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A recent study paints a picture of a great ancient Mexican city-state that eventually collapsed, at least in part, due to the weight of its own internal social, political and economic struggles.

Known as Teotihuacán, the enigmatic end of this ancient, powerful central Mexican civilization has been the subject of a variety of theories and explanations, including warfare, draught, and internal unrest or conflict, to name a few. The latest study, however, points to internal social and economic struggles characteristic of a mixed, complex and fractured social fabric and power structure that essentially set the stage for conditions leading to its downfall.

“The contrast between the corporate organization at the base and top of Teotihuacán society and the exclusionary organization of the neighborhoods headed by the highly competitive intermediate elite introduced tensions that set the stage for Teotihuacan’s collapse,” stated Linda Manzanilla of Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in her report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.*

Teotihuacán was one of the most powerful cultural centers in Mesoamerica between the 1st and 6th centuries CE. Unlike most preindustrial urban settlements, Teotihuacán was well-planned and multiethnic partly because two volcanic eruptions forced people of differing cultures to migrate to the metropolis, bringing with them new skill sets, knowledge, and additional labor to support a developing economy.

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The ancient city of Teotihuacán, 30 miles northeast of modern-day Mexico city. Wikimedia Commons

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Manzanilla’s findings are the result of extensive excavations and multidisciplinary analyses of bodies buried in Teotihuacán and, more specifically, one neighborhood center, Teopancazco. Her analyses included measurements of activity markers, nutritional patterns and status, isotopes, and ancient DNA. The results revealed groups from different backgrounds settling mostly on the margins of the metropolis. Around the city core, however, elites exploited the new dynamics by fostering the movement of goods, such as pigments, cosmetics, slate, greenstone, travertine, and foreign pottery, acquiring workers from a variety of foreign cultures to perform specialized tasks. The resulting complex multiethnic neighborhoods aggressively competed with each other and allowed intermediate elite residents to wield social and economic power. Manzanilla suggests that the contrast between the corporate organization wielded by the elites at the top of Teotihuacán society and the differing neighborhoods headed by the highly competitive intermediate elites introduced tensions that helped lead to Teotihuacán’s eventual collapse.

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Decapitated males from Teopancazco, a neighborhood within the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan. Image courtesy of Linda Manzanilla.

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“The major ritual and administrative buildings along the Street of the Dead were set on fire in A.D. 550, and the sculptures inside palatial structures, such as Xalla, were shattered,” reported Manzanilla. “No traces of foreign invasion are visible at the site. We interpret this event as a revolt against the ruling elite, perhaps a response to a late intervention on the part of the state to control the entrepreneurial movements of the intermediate elite.”*

The report is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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*Article #14-19881: “Cooperation and tensions in multiethnic corporate societies using Teotihuacan, Central Mexico, as a case study,” by Linda Manzanilla.

Source: Adapted, rewritten, and edited from a press release of the PNAS with information from the published study report.

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

Human foragers were relying on tropical rainforests for resources since at least 20,000 years ago, or 10,000 years earlier than researchers had thought, according to a new study. Until now, researchers had not been able to find direct evidence of human occupation of rainforest regions before about 10,000 years ago. They had generally assumed that rainforest environments were too dangerous—and offered too little food—to be attractive to prehistoric foragers. But Patrick Roberts and colleagues analyzed carbon and oxygen isotopes from the fossilized tooth enamel of humans and animals found in Sri Lanka and discovered that their diets consisted primarily of plants from rainforests as opposed to plants from open habitats. Humans and animals such as porcupines, giant squirrels, and monkeys foraged the forest edges and semi-open rainforests in Sri Lanka, they say. They didn’t just use them occasionally, as some previous research had suggested, but relied heavily on rainforest resources, even as the rainforest climate and environment experienced dramatic fluxes.

An international research team has shed new light on the diet of some of the earliest recorded humans in Sri Lanka. The researchers from Oxford University, working with a team from Sri Lanka and the University of Bradford, analysed the carbon and oxygen isotopes in the teeth of 26 individuals, with the oldest dating back 20,000 years. They found that nearly all the teeth analysed suggested a diet largely sourced from the rainforest.

This study*, published in the early online edition of the journal, Science, shows that early modern humans adapted to living in the rainforest for long periods of time. Previously it was thought that humans did not occupy tropical forests for any length of time until 12,000 years after that date, and that the tropical forests were largely ‘pristine’, human-free environments until the Early Holocene, 8,000 years ago. Scholars reasoned that compared with more open landscapes, humans might have found rainforests too difficult to navigate, with less available food to hunt or catch.

The Science paper also notes, however, that previous archaeological research provides ‘tantalising hints’ of humans possibly occupying rainforest environments around 45,000 years ago. This earlier research is unclear as to whether those early human dwellers of the rainforest were engaging in a specialised activity or whether they entered the rainforest for only limited periods of time in certain seasons rather than remaining there all year round.

Co-author Professor Julia Lee-Thorp from Oxford University said: ‘The isotopic methodology applied in our study has already been successfully used to study how primates, including African great apes, adapt to their forest environment. However, this is the first time scientists have investigated ancient human fossils in a tropical forest context to see how our earliest ancestors survived in such a habitat.’

The researchers studied the fossilised teeth of 26 humans of a range of dates – from 20,000 to 3,000 years ago. All of the teeth were excavated from three archaeological sites in Sri Lanka, which are today surrounded by either dense rainforest or more open terrain. The analysis of the teeth showed that all of the humans had a diet sourced from slightly open ‘intermediate rainforest’ environments. Only two of them showed a recognisable signature of a diet found in open grassland. However, these two teeth were dated to around 3,000 years, the start of the Iron Age, when agriculture developed in the region. The new evidence published in this paper argues this shows just how adaptable our earliest ancestors were.

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A view from Batadomba-lena rock shelter, the site at which the oldest fossils used in the study were found. Credit: Patrick Roberts

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The site of Batadomba-lena where the oldest human teeth (c. 20,000 years old) used in the study were excavated. Credit: Patrick Roberts

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Sri Lankan wet zone rainforest, near Batadomba-lena rock shelter. Credit: Patrick Roberts

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Lead author, Patrick Roberts, a doctoral student specialising in the investigation of early human adaptations from Oxford’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, said: ‘This is the first study to directly test how much early human forest foragers depended on the rainforest for their diet. The results are significant in showing that early humans in Sri Lanka were able to live almost entirely on food found in the rainforest without the need to move into other environments. Our earliest human ancestors were clearly able to successfully adapt to different extreme environments.’

Co-author Professor Mike Petraglia from Oxford University said: “Our research provides a clear timeline showing the deep level of interaction that early humans had with the rainforest in South Asia. We need further research to see if this pattern was also followed in other similar environments in Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Australasia and Africa.”

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*Direct evidence for human reliance on rainforest resources in late Pleistocene Sri Lanka, is by Patrick Roberts, Nimal Perera, Osham Wedage, Siran Deraniyagala, Jude Perera, Saman Eregama, Andrew Gledhill, Michael Petraglia and Julia Lee-Thorp.

The paper was co-authored by the University of Oxford; the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, Sri Lanka; Department of Archaeology, Sri Lanka, and the University of Bradford.

Source: University of Oxford and AAAS press releases.

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

A new intensive survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment, a massive outcrop of sandstone in the middle of the Saharan desert, has shown that stone tools occur “ubiquitously” across the entire landscape: averaging 75 artefacts per square metre, or 75 million per square kilometre.

Researchers say the vast ‘carpet’ of stone-age tools – extracted from and discarded onto the escarpment over hundreds of thousands of years – is the earliest known example of an entire landscape being modified by hominins: the group of creatures that include us and our ancestral species.

The Messak Settafet runs a total length of 350 km, with an average width of 60 km. Parts of the landscape are ‘anthropogenic’, or man-made, through build-up of tools over hundreds of thousands of years.

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The carpet of lithics on the Messak landscape. Courtesy Foley/Mirazón Lahr

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The research team have used this and other studies to attempt to estimate the volume of stone tools discarded over the last one million years of human evolution on the African continent alone. They say that it is the equivalent of more than one Great Pyramid of Giza per square kilometre of the entire continent (2.1 x 1014 cubic metres of rock).

“The Messak sandstone, now in the middle of the vast sand seas of Libya, would have been a high quality rock for hominins to fracture – the landscape is in effect a carpet of stone tools, most probably made in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene,” said Dr Robert Foley, from the Leverhulme Centre for Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, who conducted the research with colleague Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr.

“The term ‘anthropocene’ is now used to denote the point at which humans began to have a significant effect on the environment,” said Mirazón Lahr. “The critical time may well be the beginning of the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. Some talk of an ‘early anthropocene’ about 10,000 years ago when forests began being cleared for agriculture.

“Making stone tools, however, dates back more than two million years, and little research has been done on the impact of this activity. The Messak Settafet is the earliest demonstrated example of the scars of human activity across an entire landscape; the effects of our technology on the environment may be considerably older than previously thought,” Mirazón Lahr said. The study is published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

The survey, conducted in 2011, involved randomly selecting plots of one metre squared across the parts of the plateau surface. In each square, the researchers sifted through all the stones to identify the number that showed evidence of modification through hominin activity – evidence such as a ‘bulb of percussion’: a bulge or curved dent on the surface of a stone tool produced by the angular blows of hominin percussion. The average number of artefacts across all sample squares was 75.

At the simple end, large flakes of stone would have been opportunistically hacked from boulders to be used for cutting or as weapons. At the more sophisticated level, researchers found evidence that specific tools had been used to wedge into the stone in order split it.

“It is clear from the scale of activity how important stone tools were, and shows that African hominins were strongly technologically dependent,” said Foley. “Landscapes such as these must have been magnets for hominin populations, either for ‘stone foraging trips’ or residential occupation.”

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Above:  A Levallois core, a distinctive type of Middle Stone Age stone tool, recovered on the surface of the Messak. Courtesy Foley/Mirazón Lahr

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The researchers say that if – as seems likely – the success of Stone Age communities depended significantly on tool technology, there would be enormous advantage to knowing, remembering and indeed controlling access to areas with a “super-abundance” of raw materials, such as the Messak Settafet.

“Hominins may well have become tethered to these areas, unable to stray too far if survival depended on access to the raw materials for tools, and forced to make other adaptations subservient to that need,” said Mirazón Lahr.

One way that the environmental impact of hominin tool excavation may have been positive for later humans is through the clusters of small quarrying pits dotted across the landscape (ranging up to 2 metres in diameter, and 50 centimetres in depth).

These pits would have retained moisture – with surface water still visible today after rains – and the small pools would have attracted game. In many of these pits, the team found ‘trapping stones’: large stones used for traps and ties for game and/or cattle during the last 10,000 years.

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Prof. Robert Foley recording lithic density on the Messak. Courtesy Foley/Mirazón Lahr

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By combining their data with previous extensive surveys carried out across Africa, the researchers attempted to estimate roughly how much stone had been used as tools and discarded during human evolution.

Although stone tool manufacture dates back at least 2.5 million years, the researchers limited the estimate to one million years. Based on their and others research, they standardised population density (based on extant hunter-gatherers), tool volume, the number of tools used by one person in a year and the amount of resulting debris per tool.

They estimate an average density of between 0.5 and 5 million stone artefacts per square kilometre of Africa. When converted into an estimate of volume, this is the equivalent of between 42 to 84 million Great Pyramids of Giza.

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Source: University of Cambridge Press Release

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

Krapina Neanderthals may have manipulated white-tailed eagle talons to make jewelry 130,000 years ago, before the appearance of modern human in Europe, according to a study* published March 11, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Frayer from the University of Kansas and colleagues from Croatia.

Researchers describe eight mostly complete white-tailed eagle talons from the Krapina Neanderthal site in present-day Croatia, dating to approximately 130,000 years ago. These white-tailed eagle bones, discovered more than 100 years ago, all derive from a single time period at Krapina. Four talons bear multiple edge-smoothed cut marks, and eight show polishing facets or abrasion. Three of the largest talons have small notches at roughly the same place along the plantar surface.

The authors suggest these features may be part of a jewelry assemblage, like mounting the talons in a necklace or bracelet. Some have argued that Neanderthals lacked symbolic ability or copied this behavior from modern humans, but the presence of the talons indicates that the Krapina Neanderthals may have acquired eagle talons for some kind of symbolic purpose. They also demonstrate that the Krapina Neanderthals may have made jewelry 80,000 years before the appearance of modern humans in Europe.

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Modified white-tailed eagle talons from the Krapina Neanderthal site in present-day Croatia, dated to approximately 130,000 years ago. Courtesy Luka Mjeda, Zagreb

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“It’s really a stunning discovery. It’s one of those things that just appeared out of the blue. It’s so unexpected and it’s so startling because there’s just nothing like it until very recent times to find this kind of jewelry,” said Frayer.

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*Radovi D, Sršen AO, Radovi J, Frayer DW (2015) Evidence for Neandertal Jewelry: Modified White-Tailed Eagle Claws at Krapina. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0119802. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0119802

Source: Edited from a PLOS ONE press release.

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Read about the most fascinating discoveries with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine.  Find out what Popular Archaeology Magazine is all about.  AND MORE:

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

Other than agriculture, very little can be seen in the field of el-Manach. It is quiet and flat, the soil clearly worked as any farmer’s field would be in this part of Israel.  But beneath its surface lie the material vestiges of what at one time, about 1800 years ago, was a major encampment of Roman soldiers. MAJOR is the operative word, because this encampment constituted the military headquarters of the Legio VI Ferrata, or the Roman Sixth Legion, which, during its time, secured Rome’s hold of northern regions of the province of Syria-Palaestina with its strategic location near important imperial roads.  

Since Byzantine times, the exact location of the military base was a mystery to historians. But in the early 20^th century American engineer, architect and archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher observed the remains of Roman architecture in the area of ancient Megiddo, and in the 1990’s during a survey Israeli archaeologist Yotam Tepper of the Israel Antiquities Authority identified Roman remains, including coins and roof tiles stamped with the name of the Roman Sixth Legion, concentrated in and around the el-Manach agricultural field.

But real validation didn’t come until 2010, when Tepper began focused archaeological investigations at el-Manach using a variety of remote sensing techniques. This, along with data acquired through preliminary archaeological and historical work, led to the first full-scale excavation at el-Manach in 2013, employing a team of archaeologists, American and European students, and participants from local youth and community groups under co-directors Tepper and Matthew J. Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and Jonathan David of Gettysburg College.

What they found at the site, now referred to as Legio after an associated ancient place name, was nothing short of reaffirming.

“The data gathered so far in survey, research, and excavations shows a complex and unexpected settlement scenario at Legio,” wrote Tepper, et al. in a project summary soon to be published in Popular Archaeology Magazine.  “At its heart is a large legionary base of the Sixth Legion, perhaps accommodating the full legion of nearly 5,000 soldiers from all over the empire. Nearby would have been a vicus, an ad hoc civilian settlement providing entertainment, commercial support, and other services for the men of the legion. At Kefar ‘Othnay, just south of the base, was a Jewish-Samaritan village in which there is evidence for an early Christina gathering place, dedicated in part by a Roman centurion.”*

Thus far, finds have included defensive trenching earthworks, or fosse; evidence of a 6m-wide wall that surrounded the base, rooms of barracks that contained hundreds of ceramic tiles, some bearing the legion’s mark; a variety of local and foreign coins of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, CE; scale armor fragments; ceramic water pipes; lead ingots; and a stone table leg featuring the face of a panther. They also uncovered evidence of a wide street flanked by drainage channels.    

“Legio provides an incredible new window on the Roman military occupation of the eastern provinces,” state Tepper, et al. “No military headquarters of this type for this particular period have yet been excavated in the entire Eastern Empire.”*

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A volunteer excavates collapsed roof tiles from one of the barracks rooms. Courtesy Jezreel Valley Regional Project

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Roof tile stamped with LEG V (IFERR). Courtesy Jezreel Valley Regional Project

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Roman armor scales found in the barracks. Courtesy Jezreel Valley Regional Project

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In addition to the finds, the excavation has been a proving ground for the application of multiple technologies on a single site, including photogrammetry for digitally mapping and planning, 3D imaging, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) for digital epigraphy, X-Ray Florescence for determining chemical composition of objects and sediments, and a new archaeological and historical database system.

In 2015, Tepper and colleagues plan to return to the site with another team of specialists, students and volunteers to continue the excavations. During this season, they plan to also employ a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for aerial imagery, remote sensing, and landscape modeling.

More information about the Legio excavations and how to participate can be acquired at the project website, and a more detailed feature article about the Legio project will be published soon in the Spring issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

* The Legionary Base of the Roman Sixth Ferrata Legion at Legio, Israel, by Yotam Tepper, Matthew J. Adams, and Jonathan David

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Read about the most fascinating discoveries with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine.  Find out what Popular Archaeology Magazine is all about.  AND MORE:

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

An international team has discovered a fossilized partial mandible (lower jaw) with five intact teeth representing an early human that, based on the dating, lived as much as 2.8 million years ago in what is today the Afar region of Ethiopia. It is now the oldest fossil evidence to date of a hominin in the genus Homo, the line that includes modern humans. The findings are reported in the journal Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Led by Brian A. Villmoare of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Arizona State University (ASU) scientists Kaye E. Reed, William H. Kimbel, Christopher J. Campisano and J. Ramón Arrowsmith, and geoscientist Erin N. DiMaggio of Penn State, the researchers discovered the fossil in 2013 in the Ledi-Geraru area of the Afar Regional State of Ethiopia (see images below), an area that also features other ancient mammal fossils, such as prehistoric antelope, water dependent grazers, prehistoric elephants, a type of hippopotamus and crocodiles and fish. The area is significant because it shows geological strata, or layers, that have been exposed due to geologic fault uplifting in the African Great Rift Valley system, where it is located. In other areas where uplifting has not taken place, the same strata have been long eroded away through time.  

The fossil was first sighted by Ethiopian ASU graduate student Chalachew Seyoum on January 29, 2013 while conducting assigned surveying tasks. The 8 cm. long Ledi-Geraru mandible fossil represents the left side of the lower jaw and five teeth, still embedded within the mandible. Analysis of the fossil, led by Villmoare and William H. Kimbel of ASU’s Institute of Human Origins, has revealed features such as slim molars, symmetrical premolars and an evenly proportioned jaw, characteristics that have distinguished species of the Homo lineage from the more apelike characteristics of Australopithecus, an earlier hominin genus, of which one species is suggested by many scholars to have been a forerunner of the Homo genus. Yet some features of the Ledi-Geraru mandible, such as a more primitive, sloping chin morphology, is similar to that of the Australopithecines. It could suggest a possible bridge species between the Australopithecines and later Homo genus species. But it is too soon to assign the fossil to any specific species, say the researchers. There is not enough information yet to make a supportable designation.

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Detailed map of where the Ledi-Geraru site is located in reference to other important fossil sites in Ethiopia. Credit Erin DiMaggio

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Site, geography, and geological stratification where the fossil jaw (designated LD 350-1) was discovered. Credit: Villmoare, et al.

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“We used multiple dating methods including radiometric analysis of volcanic ash layers, and all show that the hominin fossil is 2.8 to 2.75 million years old,” said DiMaggio.

By dating volcanic ash/tuff layers below and above the fossil using argon 40/39 dating, a high-precision radiometric dating method that measures the decay through time of different isotopes of argon within the ash/tuff, scientists were able to calculate the ages of nearby associated ancient volcanic eruptions. In this way, geologists could determine the youngest and oldest dates when the Homo individual could have lived.

The variety of 2.8 – 2.75-year-old animal fossils found in the area indicates that the ancient landscape inhabited by the Homo individual was an open habitat of mixed grasslands and shrub lands with a gallery forest—trees lining rivers or wetlands, likely similar to African locations like the Serengeti Plains or the Kalahari.

Some researchers have also suggested that global climate change during that time created an environment of climate variability and aridity, triggering evolutionary changes in many mammal lines, including early humans.

“We can see the 2.8 million-year-old aridity signal in the Ledi-Geraru faunal community,” said Reed. “But it’s still too soon to say that this means climate change is responsible for the origin of Homo. We need a larger sample of hominin fossils and that’s why we continue to come to the Ledi-Geraru area to search.”

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A caravan moves across the Lee Adoyta region in the Ledi-Geraru project area near the early Homo site. The hills behind the camels expose sediments that are younger than 2.67 million year old, providing a minimum age for the mandible. Credit Erin DiMaggio

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Geologists Dr. Erin DiMaggio of Penn State (left) and Dominique Garello (ASU, right) sample a volcanic tuff near the early Homo site in the Ledi-Geraru project area. Credit J. Ramón Arrowsmith

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Most significantly, the Ledi-Geraru Homo fossil (designated LD 350-1) predates previously known fossils of the Homo lineage by about 400,000 years. Until now, the earliest credible fossil evidence of the Homo genus was dated to about 2.3 or 2.4 million years ago, as represented by the fossil mandible HCRP-UR 501 (see image below), found by the German paleoanthropologist Friedermann Shrenk at Uraha, Malawi. HCRP-UR 501 has been identified as belonging to Homo rudolfensis, an early Homo species that lived roughly contemporaneous with Homo habilis around 2 million years ago.

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HPCR-UR 501, recovered by Friedermann Shrenk at Uraha, Malawi. Gerbil, Wikimedia Commons

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LD 350-1. Close-up view of the Ledi-Geraru partial mandible close to where it was sighted. Credit: Kaye Reed

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Close-up images of the Ledi-Geraru partial mandible, as seen from different angles and perspectives. Credit: William Kimbel

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In a related report published in the journal Nature, Fred Spoor and his colleagues discuss a new reconstruction of the cranium and associated mandible belonging to the 1.8 million-year-old Homo habilis (“Handy Man”) from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. When first found by Mary and Louis Leakey on November 4, 1960, the fossil was in deformed condition. The reconstruction shows some surprising features that could help inform the discussion on where it might stand in relation to the Ledi-Geraru Homo within human evolution.

In any case, the researchers maintain that the new find from the Afar region represents a remarkable discovery.

“In spite of a lot of searching, fossils on the Homo lineage older than 2 million years ago are very rare,” says Villmoare. “To have a glimpse of the very earliest phase of our lineage’s evolution is particularly exciting.”

“The Ledi jaw helps narrow the evolutionary gap between Australopithecus and early Homo,” adds co-author William Kimbel of ASU. “It’s an excellent case of a transitional fossil in a critical time period in human evolution.”

The research team plans to continue their search for additional Homo fossils in the area of the find, hoping to shed additional light on the specimen and ultimately determine a suggested species designation. 

Two detailed research reports* documenting the discovery are published in the journal Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

*“Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia” by B. Villmoare et al., and “Late Pliocene Fossiliferous Sedimentary Record and the Environmental Context of early Homo from Afar, Ethiopia,” by E.N. DiMaggio et al.

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The research team, which began conducting field work at Ledi-Geraru in 2002, included: Brian A. Villmoare (University of Nevada Las Vegas), William H. Kimbel (ASU Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change), and Chalachew Seyoum (ASU Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Addis Ababa), who analyzed the hominin fossil. Erin N. DiMaggio (Pennsylvania State University), Christopher J. Campisano (ASU Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change), J. Ramón Arrowsmith (ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration), Guillaume Dupont-Nivet (CNRS Géosciences Rennes), and Alan L. Deino (Berkeley Geochronology Center), who conducted the geological research. Faysal Bibi (Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science), Margaret E. Lewis (Stockton University), John Rowan (ASU Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change), Antoine Souron (Human Evolution Research Center, University of California, Berkeley), and Lars Werdelin (Swedish Museum of Natural History), who identified the fossil mammals. Kaye E. Reed (ASU Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change), who reconstructed the past habitats based on the faunal communities. David R. Braun (George Washington University), who conducted archaeological research.

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

In a very real way, it may have been the lion and the long-extinct sabertoothed cat, not the dog, that was ‘man’s best friend’, if we go back far enough into human prehistory. 

In a recently published study in the Journal of Human Evolution, author and paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner of the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program shows that it was entirely feasible for early humans living on the African savanna as much as two million or more years ago to acquire enough calories simply by lying in wait and scavenging the remains of prey left by lions or big sabertoothed cats after they finished eating the first cuts. 

She concluded this after spending several months in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy nature preserve observing, examining, and analyzing large carnivore kills scattered across its grasslands. According to Pobiner, even though it is a modern landscape and environment, it isn’t much different than some of the landscapes that early human ancestors inhabited millions of years ago.   

“The site is a great analogue for the kinds of African savanna environments where hominins are thought to have lived,” said Pobiner. “The habitats—both types and varieties—were probably similar, and in this particular place, lions were the dominant predator. This may have been very much like past carnivore communities during the time our ancestors were starting to eat meat from larger animals, when we have evidence that felids—ancient lions, leopards, and three species of sabertoothed cats—lived alongside our ancestors and may have been the dominant kinds of carnivores at this time.“ She points to ancient sites such as Koobi Fora and Olduvai Gorge in East Africa that have yielded evidence of the earliest stone tools, with ancient environments very similar to that of present-day Ol Pejeta where big felids coexisted with humans.

A typical day in the field for Pobiner would begin with listening to a short wave radio for any mention from the conservancy about spotting lions or hearing them roar during the night—particularly if they were eating prey. On a lucky day, she would drive her Land Cruiser along with an armed guard out to the lion site and then simply stop to observe them at a safe distance while they ate. The armed guard was critical. “I didn’t want to become prey myself—to be charged by an elephant, rhino, buffalo, or other angry ungulate,” she said. About one hour after the lions were done and had left the scene, she and her assisting guard would finally approach the kill, meticulously document the remains with photographs and notes, and then pick up the carcass and place it into the back of the Land Cruiser. Later, another assistant would carefully remove the meat from the bones with wooden tools so as not to make any marks that might be confused with tooth marks, and then boil the bones clean. Once the bones were dry, they would be ready for further study.

Apart from potentially angry ungulates, the work was not without other challenges.

“It turns out lions don’t kill things all that often,” Pobiner says. “So getting a large enough sample size was challenging. Another challenge was sometimes having difficulty getting around to get to the carcasses even with my sturdy vehicle during the rainy season when it got really muddy or if I inadvertently drove into a warthog burrow.”

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Parked near a kill site. Photo courtesy Briana Pobiner

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A typical kill site. Photo courtesy Briana Pobiner

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Stuck! One of the many pitfalls of the work. Photo courtesy Briana Pobiner

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For her efforts, however, Pobiner’s work has its rewards. Like others before her, this study could hold answers to questions related to the ongoing debate about early human behavior before the advent of more modern hunting tools and techniques. The debate has revolved around the ‘man the hunter’ hypothesis, which suggests that early humans who lived as much as two million or more years ago procured their meat needs primarily through hunting, versus the ‘man the scavenger’ hypothesis, which proposes that the early humans procured these needs mostly by scavenging the remains left by other preying carnivores, such as lions, sabertoothed cats, hyenas, and other animals. Subsumed within the ‘man the scavenger’ hypothesis has been the question of whether these early humans scavenged primarily as aggressive, confrontational, “power” scavengers who competed with the other carnivores for first access to the prey (such as scaring or beating off a lion from its hunted and killed prey), or as ‘passive’ scavengers who waited until other carnivores got their first prime cuts and then safely went in to pick the carcass for the scraps after the other big carnivores had left the scene. Specifically, Pobiner’s study results indicated that, even after the other large carnivores had their complete fill of the prey and left the carcass to the elements, there would have been enough meat in the scraps to provide a decent meal for a scavenging hominin afterwards. In other words, early humans could have made a living as passive scavengers.

“The most surprising finding was simply the large quantity of meat that lions leave when they eat their kills, which was more than anyone had observed before,” stated Pobiner. “In fact, the leftover meat from just one zebra kill made by lions could have provided almost 6,100 calories for our early human ancestors—that’s the entire daily caloric requirements of almost three adult male Homo erectus individuals, or just over 11 Big Macs. Not bad for a “lowly” scavenger!”

“Part of the criticism of the idea of a scavenging niche is whether there would even be enough meat on a lion kill worth scavenging, especially “passively” scavenging—waiting for the lions to be completely finished rather than chasing them off their kill in “active” or “confrontational” scavenging. My research answers a resounding “yes” to that question.” 

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Artist’s depiction of a group of Homo erectus individuals butchering an elephant carcass, based on evidence found of butchered elephant bones, and thousands of stone tools found at Olorgesailie, Kenya, a site where the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program has conducted excavations. Image courtesy Smithsonian Human Origins Program/Karen Carr

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Pobiner has clocked countless hours researching how and when eating meat, a key source of calories, protein and other nutrients, became an important factor in the ultimate evolutionary success of humans.

“Diet is such a crucial part of an organism’s adaptation, and understanding when and how hominins started incorporating meat from large animals into their diets can give us insight into other key adaptations that characterize our lineage – brain size increase, body size increase, home range and group size increase, moving into novel habitats and environments, interactions with other predators, and sophisticated communication and planning, for instance,” she said. “We went from being mostly prey to being the most dominant predator on earth, or at least one of them, in a mere 2.5 million years.”

The detailed study report is published in the Journal of Human Evolution. 

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If you liked this, see also The Bones of Ol Pejeta, by Briana Pobiner and Kris Kovarovic, and Rewriting Human Evolution, a premium article in the September, 2014 issue of Popular Archaeology.

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Researchers have identified a gene that likely contributed to the physical expansion of the human neocortex—an event that is considered to be a hallmark of primate evolution, especially in humans. The gene, known as ARHGAP11B, can be found in modern humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans, and it drives the proliferation of neural progenitor cells that build the brain’s neocortex, according to a new study.

The neocortex is the region of the brain that is involved in sensory perception, motor commands, conscious thought, and language.

Marta Florio and colleagues investigated genes that may have facilitated a thicker neocortex. After combing through candidate genes expressed in populations of progenitor cells, the researchers identified ARHGAP11B as a hominin-specific gene. The researchers suggest that it arose on the human lineage soon after humans diverged from chimpanzees, and that it helps to differentiate humans and hominins from the more evolutionarily ancient chimps. When Florio and her colleagues expressed the uniquely human gene in a developing mouse brain, they found that the sub-ventricular zone of the rodent’s neocortex grew much larger than it would have in a normal mouse.

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Embryonic mouse cerebral cortex stained for cell nuclei (cyan) and a marker of deep-layer neurons (Ctip2, red). The human-specific gene ARHGAP11B was selectively expressed in the right hemisphere: note the folding of the neocortical surface. Credit: Marta Florio and Wieland B. Huttner, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics

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The detailed article is published in the journal Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Source: Edited from a press release provided by the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

Analysis of sedimentary ancient DNA from an underwater site off the southern coast of Britain suggests, according to a U.K research team, that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who occupied a site now underwater traded in a Near Eastern strain of wheat 2,000 years before the currently generally-accepted advent of farming in Britain.

“The first evidence of cereal cultivation on what is now mainland Britain dates back only to about 6,000 years ago, suggesting a substantial temporal gap between the two sides of the English Channel,” wrote University of Oxford’s Greger Larson in a perspective article published about the finding in Science magazine.** Larson is Director of the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art. It is generally thought that farming began in Europe, south and west of the English Channel, much earlier than in the British Isles. He goes on to summarize the process and merits of the recently completed study by a team of U.K. scientists led by Oliver Smith of the University of Warwick that suggests the presence of not just wheat, but a Near Eastern strain of wheat, within 8,000-year-old submerged paleosol sediments at Bouldnor Cliff off the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. 

Smith and colleagues teased DNA from core samples taken from a Mesolithic paleosol layer just beneath a peat layer sealed beneath silty-clay submerged alluvial sediments. Millennia ago, this paleosol layer was above ground, an ancient landscape that was gradually submerged as sea levels rose during the warming period beginning in the early Holocene epoch. The sea level change inundated the land bridge between what is today Britain and the rest of Europe, creating the English Channel. The researchers uncovered evidence of human occupation typical of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers at the site, which included worked wood, burnt flint and hazelnut shells. 

“The site has been dated to 8030 to 7980 calendar (cal) yr B.P.,” wrote Smith, et al. in their report, “placing it in the late Mesolithic of the British Isles, a period that is represented by few assemblages and is still little understood………The sedaDNA [sedimentary ancient DNA] profile revealed a wooded landscape that included oak, poplar, apple, and beech family members, with grasses and a few herbs present.”*

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Diver shows sample of finds unearthed at the marine site of Bouldnor Cliff. From the video describing the research findings in the paper titled “Sedimentary DNA from a submerged site reveals wheat in the British Isles 8,000 years ago”. Credit: University of Warwick

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But the most startling finding came from the DNA analysis. Through meticulous analysis accounting for and dismissing possible contamination as well as potential intrusion from other upper layers, they discovered clear DNA traces of Near Eastern strains of wheat genuinely dated to and associated within the context of the Mesolithic assemblage, which also included evidence of a Mesolithic human diet.

“The occurrence of wheat 8,000 years ago on the British continental shelf appears early, given its later establishment on the UK mainland,” wrote Smith, et al.,  “Neolithic assemblages first appear in northwest Europe in the 8th millennium B.P., from 7500 B.P. in the central Rhineland, 7300 B.P. in the Rhine/Maas delta and adjacent areas, and 7400 B.P. in western France.”*

The DNA results thus suggest the presence of wheat at Bouldnor Cliff about 400 years before the earliest known occurrences of farming in northwestern Europe, and 2,000 years before agriculture is known to have taken hold in what is today Britain.

The researchers found no evidence that the wheat had actually been cultivated at or near the site. Instead, they suggest, the wheat was likely traded into the area by a network established between hunter-gatherers at Bouldnor Cliff and Neolithic farmers further south and west in Europe.

“We suspect that this wheat represents foodstuffs imported from the continent rather than the cultivation of this cereal crop at this locale. The presence of wheat, along with pioneering technological artifacts at the site, provides evidence for a social network between well-developed Mesolithic peoples of northwest Europe and the advancing Neolithic front,” conclude Smith, et al., suggesting the agricultural products moved ahead of their actual cultivation in Britain.*

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Above: From the video describing the research findings in the paper titled “Sedimentary DNA from a submerged site reveals wheat in the British Isles 8,000 years ago”. Credit: University of Warwick

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Although the predominant thinking among scholars places the advent of the farming Neolithic in what is today Britain by 6000 years BPE, the timing and mode of Neolithization is still debated. One model suggests the arrival of Neolithic farming technologies on the mainland was rapid, facilitated by the arrival of migrating farmers from the rest of Europe, displacing or acculturating the indigenous hunter-gatherers; the other proposes that hunter-gatherers gradually transitioned to a Neolithic economy, with increasing dependency on cereals over thousands of years.

The study has important implications in the ongoing research on the evolution of agriculture in Europe. “The unexpectedly early appearance of wheat in Britain should force a rethinking of both the strength of the relationships between early farmers and hunter-gatherers, and the origins of settled agricultural communities in Europe,” concluded Larson in the Science perspective article.**

The detailed study report is published in Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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*“Sedimentary DNA from a submerged site reveals wheat in the British Isles 8000 years ago,” by O. Smith; M. Pallen; R.G. Allaby at University of Warwick in Coventry, UK; G. Member at Maritime Archaeology Trust in Southampton, UK; G. Member at National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK; R. Bates at University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, UK; P. Garwood; S. Fitch at University of Birmingham in Birmingham, UK; V. Gaffney at University of Bradford in Bradford, UK., Science, 27 February, 2015, VOL 347 ISSUE 6225.

** “How wheat came to Britain,” by Greger Larson at University of Oxford, Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Science, 26 February, 2015.

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An archaeological team has uncovered remains of what may have been an administrative center during the period when Judahite kings ruled out of ancient Jerusalem.

Led by project director Avraham Faust, an archaeologist with Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, Israel, excavations at the site of Tel ‘Eton located on the edge of the fertile Shephelah and the Hebron hill country to its east have revealed structures, artifacts, and fortifications that tell of an ancient city that historically straddled the eastern edge of the lowlands between the biblical kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem in the east and the cities of the Philistines on the Mediterranean coastal plains of the west.

Among the finds was a large, 240 sq.m. 8^th century BCE house structure built following a four-room plan typical of ancient Israelite dwellings, featuring high-quality construction and, with its location at the highest point on the mound, commanding a strategic view of all areas below. The ancient building, along with its town context, was strategically located at the cross-roads of important north-south and east-west routes, set above fertile agricultural country.

“The structure was excavated, almost in its entirety, and was composed of a large courtyard with rooms on three sides,” stated Faust. “The building was nicely executed, including ashlar stones in the corners and openings. Hundreds of artifacts were unearthed within the debris, including a wide range of pottery vessels, loom weights, many metal objects, botanical remains, as well as many arrowheads, evidence of the battle which accompanied the conquest of the site by the Assyrians.”

Near the end of the 8^th century, in 701 BCE according to biblical and Assyrian records, invading armies under the Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed cities and towns throughout the Kingdom of Judah, sparing Jerusalem but utterly devastating the settlements of the Shephelah region, on the eastern edge of which Tel ‘Eton is located. 

Faust and his colleagues suggest that the building may have been the residence of a Judean governor, responsible for administering a region under its control under the Judahite kingdom centered in Jerusalem.    

Tel ‘Eton has also been identified with a more ancient Canaanite city known as Biblical Eglon (Josh 10:34-36; 15:39), and Faust’s team has uncovered evidence of occupation dating as far back as the third millennium BCE (the Early Bronze Age).

But the most abundant finds for the early periods were dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550-1200/1150 BCE).

“Remains from this period were unearthed in practically every square in the section in which we dug deep enough,” stated Faust, “and in-situ (left in-place by the early inhabitants) vessels were discovered even down the slopes, signifying that the town was large.”

The Late Bronze Age is well documented in Egyptian sources, such as the el Amarna letters, which are mostly diplomatic correspondence on clay tablets that have provided an historical accounting of the affairs, especially as they relate to Egyptian/Canaanite relations, during the Egyptian New Kingdom.

In addition, Faust’s team has uncovered a destruction layer dated to the Late Bronze Age town.

“The evidence regarding the end of the Late Bronze Age town hints that it was destroyed, probably in the 1^st half of the 12^th century BCE,” stated Faust in a recent report. “This was part of a wider wave of destructions throughout the region. The causes of the destruction are not clear, [but] various suggestions were raised regarding the identity of the responsible party, including the Israelites, the Philistines and the Egyptians.”

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An aerial photograph of Tel ‘Eton, looking south (photographed by Sky View\ Griffin Aerial Imaging)

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A bulla excavated from Tel ‘Eton, with an inscription. (Photographed by Zev Radovan)

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A team member excavating within the Assyrian destruction layer. Courtesy Bar-Ilan University Expedition to Tel ‘Eton

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Faust writes more about the excavations and discoveries at Tel ‘Eton in the upcoming Spring issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

Individuals interested in participating in or supporting the Tel ‘Eton excavation project may learn more at the project website.

_____________________________________

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition.  We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

A UK-led initiative to scan the Amazon rainforest for new signs of ancient settlements was announced at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose, California. The project, which has already been awarded $1.9m grant from the European Research Council, will include conducting laser scans via drone.

A major goal of the project is to understand the extent to which pre-Columbian populations built and flourished as far back as 3,000 years prior to the arrival of Europeans.

More than 400 geoglyphs have already been exposed by deforestation, suggesting collective, organized human behavior—an argument that has been an ongoing debate within New World archaeology.

“Although humans have lived in Amazonia for the last 13,000 years, until recently, the long-accepted paradigm has been one of a noble savage living in harmony with the ancient forest, with negligible impact on the forest,” said Dr. José Iriarte of the University of Exeter, the lead researcher of the project. “Such a view was widely shared, not only among archaeologists, but also by most tropical ecologists whose interpretations of the biodiversity and ecological change were based on the assumption that this forest environment was largely pristine.” 

But, “based on mounting archaeological evidence that suggest the presence of complex Amazonian societies,” Iriarte continued, “at the other end of the spectrum are those that propose that the Amazon Basin was densely populated, perhaps up to 10 million inhabitants, and so intensively managed that by 1492 there was no such thing as  a “virgin forest”— instead, it was a cultural parkland.” 

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Geoglyphs on deforested land at the Fazenda Colorada site in the Amazon rainforest, Rio Branco area, Acre. Site dated to c. AD 1283. Sanna Saunaluoma, Wikimedia Commons

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Among other objectives, Iriarte hopes to test this idea of large, complex and hierarchical societies in the Amazon, known as the “cultural parkland hypothesis’, by conducting an intensive study of four distinct regions across the Amazon, implementing a battery of state-of-the-art techniques from the social and natural sciences, including archaeology, archaeobotany, ethnohistory, and paleoecology, in conjunction with remote sensing technology. Most notably, he and his team will be mounting LiDAR and multi-spectral sensors on UAVs (drones) beginning in the Fall of 2015 to scan large areas, comparing what they find to landscapes with areas already known to exhibit evidence of anthropogenic (human) manipulation of the landscape.

“It is only by applying this interdisciplinary approach that we can provide a holistic understanding of the origins of the modern Amazonian landscapes,” said Iriarte.

Even if and when Iriarte and his team come up with strong evidence supporting the ‘cultural parklands hypothesis’, they also hope to find answers to some other key questions. Issues of conservation and sustainability play a salient role.

“How did the 1492 Columbian encounter affect these landscapes and cultures?” asks Iriarte. “And did pre-Columbian land use have a lasting affect on the modern forest and, if so, how does the knowledge of the legacy of Late pre-Columbian groups inform modern conservation and sustainable agricultural practices for the future of the Amazon and other tropical regions of the world?” 

Irarte suggests that the outcome of the project could potentially guide policy-making in terms of land management and sustainability, and influence many other decisions that could otherwise be insufficiently informed without understanding past human management of the landscape. 

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As it is in New York city, so it was in the ancient cities of Teotihuacán and Tenochtitlán.

So suggests a team of anthropologists who recently conducted a study that shows that ancient settlements grew according to the same rules as modern cities.

Using archaeological data from rural settlements to urban centers, including information on the volumes of ancient public monuments, the boundaries of political units, the number and size of ancient houses, and the extent of settled areas, and then applying mathematical formulas related to settlement scaling theory*, they applied a common formula explaining the dynamics of city growth that balances the benefits of social interaction—such as increased productivity, trade and information sharing—with the costs of movement or transport.

Led by Scott Ortman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study authors began their research based on findings from previous research studies that suggested that a common characteristic of modern cities is increasing productivity or economic returns to scale—that many socioeconomic outputs increase more rapidly than the associated infrastructure and population size. In other words, a city’s population outpaces its development of urban infrastructure, for example, and its production of goods and services outpaces its population. They examined the extent to which increasing returns may also apply to ancient cities, in this case those of the pre-Hispanic Basin of Mexico (BOM), which contained cities of the ancient Teotihuacán, Toltec, and Aztec civilizations, by analyzing the dimensions of hundreds of ancient temples and thousands of ancient houses to estimate population sizes and densities, size and construction rates of structures, and the intensity of site use.

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View of the Avenue of the Dead and the Pyramid of the Sun at the ancient site of Teotihuacán, one of the great ancient cities of present-day Mexico, located in the Valley of Mexico about 30 miles northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Wikimedia Commons

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The results, according to the authors, were exciting.

“It was shocking and unbelievable,” says Ortman. “We were raised on a steady diet telling us that, thanks to capitalism, industrialization, and democracy, the modern world is radically different from worlds of the past. What we found here is that the fundamental drivers of robust socioeconomic patterns in modern cities precede all that.”

“We have shown that in the pre-Hispanic BOM, larger population aggregates used space more efficiently, produced public goods more rapidly, and were more productive per household,” wrote Ortman, et al. in the report. “Further, the congruence of these results with theory suggests that the benefits of scale…..ultimately derive from the properties of strongly interacting social groups embedded in structural spaces. This reinforces our view that human settlements of all times and places function in the same way by manifesting strongly interacting social networks, thus magnifying rates of social interaction and increasing the productivity and scope of material resources, human labor, and knowledge.”*

“Our results suggest that the general ingredients of productivity and population density in human societies run much deeper and have everything to do with the challenges and opportunities of organizing human social networks,” said Santa Fe Institute’s Professor Luis Bettencourt, a co-author of the study.

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Modern and ancient cities reflect the same basic social networking processes.
Image Credit: Gabriel Garcia

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Moving forward, the team plans to conduct similar analyses of ancient sites in Peru, China, and Europe, focusing on the factors underpinning urban development, growth, and collapse.

The detailed report is published in the current issue of the new open-access journal, Science Advances, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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*”Settlement scaling and increasing returns in an ancient society,” by S.G. Ortman at University of Colorado, Boulder in Boulder, CO; S.G. Ortman; A.H.F. Cabaniss; L.M.A. Bettencourt at Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, NM; A.H.F. Cabaniss at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC; J.O. Sturm at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM.

The content of this article was adapted and edited from press releases of the University of Colorado, Boulder, the Santa Fe Institute, and included statements published in the referenced research report.

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DURHAM, N.C.—Anthropologists and evolutionists have long theorized that the size of the human brain expanded dramatically during the course of evolution, especially in the neo-cortex region of the brain, imparting us with unique capabilities such as thinking abstractly and language. But how did the human brain get larger than that of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee?

Duke scientists have shown that it’s possible to pick out key changes in the genetic code between chimpanzees and humans and then visualize their respective contributions to early brain development by using mouse embryos.

The team found that humans are equipped with tiny differences in a particular regulator of gene activity, dubbed HARE5, that when introduced into a mouse embryo, led to a 12% bigger brain than in the embryos treated with the HARE5 sequence from chimpanzees.

The findings*, appearing online Feb. 19, 2015, in Current Biology, may lend insight into not only what makes the human brain special but also why people get some diseases, such as autism and Alzheimer’s disease, whereas chimpanzees don’t.

“I think we’ve just scratched the surface, in terms of what we can gain from this sort of study,” said Debra Silver, an assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke University Medical School. “There are some other really compelling candidates that we found that may also lead us to a better understanding of the uniqueness of the human brain.”

Every genome contains many thousands of short bits of DNA called ‘enhancers,’ whose role is to control the activity of genes. Some of these are unique to humans. Some are active in specific tissues. But none of the human-specific enhancers previously had been shown to influence brain anatomy directly.

In the new study, researchers mined databases of genomic data from humans and chimpanzees, to find enhancers expressed primarily in the brain tissue and early in development. They prioritized enhancers that differed markedly between the two species.

The group’s initial screen turned up 106 candidates, six of them near genes that are believed to be involved in brain development. The group named these ‘human-accelerated regulatory enhancers,’ HARE1 through HARE6.

The strongest candidate was HARE5 for its chromosomal location near a gene called Frizzled 8, which is part of a well-known molecular pathway implicated in brain development and disease. The group decided to focus on HARE5 and then showed that it was likely to be an enhancer for Frizzled8 because the two DNA sequences made physical contact in brain tissue.

The human HARE5 and the chimpanzee HARE5 sequences differ by only 16 letters in their genetic code. Yet, in mouse embryos the researchers found that the human enhancer was active earlier in development and more active in general than the chimpanzee enhancer.

“What’s really exciting about this was that the activity differences were detected at a critical time in brain development: when neural progenitor cells are proliferating and expanding in number, just prior to producing neurons,” Silver said.

Smartmice?

The researchers found that in the mouse embryos equipped with Frizzled8 under control of human HARE5, progenitor cells destined to become neurons proliferated faster compared with the chimp HARE5 mice, ultimately leading to more neurons.

As the mouse embryos neared the end of gestation, their brain size differences became noticeable to the naked eye. Graduate student Lomax Boyd started dissecting the brains and looking at them under a microscope.

“After he started taking pictures, we took a ruler to the monitor. Although we were blind to what the genotype was, we started noticing a trend,” Silver said.

All told, human HARE5 mice had brains 12% larger in area compared with chimpanzee HARE5 mice. The neocortex, involved in higher-level function such as language and reasoning, was the region of the brain affected.

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The human version of a DNA sequence called HARE5 turns on a gene important for brain development (gene activity is stained blue), and causes a mouse embryo to grow a 12 percent larger brain by the end of pregnancy than an embryo injected with the chimpanzee version of HARE5. Image Credit: Silver lab, Duke University

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Producing a short list of strong candidates was in itself a feat, accomplished by applying the right filters to analysis of human and chimpanzee genomes, said co-author Gregory Wray, professor of biology and director of the Duke Center for Genomic and Computational Biology.

“Many others have tried this and failed,” Wray said. “We’ve known other people who have looked at genes involved in brain size evolution, tested them out and done the same kinds of experiments we’ve done and come up dry.”

The Duke team plans to study the human HARE5 and chimp HARE5 mice into adulthood, for possible differences in brain structure and behavior. The group also hopes to explore the role of the other HARE sequences in brain development.

“What we found is a piece of the genetic basis for why we have a bigger brain,” Wray said. “It really shows in sharp relief just how complicated those changes must have been. This is probably only one piece — a little piece.”

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Source: Adapted and edited from a Duke University press release.

The work was supported by a research incubator grant from the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, the National Institutes of Health (R01NS083897), and National Science Foundation (HOMIND BCS-08-27552).

*”Human-Chimpanzee Differences in a FZD8 Enhancer Alter Cell-Cycle Dynamics in the Developing Neocortex,” J. Lomax Boyd, Stephanie L. Skove, Jeremy Rouanet, Louis-Jan Pilaz, Tristan Bepler, Raluca Gordan, Gregory A. Wray, Debra L. Silver. Current Biology, February 19, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.01.041.

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