The Astros baseball team certainly doesn’t have it easy at all. When a team is used to having one manager for some time, it’s hard to part ways. But that might be happening for this particular team, and soon! Dusty Baker has been with the boys for four long years, and now, in 2023, he might just be planning on retiring. What will the team do next?
Dusty Baker – Retirement Plans?
It’s not easy for the Huston baseball team, Astros – and it doesn’t look like things will be getting much better. They lost in Game 7 of the ALCS, and now they must prepare for another loss that might sting a little more.
Pexels // Chris FIn the upcoming offseason, the team will most likely be parting ways with their manager of four years, Baker. At 64 years old, Baker has expressed on multiple occasions that this season may be his last.
Baker Might Still Be Around
Dusty Baker got his first managerial role in 1993, and, as recent reports suggest, he might not be leaving the sports scene for good. He has expressed an interest in staying in the game, just not as a manager.
He has been a manager for 26 long seasons, and the Astros had four runs in a role in the ALCS and two World Series appearances. Suffice it to say, Baker has become a valued asset to the team and their level in the baseball organization.
Humans Arrived at Micronesia Much Earlier Than Previously Thought
For the first time in history, scientists might be able to pinpoint the time when humans first arrived in Micronesia. And they use an unlikely source to determine it – soil sediments accumulated over millennia. A new study, recently published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), hints that humans might have arrived more than 5,000 years earlier than was initially thought.
First Migrations to Micronesia
The past few decades saw incredible advances in bio-anthropological and archaeological research in Oceania. Nevertheless, the precise pattern and timing of human activity (settlement) are still widely debated among scientists.
It’s believed that human activity in remote Oceania and Micronesia began some 3,300-3,500 years ago. To reach this destination, humans had to overcome challenges that were never seen in human history up to that time. Experts consider that, around that time, sea levels might have been over 6.5 feet higher than they are today. So, humans could have only passed thousands of miles through the ocean once its levels were lowered and stabilized.
Mangrove Trees Hold Clues
Across the Micronesia region, there are various high and low islands. Experts thought some of the higher islands would be more desirable than low-lying atolls, primarily due to their abundance of resources. Experts looked into settlements across the western part of Oceania. What they found was exactly what they expected – high islands showed evidence of earlier settlement compared to nearby atolls.
That pattern isn’t universal, though. In Micronesia, high islands like Kosrae show signs of human activity over 1,000 years later than nearby smaller islands.
Within the mangrove forests of Kosrae, scientists found sediments some 16 feet deep. Those trees, which grow at the coast, accumulate deep soils as sea levels rise. Researchers found that the oldest sediments in the mangroves were over 5,700 years old, meaning that over that time, the sea level rose by roughly 13 feet.
Scientists have proposed that land might be sinking relative to the sea surface. That would suggest evidence of earlier settlement in Micronesia’s Pohnpei and Kosrae might be submerged.