Headhunters on the map . . .
QUESTION Why is there a strange wiggly bit in the middle of the otherwise straight line border between Papua New Guinea and Indonesia?
New Guinea is a large island in the Pacific. The western half, Irian Jaya, is part of Indonesia, with Papua New Guinea, the Louisiade Archipelago and the Bismarck Archipelago to the east.
The imperial scramble of the late 19th century engulfed the island, with Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands establishing claims. In the early 1880s, they agreed to the island’s partition.
The Dutch claimed all the land to the west of a line marked by the 141st meridian, roughly dividing the mainland in two; to Germany went the north-east region of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and Bougainville [Germany lost control of their portion as a result of world war I]; and to Great Britain went the south-east region of New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago.
In 1893, the southern British portion was plagued by headhunting activity and the proximity to the Dutch border made policing it difficult. The problem was solved by a deal that moved the border slightly to the east, to the mouth of the nearby Bensbach River. This enabled the British to use geographical boundaries to help protect their territory.
In return for this bit of territory ceded to the Dutch, the British gained the Fly River border, further north. Thus, the border now runs about 250 miles south of its northern terminus on the Pacific coast, down the 141st Meridian, until it is diverted west along the course of the Fly River.
The bend strays west across the 141st meridian for about 40 miles. Following the river along its twists and turns, the border adds up to about 95 miles in total.
The border then resumes its straight southerly course, though about two miles east of the 141st meridian, to the mouth of the Bensbach River.
James Cross, Hexham, Northumberland. QUESTION Do identical twins have identical fingerprints? IDeNTIcAL twins are born as a result of a single fertilised egg dividing into two. The twins will share the same DNA. However, fingerprints begin to form on the limbs of the foetus about three months into the pregnancy — but as each foetus reacts differently to the environment in the womb, caused by emotional and physical factors, the ridge detail will develop in different ways for each.
The answer to the question, therefore, is that no, identical twins do not have identical fingerprints.
The skin on the inner surface of the hands differs from that elsewhere on the body. It forms ridges and furrows from the tips of the fingers to the wrist.
All finger, thumb and palm prints and crime-scene marks can be identified because every impression has a unique configuration of the ridges (known as friction ridges) and ridge features such as where a ridge ends or another begins between two surrounding ridges. Ridges may divide to form two new ridges or where divided come together to form an enclosure similar to a ‘lake’.
It is the type, position and number of these features relative to one another which determines the identification and uniqueness of the impression made when a finger, thumb or palm is recorded.
By a simple but accurate process of correlating and cross-matching friction ridge features, the fingerprint expert can decide whether two impressions have been made by the same area of friction ridge surface.
Similar features such as those above can be seen if one looks at the stripes on a zebra (endings, forks, lakes, etc).
The uniqueness of the configuration of ridge detail on any digit or other part of the hand means that no two people leave the same impression. In the case of twins, this has been shown by example and research.
In the late 1800s, the identical Fox twins (Albert ebenezer and ebenezer Albert) were petty criminals in Hertfordshire who led the law a merry dance by swapping names, which meant the authorities were never sure which twin had been arrested or convicted, as the only form of identification used at the time was visual (eg, a photo).
However, they were still active when the practice of taking the fingerprints of arrested and convicted criminals was introduced. It was then that the problem was resolved, as the set of fingerprints taken from one twin was distinctively different from that taken from the other.
Chris McEvoy, Retired senior identification officer, Metropolitan Police Service, NSY,
Northolt, Greater London. QUESTION How accurate has Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner proved in its predictions of what the world would be like in 2019? FuRTHeR to earlier answers, in one scene, Deckard (Harrison Ford) uses a video-phone booth to invite Rachael (Sean Young) for a drink — this was many years before Skype was even dreamed of.
In another scene, he uses a ‘lie detector’ to determine whether Rachael is a human or a replicant. Lie detector tests are now common in the united States.
while we don’t yet have flying cars, Google is looking at prototypes.
David Evans, Wrexham, N. Wales.
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