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What Bronze Age teeth say about the evolution of the human diet

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA—A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford Univeristy Press, uncovers well-preserved microbiomes from two 4,000 year old teeth in a limestone cave in Ireland. These contained bacteria that cause gum disease, as well as the first high quality ancient genome from S. mutans, an oral bacterium that is one of the major causes of tooth decay.

These discoveries allowed the researchers to assess the impact of past dietary changes on the oral microbiome across millennia, including major changes coinciding with the popularization of sugar and industrialization. The teeth, both derived from the same Bronze Age man, also provided a snapshot of oral health in the past, with one tooth showing evidence of microbiome dysbiosis.

Microbial DNA extracted from ancient human teeth can provide information on the evolution of the oral microbiome. How did our ancestors’ mouths differ from our own and why? The excellent preservation of DNA in fossilized dental plaque has made the oral cavity one of the best studied aspects of the ancient human body. However, scientists have retrieved very few full genomes from oral bacteria from prior to the Medieval era. Researchers have limited knowledge about prehistoric bacterial diversity and the relative impact of recent dietary changes compared to ancient ones, such as the spread of farming starting about ten thousand years ago.

S. mutans is the primary cause of dental cavities and very common in oral microbiomes. However, it is exceptionally rare in the ancient genomic record. One reason for its rarity could be its acid-producing nature – this acid causes the tooth to decay but also degrades DNA and prevents plaque from mineralizing. The absence of S. mutans DNA in ancient mouths could also reflect less favorable habitats for the species across most of human history. Archaeologists have observed an uptick in dental cavities in skeletal remains following the adoption of cereal agriculture, but cavities become much more common in the Early Modern period, beginning about 1500 AD.

The sampled teeth were among a large assemblage of skeletal remains excavated from a limestone cave at Killuragh, County Limerick, by the late Peter Woodman of University College Cork. While other teeth in the cave showed advanced dental decay there was no evidence of caries on the sampled teeth. Nevertheless, one tooth root yielded an unprecedented quantity of mutans sequences.

“We were very surprised to see such a large abundance of mutans in this 4,000 year old tooth” said Lara Cassidy, an assistant professor at Trinity College Dublin and senior author of the study. “It is a remarkably rare find and suggests this man was at high risk of developing cavities right before his death.”

The cool, dry, and alkaline conditions of the cave may have contributed to the exceptional preservation of S. mutans DNA, but its high abundance also points to dysbiosis. The researchers found that while S. mutans DNA was plentiful, other streptococcal species were virtually absent from the tooth sample. This implies that the natural balance of the oral biofilm had been upset – mutans had outcompeted the other species leading to a pre-disease state.

The study lends support to the “disappearing microbiome” hypothesis, which proposes the microbiomes of our ancestors were more diverse than our own today. Alongside the S. mutans genome, the authors reconstructed two genomes for T. forsythia – a bacteria involved in gum disease – and found them to be highly divergent from one another, implying much higher levels of strain diversity in prehistoric populations.

“The two sampled teeth contained quite divergent strains of T. forsythia” explained Iseult Jackson, a PhD candidate and first author of the study. “These strains from a single ancient mouth were more genetically different from one another than any pair of modern strains in our dataset, despite these modern samples deriving from Europe, Japan, and the USA. This is interesting because a loss of biodiversity can have negative impacts on the oral environment and human health.”

The reconstructed T. forsythia and S. mutans genomes revealed dramatic changes in the oral microenvironment over the last 750 years. In recent centuries, one lineage of T. forsythia has become dominant in global populations. This is the tell-tale sign of a selective episode – where one strain rises rapidly in frequency due to some genetic advantage. The researchers found that post-industrial T. forsythia genomes have acquired many new genes that help the bacteria colonize the oral environment and cause disease.

S. mutans also showed evidence of recent lineage expansions and changes in gene content, which coincide with the popularization of sugar. However, the investigators found that modern S. mutans populations have remained more diverse than T. forsythia, with deep splits in the mutans evolutionary tree pre-dating the Killuragh genome.  They believe this is driven by differences in the evolutionary mechanisms that shape genome diversity in these species.

S. mutans is very adept at swapping genetic material across strains.” said Cassidy “This allows an advantageous innovation to be spread across mutans lineages, rather than one lineage becoming dominant and replacing all others.”

In effect, both these disease-causing bacteria have changed dramatically from the Bronze Age to today, but it appears that very recent cultural transitions, such as the consumption of sugar, have had an inordinate impact.

The paper, “Ancient genomes from Bronze Age remains reveal deep diversity and recent adaptive episodes for human oral pathobionts,” is available (at midnight on March 27th) at https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/molbev/msae017.

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Killuragh Cave, County Limerick, Ireland. Sam Moore and Marion Dowd/Molecular Biology and Evolution

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Article Source: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA news release

The reason for the proximity between Paleolithic extensive stone quarries and water sources: Elephant hunting by early humans

TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY—Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University have uncovered the mystery surrounding extensive Paleolithic stone quarrying and tool-making sites: Why did Homo erectus repeatedly revisit the very same locations for hundreds of thousands of years? The answer lies in the migration routes of elephants, which they hunted and dismembered using flint tools crafted at these quarrying sites.

The research was led by Dr. Meir Finkel and Prof. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University’s Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures

The study* was published in the journal Archaeologies.

Prof. Ran Barkai explains: “Ancient humans required three things: water, food and stone. While water and food are necessities for all creatures, humans relied on stone tools to hunt and butcher animals, as they lack the sharp claws or fangs of other predators. The question is, why do we find rock outcrops that were used for the production of flint tools, surrounded by thousands of stone tools, and next to them rock outcrops containing flint that was not used for the production of tools? A study of indigenous groups that lived until recently, with some still alive today, shows that hunter-gatherers attribute great importance to the source of the stone — the quarry itself — imbuing it with potency and sanctity, and hence also spiritual worship. People have been making pilgrimages to such sites for generations upon generations, leaving offerings at the rock outcrop, while adjacent outcrops, equally suitable for stone tool production, remain untouched. We sought to understand why; what is special about these sites?”

For nearly 20 years, Prof. Barkai and his colleagues have been researching flint quarrying and tool-making sites in the Upper Galilee. These sites are characterized by large nodules of flint convenient for crafting and are located within walking distance of the major Paleolithic sites of the Hula Valley — Gesher Benot Ya’akov and Ma’ayan Baruch. These sites boast thousands of quarrying and extraction localities where, until half a million years ago, in the Lower Paleolithic period, prehistoric humans fashioned tools and left offerings, despite the presence of flint in other geological formations in various places. Because elephants were the primary dietary component for these early humans, the Tel Aviv University researchers cross-referenced the database of the sites’ distribution with the database of the elephants’ migration routes, and discovered that the flint quarrying and knapping sites were situated in rock outcrops near the elephants’ migration paths.

“An elephant consumes 400 liters of water a day on average, and that’s why it has fixed movement paths,” says Dr. Finkel. “These are animals that rely on a daily supply of water, and therefore on water sources — the banks of lakes, rivers and streams. In many instances, we discover elephant hunting and processing sites at “necessary crossings” — where a stream or river passes through a steep mountain pass, or when a path along a lakeshore is limited to the space between the shore and a mountain range. At the same time, given the absence of available means of preservation and the presence of predatory animals in the area, the window of opportunity for a group of hunter-gatherers to exhaust their elephant prey was limited. Therefore, it was imperative to prepare suitable cutting tools in large quantities in advance and nearby. For this reason, we find quarrying and knapping sites in the Upper Galilee located a short distance from elephant butchering sites, which are positioned along the elephants’ movement paths.”

Subsequently, the researchers sought to apply an adapted model from the one they developed in Israel to several sites from the Lower Paleolithic period in Asia, Europe and Africa, where such a “triad” exists. These included both sites where the hunted animals were elephants or mammoths, as well as later sites where other animals, such as hippos, camels, and horses, were the prey.

“It appears that the Paleolithic holy trinity holds true universally: Wherever there was water, there were elephants, and wherever there were elephants, humans had to find suitable rock outcrops to quarry stone and make tools in order to hunt and butcher their favorite mega herbivores,” says Prof. Barkai. “It was a tradition: For hundreds of thousands of years the elephants wandered along the same route, while humans produced stone tools nearby. Ultimately, those elephants became extinct, and the world changed forever.”

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Illustration of elephant hunting using spears by Dana Ackerfeld. Dana Ackerfeld

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Article Source: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY news release.

*Finkel, M., Barkai, R. Quarries as Places of Significance in the Lower Paleolithic Holy Triad of Elephants, Water, and Stone. Arch (2024). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11759-024-09491-y

Cover Image, Top Left: Mammoth Hunt; Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878;Gay, Sydney Howard, 1814-1888; Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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The Death Chambers of Herculaneum

No one knows her name.

The hollow cavities that once held her eyes in her last, terrifying, desperate moment of life nearly 2,000 years ago stared back at me in silence. Surrounded by the articulated skeletal remains of family and friends, her bones told a story of a catastrophe that still echoes across time to this day. I was peering into a cave-like construction that once housed fishing equipment — one among 12 of them — neatly arranged as built in a straight-line row along the back perimeter of what is today a flat but stoney surface. It defined the dimensions of what was once an ancient city’s inviting seaside beach. 

Now only a caste replica of the bones she left behind, I knew there was a lost, untold history and personality here that will never be known to today’s living generations.

At least for now, we know how she died, and how quickly.

Through research conducted by a number of researchers, including a team under the leadership of Pierpaolo Petrone of the University Federico II in Naples, scientists have analyzed the skeletal remains of the victims of the volcanic catastrophe of ancient Herculaneum. This research was built upon and confirmed results of previous bioarchaeological and taphonomic studies. Based on the previous studies and their knowledge of how extreme heat can effect the human body, they formulated a horrific and vividly graphic hypothesis for study.

To read more, see the full story at Popular Archaeology Premium.

Cover Image, Top Left: BobFog at Italian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Toba supereruption unveils new insights into early human migration

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY—Modern humans dispersed from Africa multiple times, but the event that led to global expansion occurred less than 100,000 years ago. Some researchers hypothesize that dispersals were restricted to “green corridors” formed during humid intervals when food was abundant and human populations expanded in lockstep with their environments. But a new study* in Nature, including ASU researchers Curtis Marean, Christopher Campisano, and Jayde Hirniak, suggests that humans also may have dispersed during arid intervals along “blue highways” created by seasonal rivers. Researchers also found evidence of cooking and stone tools that represent the oldest evidence of archery.

Working in the Horn of Africa, researchers have uncovered evidence showing how early modern humans survived in the wake of the eruption of Toba, one of the largest supervolcanoes in history, some 74,000 years ago. The behavioral flexibility of these people not only helped them live through the supereruption but may have facilitated the later dispersal of modern humans out of Africa and across the rest of the world.

“This study confirms the results from Pinnacle Point in South Africa – the eruption of Toba may have changed the environment in Africa, but people adapted and survived that eruption-caused environmental change,” said Marean, research scientist with the Institute of Human Origins and Foundation Professor with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

The team investigated the Shinfa-Metema 1 site in the lowlands of present-day northwestern Ethiopia along the Shinfa River, a tributary of the Blue Nile River.

The supereruption occurred during the middle of the time when the site was occupied and is documented by tiny glass shards whose chemistry matches that of Toba.

Pinpoint timing through cryptotephra

“One of the ground-breaking implications of this study,” said Marean, “is that with the new cryptotephra methods developed for our prior study in South Africa, and now applied here to Ethiopia, we can correlate sites across Africa, and perhaps the world, at a resolution of several weeks of time.” 

Cryptotephra are signature volcanic glass shards that can range from 80–20 microns in size, which is smaller than the diameter of a human hair. To extract these microscopic shards from archaeological sediment requires patience and great attention to detail. 

“Searching for cryptotephra at these archaeological sites is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but not knowing if there is even a needle. However, having the ability to correlate sites 5,000 miles apart, and potentially further, to within weeks instead of thousands of years makes it all worth it,” said Christopher Campisano, research scientist with the Institute of Human Origins and professor with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

“This study, once again,” said Campisano, “highlights the importance of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas/Arizona State University team pushing the limits for successfully analyzing extremely low abundance cryptotephra to date and correlate archaeological sites across Africa.” 

The methods for identifying low abundance cryptotephra at Pinnacle Point were first developed at University of Nevada Las Vegas led by the late Gene Smith and Racheal Johnsen and now carried on at Arizona State University’s Sediment and TEphra Preparation (STEP) Lab.

School of Human Evolution and Social Change graduate student Jayde Hirniak led ASU’s effort to create its own cryptotephra lab—the STEP Lab—working with Campisano and building on methods developed at UNLV. Hirniak also collaborated with cryptotephra labs in the United Kingdom that work with sediment samples preserving hundreds or thousands of glass shards. Now Hirniak’s primary expertise is in tephrochronology, which involves the use of volcanic ash to link archaeological and paleoenvironmental records and place them on the same timeline, which was her contribution to this research.

“Our lab at ASU was built to process extremely low abundance cryptotephra horizons (<10 shards per gram) using a highly specialized technique. There are only a few labs in the world with these capabilities,” said Hirniak.

Migrations along “blue highways”

Based on isotope geochemistry of the teeth of fossil mammals and ostrich eggshells, they concluded that the site was occupied by humans during a time with long dry seasons on a par with some of the most seasonally arid habitats in East Africa today. Additional findings suggest that when river flows stopped during dry periods, people adapted by hunting animals that came to the remaining waterholes to drink. As waterholes continued to shrink, it became easier to capture fish without any special equipment, and diets shifted more heavily to fish.

Its climatic effects appear to have produced a longer dry season, causing people in the area to rely even more on fish. The shrinking of the waterholes may also have pushed humans to migrate outward in search of more food.

“As people depleted food in and around a given dry season waterhole, they were likely forced to move to new waterholes,” said John Kappelman, a UT anthropology and earth and planetary sciences professor and lead author of the study. “Seasonal rivers thus functioned as ‘pumps’ that siphoned populations out along the channels from one waterhole to another, potentially driving the most recent out-of-Africa dispersal.

The humans who lived at Shinfa-Metema 1 are unlikely to have been members of the group that left Africa. However, the behavioral flexibility that helped them adapt to challenging climatic conditions such as the Toba supereruption was probably a key trait of Middle Stone Age humans that allowed our species to ultimately disperse from Africa and expand across the globe.

The people living in the Shinfa-Metema 1 site hunted a variety of terrestrial animals, from antelope to monkey, as attested to by cut marks on the bones, and apparently cooked their meals as shown by evidence of controlled fire at the site. The most distinctive stone tools are small, symmetrical triangular points. Analyses show that the points are most likely arrowheads that, at 74,000 years in age, represent the oldest evidence of archery.

ASU’s cryptotephra research was funded by the Hyde Family Foundations, the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Human Origins, and Arizona State University.

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Excavations at a Middle Stone Age archaeological site, Shinfa-Metema 1, in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia revealed a population of humans at 74,000 years ago that survived the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. From https://topographic-map.com Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0

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A tiny glass shard less than the diameter of human hair was recovered from a Middle Stone Age site in northwest Ethiopia. Its chemistry matches that of the Toba supervolcano located on the other side of the world in Indonesia. The people who lived at this archaeological site survived the supereruption because of their behavioral flexibility. Photograph by Racheal Johnsen.

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Projectile points from a Middle Stone Age archaeological site, Shinfa-Metema 1, in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia dating from the time of the Toba supereruption at 74,000 years ago provide evidence for bow and arrow use prior to the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa. Photograph by Blue Nile Survey Project.

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Article Source: ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY news release.

The first Neolithic boats in the Mediterranean

PLOS—More than 7,000 years ago, people navigated the Mediterranean Sea using technologically sophisticated boats, according to a study* published March 20, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Juan F. Gibaja of the Spanish National Research Council, Barcelona and colleagues.

Many of the most important civilizations in Europe originated on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. During the Neolithic, communities clearly traveled and traded across the water, as evidenced by watercraft in the archeological record and the presence of settlements on coasts and islands. In this study, Gibaja and colleagues provide new insights into the history of seafaring technology through analysis of canoes at the Neolithic lakeshore village of La Marmotta, near Rome, Italy.

Excavation at this site has recovered five canoes built from hollowed-out trees (dugout canoes) dating between 5700-5100BC. Analysis of these boats reveals that they are built from four different types of wood, unusual among similar sites, and that they include advanced construction techniques such as transverse reinforcements. One canoe is also associated with three T-shaped wooden objects, each with a series of holes that were likely used to fasten ropes tied to sails or other nautical elements. These features, along with previous reconstruction experiments, indicate these were seaworthy vessels, a conclusion supported by the presence at the site of stone tools linked to nearby islands.

The authors describe these canoes as exceptional examples of prehistoric boats whose construction required a detailed understanding of structural design and wood properties in addition to well-organized specialized labor. Similarities between these canoes and more recent nautical technologies support the idea that many major advances in sailing were made during the early Neolithic. The authors suggest there may be more boats preserved near La Marmotta, a potential avenue for future research.

The authors add: “Direct dating of Neolithic canoes from La Marmotta reveals them to be the oldest in the Mediterranean, offering invaluable insights into Neolithic navigation. This study reveals the amazing technological sophistication of early agricultural and pastoral communities, highlighting their woodworking skills and the construction of complex vessels.”

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Excavation of Canoe 5. Gibaja et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Canoe Marmotta 1. On display in the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome. Gibaja et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Gibaja JF, Mineo M, Santos FJ, Morell B, Caruso-Fermé L, Remolins G, et al. (2024) The first Neolithic boats in the Mediterranean: The settlement of La Marmotta (Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy). PLoS ONE 19(3): e0299765. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299765

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Hominin fossil find in Italy suggests multiple human lineages coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene in Europe

The presence and pattern of peopling of Europe during the Middle Pleistocene (between 770,000 and 126,000 years ago) has long been a subject of debate among scientists. Some scholars suggest coexistence of multiple human lineages during this time in Europe, and others propose a single lineage evolving from Homo heidelbergensis to Homo neanderthalensis. Recently, researchers conducted a morphometric, biomechanical and palaeopathological study of a second right metatarsal SdD2 hominin fossil found at the Sedia del Diavolo site in Italy, and found that the fossil showed features more archaic than those of Neanderthals. From the research, the study authors were also able to suggest a revised assessment of the technology and hunting strategies adopted by Homo in the region between MIS 9 (337,000 to 300,000 years ago) and MIS 8 (301,000 to 245,000 years ago).

“These observations,” state the authors in the published study*, “when interpreted within the context of the available fossil record, may suggest the co-existence of at least two hominin clades in the Italian Peninsula during the beginning of marine isotope stage (MIS) 8”.

Moreover, according to the study authors, the Sedia del Diavolo site provides evidence for the oldest association of a hominin, in this case possibly other than Neanderthal, and Levallois technology, challenging the previously held  paradigm that only Neanderthals were associated with this technology in Europe. Finally, observance of bony stress injuries in the fossil specimen, coupled with the known prevalence of such bone stress injuries in specimens found within Early and Middle Pleistocene fossil assemblages, supports the contention for persistence hunting as a common activity among early members of Homo, the genus through which modern humans have evolved.

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(a) the SdD2 fossil, a second right metatarsal with a bony callus on the distal diaphysis, interpreted as a stress fracture38. From left to right: dorsal, plantar, lateral, and medial views. Reference scale bar 10 mm. (b) the set of landmarks (large spheres) and semilandmarks (small spheres) used for the three-dimensional geometric morphometric analysis of the proximal epiphysis (dark blue), distal epiphysis (light blue) and diaphysis (purple). CC BY-SA 4.0, Riga, A., Profico, A., Mori, T. et al. The Middle Pleistocene human metatarsal from Sedia del Diavolo (Rome, Italy). Sci Rep 14, 6024 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55045-1

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*Riga, A., Profico, A., Mori, T. et al. The Middle Pleistocene human metatarsal from Sedia del Diavolo (Rome, Italy). Sci Rep 14, 6024 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-55045-1

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Text and images for this article, Riga, A., et al. (see above citation),  CC-BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons License)
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The Adventure of Archaeology: Ten Fascinating Stories

Here are the most compelling published stories of Popular Archaeology Magazine. Some have an element of controversy, some discoveries took place decades before, and others entail findings that may lead to further discoveries yet to come. In all cases, they represent the excitement and adventure of archaeology as it opens new and fascinating windows on humanity’s collective past.

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The discovery of the world’s largest trove of ancient writings opened an unparalleled window on a vanished world. Read About It Here

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The story of a forgotten explorer and his intrepid journey to discover great ancient Arabian cities of the Incense Road. Read About It Here

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How an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life. Read About It Here

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Two remarkable sites are shedding light on a critical transitional period in human evolution. Read About It Here

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The startling discovery of million-year-old human footprints on a beach in the United Kingdom had scientists jumping. Read About It Here

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The recent controversial discoveries, and a renowned scholar’s quest to uncover the historical truth about Jesus of Nazareth. Read About It Here

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Excavations of princely tombs are shedding new light on a formative time before the high florescence of the Mycenaean civilization. Read About It Here

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An anthology of articles focusing on the findings that are informing a new paradigm about the early settling of the Americas. Read About It Here

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Archaeologists are unearthing new clues to America’s historic “lost” colony. Read About It Here

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The in-depth story about the controversial discovery of a 130,000-year-old human presence in Southern California. Read About It Here

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Aegean Connections (Episode 2)

Most of us have heard or read about the great Trojan War and the epic journey of Odysseus (otherwise known as Ulysses) through the legendary characters and events as described by Homer in his famous literary works, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Fewer, however, have a more than passing knowledge of the ancient Bronze and Iron Age peoples who many scholars suggest may have formed the historical basis for Homer’s epic mythical stories, such as the Mycenaeans and Minoans. The real story of these civilizations has slowly come to light through the painstaking efforts of archaeologists and scholars, popularized by the media over the years, but documented and studied more meticulously within the halls of academia. Despite the efforts to come to a greater understanding, mysteries still abound and there are more questions than answers.

Dr. Ester Salgarella, who received her Ph.D from Cambridge University and subsequently conducted post-doctoral research at the university, has developed and released a new podcast series, entitled Aegean Connections, that explores all facets of these civilizations, bringing the research out from the confines of the scholarly “ivory tower” and into the listening ear of the general public. She does this by conducting interviews of the very scholars who engage in the study and research, focusing on such topics as undeciphered scripts, the life-ways and origins of these Aegean peoples, and many other topics to “build a bridge between scholars (both well-established and early-career) in Aegean-oriented academic fields and the wider audience….,” according to Salgarella. 

Linear B tablet Clay from Pylos end of 13th century BCE NAM Athens. Mary Harrsch, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The second episode of the series, released on February 6, 2024, interviews Dr. Rachele Pierini, a Senior Researcher and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Textile Research, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. In this episode, the listener will learn a few fascinating things about this ancient script, used by the ancient Mycenaeans to write the earliest attested form of the Greek language. Rachele will tell us about how Linear B textual evidence is incorporated into her current research related to textile production, sustainability, gender identity and cultural identity, showing how a Bronze Age script can be used as an example of how the past can inform and explain the present.

Anyone can listen to the podcast, which is free to the public.

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Above: Fresco wall painting detail created by an ancient Minoan artist at Akrotiri, depicting a city and the seafaring adventures of this maritime civilization.

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Cover Image, Above: Image by Vektorianna, Pixabay

Timing of early human population bottleneck

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—The migration of hominins out of Africa may have been driven by climatic changes, a study suggests. Genomic studies have suggested that humans underwent a population bottleneck around 0.9 million years ago, but a recent study* of early archaeological sites suggested that this bottleneck occurred around 1.1 million years ago. The dating discrepancy makes it challenging to identify climatic events that may have contributed to a bottleneck. Giovanni Muttoni and Dennis Kent reevaluated the stratigraphic records of early hominin sites across Eurasia to explore the timing and drivers of a hominin population bottleneck. The authors identified a concentration of Eurasian hominin sites reliably dated to 0.9 million years ago. In comparison, the stratigraphic records dating Eurasian sites to greater than 1.1 million years ago were ambiguous and disputed, making associations with climatic events less reliable. The findings are consistent with a rapid migration of hominins and other animals out of Africa around 0.9 million years ago during the first major glaciation of the Pleistocene Epoch, when a drop in sea level opened land routes out of Africa and aridity increased across Africa. According to the authors, the findings suggest that the dispersal of humans out of Africa may have been an adaptive response to a population bottleneck driven by climatic changes around 0.9 million years ago.

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Deployment of piston corer used to recover 16 meter-long, deep-sea sediment cores. Dennis Kent

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Effects of enhanced, cyclical cooling and warming since marine isotope stage 22 shown in open-pit excavation of loess-paleosol sequence in Kostolac, Serbia. Giovanni Muttoni

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Loess section being sampled for integrated stratigraphy in Krakow-Zwierzniec, Poland, with researcher standing on level with evidence of early occupation by H. sapiens. Giovanni Muttoni

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*“Hominin population bottleneck coincided with migration from Africa during the Early Pleistocene ice-age transition,” by Giovanni Muttoni and Dennis V. Kent. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 11-Mar-2024. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2318903121

Lost tombs and quarries rediscovered on British military base in Cyprus

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER—More than forty archaeological sites in Cyprus dating potentially as far back as the Bronze Age that were thought lost to history have been relocated by University of Leicester scientists working for the Ministry of Defence.

A small team of archaeologists from University of Leicester Archaeological Services, funded by the DIO Overseas Stewardship Project, undertook a ‘walkover survey’ – a systematic surveying and recording of visible archaeological remains – of the Eastern Sovereign Base Area at Dhekelia (ESBA) on the south coast of the island. The work, licensed by Cyprus’ Department of Antiquities in Nicosia, is to inform site management by the DIO, which is the custodian of the UK and overseas Defence estate.

Dhekelia is about 30km south-east of Nicosia, and 80km north-east of the Western Sovereign Base Area (WSBA) at Akrotiri where the University of Leicester has been working since 2015.

The task of the walkover was to relocate around 60 possible archaeological sites that had been recorded in the early 1960s prior to the development of the garrison within the Dhekelia base, and the laying out of the Kingsfield Airstrip at the western end of the area.

In preparation of the survey a Geographic Information System (GIS) record was compiled that included all the known information, and from that co-ordinate points for the possible sites were exported to standard handheld GPS units. Archaeologists then visited each site and searched for the evidence that had been previously recorded. When successfully found, each site would then be photographed, GPS located, and recorded on pro forma sheets.

In total, 51 sites including 5 historic buildings were located. Some records survived for 47 of the sites, but a further four were known only from labels on a 1:25,000 scale plan. Although the dating of most of the sites is currently unknown, they are likely to span from the Bronze Age which started c.2500 BC to the Byzantine period which ended in the 12th Century AD, and to include sites from the Hellenistic period (312 – 58 BC) and Roman periods (58 BC – 395 AD).

Particular highlights included three coastal quarries where stone was being taken off low spits running out into the sea. One quarry had a little ramp that looked like it was used for loading slabs of quarried rock into boats tied in deep water alongside, and another had dozens of very clear circular grinding stone removals which, where immediately adjacent to each other, left behind distinct clover leaf shapes in the bed rock.

Large areas of rock cut tomb extended over several hectares in one part of the inland plateau. Most of these tombs were in a very poor state and some bore clear signs of looting in the form of adjacent mounds of earth. Many tombs have been used as convenient areas for fly tipping. One tomb, part of a substantial cemetery surrounding a monastery to the west of Xylotymbou village was being used for caging cats.

Matt Beamish from University of Leicester Archaeological Services, who led the survey, said:

“Our GIS and survey methods had worked well when used for a similar survey of the Akrotiri peninsula in 2019. Many of the sites we were planning to survey had been last visited over 20 years ago, and in many instances had been reported as no longer existing or being unfindable. On reflection this had more to do with inadequate mapping, lack of preparation and lack of satellite location technologies: we found that many of the sites could be re-found with a little bit of patience.

“There were undoubtedly problems with some of the archive information which was incomplete and had been inaccurately redrawn at some stage in the past. Some sites had clearly been lost to the subsequent development of roads and buildings.”

The Dhekelia Sovereign base is around 20km wide and 7km deep and sits on the east side of Larnaca Bay. The topography is varied including a flat coastal strip meeting steep limestone cliffs and hills, with a broadly flat plateau on the interior which includes more areas of rocky outcrop and is bisected by rivers which are generally dry beds under cultivation. The coastal strip and plateau include areas of agriculture and horticulture, and areas of olive and citrus grove and scrub. In the north of the area there are large dairy and livestock farms.

Cyprus’ position on Mediterranean sea routes has led to a rich and diverse cultural heritage, and it is famed for the preservation of many archaeological sites from the Bronze Age, Hellenistic/Iron Age, Roman, and Byzantine or medieval periods. At the western end of the Dhekelia area this occupation is represented in a significant archaeological landscape comprising a large Bronze Age defended hilltop settlement at Kokkinokremnos and an adjacent Iron Age hillfort at Vikla, both sitting above the Roman harbour town of Koutsopetria: all these protected sites are subject to recent research excavations. The Roman harbour is all now infilled, possibly stemming from a catastrophic tsunami event.

Much of the known archaeology across Dhekelia is funerary, and this mostly comprises rock cut tombs, some of which were built into the limestone caves (generally Hellenistic/Iron Age), and rock cut shaft graves (generally Byzantine/Roman-Medieval). 

Matt Beamish added: “The survey was very successful with the identification of significant archaeological areas. We know that many more archaeological sites will exist which are not obvious to the naked eye. Much of the area has seen no systematic archaeological survey, and the application of remote sensing or aerial survey perhaps using LiDAR would enable a wider picture of previous human activity to be drawn. The information will enable the DIO to better manage the archaeological sites within the Sovereign Base Administration Area, and allow a wider understanding of Dhekelia’s archaeological heritage.”

Alex Sotheran, Archaeology Advisor, DIO, praised the survey and the results:

“The work carried out by Matt and the team has really improved our knowledge and understanding of the archaeology across the Dhekelia area and will allow for an improved system of management of these vital and important heritage assets going forward.”

David Reynolds, Environmental Advisor (Cyprus), DIO, added:

“Along with the University of Leicester team, we would like to thank the Republic of Cyprus Department of Antiquities and the Sovereign Base Area Office (Dhekelia) for all their support and guidance in making this extremely valuable piece of work happen.”

The data created during the survey has been entered into DIO’s Historic Buildings, Sites and Monuments Record, which in turn is vital for helping to protect the historic environment across the Ministry of Defence’s UK and overseas estate.

Additionally, the archaeological data has been shared with the Republic of Cyprus Department of Antiquities (DoA) as part of a Protocol for Collaboration between British Forces Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus DoA. The protocol will ensure that potential impacts on archaeology will be actively considered alongside military training activities and infrastructure work across the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. It also sets out procedures for managing any archaeological remains uncovered during construction projects.

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Location of sites visited by archaeologists from University of Leicester Archaeological Services. © ULAS, University of Leicester

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Adjacent grinding stone removals at Ormideia leaving a clover leaf shape. © ULAS, University of Leicester

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Slab quarrying near Xylophagou anchorage. © ULAS, University of Leicester

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER news release.

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Archaeology Is Flipping the Script on What We Know About Ancient Mesoamerica

Gary M. Feinman is an archaeologist and the MacArthur curator of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

David M. Carballo is a professor of archaeology, anthropology, and Latin American studies and assistant provost for general education at Boston University.

Recent archaeology emerging from ancient Mesoamerica is flipping the script of public understanding about the people and institutions that inhabited this world: the evidence tells us that cooperative and pluralistic government was at least as common as and more resilient than despotic states.

This more complex picture and the achievements of Mesoamerica’s peoples are all the more impressive given the area’s rugged terrain and resource constraints. Compared to ancient Eurasia, the inhabitants of Mesoamerica—the region stretching from Costa Rica to central Mexico—lacked beasts of burden and wheeled transport, and the use of metals was generally limited.

Until recently, our understanding of how most societies and early states developed was heavily grounded in interpretations of urban societies in Eurasia. Despotic, coercive rule was assumed (except for ancient Athens and republican Rome), the actions of the elite were ascribed great importance, and core functions of the economy were presumed to be in the hands of the ruler.

Precolonial Mesoamerica doesn’t fit this cookie-cutter framework: neither was economic production or distribution centrally controlled by despotic rulers, nor was governance in societies with very large populations universally coercive.

This new perspective is the outgrowth of a decades-long shift in archaeological research’s focus from temples and tombs to regional settlement patterns, urban layouts, house excavations, domestic economies, and agricultural production.

By concentrating on the archaeological record, recent generations of researchers have brought fresh attention to features of precolonial Mesoamerica that did not fit entrenched stereotypes, many of which had their roots in the 19th century. Mesoamerica’s cities and large-scale societies arose independently of other global regions, spawned by their own regional populations. Mesoamerican technological development never experienced the centralizing impact of the monopolization of bronze weaponry through control of scarce tin deposits, nor the “democratizing” or “decentralizing” effects of the adoption of more widely available iron.

Mesoamerica was also spared the stark inequalities in military and transportation technology that appeared in Eurasia when some societies developed the chariot, serious naval capabilities, and fortified palaces while others lagged behind. In Mesoamerica, military might came through the control of large infantries using weapons crafted primarily from widely available stone, all of which made for generally more balanced political relations than in Eurasia.

Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica is therefore emerging as an ideal place to examine the different ways that humans coalesced in urban contexts, in both collective and autocratic political formations, without some of the key factors that earlier scholars have traditionally seen as necessary or transformative for the rise of premodern societies.

How were these large, preindustrial urban centers in Mesoamerica organized? Were they long-lasting? And if so, what accounts for their comparative degrees of resilience across time?

In a 2018 study, we coded data from a carefully selected sample of 26 precolonial Mesoamerican cities and prominent political centers. We found that more than half of them were not despotically ruled and that the more collective political centers had greater resilience in the face of droughts and floods, and warfare or shifts in trade. Cities that addressed their social challenges using more collective forms of governance and resource management were both larger and somewhat more resilient than the cities with personalized rulership and more concentrated political power.

In general, collectively organized political centers relied more heavily on internal finance generation, such as taxes, as compared to the more autocratic centers that relied more on external financing, such as monopolized trade networks and war booty. The more that political elites can support themselves without relying on financing from the general population, the less they face accountability from the people, and the greater the likelihood that governance and power are hoarded. Additionally, higher levels of internal financing and communal resources often corresponded with evidence of the wider circulation of public goods and the bureaucratization of civic offices. Collectively organized centers with these features as well as spatial layouts, such as large open plazas and wide streets, that provided opportunities for householders and urban dwellers to communicate and express themselves seem to have fostered community persistence as major centers.

In a later study that included an updated and expanded sample of 32 well-researched Mesoamerican cities, we found that centers that were both more bottom-up and collective in their governance were more resilient. While some of these cities had palaces and monuments to rulers as their focal points, others featured more shared and equitably distributed forms of urban infrastructure. This includes apartment compounds, shared terraces or walls within neighborhoods, neighborhood plazas, temples and other civic buildings, and shared roads and causeways, all of which required cooperation and collective labor for their construction and maintenance and would have facilitated more regular face-to-face interaction and periodic public gatherings.

The implications of this archaeological research are too informative and powerful to stay put in textbooks. They resonate with evolving views of our present world, which are finding that public space, open communication, fair taxation, and effective bureaucracy can be cornerstones of well-being. These parallels with and understandings from the past can be insightful for us today as models to guide our future planning and identify the social models that best position us to survive the tests of time.

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This article is a re-publication from the original source: the Independent Media Institute, under a collaborative agreement.

Image top left by Angelo Scarcella from Pixabay

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If you liked this article, you may like The Milpa Way, a major feature article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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Research suggests new tool-making timeline for East Asian hominins

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS—A new study from the Nihewan basin of China has revealed that hominins who possessed advanced knapping abilities equivalent to Mode 2 technological features occupied East Asia as early as 1.1 million years ago (Ma), which is 0.3 Ma earlier than the date associated with the first handaxes found in East Asia. This suggests that Mode 2 hominins dispersed into East Asia much earlier than previously thought. 

The study, which was conducted by a joint team led by Prof. PEI Shuwen from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Ignacio de la Torre from the Institute of History the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), was published in PNAS on Mar. 4 and provide insights into the early dispersals and adaptions of hominins in Eurasia.  

By reconstructing Cenjiawan refit sets from Nihewan basin, the research team discovered organized flaking techniques that aimed at producing slender flakes by core preparation on both the striking platform and flaking surface. The standardized operational process was not only shown by refit sets: Plenty of products detached at each stage of the process, thus provide strong evidence of standardized core preparation.  

Prepared core technologies were characterized by organized methods to obtain predetermined flakes that required detailed planning and a deep understanding of flaking mechanisms, which originated in the Acheulean and particularly more than 1.0 Ma.  

Regarding retouched tools, technological analysis of refitted products detached from the prepared core technology indicates intentional breakage of slender flakes in two halves. One or more of the resulting fragments were then selected as blanks for retouching, with the aiming of creating tipped tools with two convergent sides, thus significantly altering the original shape of blanks.  

In addition, patterns of retouching tools like points and borers, which showed standardization of tool shape, were also well documented in the Cenjiawan assemblage, thus suggesting complex mental templates among the Cenjiawan toolmakers.  

The prepared core technology, standardized predetermined products and retouching tool shapes, together with the high level of manual precision, fragmented reduction sequences, long reduction sequences, and organized management of raw materials documented in the Cenjiawan assemblage, provide compelling evidence for complex technical abilities and in-depth planning behaviors among Early Pleistocene hominins in East Asia. 

“The advanced technological behaviors documented at the Cenjiawan site similar to those of Mode 2 technology, rather than the technical simplicity attributed to Mode 1”, said Dr. MA Dongdong, first author of the study, who conducted the research during his Ph.D at IVPP and currently is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of History of CISC.  

The Lower Paleolithic technology in China has long been regarded as simple (Oldowan-like/Mode 1) and homogeneous before late Pleistocene. The compelling evidence in the Cenjiawan assemblage provides a new perspective in understanding the small debitage system in China and may force a reconsideration of current perceptions of technological stasis in East Asia.  

The authors argued that the technological features, rather than the mere presence or absence of specific tool types (e.g., handaxes), should be the basis for studying Early and Middle Pleistocene assemblages in East Asia. This enables a more integrated understanding of Mode 2 technology as well as the human cultural and biological connections between East Asia and other regions of the Old World. 

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(A-E) Slender flakes are intentionally broken and used as blanks for retouching tipped tools. (G-I) Unifacially retouched points. (J-M) Borers. IVPP

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Article Source: CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS news release

The Evolution of the Human Pair Bond

Brenna R. Hassett, PhD, is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire and a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, London. In addition to researching the effects of changing human lifestyles on the human skeleton and teeth in the past, she writes for a more general audience about evolution and archaeology, including the Times (UK) top 10 science book of 2016 Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, and her most recent book, Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood. She is also a co-founder of TrowelBlazers, an activist archive celebrating the achievements of women in the “digging” sciences.

Our species stands out from the animal kingdom in many ways. Some of them are obvious: we are big-brained primates who use tools and language, a social species with symbols, culture, and art. These are all artifacts of our evolution, the process by which our ancestors found adaptations that allowed them to succeed in a natural world that is often red in tooth and claw. Often, however, we think of evolution as affecting our physical bodies—changing the shape of our hominin ancestors so they could walk upright, or grow bigger brains. But evolution has other ways to act on a species, particularly in clever, social species like ours. It can shape the way we socialize and bond, the way we pass on learning and care, and even whom we love. This is why we find that one of the most remarkable adaptations our species has ever made lies in our very, very unlikely mating system: monogamy.

Monogamy is a strange word and an even stranger concept. The way we use it in our societies today to imply two people romantically linked for life is a far cry from what a scientist who actually observes primates like us would call it. Monogamy, simply put, is pair-bonding between two animals. Often it is pair-bonding with an eye towards reproduction, but it can also include animals that can’t reproduce together who form a pair-bonded social unit anyway. Perhaps the most famous example, though certainly not the only one, might be Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins from New York’s Central Park Zoo who formed a pair bond and even raised a chick together. There are other critical differences between what a scientist would define as a pair bond and what we commonly understand monogamy to be.

While humans tend to define monogamy as a once-in-a-lifetime pairing, with rituals and cultural rules that reinforce the idea of a lifetime bond, even the most pair-bonded of animals rarely are pair-bonded for life. Perhaps the most extreme animal monogamists on the planet are the far-flying seabirds albatrosses and petrels (all from the family Procellariiformes); almost every single pair is mated for life. However, even in these pairs, factors can intervene to disrupt the pair bond. Beyond simply losing one member of the pair, even allegedly mated-for-life albatrosses have cases of ‘extra-pair paternity’—almost 10 percent of chicks surveyed in one sample had a male parent who was not their female parent’s partner.

Humans, even those with strong cultural proscriptions against adultery, have very similar rates of extra-pair paternity—about 10 percent. While some cultures, particularly those that do not allow a great deal of female agency in choosing a partner, have slightly higher rates than others, this figure seems to be broadly the same across our species. While genetic monogamy—where two individuals breed exclusively with each other—may be elusive, even in the allegedly monogamous sea birds, social monogamy is not. Social monogamy is the type of pair bonding where the partners fulfill all the social roles needed in a pair bond without necessarily producing any genetic offspring—like Roy and Silo, tending a chick that was not their own. This suggests that it is social monogamy that is the most important part of pair bonding for many species—including our own.

Why would social monogamy benefit a species? It must offer some sort of advantage to our species, or we would not have adopted it—and we have indeed adopted it. Despite our very human flair for variety and adaptation, most societies around the world set a pair-bonded couple at the heart of how their members reproduce. Of course, there are examples of polygamy—marriage of one male to multiple females—and even polygyny—one female to many males in our wide array of cultural practices, but the vast majority of our fellow Homo sapiens will have social expectations of forming a monogamous pair bond.

So why have we evolved to have these bonds? It is not at all automatic that pair-bonds would be of adaptive value. In species that have evolved to sexually reproduce, the distribution of risk and reward for breeding behavior depends on how much each partner will need to invest in reproduction in order to produce a successful offspring. For the partner that makes the small gamete (sperm), investment costs are lower from the get-go, meaning strategies that maximize opportunities for reproduction. In fact, pair bonding is an incredibly rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Outside of birds, who are uncommonly fond of the state—90 percent of bird species create pair bonds—only 5 percent of animal species settle for ‘the one’ and form pair bonds. About 15 percent of primates, however, opt for pair-bonding.

Here we can start to unravel part of the mystery of the human pair bond, by examining what our other clever, social primate relatives use pair bonding for. The evolution of monogamy, or pair-bonding, has been a topic of major debates in anthropology and primatology. Most of the primate species that form pair bonds are actually quite distant from our species evolutionarily—the smaller monkey species like the marmosets, titi monkeys, and owl monkeys. Many of the original investigations of primate monogamy sought to explain the phenomenon in very Darwinian terms, looking at the advantage in genetic terms gained by reproducing monogamous pairs. In the 1970s, primatologist Sarah Hrdy suggested that pair-bonding might have evolved to be protective against infanticide because marauding male monkeys would not be motivated to harm their own genetic offspring but would be motivated to remove any offspring from a group that were not theirs.

This interpretation has been challenged in more recent times, particularly by anthropologist Holly Dunsworth. She argues that the kind of cognitive power required for a primate to understand whether offspring is genetically theirs or not is just not present in primate species. Perhaps pair-bonded species don’t have infanticide not just because the male primates are trying to maximize their genetic reproductive potential, but because primates are social animals and those male primates are simply primed to be ‘nice’ to the offspring of the females they are bonded to.

Current theories for why pair bonding exists, even though it doesn’t allow male primates to maximize their mating opportunities, follow several lines of evidence to understand what the actual adaptive benefit might be. One theory is that pair-bonding is the only way for males to keep up with females who roam over large territories; it allows them the opportunity to mate because otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to encounter any females. This is something that seems particularly applicable to the smaller monkeys like marmosets, where females hold territory.

Another theory for the evolution of pair bonding in primates looks at the reproductive benefit not just to the individual parent, in terms of the number of offspring possible, but to the effects on the next generation of having one more pair of helping hands. This looks at the net benefit to the offspring itself of having two parents provisioning it. In many species of primates, the offspring are helpless and a considerable burden on their carer. Having another pair of hands around may make the difference between growing an expensive, big-brained baby and falling out of the evolutionary race. Looking again at examples from the primate order we can see that the role of the male parent can be critical in the survival of the species—our male titi monkey will carry his offspring for the first year of their life, until they are old enough to move around on their own.

What does this mean for our own species? Well, we definitively have adopted a pair-bonded architecture—social monogamy is at the core of our societies. Why we have done so is less clear—but as more and more work is done on understanding the benefits of monogamy to a species we see that there are several factors that may have influenced our ancestors’ choices to develop such an outré mating system. In fact, monogamy in primates seems to have evolved multiple times, and for multiple reasons. Computational models that have examined the likelihood of different evolutionary explanations have used these multiple evolutionary episodes in our nearest relatives to predict that, for humans, multiple factors may have given us the monogamy we have now. Adaptations to pair bonding that ensure males meet roving females might have been a stepping stone to developing the kind of multiple-parental care that keeps something as extraordinarily demanding as a human baby alive. So while our cultural perceptions of monogamy might not fit the evolutionary reality, we can say that as a species, we are awfully fond of a pair bond.

This article is a re-publication from the original source: Human Bridges, a publication of the Independent Media Institute, under a collaborative agreement.

Change in gene code may explain how human ancestors lost tails

NYU LANGONE HEALTH / NYU GROSSMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE—A genetic change in our ancient ancestors may partly explain why humans don’t have tails like monkeys, finds a new study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.  

Published online February 28 as the cover story of the journal Nature*, the work compared the DNA of tail-less apes and humans to that of tailed monkeys, and found an insertion of DNA shared by apes and humans, but missing in monkeys. When the research team engineered a series of mice to examine whether the insertion, in a gene called TBXT, affected their tails, they found a variety of tail effects, including some mice born without tails.

“Our study begins to explain how evolution removed our tails, a question that has intrigued me since I was young,” says corresponding study author Bo Xia, PhD, a student at the time of the study in the labs of study senior co-authors Jef D. Boeke, PhD, and Itai Yanai, PhD at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Xia is now a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a principal investigator at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

More than 100 genes had been linked by past work to the development of tails in various vertebrate species, and the study authors hypothesized that tail loss occurred through changes in the DNA code (mutations) of one or more of them. Remarkably, say the study authors, the new study found that the differences in tails came not from TBXT mutations, but instead from the insertion of a DNA snippet called AluY into the gene’s regulatory code in the ancestors of apes and humans.

Profound Surprise

The new finding proceeds from the process by which genetic instructions are converted into proteins, the molecules that make up the body’s structures and signals. DNA is “read” and converted  into a related material in RNA, and ultimately into mature messenger RNA (mRNA), which produces proteins.

In a key step that produces mRNA, “spacer” sections called introns are cut out of the code, but before that guide the stitching together (splicing) of just the DNA sections, called exons, which encode the final instructions. Further, the genomes of vertebrate animals evolved to feature alternative splicing, in which a single gene can code for more than one protein by leaving out or adding exon sequences. Beyond splicing, the human genome grew more complex still by evolving to include “countless” switches, part of the poorly understood “dark matter” that turns on genes at different levels in different cell types.

Still other work has shown that half of this non-gene “dark matter” in the human genome, which lies both between genes and within the introns, consists of highly repeated DNA sequences. Further, most of these repeats consist of retrotransposons, also called “jumping genes” or “mobile elements,” which can move around and insert themselves repeatedly and randomly in human code.

Pulling these details together, the “astounding” current study found that the transposon insertion of interest, AluY, which affected tail length, had randomly occurred in an intron within the TBXT code. Although it did not change a coding portion, the intron insertion, so the research team showed, influenced alternative splicing, something not seen before, to result in a variety of tail lengths. Xia found an AluY insertion that remained in the same location within the TBXT gene in humans and apes resulted in the production of two forms of TBXT RNA. One of these, they theorize, directly contributed to tail loss.

“This finding is remarkable because most human introns carry copies of repetitive, jumping DNAs without any effect on gene expression, but this particular AluY insertion did something as obvious as determine tail length,” said Boeke, the Sol and Judith Bergstein Director of the Institute for System Genetics at NYU Langone Health.

Tail loss in the group of primates that includes gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans is believed to have occurred about 25 million years ago, when the group evolved away from Old World monkeys, said the authors. Following this evolutionary split, the group of apes that includes present-day humans evolved the formation of fewer tail vertebrae, giving rise to the coccyx, or tailbone. Although the reason for the tail loss is uncertain, some experts propose that it may have better suited life on the ground than in the trees.

Any advantage that came with tail loss was likely powerful, the researchers say, because it may have happened despite coming with a cost. Genes often influence more than one function in the body, so changes that bring an advantage in one place may be detrimental elsewhere. Specifically, the research team found a small uptick in neural tube defects in mice with the study insertion in the TBXT gene.  

“Future experiments will test the theory that, in an ancient evolutionary trade-off, the loss of a tail in humans contributed to the neural tube birth defects, like those involved in spinal bifida, which are seen today in one in a thousand human neonates,” said Yanai, also in the Institute for Systems Genetics.

Article Source: NYU LANGONE HEALTH news release.

Social dynamics of ancient hunter-gatherers in France

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—The last hunter-gatherers of modern-day northwestern France avoided inbreeding, despite living in close proximity with limited mate choice, according to a study*. The interaction between human groups during the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies in Europe is not well-understood. Mattias Jakobsson and colleagues sequenced the genomes of 10 individuals, including two children, from ancient human remains in the Brittany region of France. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the hunter-gatherers lived between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago and overlapped in time with the first farmers in the region, even though the genomic data suggests that these groups maintained distinct ancestries. The genomes of the individuals buried on the present-day islands of Téviec and Hoedic showed no signs of inbreeding, even though the last hunter-gatherers of the Atlantic coast were part of a small group. Analysis of the bones revealed that although seafood was an important part of the two groups’ diets, the individuals buried at Téviec consumed more land-based protein. Together, the findings suggest that late hunter-gathers in western Europe lived in social systems that promoted mating between—rather than within—their own groups. According to the authors, the integration of the genetic data with previous research yields fresh insights into the social and cultural changes that occurred during a pivotal moment in human history.

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Genomic ancestry and social dynamics of the last hunter-gatherers of Atlantic France,” by Luciana Simões, Rita Peyroteo-Stjerna et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26-Feb-2024. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310545121.

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Rock selection for Stone Age tools

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study finds that Stone Age toolmakers likely understood the mechanical properties of rocks they selected as raw materials for toolmaking. The Stone Age is marked by the use of rocks as tools, a process that requires the selection of rocks that not only flake easily so that they can be shaped but are also tough and durable. The factors underlying the selection of rocks to make tools is not well understood. Patrick Schmidt and colleagues analyzed the mechanical properties of stone tools found at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter site in South Africa, representing the Middle Stone Age. The primary types of rocks shaped into tools at the site were hydrothermal quartz, quartzite, hornfels, and silcrete. The authors developed a physical model of rock characteristics to estimate the force needed to flake pieces of rock and to determine the rocks’ strength during projectile impact. The modeled physical properties explain the selection of quartzite, silcrete, and hydrothermal quartz raw materials at the Middle Stone Age site, suggesting that toolmakers understood the tradeoffs of ease of tool shaping and mechanical strength. According to the authors, the results* suggest that Stone Age toolmakers had the engineering skills required to fashion tools with desirable qualities at a reasonable cost.

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Researcher strikes a flake from the South African rock hornfels to demonstrate how tools were made in the Middle Stone Age. Patrick Schmidt

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A finely crafted “Still Bay point” from Diepkloof Rock Shelter, a typical stone tool from the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa. Patrick Schmidt

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“The driving force behind tool-stone selection in the African Middle Stone Age,” by Patrick Schmidt, Ioannis Pappas, Guillaume Porraz, Christoph Berthold, and Klaus G. Nickel, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 26-Feb-2024. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2318560121

Earliest ochre-based adhesives found in Europe bear resemblance to those from Middle Stone Age in Africa

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Artifacts from Le Moustier, a Middle Paleolithic site in France, offer the earliest evidence from Europe for the use of ochre – a clay pigment containing iron oxide – to produce less-sticky, “gripping” adhesives used for a variety of tools, according to a new study. Although Neanderthals are known to have produced adhesives with similar properties to make hand grips, ochre-based compound adhesives had previously only been associated with Homo sapiens in Africa, Patrick Schmidt and colleagues say. “If anatomically modern humans brought this knowledge with them during their Out-of-Africa migration, its presence at Le Moustier would document a remarkably long technological continuity,” the authors speculate, noting that these adhesives could also have been produced by Neanderthals independently. Ancient materials such as adhesives, which were used for attaching tool pieces together, are among the best evidence archaeologists have found to understand the cognitive abilities and cultural transmission of early modern humans and Neanderthals. Evidence from the Middle Paleolithic era, or Middle Stone Age, between 300,000 and 30,000 years ago, suggests that Neanderthals in Europe produced adhesives from bitumen, tree resins, and birch bark. Meanwhile, Homo sapiens in Africa concocted recipes for compound adhesives by combining Podocarpus trees or other naturally sticky substances with materials such as ochre, quartz, or bone fragments. Here, Schmidt et al. report some of the earliest evidence that ochre-based adhesives were also produced in Europe in the Middle Paleolithic. The researchers examined five well-preserved artifacts, including flakes, a blade, and a scraper containing traces of red, yellow, and black residue, all of which were originally found at Le Moustier, a site associated with the Mousterian stone tool industry. Chemical and structural analyses revealed that the residue was made by mixing bitumen – a black, sticky, petroleum-based substance – with goethite ochre, similar to Middle Stone Age adhesives found in Africa. Experiments confirmed that mixing bitumen and goethite ochre could produce an adhesive that was ideal for gripping rather than gluing parts together.

Neolithic groups from the south of the Iberian Peninsula first settled permanently in San Fernando (Cadiz) 6,200 years ago

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA—The first Neolithic farmers and shepherds in Andalusia settled permanently on the island of San Fernando, Cadiz, 6,200 years ago, where they continued to collect and consume shellfish throughout the year, preferably in winter. This is the conclusion of an archaeological study* led by Asier García-Escárzaga, researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Prehistory of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), which shows that these populations occupied the island throughout the year. 

The research carried out in recent decades in the south of the Iberian Peninsula has revealed many aspects of the life of the first Neolithic groups in Andalusia. These populations were the first to base their subsistence mainly on agriculture and livestock, rather than hunting and gathering. However, there were still questions to be answered about the patterns of occupation of sites (annual or seasonal) and the exploitation of marine resources after the adoption of a new economic model. 

In a new study, published in the prestigious international journal Archaeological and Anthropological Science, oxygen stable isotope analysis was applied to marine shells to address both questions. The shells analyzed were recovered from the sites of Campo de Hockey (San Fernando, Cadiz).

The necropolis of Campo de Hockey, excavated in 2008, is located on the ancient island of San Fernando, just 150 metres from the ancient coastline. The excavations, directed by Eduardo Vijande from the University of Cadiz, allowed to document 53 graves (45 single, 7 double and 1 quadruple). Most of them were plain (simple graves in which the individual is buried), but what stood out the most was the existence of 4 graves of greater complexity and monumentality, made with medium and large stones considered to be proto-megalithic. The Campo de Hockey II site, annexed to the first site and whose excavation and research was conducted by María Sánchez and Eduardo Vijande in 2018, allowed for the identification of 28 archaeological structures (17 hearths, two shell heaps, four tombs and five stone structures). 

The high presence of hearths and mollusk and fish remains in the middens suggests that the area was used for the processing and consumption of marine resources. Among the information that can be obtained from the analysis of stable oxygen isotopes in marine shells is the possibility of reconstructing the time of year when the mollusks died, and therefore when they were consumed by prehistoric populations in the past. 

The results of this research indicate that the first farmers occupying the island of San Fernando collected shellfish all year round, but more in the colder months of autumn, winter, and early spring, that is, from November to April. This information allowed the scientific team to conclude that these populations occupied the island throughout the year. “The size of the necropolis already led us to believe that it was an annual habitat, but these studies confirm the existence of a permanent settlement 6,200 years ago,” said Eduardo Vijande, researcher at the University of Cadiz and co-author of the study. 

The greatest exploitation of shellfish during the coldest months of the year coincides with the annual period of maximum profitability of this food resource due to the formation of gametes. A seasonal pattern of shellfish consumption based on energetic cost-benefit principles which is similar to that developed by the last hunter-gatherer populations of the Iberian Peninsula. “That is to say, there is a greater exploitation of these topshells in the winter months, since this is the time when these animals present a greater quantity of meat,” points out Asier García-Escárzaga. This suggests that, although these new Neolithic groups had changed their economic model, living from agriculture and livestock, in this settlement located in an insular environment, the exploitation of the marine environment continued to be of great importance. 

The study forms part of four research projects coordinated from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (PID 2020-115715 GB-I00) and the University of Cadiz (FEDER-UCA18-106917 and CEIJ-015 [2018-2019]) in Spain, and the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

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Excavation of human remains at Campo de Hockey. SalvadorGA96, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA news release.

*García-Escárzaga, A.; Cantillo, J.J.; Milano, S.; Arniz-Mateos, R.; Gutiérrez-Zugasti, I.; González-Ortegón, E.; Corona, J.M.; Colonese, A.C.; Ramos-Muñoz, J.; Vijande-Vila, E. 2024. Marine resource exploitation and human settlement patterns during the Neolithic in SW Europe: Stable oxygen isotope analyses (δ18O) on Phorcus lineatus (da Costa, 1778) from Campo de Hockey (Cádiz, Spain), Archaeological and Anthropological Science. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-024-01939-0

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Who were the Aegeans?

Most of us have heard or read about the great Trojan War and the epic journey of Odysseus (otherwise known as Ulysses) through the legendary characters and events as described by Homer in his famous literary works, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Fewer, however, have a more than passing knowledge of the ancient Bronze and Iron Age peoples who formed the historical basis for Homer’s epic stories, such as the Mycenaeans and Minoans. The real story of these civilizations has slowly come to light through the painstaking efforts of archaeologists and scholars, popularized by the media over the years, but documented and studied more meticulously within the halls of academia. Despite the efforts to come to a greater understanding, mysteries still abound and there are more questions than answers.

Dr. Ester Salgarella, who received her Ph.D from Cambridge University and subsequently conducted post-doctoral research at the university, has developed and released a new podcast series, entitled Aegean Connections, that explores all facets of these civilizations, bringing the research out from the confines of the scholarly “ivory tower” and into the listening ear of the general public. She does this by conducting interviews of the very scholars who engage in the study and research, focusing on such topics as undeciphered scripts, the life-ways and origins of these Aegean peoples, and many other topics to “build a bridge between scholars (both well-established and early-career) in Aegean-oriented academic fields and the wider audience….,” according to Salgarella. 

Tablet inscribed with Cypro-Minoan 2 script. Late Bronze III
Provenance: Enkomi, Cyprus. Louvre, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

The first and opening episode of the series, released on February 13, 2024, interviews Dr. Cassandra Donnelly, a post-doctoral researcher working on Cypro-Minoan (CM) inscriptions at the University of Cyprus. Otherwise known as the Cypro-Minoan Syllabory, the script is still undeciphered but was used on the island of Cyprus and its trading partners during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age (c. 1650–1050 BC). The term “Cypro-Minoan” was coined by archaeologist and explorer Arthur Evans in 1909 due to its visual similarity to Linear A, an undeciphered script of the ancient Minoans, discovered on Crete. CM is theorized to have been derived from that script. Several hundred CM inscriptions have been recovered by archaeologists on clay balls, votive stands, cylinders, and clay tablets  Discoveries were made primarily on Cyprus but also at the site of the ancient city of Ugarit on the coast of Syria.

This opening podcast explores what we now know, and what we don’t know, about this mysterious script. Anyone can listen to the podcast, which is free to the public.

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Above: Fresco wall painting detail created by an ancient Minoan artist at Akrotiri, depicting a city and the seafaring adventures of this maritime civilization.

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Cover Image, Above: Image by Vektorianna, Pixabay

Vittrup Man crossed over from forager to farmer before being sacrificed in Denmark

PLOS—Vittrup Man was born along the Scandinavian coast before moving to Denmark, where he was later sacrificed, according to a study* published February 14, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Anders Fischer of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and colleagues.

Vittrup Man is the nickname of a Stone Age skeleton recovered from a peat bog in Northwest Denmark, dating to between 3300-3100 BC. The fragmented nature of the remains, including a smashed skull, indicate that he was killed in a ritualistic sacrifice, a common practice in this region at this time. After a DNA study found Vittrup Man’s genetic signature to be distinct from contemporary, local skeletons, Fischer and colleagues were inspired to combine additional evidence to reconstruct the life history of this Stone Age individual at an unprecedented resolution.

Strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopes from Vittrup Man’s tooth enamel indicate a childhood spent along the coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Corroborating this, genetic analysis found a close relationship between Vittrup Man and Mesolithic people from Norway and Sweden. Additional isotope and protein analysis of the teeth and bones indicate a shift in diet from coastal food (marine mammals and fish) in early life to farm food (including sheep or goat) in later life, a transition that happened in the later teen years.

These results suggest that Vittrup Man spent his early years in a northern foraging society before relocating to a farming society in Denmark. It isn’t clear why this individual moved, though the authors suggest he might have been a trader or captive who became integrated into local society. Mysteries remain about Vittrup Man, but this detailed understanding of his geographic and dietary life history provides new insights into interactions between Mesolithic and Neolithic societies in Europe.

The authors add: “To our knowledge, this is the first time that research has been able to map a north European inhabitant’s life history in such a high degree of detail and in such high distance of time.”

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The cranial remains of Vittrup Man, who ended up in a bog after his skull had been crushed by at least eight heavy blows. Photo: Stephen Freiheit. Fischer et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release.

*Fischer A, Sjögren K-G, Jensen TZT, Jørkov ML, Lysdahl P, Vimala T, et al. (2024) Vittrup Man–The life-history of a genetic foreigner in Neolithic Denmark. PLoS ONE 19(2): e0297032. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297032