From statehouses to Congress, Republicans have advanced a range of ideas: banning nearly all abortions beyond the 20th week after conception; making abortion clinics follow regulations for surgical care; mandating that clinic physicians have admitting privileges at local hospitals; requiring women to get ultrasounds before terminating a pregnancy.

The issue, which is figuring prominently in early 2016 White House race maneuvering, energizes social conservatives who influence many Republican primaries and drive GOP success in nonpresidential years when the electorate is older, whiter and more conservative. And some Republicans say more moderate voters will support their agenda in the wake of the murder conviction against Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortion doctor who jurors determined killed babies who'd survived the procedure.

But Democrats and abortion-rights advocates say Republicans already have overreached the noticeable uptick in restrictions began with GOP gains in 2010 elections, before Gosnell's prosecution began and that moderate voters have other priorities.

"Defense workers are being furloughed, student loan interest rates have doubled and these Republicans insist on a relentless pursuit of more restrictions on women's freedoms," said Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democrats' national congressional campaign for 2014. "Swing voters are by their very nature moderate; they want solutions, not ideological warfare."

The House of Representatives adopted a 20-week ban in June. It has no chance of passing the Democratic-run Senate. A top anti-abortion lobbyist, National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias, told The Associated Press that her organization is working on a bill with the office of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is a high-profile possibility for the 2016 presidential race.

North Carolina's newfound legislative supermajority wants to regulate clinics more heavily, though the Republican governor has pushed back after promising as a candidate not to sign any new restrictions. Texas Gov. Rick Perry called his GOP legislature back into session to consider a 20-week ban and sweeping regulatory changes after a Democratic filibuster derailed the measure and drew national attention last month. The legislature passed the bill Friday and it's headed to Perry's desk.

Rick Santorum, a failed 2012 presidential candidate who's considering another run, has traveled to Texas to lobby for the bill. Perry, meanwhile, is among several anti-abortion governors mulling a presidential bid. Scott Walker in Wisconsin recently signed a bill requiring ultrasounds before abortions, though a federal judge blocked the law. Louisiana's Bobby Jindal has signed several more restrictive bills, including two these year.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, which works on reproductive health issues including abortion-rights, states this year have enacted at least 43 new laws that restrict or further regulate abortion. That comes after more than 120 new laws, several held up by federal courts, the previous two years.

Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said, "There's a political price for Republicans trying to roll back the clock," and some of the legislative debates have already drawn comparisons to Republican losses in 2012, when controversial or scientifically inaccurate statements from Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock grew into a national liability.

Israel predicated abortion would be an issue again in the 2013-14 elections that will determine who controls Congress and dozens of statehouses during the final two years of Democratic President Barack Obama's term. He mentioned 12 Republicans who represent districts that Obama won last year and four more where Republican Mitt Romney won by less than 2 percentage points. Hogue said it could matter in the North Carolina Senate race, as well, particularly if state House Speaker Tom Tillis ends up as the GOP challenger to Sen. Kay Hagan. The first-term senator took to her Twitter account recently to blast Raleigh Republicans. "Women are watching," she wrote.

Democrats need 18 more seats to run the House. Republicans must net a six-seat gain to control the Senate.

At the National Republican Congressional Committee, spokeswoman Andrea Bozek suggested the best GOP strategy would be to shift the conversation to Obama's health care law, key parts of which the president has delayed. "Let's be clear: It's the House Democrats who are extreme on women's health care," she said. "That law is something women are extremely concerned about, and that's the politically toxic issue for Democrats."

Polls on abortion have long suggested nuanced divisions in public opinion. In a May Gallup poll, 26 percent of Americans said the procedure always should be legal; 20 percent said outlaw it in all cases. Fifty-two percent, meanwhile, said it should legal under some circumstances, implying acceptance of legal restrictions. Yet fewer 42 percent feel it's morally defensible to end a pregnancy, while 49 percent said it's morally wrong.

A Pew Research Center poll in January, 41 percent said Democrats better represent their views on abortion; 36 percent opted for Republicans on the issue.

"The country is not willing yet to ban all abortions, but they do want a lot more limitations," argued Tobias, the National Right to Life chief. She said tighter clinic regulations and the "fetal-pain bills," the mid-pregnancy bans based on the presumption that a fetus can feel pain at that point, are "very reasonable ... protections for the unborn child and their mothers."

The Supreme Court holds that states can ban most abortions at the point a fetus could survive once born. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has opposed fetal-pain proposals. The group notes that medical professionals date pregnancy from a woman's last menstrual period, not conception or fertilization. The Congress says viability occurs about 24 weeks from the start of a pregnancy and that the most comprehensive study of fetal pain "concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester," which begins with week 28.

Alabama Republican Party Chairman Bill Armistead predicted Gosnell trial and conviction will prove a turning point. "The other side just talks about the rights of a woman to do what she wants with her body, but they never about the child within that body," Armistead said. "The middle ground will yield to the conservative side the more hard evidence we see that we're dealing with a life inside the woman's body."

Yet voters' ambiguity leaves at least a few Republicans wincing at making abortion a top issue. "Everyone already knows the Republican Party is the pro-life party," said New Hampshire's Steve Duprey, an RNC member who supports abortion rights.

The national party's analysis of the 2012 election loss, released in March with considerable fanfare, didn't mention abortion. But it acknowledged characterizations of the GOP as "narrow minded," ''out of touch" and a party of "stuffy old men" labels used in focus groups of former Republican voters. Abortion, Duprey said, fits into that critique: "The more strident we sound, the more difficult it becomes" to expand.

But Tobias promised the issue won't go away any time soon. If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid does what's expected and doesn't bring an abortion bill to the floor, she said, "We'll just ask the House to vote on it again in 2014."

___

AP Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta in Washington and Associated Press writer Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Barrow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

Thousands of Scouts gather for 10 days starting Monday at a new location in West Virginia. Officials designed the 1,000-plus acre Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve to take advantage of the Mountain State's natural assets, and they also put into place new physical fitness requirements that eliminated morbidly obese Scouts from participating.

"Part of the design in building this site was to address the need for physical fitness in our youth, which of course is a longstanding component of Scouting," said Dan McCarthy, director of the BSA's Summit Group. "We saw this as an opportunity to integrate some new challenges ... so we deliberately spread the site to enable us to encourage Scouts and basically require Scouts to move about the site by foot."

This year, 30,000 Scouts ages 12 to 20 and their leaders were required to meet a threshold for body mass index and other health factors before being allowed to participate. Jamboree applicants with a BMI a measure of body fat determined through height and weight of 40 or higher were deemed ineligible. Those who fell between 32 and 39.9 faced providing additional health information to Jamboree medical staff.

Nationally, about 17 percent of children ages 2 to 19 are considered obese triple the rate from a generation earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We required a level of fitness in order to come to the Jamboree that we haven't required before," McCarthy said. "And that has motivated an enormous return in terms of both kids and adults getting serious about improving their health."

Soon, the Scouts will know why. Besides offering a whole lot of fun, dozens of venues will test their physical skills and fitness. At some point during the Jamboree, every participating Scout will be asked to take a 3-mile trek up a mountain.

Their reward: A barbecue waiting at the top.

"We certainly want to get the Scouts outdoors, challenge them and have a healthy lifestyle," said Gary Hartley, the Summit's director of community and governmental relations. "We talk about the three C's as kind of the pillars, and that is cardio, character and citizenship. We have all of those embodied here."

From 1981 to 2010, the Jamboree was held every four years in Fort A.P. Hill, Va. That gathering on a flatter, borrowed Army base limited the size and scope of the Jamboree's operations.

In 2009, southern West Virginia was chosen out of 80 proposals from 28 states as the Jamboree's new home. Along with being the permanent home of the national Jamboree, whose theme is "Go Big, Get Wild," the Summit will serve as one of four high-adventure camps for the Scouts and will host the 2019 World Jamboree.

While Scouts will be roughing it outdoors, Hartley said walking won't be that rough. It's 1.5 miles from the furthest tent to the center of activity at the Summit, compared to 3 miles at Fort A.P. Hill.

Even the short, casual stroll isn't meant to be boring. A 786-foot suspension bridge connecting two of the Summit's six base camps to one of the outdoor activity centers has catwalks on either side.

The Summit's offerings are numerous. There are simple activities such as fishing on four different lakes. There's also the chance to get even wetter with whitewater rafting trips and learning to scuba dive and kayak in the Summit's Olympic-sized pools.

Among the bigger, more extreme venues, there are 50 mountain bike trails. The 11 BMX tracks and jumps total the size of about five football fields. A paved skateboard park was built by the same team that designed venues for the Summer X Games, and it includes a bowl, a vertical ramp, street-style combinations and a foam pit for Scouts to try out new tricks.

"This is the exact opposite of 'no skateboards or roller blades allowed,'" Hartley said.

Some of the venue designs fit in with the BSA's motto of building Scouts' confidence because they enable the youngsters to choose what fits their skill levels. Venues at Fort A.P. Hill addressed only the average skill set.

"Those are very different approaches to what we've done here that clearly is going to excite kids and provide opportunities that we've never had before," McCarthy said.

The planning includes incorporating safety procedures into staff training and venue oversight. Scout leaders want to be careful that exercise doesn't become exhaustion or worse.

In 2005, four adult Scout leaders were killed in an electrical accident on the opening day of the Jamboree. In the four days of intense heat that followed, more than 300 Scouts and visitors fell ill. In 1997, a Scout was killed at the Jamboree after the Army Humvee he was driving overturned.

Dale Hausner, the so-called "Serial Shooter" who asked the state Supreme Court for a speedy execution, was found to have died from "amitriptyline intoxication," according to the Pinal County Medical Examiner's Office.

A prison spokesman declined comment on whether Hausner, 40, was being treated with the anti-depressant and how he was able to get enough of the medication to overdose.

Hausner was found unresponsive in his cell and died on June 19, nearly a year after he wrote to the Supreme Court asking to be executed "as soon as possible" for a rampage that killed four men and two women on Phoenix streets in 2005 and 2006.

The former janitor was convicted in 2009 of six murders and 74 other crimes committed during drive-by shootings that terrorized the Phoenix area. Accomplice Samuel Dieteman was sentenced to life in prison and testified against Hausner.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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The standing desk was a thing of wonder, like the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. There he stood all day, working. Curious, I asked someone where he had acquired this wondrous instrument and whether I, too, could spend my days on two feet. I was told that it had been an expensive “union job” for which one needed a doctor’s note. This meant that I should not ask again.

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, there is no real need to repeat them. Suffice it to say that you should not spend your entire day on your derrière. And barring employment full of perambulation, a standing desk has become an increasingly viable solution for office workers. At the very least, it’s less silly than one of those bouncy balls. Come to think of it, there was one of those in the newsroom, too.

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As with all things that gain popularity, the standing desk now faces a backlash. This morning, ,” in which Ben Crair writes:

Of course the long, stationary workdays of most Americans are unhealthy. The solution should not be to sit less, but to work less. If sitting is as bad as the doctors say—and I’m sure it is!—then why not prescribe longer lunch breaks, shorter hours, and more vacation? You can still be chained to a standing desk. Is it any surprise that its biggest fans are the paternalist creeps of Silicon Valley?

Crair then interviews several writers, all of whom express displeasure with the notion of writing while standing – .

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Zoë Heller told Crair that standing while writing “was never going to happen,” evein if Roth did it, adding that “the cigarette and Diet Coke habit is a much more pressing concern.” Geoff Dyer, the essayist, also offered a similar endorsement of sitting. Gary Shteyngart, playing the part of the famously supine , went even further: “I do not sit. I lie.”

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Crair celebrates authorial sitting the way earlier generations defended authorial drinking – dissolution for the sake of the muse, Rimbaud’s “derangement of the senses” in an Aeron chair.

Crair argues for sitting as intrinsic to creativity:

A culture that requires standing or treadmill desks in the workplace produces a literature mainly about “the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk” [in the words of Susan Orlean]. A culture that tolerates sitting is one where people can apply their minds to something else.

Meanwhile, Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald tweeted in response to Crair’s piece, “I will happily go to war in defense of sitting.”

This backlash tends to treat the discourse around standing desks as identical to the actual use of standing desks. Vegetarians are annoying, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a point about red meat. What seems to really frighten Crair is that the physical dangers of sitting will lead to a Bloomberg-type public health campaign to make us all stand for nine hours a day. As if similar campaigns by New York’s so-called “nanny” against smoking in bars and for increased biking have proven all that nefarious (or unpopular).

Moreover, there is no link between sitting and creativity. If anything, standing is very close to walking, and walking is believed by many to foster the very kind of creative thinking Crair thinks will disappear if we use standing desks.

As Kierkegaard once wrote, “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.” That’s hard to do if you’re eternally sitting down.

Photos: Winston Churchill at standing desk, ; office standing desk by Tomas Quinones, .

The shrinking differential between the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude gets the lions share of the blame for last nights announcement from Valero Corp. () that net income for the second quarter will fall in the range of $0.80 to $0.90 per share. That is a drop of more than 30% from the consensus estimate of $1.27 a share.

In its announcement, Valero recited a litany of troubles:

The second quarter 2013 refining segment earnings are estimated to decrease versus the second quarter of 2012, primarily due to significantly lower discounts for heavy sour crude oil, higher natural gas costs, higher costs to comply with the Renewable Fuels Standard, and turnaround and maintenance activity at the Quebec City, McKee, Meraux, and Port Arthur refineries.

As the spread between WTI and Brent shrinks, the price for heavy, sour crude is not discounted as heavily and that forces Valero to pay more for the stinkier stuff. Because the heavy crude is more costly to refine, the companys cost for fuel (natural gas) also rises.

Valero is also being hit by the rising price for renewable energy credits, known as Renewable Identification Numbers or (RINs), which soared from a few pennies to near $1 earlier this year, and have now topped $1 again. We discussed this issue earlier this year, but the short version is that demand for RINs has been inflated as the federal mandate for ethanol production now exceeds the projected demand. This forces refiners to buy more RINs than they need.

Archer Daniels Midland Co. () and Valero are the two largest publicly traded ethanol producers in the United States and both will be hurt by the ethanol glut. Other refiners also are likely to see costs rise due both to the RIN issue and the closing differential between WTI and Brent.

Shares of Valero are trading down 3.6% in the premarket this morning at $33.36 in a 52-week range of $23.63 to $48.97.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A central part of President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law - a requirement that large employers offer health insurance to employees or pay a fine to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service - is being delayed for a year until 2015.

The move, which raised questions about the future of other provisions of the law, followed widespread complaints from businesses and their lobbyists about reporting requirements for employers with 50 or more full-time workers.

With less than six months left before much of the law takes effect, the IRS still has several related tax rules to finalize. Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said last month that the agency was "on path to hit the rest of our key milestones."

Here are some details.

EMPLOYER MANDATE

The Treasury Department said on July 2 that the "employer mandate" will not take effect until 2015, postponed from 2014.

The provision says any business with 50 or more full-time employees must offer affordable healthcare coverage to employees, or pay the IRS $2,000 for each full-time employee not offered coverage. A business's first 30 employees are excluded from the fee.

Businesses face the same tax if the coverage they offer is unaffordable or does not provide "minimum essential" coverage.

The IRS issued proposed rules on this January 2 and held a hearing on April 23. It is unclear when the rules - expected to specify minimum essential coverage and other requirements - will be finished.

DOCUMENTING WORKERS

As part of the employer mandate delay, Treasury said new reporting requirements for businesses on coverage of employees and dependents will be voluntary in 2014. Businesses with 50 or more full-time employees are affected.

Proposed requirements will be published in mid-2013, Treasury said. It is unclear how specific the information will be and what additional forms, if any, employees will fill out.

INDIVIDUAL MANDATE

Starting in 2014, most Americans must have health insurance or pay a fee to the IRS. Proposed rules for this were released in January. A public hearing was held on May 29. It is unclear when the rules will be finished.

The fee will be $95 per year, or 1 percent of taxable household income, in 2014; rising in phases by 2016 to $695 per person, with a cap of 2.5 percent of household income.

PREMIUM TAX CREDIT

Also starting in 2014, a tax credit will be available to low- and middle-income individuals for health insurance premiums paid, based on a percentage of income. The credit is meant to help them pay for obtaining coverage in insurance marketplaces being set up by the states and federal government.

The IRS finished the rules for this in May 2012.

HOSPITAL INSURANCE 0.9 PERCENT TAX

Starting this year, high-income earners began paying an additional 0.9 percent payroll tax on incomes over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. That came on top of the current payroll tax, which goes toward funding Medicare federal health insurance for the elderly and disabled.

The IRS in December issued proposed rules that explain how to calculate the tax and report a tax liability. It is unclear when the rules will be finalized.

UNEARNED INCOME 3.8 PERCENT TAX

This is a new tax on investment income, such as capital gains and dividends, of 3.8 percent, on top of the current 20 percent tax, also for higher-income groups. The IRS issued proposed rules for the tax in December 2012 and had a hearing in April. It is unclear when the rules will be finished.

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Doina Chiacu)

Leaders of the union representing 17,000 non-supervisory Border Patrol officers say they have serious concerns about how the Border Patrol can grow from 21,394 agents to 40,000 in only 10 years, as the bill requires, without sacrificing quality or efficiency. The Border Patrol has doubled in size in the past eight years on earlier mandates from Congress supported by President George W. Bush. The government also nearly doubled the number of Customs agents who man ports of entry, which has raised concerns about poorly screened officers are being hired who may be more likely to be corrupt.

The bill would increase spending on the southern border by $46.3 billion in the first 10 years. About $38 billion of that was added in a last-minute amendment introduced by Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to attract more conservative support for the legislation, which also would legalize most of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the country. The amended bill passed with 14 Republican votes and the support of the entire Democratic caucus.

One might imagine that the union, which stands to double in membership because of the bill, would be enthusiastic about it. But the conservative-leaning union has instead raised concerns about its feasibility and has refused to endorse it.

"We're not your ordinary union," said Shawn Moran, the National Border Patrol Council's spokesman. "We really do appreciate the intent of Senators Hoeven and Corker with the increase in manpower. We just think it can be done better and, frankly, cheaper."

Moran said he would prefer agents be allowed to work 10-hour days instead of the current eight-hour shifts, which would mean more man-hours on the border without the expense of hiring and training as many new officers. Agents receive a few more dollars per hour when they work more than eight hours.

"Don't get me wrong: Could we use 20,000 more agents? Yes.That'd be great," Chris Cabrera, the vice president of a chapter of the Border Patrol union in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, said. "We're sitting on a porous border. Twenty thousand is a great number, but I don't see it as an achievable goal."

Moran said that "the last time they hired any large number of Border Patrol agents ... they were given a badge or a gun and put out on the field and then a red flag would come up by the time they finally did a background check,"

A hiring surge between 2006 and 2008 led to "hurried background checks and loosened hiring standards," . Between October 2004 and 2011, 132 customs officials were indicted on corruption or corruption-related charges. Customs and Border Protection employees were arrested more than 2,000 times between 2004 and 2012.

One of Cabrera's primary concerns is that the Border Patrol may "cut corners" in their rush to train and deploy so many thousands of new agents. Training was already shortened during the last hiring surge from nearly six months to three months.

"What concerns me is are they not going to be as thorough as they need to be because the budget doesn't allow for it," Cabrera said.

TORONTO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - BlackBerrywill likely face tough questions about its future at its annual meeting on Tuesday after dismal quarterly results last week triggered a 28 percent plunge in the Canadian smartphone maker's share price.

Sales of BlackBerry's make-or-break new line of smartphones in the quarter ended June 1 came in well below analysts' expectations and offered little evidence that the company can quickly win back market share from Apple Inc'siPhone, Samsung'sGalaxy devices, and other phones powered by Google Inc's Android operating system.

"The results were a quasi death knell for BlackBerry," said John Goldsmith, the deputy head of equities at Montrusco Bolton, which owns more than 1.5 million BlackBerry shares. "The share move last week was very violent. I think you are going to get people standing up and making their voices heard at the AGM."

BlackBerry has forecast another operating loss for the current quarter, but Chief Executive Thorsten Heins said the company is on the right track and just needs more time.

"This is a year of investment. We have managed our cash carefully and prudently, and we now have the funds to invest, so this is the 'create the future' year," Heins told Reuters.

Some investors say BlackBerry must now look at all its options, from a sale of the whole company to a sale of parts. Its valuable patent portfolio and high-margin services business could draw interest from technology companies, according to bankers and investors.

Interest from private equity is seen to be weak, however, and some investors said they fear that BlackBerry will only lose more value if it keeps posting losses, burning through cash and bleeding subscribers.

"I think the pieces were worth more than the whole a year or two ago, but that's becoming less of a convincing argument and I am not sure it is true," said one fund manager, whose firm is one of BlackBerry's top 20 shareholders. The manager declined to be identified, citing to his firm's policy.

Ottawa reviews any big takeover of a Canadian company for competitive and national security reasons. Government officials have often said they want BlackBerry to succeed as a Canadian company, but concede they do not know how things will play out.

Given the uncertainty about its turnaround prospects, a foreign bid for BlackBerry could be palatable to Canadian regulators, some shareholders say.

PROSPECTS THINNING

Heins said BlackBerry is determined to stick to its strategy, and will unveil more devices that run on its new BlackBerry 10 operating system over the next eight months.

"We stay the course. This is the course that management has created and it is course that the board has accepted," he said.

A source close to BlackBerry said the sharp drop in the company's share price could trigger pressure on the board to re-examine its options, in spite of reluctance to do a deal.

"It is the board's job to deal with this objectively, and we hope they would be objective enough to do the best thing for the shareholders," said Don Yacktman of Yacktman Asset Management, another top 20 investor in BlackBerry, with 5.8 million shares, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Many investors say BlackBerry's new devices are impressive, but they fear the company lacks the wherewithal for a drawn-out fight against Apple and Samsung.

BlackBerry also competes against Microsoft Corpto be the No. 3 platform in the smartphone market.

"The problem here is they are facing Goliaths like Apple and Samsung, forget about the other Android devices. With a research and development budget that is a fraction of that of those two companies, how on earth can they compete?" Goldsmith said.

"I love fairy tale endings as much as the next person, but this is David versus two Goliaths, so good luck."

(Editing by Janet Guttsman; and Peter Galloway)

A team of scientists has uncovered a series of engravings and drawings strategically placed in open air and within caves by prehistoric groups of Native American settlers that depict their cosmological understanding of the world around them.

"The subject matter of this artwork, what they were drawing pictures of, we knew all along was mythological, cosmological," Jan Simek, anat the University of Tennessee said. "They draw pictures of bird men that are important characters in their origin stories and in their hero legends, and so we knew it was a religious thing and because of that, we knew that it potentially referred to this multitiered universe that was the foundation of their cosmology." []

Simek and his team studied art from 44 open-air locations and 50 cave sites. The earliest depiction of this kind of cosmological stratification dates to around 6,000 years ago, but most of the art is more recent, from around the 11th to 17th centuries.

The researchers noticed that certain kinds of drawings and engravings only appear in specific areas of the plateau. For instance, open-air spots in high elevations touched by the sun feature "upper world" artistic renderings that include depictions of weather forces,and characters that can exert influence on humans.

"Lower world" drawings and engravings are found in dark areas likethat are hidden from the sun. Usually, this layer of the world is associated with death, darkness and danger.

The "middle world" is representative of the reality that surrounded prehistoric humans on a daily basis. These drawings were found in both open-air environments and caves, but for the most part, they were found in the middle elevations of the plateau.

"This layered universe was a stage for a variety of actors that included heroes, monsters and creatures that could cross between the levels," Simek said in a statement.

Although depictions of many of the actors were found in low, high and middle elevations, color relates the overall cosmological structure of the universe, Simek said. Characters drawn in red the color of life are found in higher elevation sites, while black was used to draw figures found in the lower world.

"The dominant things we see all together are human images, what we call anthropomorphs," Simek told LiveScience. "They're not all human; some of them are clearly mythological people or people who blend animal and human characteristics."

These depictions of the universe can also help inform an understanding of the modern world.

"It's a very common human conception that there are different levels of being and different levels of cognition and different levels of connectivity with the human condition," Simek said. "I think all people at one level or another do that."

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