Pre-Columbian congenital syphilis from the late antiquity in France

Today, exactly 500 years after the discovery of America, there is still a lot of controversy about the history of syphilis in Europe, especially about the Columbian and pre-Columbian hypotheses. This paper presents evidence for the presence of venereal treponematosis in the late Antiquity in France. The case that we examined comes from the necropolis of Costebelle (3rd-5th centuries AD; Hyères, Var, France). Grave no. 1 contained the well-preserved skeleton of a relatively old woman with the skeletal remains of an approximately 7-month-old fetus in her pelvic cavity. The osseous lesions of the fetal remains can be described in four groups: periosteal appositions on the skull vault (frontal and parietal); signs of periostitis on the long bones (bilateral cortical irregularities, predominantly on the left side, which affect first of all tibiae, femora, fibulae, radii and humeri, particularly in the metaphyseal region); some infraperiosteal detachment reminiscent of an infraperiosteal haematoma surrounding the distal extremity of the left forearm and the left hand; and finally, the irregular lesions of the humeral distal and proximal tibial metaphyses reminded us radiologically of Wimberger's signs. The most probable diagnosis of all the lesions mentioned above is that of a precocious congenital syphilis. This case consists of an argument against the epidemiological theories about the migration of Treponema pallidum from the New World back to the Old World starting at the end of the 15th century.     

La Langue des Sciences Sociales dans le Tableau historique de Condorcet

Condorcet started working on "social sciences" many years before the French Revolution. Although published in 1793-1794, his Tableau historique, was first conceived in the 1770s. It examined the necessary conditions for scientific reasoning and scientific languages. Analyzing the obstacles that stood in the way of the development of social sciences, Condorcet used case studies to offer a reflection on the making of a language that would be scientific and accessible to the enlightened citizen as well.     

Partis, Pari et Théorie des Jeux

This article looks at the "problem of the divisions" - a dialogue between two persons or more - to bring out its structure, in which religious and ethical elements are intermingled. It then offers a reevaluation of the argument of the wager, which is seen here as a sort of prefiguration of game theory rather than as the solution to a problem of probabilities. Although their correspondence suggests that Fermat and Pascal believed they were offering a solution to the same problem, they were not - as written by Fermat, the problem of divisions is a problem of probabilities, but ultimately Fermat did not solve the same problem as Pascal.     

Detection of diffusion and contact zones of early farming in Europe from the space-time distribution of 14C dates

The spread of early farming in Europe is revisited using a sample of 3072 audited 14C calBC dates from 940 georeferenced early Neolithic sites. The surface expansion of early Neolithic has been reconstituted using the kriging technique of spatial interpolation. Centres of renewed expansion, of contact zones, and the main routes of expansion have been highlighted by means of a vector map, representing the gradient. The expansion of the agricultural system on the map, was not uniform and regular across Europe as a whole, but proceeded in leaps. With the scale of detection of the 500-year isochrones, several leaps are identifiable: at 8000 calBC crossing the Taurus barrier, 6700–6100 calBC crossing the southern Adriatic barrier, 6100–5600 calBC crossing the Central European agro-ecological barrier and 5000–4000 calBC expanding on the other, marginal zones. Using a vector map, 10 points of renewed expansion and nine contact zones, were detected. The whole does not correspond to a process of homogeneous diffusion, approximately steady, but a process marked by phases of geographical expansion and stasis.