s #Nemaska #Lithium

By Thomson Reuters Feb 18, 2026 | 8:35 AM

Feb 18 (Reuters) – "Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it has gained majority control of Canada’s Nemaska Lithium, advancing its push ​to build an integrated lithium business ‌in #Quebec.

"The Anglo-Australian miner now holds a 53.9% stake in the lithium producer and will assume direct management, while the Government of Quebec holds 46.1%.

"Rio ‌Tinto ​is seeking to establish ⁠a fully integrated lithium ⁠supply chain in Quebec, from mining raw ore to chemical processing, to supply the North American electric vehicle market.

"Rio Tinto and ​the eastern Canadian province, through its economic development agency Investissement Quebec, have been ⁠investing in Nemaska Lithium ⁠since March 2025.

"The partners will continue ​to fund the project, including the #LithiumHydroxide ​plant in #Becancour, with first production expected ‌in 2028, it added.

"Quebec will invest up to an additional $200 million in Nemaska Lithium through share subscriptions, the company said, on ⁠top of an investment of more than $300 million by Rio Tinto in 2026 to further develop its ⁠lithium sector ‌in the province.

"Through its acquisition ⁠of #Arcadium in March 2025, ​Rio Tinto ‌acquired a 50% interest in ​Nemaska Lithium, ⁠which includes the lithium hydroxide plant in Becancour, Quebec, and the #Whabouchi spodumene mine in the #EeyouIstchee #JamesBay region of Quebec."

https://kelo.com/2026/02/18/rio-tinto-takes-majority-control-of-canadas-nemaska-lithium/

#CanadaPol #LithiumMining #LithiumProcessing #EnvironmentalRacism #Pollution

Good ol' #RioTinto. Building a dangerous #LithiumHydroxide plant near some of my ancestral lands (#Wolinak #Abenaki). They seem to have a pattern of polluting and destroying #IndigenousLands -- whether in #Canada, the #UnitedStates , #Australia, etc., etc.!

#RioTinto takes majority control of #Canada’s #Nemaska #Lithium

By Thomson Reuters Feb 18, 2026 | 8:35 AM

Feb 18 (Reuters) – "Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it has gained majority control of Canada’s Nemaska Lithium, advancing its push ​to build an integrated lithium business ‌in #Quebec.

"The Anglo-Australian miner now holds a 53.9% stake in the lithium producer and will assume direct management, while the Government of Quebec holds 46.1%.

"Rio ‌Tinto ​is seeking to establish ⁠a fully integrated lithium ⁠supply chain in Quebec, from mining raw ore to chemical processing, to supply the North American electric vehicle market.

"Rio Tinto and ​the eastern Canadian province, through its economic development agency Investissement Quebec, have been ⁠investing in Nemaska Lithium ⁠since March 2025.

"The partners will continue ​to fund the project, including the #LithiumHydroxide ​plant in #Becancour, with first production expected ‌in 2028, it added.

"Quebec will invest up to an additional $200 million in Nemaska Lithium through share subscriptions, the company said, on ⁠top of an investment of more than $300 million by Rio Tinto in 2026 to further develop its ⁠lithium sector ‌in the province.

"Through its acquisition ⁠of #Arcadium in March 2025, ​Rio Tinto ‌acquired a 50% interest in ​Nemaska Lithium, ⁠which includes the lithium hydroxide plant in Becancour, Quebec, and the #Whabouchi spodumene mine in the #EeyouIstchee #JamesBay region of Quebec."

https://kelo.com/2026/02/18/rio-tinto-takes-majority-control-of-canadas-nemaska-lithium/

#CanadaPol #LithiumMining #LithiumProcessing #EnvironmentalRacism #Pollution

Good ol' #RioTinto. Building a dangerous #LithiumHydroxide plant near some of my ancestral lands (#Wolinak #Abenaki). They seem to have a pattern of polluting and destroying #IndigenousLands -- whether in #Canada, the #UnitedStates , #Australia, etc., etc.!

#RioTinto takes majority control of #Canada’s #Nemaska #Lithium

By Thomson Reuters Feb 18, 2026 | 8:35 AM

Feb 18 (Reuters) – "Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it has gained majority control of Canada’s Nemaska Lithium, advancing its push ​to build an integrated lithium business ‌in #Quebec.

"The Anglo-Australian miner now holds a 53.9% stake in the lithium producer and will assume direct management, while the Government of Quebec holds 46.1%.

"Rio ‌Tinto ​is seeking to establish ⁠a fully integrated lithium ⁠supply chain in Quebec, from mining raw ore to chemical processing, to supply the North American electric vehicle market.

"Rio Tinto and ​the eastern Canadian province, through its economic development agency Investissement Quebec, have been ⁠investing in Nemaska Lithium ⁠since March 2025.

"The partners will continue ​to fund the project, including the #LithiumHydroxide ​plant in #Becancour, with first production expected ‌in 2028, it added.

"Quebec will invest up to an additional $200 million in Nemaska Lithium through share subscriptions, the company said, on ⁠top of an investment of more than $300 million by Rio Tinto in 2026 to further develop its ⁠lithium sector ‌in the province.

"Through its acquisition ⁠of #Arcadium in March 2025, ​Rio Tinto ‌acquired a 50% interest in ​Nemaska Lithium, ⁠which includes the lithium hydroxide plant in Becancour, Quebec, and the #Whabouchi spodumene mine in the #EeyouIstchee #JamesBay region of Quebec."

https://kelo.com/2026/02/18/rio-tinto-takes-majority-control-of-canadas-nemaska-lithium/

#CanadaPol #LithiumMining #LithiumProcessing #EnvironmentalRacism #Pollution

Good ol' #RioTinto. Building a dangerous #LithiumHydroxide plant near some of my ancestral lands (#Wolinak #Abenaki). They seem to have a pattern of polluting and destroying #IndigenousLands -- whether in #Canada, the #UnitedStates , #Australia, etc., etc.!

#RioTinto takes majority control of #Canada’s #Nemaska #Lithium

By Thomson Reuters Feb 18, 2026 | 8:35 AM

Feb 18 (Reuters) – "Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it has gained majority control of Canada’s Nemaska Lithium, advancing its push ​to build an integrated lithium business ‌in #Quebec.

"The Anglo-Australian miner now holds a 53.9% stake in the lithium producer and will assume direct management, while the Government of Quebec holds 46.1%.

"Rio ‌Tinto ​is seeking to establish ⁠a fully integrated lithium ⁠supply chain in Quebec, from mining raw ore to chemical processing, to supply the North American electric vehicle market.

"Rio Tinto and ​the eastern Canadian province, through its economic development agency Investissement Quebec, have been ⁠investing in Nemaska Lithium ⁠since March 2025.

"The partners will continue ​to fund the project, including the #LithiumHydroxide ​plant in #Becancour, with first production expected ‌in 2028, it added.

"Quebec will invest up to an additional $200 million in Nemaska Lithium through share subscriptions, the company said, on ⁠top of an investment of more than $300 million by Rio Tinto in 2026 to further develop its ⁠lithium sector ‌in the province.

"Through its acquisition ⁠of #Arcadium in March 2025, ​Rio Tinto ‌acquired a 50% interest in ​Nemaska Lithium, ⁠which includes the lithium hydroxide plant in Becancour, Quebec, and the #Whabouchi spodumene mine in the #EeyouIstchee #JamesBay region of Quebec."

https://kelo.com/2026/02/18/rio-tinto-takes-majority-control-of-canadas-nemaska-lithium/

#CanadaPol #LithiumMining #LithiumProcessing #EnvironmentalRacism #Pollution

Good ol' #RioTinto. Building a dangerous #LithiumHydroxide plant near some of my ancestral lands (#Wolinak #Abenaki). They seem to have a pattern of polluting and destroying #IndigenousLands -- whether in #Canada, the #UnitedStates , #Australia, etc., etc.!

#RioTinto takes majority control of #Canada’s #Nemaska #Lithium

By Thomson Reuters Feb 18, 2026 | 8:35 AM

Feb 18 (Reuters) – "Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it has gained majority control of Canada’s Nemaska Lithium, advancing its push ​to build an integrated lithium business ‌in #Quebec.

"The Anglo-Australian miner now holds a 53.9% stake in the lithium producer and will assume direct management, while the Government of Quebec holds 46.1%.

"Rio ‌Tinto ​is seeking to establish ⁠a fully integrated lithium ⁠supply chain in Quebec, from mining raw ore to chemical processing, to supply the North American electric vehicle market.

"Rio Tinto and ​the eastern Canadian province, through its economic development agency Investissement Quebec, have been ⁠investing in Nemaska Lithium ⁠since March 2025.

"The partners will continue ​to fund the project, including the #LithiumHydroxide ​plant in #Becancour, with first production expected ‌in 2028, it added.

"Quebec will invest up to an additional $200 million in Nemaska Lithium through share subscriptions, the company said, on ⁠top of an investment of more than $300 million by Rio Tinto in 2026 to further develop its ⁠lithium sector ‌in the province.

"Through its acquisition ⁠of #Arcadium in March 2025, ​Rio Tinto ‌acquired a 50% interest in ​Nemaska Lithium, ⁠which includes the lithium hydroxide plant in Becancour, Quebec, and the #Whabouchi spodumene mine in the #EeyouIstchee #JamesBay region of Quebec."

https://kelo.com/2026/02/18/rio-tinto-takes-majority-control-of-canadas-nemaska-lithium/

#CanadaPol #LithiumMining #LithiumProcessing #EnvironmentalRacism #Pollution

Walking #BeyondCapitalism, #WendslerNosie Journeys to Federal Court in Phoenix

via #CensoredNews, January 3, 2026

Statement by Wendsler Nosie:

"Good afternoon to all my family, friends, relatives, and people. I come to you in this moment in time, knowing we all have been born into from our parents and those before. We all know those before us, suffered from a great #evil, who tried to destroy them. This evil still exists today.

Every day it works to control us and make its way to have us deceive our own children's lives, by them not being told the truth. We teach them to live and embrace a system of #capitalism that we surely know won't secure the future.

Through every passing generation, it clearly shows it has failed. From the birth of Europe to their unauthorized arrival here and the taking of the East Coast, wrongfully establishing their 13 colonies, they then turned toward the west, breaking all treaties that were dishonest from their inception, establishing a dishonest trust system allowing them to take more and more.

Their human ideology, their way to survive through their economic engine, has been a disaster. It takes and it takes and gives nothing back. No care for any kind of life, no care for the next generation. It's about living for now and being #greedy and destroying communities of people with their power of capitalism.

Since the beginning, through #colonization and capitalism, many here and around the world have suffered. People cried then and still today for a better day and still ask God, what have I done?

The political agenda of capitalism is to put fear in each of us. Pushing each of us towards the illusion that #MotherEarth and ourselves are useless. From fear we lose hope, the journey of spirituality and everything on mother earth, becomes disposable. Our mother earth is the timeline to everything. It gives us the water of life, it gives us the oxygen of life, it gives us the food of life, and it blesses us with life for our children and those yet to come.

It saddens me when this country does not prioritize all the sacred elements that give us life. It saddens me to witness that some no longer care to keep God's greatest gift alive. From a spiritual understanding, our love for one another is critical, our morals to make right decisions is critical and the love for our mother earth should be embedded forever.

We have all been taught not to recognize our mother and forced into a life to be colonized. We were blessed, in the beginning, with the tools of how to survive in the world that provides for us all.

This evil took those tools away and taught us how to be selfish, greedy, impassive and assimilate our minds and hearts to believe in capitalism. For what I have witnessed, I now can say, I see as what my father, my grandfather and great grandfather witnessed before me.

Capitalism demands your loyalty, to destroy every moral ethic, spiritual belief and God's way of life. I too know who cares and protects what God and Jesus had warned the world about. I will not be one who is loyal to capitalism, you will not fool me. If we really think it through, from those who say that capitalism will solve our problems, and when we actually understand it, disaster will occur, i.e. billions of gallons of water can remain forever, no contamination to the environment, no climate changes, one of the oldest religious ceremonies before the beginning of time continues, etc.

The United States of America clearly violated procedures and laws and ignored not only the #NativeAmericans, but also the state of #Arizona and the people of this country. Their decision to give full exemptions from the law has opened the door forever for #corporations to follow suit.

America, our civilization is in trouble and it needs your attention. As you and I today, as did our ancestors had encountered centuries ago, we are also in that moment. We cannot lose our mother earth, if she is lost, there is no life.

The sustainability of the Mother Earth ensures our children’s children will live . So, preserving mother earth today, will guarantee future generations.

I will be departing from #OakFlat on Sunday, January 4th at 11 AM. I will be walking and a little jogging to arrive in downtown Phoenix to attend the court hearings (#AZReform Mining Coalition, ITCA, San Carlos Apache Tribe and Lopez/Kinsey (Burdette) cases vs. U.S., which begin at 10 a.m. on January 7, 2026.

For those who do know me well, I had a spiritual encounter and must travel in this spiritual way. I ask each of you, if possible, to make a ceremonial fire, light a candle, or be in prayer.

The decision of the federal judges will weigh heavy on the future for water, environment, religion, and the ability to give federal exemptions to corporations without following legal policies.

#Usen (Creator), hear my prayers, as I make this journey to encounter many ugly obstacles but also witness the beauty of all life. I will let No Fear distract me, for all the beautiful spirits will be in all four directions."

Wendsler Nosie Sr.

Source:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2026/01/walking-beyond-capitalism-wendsler.html

#SaveOakFlat #WaterIsLife #ProtectOakFlat #DefendTheSacred #NativeAmericanActivism #CorporateColonialism #CapitalismMustDie #ApacheStronghold #SanCarlosApache #ResolutionCopper
#Arizona #ChichilBildagoteel
#RioTinto #CopperMining #Fight4OurExistance #SacredLand
#TontoNationalForest #WesternApaches #ProtectTheSacred

Not surprising...😠

#ApacheStronghold -- Supreme Court Again Declines to Protect Sacred #OakFlat

By Apache Stronghold, via @bsnorrell.blogspot.com, Oct. 6, 2025

Apache Stronghold - Supreme Court update

"This morning, we received word the Supreme Court has decided not to reconsider our case. While this decision is deeply disappointing, the fight to protect Oak Flat is far from over.
We will continue pressing our case in the lower courts. In addition to our case, three other cases are also seeking to protect Oak Flat, and the Ninth Circuit will hear oral argument in those cases on
January 7, 2026. We’ll also keep urging Congress, the President, and federal agencies to stop the destruction of Oak Flat and protect our ancestral sacred land.

Oak Flat deserves the same respect and protection this country has long given to other places of worship.

Wendsler Nosie Sr. responding to the Supreme Court result, 'First, thank you everyone for all the hard work. You have been a blessing to us all in our country. Most importantly deep within us we
knew, but now we definitely witness the truth of this country, by the Supreme Court taking no action. What is evil created the unfairness, not just to us human beings but to all of God’s creations. When this country was founded, humans with the heart of #greed worked to mute the voice of the Creator. By this undertaking, we now live with a third entity, who was created to take and destroy every blessed
gift God gave us through our #MotherEarth. We know this evil as #Corporations, which comes from
#capitalism which #colonizes people. We must defend what is spiritual, holy and God’s greatest gift to us all, our Mother. Today is a new day for me as I now take the blessings from Usen (God), to walk
the footsteps of the purpose I was blessed with and no longer be a captive.'

America has shown us the government’s true intentions, we are unheard and ignored once again. Our judicial system’s voice is muted by capitalism, the ultimate destruction of Mother Earth has been given permission as if they control her, she supplies our lives not the reverse. Such a sad reality.

We call on all people to pray, to raise their voices, and to join us in defending Mother Earth. Thank you for standing with us."

Source:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2025/10/apache-stronghold-supreme-court-again.html

#SanCarlosApache #ChichilBildagoteel #WesternApaches #Fight4OurExistence #SacredLand #ReligiousLiberty #CensoredNews #Apache #ProtectOakFlat
#CopperMining #CorporateColonialism #SaveOakFlat #ProtectTheSacred #SCOTUS #SCOTUSIsCompromised #TontoNationalForest #ResolutionCopper #RioTinto

The Silent Killers in #IndianCountry: #Copper, #Lithium, #Uranium and #Plutonium

Judge finds plutonium plants in #NewMexico and #SouthCarolina violated environmental laws

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, Oct. 10, 2024

"The U.S. government's plan for increased plutonium production at #LosAlamos National Laboratory, in the heart of Pueblo lands in northern New Mexico, has been delayed by a federal judge.

"Continuing the U.S. legacy of poisoning Indian country with #radiation, this comes as the U.S. government is granting leases to foreign #mining companies targeting Native #sacred lands and communities.

"#CopperMining is targeting San CarlosApache's sacred #OakFlat; #Hualapai are suing the US Department of Interior to halt lithium mining at their sacred spring Ha'Kamwe'; and the U.S. government is promoting the ongoing digging into the #Paiute Massacre Site in northern Nevada for #lithium, in violation of all federal laws that protect Native religious and historic sites, the environment and endangered species.

"Uranium mining in the Grand Canyon threatens #Havasupai's aquifer, the haul route endangers everyone in the Four Corners region, and the uranium mill at White Mesa Ute in #Utah is poisoning #Utes.

"Interior Sec. #DebHaaland said in Farmington, N.M., that Los Alamos Labs would be the leader in the so-called '#GreenEnergy transition' in the #FourCorners region.

"More than 500 radioactive #UraniumMill sites remain on the #NavajoNation that have not been cleaned up by the U.S. #EPA, which deceives the public by announcing plans and promises to clean up the #ColdWar sites.

"In the current federal lawsuit, a federal judge in South Carolina ruled that U.S. energy officials illegally neglected to study impacts to the #environment in efforts to increase plutonium production for nuclear weapons in New Mexico and South Carolina.

"'South Carolina District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis sided with environmental, #AntiNuclear proliferation and community groups last week who sued the National Nuclear Security Administration (#NNSA), which oversees the nuclear weapons stockpile as part of the U.S. Department of Energy [#DOE],' reports Source New Mexico.

"The U.S. is investing billions into restarting the manufacture of #PlutoniumPits, the grapefruit-sized spheres developed for #nuclear weapons. The plutonium is produced from uranium.

"'The federal government halted its manufacturing program at the #RockyFlatsPlant in #Colorado in 1989 after an FBI raid due to safety concerns and #EnvironmentalCrimes,' Source New Mexico reports.

"The U.S. government's #AtomicBombTesting in #Nevada left a trail of cancer and death for #WesternShoshone. The documentary 'Downwind' reveals the truth.

"'This is a very serious issue and that's why I can't let it go. I can't move on. People say, 'oh, why don't you just let it go?' Because it's killing my family. It's killing my land. It's killing my people. And that will not stand. It's being done in secret. And killing Indians in secret will not stand,' said Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Bands of the #ShoshoneNation of Indians. Zabarte is featured in '#Downwind' about radiation poisoning from U.S. #NuclearTests.

"Currently, foreign companies -- which receive the profits and find it easy to avoid clean up and responsibility for #environmental crimes and deaths from #cancer -- are receiving the mining leases from the U.S. government. The leases are granted by the U.S. Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and in the case of #UraniumMining in the #GrandCanyon, it is the USDA's Forestry Service. #Biden's attorneys have joined the lawsuit with #RioTinto to devastate #OakFlat.

"Australian and Canadian mining corporations are devastating Native lands and communities, poisoning the water and causing widespread cancer.
Rio Tinto, targeting Apaches #OakFlat, is an Australian company which destroyed 46,000 years of #Aboriginal sacred history in caves in #Australia.

"Another Australian mining company is targeting #Hualapai's sacred site. It is #Hawstone / #ArizonaLithium, in Perth, Australia.

"#EnergyFuels, now uranium mining in the Grand Canyon, and operating the uranium mill at #WhiteMesaUte, is a Canadian company. Another Canadian company is digging into the #Paiute Massacre Site. It is #LithiumAmericas.
#Hopi judge #DianeHumetewa granted a temporary restraining order to halt the lithium mining at #Hualapai's sacred spring."

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-silent-killers-in-indian-country.html

#NoUraniumMining #CopperMining #LithiumMining #NoMiningWithoutConsent #EnvironmentalRacism #NoWar #NoNukes #NuclearWeapons #RecycleCopper #RecycleLithium #WaterIsLife #NuclearWaste #DefendTheSacred #WhiteMesaMill #Ute #AtomicBomb #CulturalGenocide #Genocide #FirstNations #NativeAmericanNews #SuperfundSites #ToxicWaste #SaveOakFlat #OpenPitMining #Pollution #ReaderSupportedNews

Federal Judge #DianeHumetewa, #Hopi, is First to Halt Interior Sec. #DebHaaland's #Lithium Drilling Permits in #Native #Ceremonial Places

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, Sept. 18, 2024

"Federal Judge Diane Humetewa, Hopi, is the first federal judge to halt the lithium permits being given out by Interior Sec. Deb Haaland. Humetewa granted a temporary restraining order halting an Australian company's lithium drilling at #Hualapai's Sacred Spring.

"Now, U.S. District Judge Humetewa will rule on whether to make it permanent. Humetewa is the first to ask attorneys to submit arguments concerning the federal laws that protect historic and archaeological sites and the environment.

"Judge Humetewa gave lawyers on both sides until next Tuesday to summarize their arguments and more specifically respond to questions she asked about the government’s compliance with the #NationalHistoricPreservationAct and the #NationalEnvironmentalPolicyAct.

"#Biden's Justice Dept attorneys joined the drillers in court to argue for the drilling to proceed. And the #NavajoTransitionalEnergyCompany, a tribal enterprise in Farmington, NM, plans to do the drilling. CEO #VernLund has joined the board of the Australian-owned company #Hawkstone / #ArizonaLithium of Perth, Australia.

"In a separate case, the #TohonoOodham and #SanCarlosApache have filed a lawsuit against Interior Sec. Haaland for the bulldozers now destroying ancient village sites, #burial places and #MedicineGrounds in southern #Arizona. A Tucson federal judge refused to halt the destruction by the #SunZia Transmission Lines, for a wind energy project that plans to take electricity from New Mexico to California. The wind energy company, #PattenEnergy, is owned by the #CanadianPensionFund.

"The lithium drilling continues at the #Paiute Massacre Site in northern Nevada by the Canadian-owned #LithiumAmericas / #LithiumNevada. #Paiute and #Shoshone elderly and mothers have been charged in a court case for defending the grounds where their ancestors remain. #Haaland said she supports the #LithiumMining.

"#ApacheStronghold filed a case before the U.S. #SupremeCourt [#SCOTUS] this week, to halt the planned destruction of their ceremonial place, #OakFlat in Arizona, targeted for a massive copper mine by Australia's #RioTinto and #BHP, and pushed by the Biden administration. Rio Tinto already blew up 46,000 years of sacred #Aboriginal teachings in caves in #Australia. Rio Tinto was forced to admit widespread sexual attacks in its mines, with the highest number in Australia and #SouthAfrica."

Source:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/09/federal-judge-humetewa-hopi-is-first-to.html

#DefendTheSacred #ReaderSupportedNews #NoMiningWithoutConsent #NoLithiumMining #EnvironmentalRacism #environment #Greenwashing #EVs #WaterIsLife #NoLithiumMiningWithoutConsent #HumanRights #WaterIsLife #HumanRightsDefenders #IndigenousActivists #CorporateColonialism #SaveOakFlat
#CulturalGenocide #EnvironmentalRacism #ExtractiveMining

Farmers and activists in Serbia have sparked nationwide protests to stop the building of #RioTinto first European #lithium mine, warning it would pollute their land and endanger public health. #MiningCompanies #mining #ToxicWaste

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I1pcCzJJSU

Warriors for a New Generation: #Indigenous Youths at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, April 17, 2024

NEW YORK -- "Indigenous youths from around the world challenged #corporations and institutions -- rising as warriors, defenders and #changemakers that are honoring #MotherEarth and protecting future generations, at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on Tuesday, the second day of the two week forum.

"#EnergyTransfer's lawsuit against #Greenpeace is an attempt to silence the voices for Mother Earth, and Indigenous who are battling the #DakotaAccessPipeline, said #MorganBringsPlenty, #CheyenneRiverLakota , speaking at the #UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

"Brings Plenty said #Lakota youths are here to warn the global community about the rising threat of abusive lawsuits known as #SLAPP lawsuits, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
She said the lawsuit of Energy Transfer, owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, is an attack on the peaceful protest of #IndigenousPeoples at #StandingRock in North Dakota from May of 2016 to May of 2017, and is seeking $300 million in damages. It is expected to go to trial this summer.

"'The lawsuit against Greenpeace is also an attack on the Indigenous movement in our fight for self determination to protect Mother Earth, our water, sacred and cultural sites, our youths, and future generations.'

"In her passionate appeal to the U.N. Permanent Forum, Brings Plenty said the lawsuit is trying to silence anyone that is speaking out.

"'These colonial lawsuits are sending a warning to anyone who is thinking about speaking out to be quiet.'

"'Any of you could be next.'"

Read more:
https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/04/warriors-for-new-generation-indigenous.html

#StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL #IndigenousRights
#RightToProtest #WaterIsLife
#CorporateColonialism #NativeAmericanActivists #IndigenousActivists #ProtectTheForest #WaterProtectors #LandDefenders #DefendMotherEarth #NoUraniumMining #BigMountainResistance
#RioTinto #DirectAction #ClimateJustice #StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL #SLAPPs #CorporateColonialism

[Photos] #PrayerHorseRide to Peehee Mu'huh

Nanesootuhina Pookoo Goobakatudu

#CensoredNews, March 28, 2024
Photos by Melissa Robles-Dyer

Peehee Mu'huh (#ThackerPass) -- "The Prayer Horse Ride, March 17-26, began in Schurz on its jouney to Peehee Mu’huh, Thacker Pass. The ride is in the traditional, ancestral and #unceded lands of the #Paiute, #Shoshone and #Bannock.

"'We do this prayer ride to reconnect our way of life,' said #JoshDiniSr., #WalkerRiverPaiute, #WaterProtector and #PrayerHorseRider.

"The Prayer Horse Ride is to raise awareness about #LithiumMining in #McDermittCaldera, and also #CopperMining in the #PineNutHills, in remembrance of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women/People (#MMIW / #MMIP). Riders are revitalizing cultural identity, languages and lifeways in #Indigenous communities."

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/03/prayer-horse-ride-to-peehee-muhuh.html

#ProtectThackerPass #IndigenousActivism #IndigenousPeoples #PeeheeMuhuh #NoLithiumMining #EnvironmentalRacism #RecycleElectronics #RecycleLithium #LandBack #TraditionalLands #LithiumNevada #LithiumAmerica #RioTinto #CorporateColonialism

via @arizonamirror

If #Hobbs is serious about protecting #groundwater, she must work to close the #mining loophole

by Russ McSpadden
February 12, 2024

"In her first State of the State address just over a year ago, Gov. #KatieHobbs was unequivocal about her commitment to tackling one of the state’s greatest challenges: our dwindling #water supply.

“Our groundwater should be used to support #Arizonans, not foreign business interests,” she said in that speech, referring to the Saudi Arabian conglomerate #Fondomonte. Over the past few years, Fondomonte has been pumping unlimited amounts of groundwater in La Paz County for alfalfa crops that it ships to feed cows on the other side of the earth.

"Though the Hobbs administration has already canceled one of Fondomonte’s four leases and says it won’t renew the others when they’re up this month, the problem doesn’t end with Saudi agriculture.

"It’s also mining companies that take advantage of loopholes in the state’s water laws to maximize profit at the expense of Arizonans — including mining giants #RioTinto and# BHP.

"Because of intense pressure from #lobbyists, when lawmakers adopted the much-heralded #ArizonaGroundwaterManagementAct in 1980 they exempted #mines from groundwater regulation, even when located in #ActiveManagement Areas — state-designated areas where groundwater pumping is controlled. That means that mines can pump unlimited amounts of water without paying the state a dime.

"This exemption was controversial in 1980. Today it’s existentially dangerous.

#ResolutionCopper, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto and BHP, is a perfect example. Their proposed mine at #OakFlat — about 70 miles east of #Phoenix in the #TontoNationalForest and within the Phoenix Active Management Area — would pump 250 billion gallons of desert groundwater over the life of the project.

"That’s 17 million gallons of water every day for four decades.

"Under current water prices, that equates to $404 million worth of groundwater that Resolution Copper will get for free. Arizona won’t see a cent for it. And it’s more than likely that the copper ore from Oak Flat will be exported to China for smelting, again depriving local communities of economic benefit.

"This limitless pumping would happen even as the #megadrought that has plagued the #AmericanSouthwest for the past two decades is likely to worsen, straining the #ColoradoRiver and #Gila rivers even more and making us all more reliant on groundwater aquifers.

"If left intact, the mining loophole will facilitate construction of Resolution’s massive mine. The extreme water pumping from the #EastSaltRiverValley will lead to groundwater depletion and subsidence, threatening to deplete wells and damage infrastructure.

"The #CenterForBiologicalDiversity, where I work, has been fighting for decades to stop this mine, and Canadian mining company Hudbay’s disastrous plan to mine for copper in the #SantaRita Mountains south of #Tucson (in the Tucson Active Management Area).

"Both projects would devastate surrounding fragile #ecosystems, pushing endangered species like the #MexicanSpottedOwl closer to the brink of #extinction. They would also destroy sacred #TribalLands and gulp down massive amounts of water when other users are being asked to conserve.

"Handing mines unlimited access to Arizona’s precious desert groundwater would be an injustice to Arizona’s #Tribes and every resident of this state.

"Fortunately, Hobbs has the vision and courage to fight for a secure water future for Arizona. It is time for her to work with legislators to close the mining loophole in Arizona water law and subject mines to the same groundwater pumping limits that apply to other entities within the state’s Active Management Areas.

"We’re hopeful she will work to block #ResolutionCopperMine and other terrible mining projects like #Hudbay’s. At the very least, it’s time for mining giants to pay for the water they use just like the rest of us."

https://azmirror.com/2024/02/12/if-hobbs-is-serious-about-protecting-groundwater-she-must-work-to-close-the-mining-loophole/

#WaterIsLife #HumanRightsViolations #CulturalGenocide #CopperMining #Mining #CorporateColonialism #EnvironmentalRacism #IndigenousNews #SaveOakFlat #IndigenousRights #Apache

Earthworks: #Environmental Impacts of #GoldMining

Most consumers don’t know where the gold in their products comes from, or how it is mined. Gold mining is one of the most destructive industries in the world. It can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments. It pollutes water and land with mercury and cyanide, endangering the health of people and ecosystems. Producing gold for one wedding ring alone generates 20 tons of waste.

Poisoned Waters

Gold mining can have devastating effects on nearby water resources. Toxic mine waste contains as many as three dozen dangerous chemicals including:

arsenic
lead
mercury
petroleum byproducts
acids
cyanide

Mining companies around the world routinely dump toxic waste into rivers, lakes, streams and oceans – our research has shown 180 million tonnes of such waste annually. But even if they do not, such toxins often contaminate waterways when infrastructure such as tailings dams, which holds mine waste, fail.

According to the UNEP there have been over 221 major tailings dam failures. These have killed hundreds of people around the world, displaced thousands and contaminated the drinking water of millions.

The resulting contaminated water is called acid mine drainage, a toxic cocktail uniquely destructive to aquatic life. According to one study: “The effects of AMD are so multifarious that community structure collapses rapidly and totally, even though very often no single pollutant on its own would have caused such a severe ecological impact.”

These same “multifarious impacts” also makes recovery from such wastes much more difficult.

This environmental damage ultimately affects us — in addition to drinking water contamination, AMD’s byproducts such as mercury and heavy metals work their way into the food chain and sicken people and animals for generations.
The Biggest Polluters:

The top four mines that dump tailings into bodies of water account for 86% of the 180 million tonnes dumped into bodies of water each year. Those mines are:

Freeport McMoRan and #RioTinto’s Grasberg mine in #WestPapua, #Indonesia, which accounts for approximately 80 million tonnes of tailings
Newmont Sumitomo Mining’s Batu Hijau mine in #Indonesia, which accounts for approximately 40 million tonnes
Ok Tedi Mining Ltd.’s Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea, which accounts for approximately 22 million tonnes
#CliffsMining Company’s Wabush/Scully mine in #LabradorCanada, which accounts for 13 million tonnes of tailings

Read more:
https://earthworks.org/issues/environmental-impacts-of-gold-mining/

#WaterIsLife #GoldMine #GoldMining #MercuryPollution #Cyanide

« Comble de bonheur, lorsque #RioTinto a des surplus, #HydroQuébec est obligé de les acheter. En 2012, Rio Tinto a engrangé 148 millions $ en vente d'#électricité, lors d'un lock-out de 6 mois dans son usine d'Alma. Les travailleurs voulaient freiner la sous-traitance dans l'usine. Il y a de ces effets pervers… »

La spirale infernale de l’industrie de l'#aluminium

#alumineries #PolQc

#LAutJournal

https://lautjournal.info/20230106/la-spirale-infernale-de-lindustrie-de-laluminium