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No One Knows Our Names

Posted on March 9, 2015 by No Author -

More than 300 years ago, three African-born slaves died on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. No written records memorialized their fate, and their names and precise ethnic background remained a mystery. For centuries, their skeletons were subjected to the hot, wet weather of the tropical island until they were unearthed in 2010 during a construction project in the Zoutsteeg area of the capital city of Philipsburg.

Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Copenhagen have extracted and sequenced tiny bits of DNA remaining in the skeletons’ teeth. From this data, they were able to determine where in Africa the individuals likely lived before they were captured and enslaved.

The research marks the first time that scientists have been able to use such old, poorly preserved DNA to identify with high specificity the ethnic origins of long-dead individuals. The finding paves the way for a greater understanding of the patterns of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and may transform the general practice of genealogical and historical research.

“Through the barbarism of the middle passage, millions of people were forcibly removed from Africa and brought to the Americas,” said Carlos Bustamante, PhD, professor of genetics at Stanford. “We have long sought to use DNA to understand who they were, where they came from, and who, today, shares DNA with those people taken aboard the ships. This project has taught us that we cannot only get ancient DNA from tropical samples, but that we can reliably identify their ancestry. This is incredibly exciting to us and opens the door to reclaiming history that is of such importance.”

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Inspection and sale of a ‘negro’, or slave from Africa. Wikimedia Commons

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A new tool

The researchers used a technique recently devised in the Bustamante laboratory called whole-genome capture to isolate enough ancient DNA from the skeletons to sequence and analyze. In this way, they learned that one skeleton was that of a man who had likely belonged to a Bantu-speaking group in northern Cameroon. The other two shared similarities with non-Bantu-speaking groups in present-day Nigeria and Ghana.

Bustamante is co-author of a paper describing the research. It will be published online March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was led by Hannes Schroeder, PhD, a molecular anthropologist from the University of Copenhagen, and Stanford postdoctoral scholar Maria Avila-Arcos, PhD. The research was initiated in Denmark, and the senior author of the study is Thomas Gilbert, PhD, of the University of Copenhagen.

Bustamante is well-known for his studies of the ethnic background of native Mexicans and Caribbean dwellers, as well as for using genomics to study the patterns of human migration from North Africa to southern Europe.

“Several years ago, we were part of the team that sequenced the genome of Otzi, the iceman, and we were able to show that the people alive today that most closely match him genetically are Sardinians,” said Bustamante. “This incredible precision was possible because we, as a community, had invested lots of resources in understanding patterns of DNA variation in Europe. I started to talk about the ‘Otzi rule,’ or the idea that we should be able to do for all people alive today what we can do for a 5,000-year-old mummy. However, few skeletons today are as well-preserved as Otzi, and not all are of European background.”

In the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration in history, more than 12 million enslaved Africans were shipped to the New World to work on plantations in eastern South America, the Caribbean, and portions of the eastern United States. Although some records were kept detailing the slaves’ departure from West and Central African ports, they are often incomplete. Furthermore, it is impossible to tell from the shipping records where in Africa individuals originated.

Researchers could tell from the skeletons found in the Zoutsteeg area that the three people were between 25 and 40 years old when they died in the late 1600s. The skulls of each also bore teeth that had been filed down in patterns characteristic of certain African groups. But this alone wasn’t enough to pinpoint where the individuals originated on the African continent.

Getting DNA from tooth roots

Schroeder and Avila-Arcos isolated DNA from the tooth roots of each of the skeletons. Although the tooth roots are relatively protected from the elements and from external contamination with unrelated genetic material, the DNA was very poorly preserved and highly fragmented — likely due to the centuries of hot, humid conditions the skeletons had endured. Initial DNA sequencing efforts rendered short stretches of highly damaged DNA.

The researchers turned to the whole-genome capture technique developed by study co-author Meredith Carpenter, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the Bustamante laboratory, to fish out snippets of ancient DNA from the mixture. The approach exposes the DNA sample to a genome-wide panel of human-specific RNA molecules to which the degraded DNA in the sample can bind. The effect is somewhat like stirring a pile of iron-rich dirt with a powerful magnet to isolate the metal from the soil, and it allowed the researchers to concentrate the ancient DNA for more efficient sequencing.

They then used a different technique called principal component analysis to compare the DNA sequences of the enslaved Africans with a reference panel of 11 West African populations and identify the distinct ethnic groups from which each individual likely originated. The findings illuminate a tumultuous period of time in the Americas and may provide insight into subsequent population patterns and perceived ethnic identities.

“We were able to determine that, despite the fact that the three individuals were found at the same site, and may even have arrived on the same ship, they had genetic affinities to different populations within Africa,” said Avila-Arcos. “They may have spoken different languages, making communication difficult. This makes us reflect on two things: the dynamics of the trans-Atlantic slave trade within Africa, and how this dramatic, ethnic mingling may have influenced communities and identities in the Americas.”

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Other Stanford authors are graduate student David Poznik and former postdoctoral scholar Martin Sikora, PhD.

The research was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation, the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, the European Research Council, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (grant numbers 5F32HG007342 and K99GM104158), a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacin, the Plan Galego IDT, the Sistema Universitario Gallego-Modalidad REDES, the Xunta de Galicia, the Lundbeck Foundation and the Danish Council for Independent Research.

Bustamante is the founder of IdentifyGenomics LLC, and is on the scientific advisory board of Personalis Inc. and Ancestry.com, as well as the medical advisory board of InVitae. Carpenter is now the chief scientific officer at IdentifyGenomics.

Information about Stanford’s Department of Genetics, which also supported the work, is available at http://genetics.stanford.edu.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/school.html. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. For information about all three, please visit http://med.stanford.edu.

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Source: Stanford University Medical Center

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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.

Archaeologists Return to Unearth Base of the Roman Sixth Legion

Posted on March 6, 2015 by No Author -

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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Early Human Fossil Find Pushes Back the Clock

Posted on March 4, 2015 by No Author -

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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Study Lends New Support to Theory that Early Humans were Scavengers

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Dan McLerran -

As Founder and Editor of Popular Archaeology Magazine, Dan is a freelance writer and journalist specializing in archaeology. He studied anthropology and archaeology in undergraduate and graduate school and has been an active participant on archaeological excavations in the U.S. and abroad. He is the creator and administrator of Archaeological Digs, a popular weblog about archaeological excavation and field school opportunities.

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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Scientists Develop New Model of Life’s Evolution

Posted on March 3, 2015 by No Author -

Temple University researchers have assembled the largest and most accurate tree of life calibrated to time, and surprisingly, it reveals that life has been expanding at a constant rate. The model also has implications for human evolution.

“The constant rate of diversification that we have found indicates that the ecological niches of life are not being filled up and saturated,” said Temple professor S. Blair Hedges, a member of the research team’s study, published in the early online edition of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. “This is contrary to the popular alternative model which predicts a slowing down of diversification as niches fill up with species.”

The tree of life compiled by the Temple team is depicted in a new way—a cosmologically-inspired galaxy of life view—and contains more than 50,000 species in a tapestry spiraling out from the origin of life.

For the massive meta-study effort, researchers painstakingly assembled data from 2,274 molecular studies, with 96 percent published in the last decade. They built new computer algorithms and tools to synthesize this largest collection of evolutionary peer-reviewed species diversity timelines published to date to produce this Time Tree of Life.

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The tree of life compiled by Temple University researchers is depicted in a new way—a cosmologically inspired galaxy of life view—and contains more than 50,000 species in a tapestry spiraling out from the origin of life. Credit: Temple University

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The study also challenges the conventional view of adaptation being the principal force driving species diversification, but rather, underscores the importance of random genetic events and geographic isolation in speciation, taking about 2 million years on average for a new species to emerge onto the scene.

“This finding shows that speciation is more clock-like than people have thought,” said Hedges. “Taken together, this indicates that speciation and diversification are separate processes from adaptation, responding more to isolation and time. Adaptation is definitely occurring, so this does not disagree with Darwinism. But it goes against the popular idea that adaptation drives speciation, and against the related concept of punctuated equilibrium which associates adaptive change with speciation.”

“In terms of how humans relate to our finding, it follows that, as we are just another species, the origin of our lineage has more to do with geographic isolation than with adaptation,” Hedges told Popular Archaeology.

Besides the new evolutionary insights gained in this study, their Timetree of Life will provide opportunities for researchers to make other discoveries across disciplines, wherever an evolutionary perspective is needed, including, for example, studies of disease and medicine, and the effect of climate change on future species diversity.

Researchers around the world utilize molecular clocks to estimate species divergence times, calculating DNA mutational rates with species divergence times from gene and genomic sequences, that together with the fossil record and geological history, provide a constantly improving view of Darwin’s “grandeur of life.”

These new results add to the decade-long efforts of the Timetree of Life initiative (TTOL), which includes internet tools and a book, led by team members Hedges and Sudhir Kumar. “The ultimate goal of the TTOL is to chart the timescale of life — to discover when each species and all their ancestors originated, all the way back to the origin of life some four billion years ago,” said Hedges.

As an ongoing service to the scientific community, Hedges and Kumar plan to continue adding new data to TTOL from future peer-reviewed studies. They also will improve their current tools, such as web and smartphone apps, and develop new tools, that will make it easier to access the information and to explore the TTOL, and for scientists to update the growing tree with their new data.

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Besides Hedges and Kumar, other members of the research team that published this new article included Julie Marin, Michael Suleski, and Madeline Paymer.

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Source: Temple University press release.

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More on the violent death of Pharaoh Senebkay

Posted on February 27, 2015 by No Author -

He may have led a king’s life, but new forensic evidence gleaned from the remains of Pharaoh Senebkay indicates that the Egyptian ruler died in battle—the earliest known pharaoh to have done so—viciously attacked by multiple assailants.

Last year, the tomb of king Senebkay (ca. 1650–1600 BCE) was discovered at the site of Abydos by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Museum working in association with Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities. Now the team led by Dr. Josef Wegner of the Penn Museum has completed a detailed study of Senebkay’s skeleton, as well as the remains of several other kings whose tombs have been discovered nearby. The 2014-15 research is supported by the Penn Museum, with additional support from the National Geographic Society Expeditions Council.

“Forensic analysis has provided some new answers about the life, and death, of this ancient Egyptian king,” noted Dr. Wegner, “while raising a host of new questions about both Senebkay, and the Second Intermediate Period of which he was a part.”

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Team members work to excavate the burial chamber of the pharaoh Woseribre Senebkay, with sheets covering a painted wall decoration. Photo: Josef Wegner, Penn Museum.

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At left, the sun disc and goose means “Son of Re” (or Ra), the Egyptian sun god. The cartouche at right spells the name of the pharaoh, Senebkay, whose body was interred in this tomb. Photo: Jennifer Wegner, Penn Museum.

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A Warrior King

Pharaoh Woseribre Senebkay, who lived during the later part of Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1650–1550 BCE), is now the earliest Egyptian pharaoh whose remains show he died in battle. Detailed analysis by Dr. Maria Rosado and Dr. Jane Hill of Rowan University has documented an extensive array of wounds on Senebkay’s skeleton showing he died aged 35-40 years old during a vicious assault from multiple assailants. The king’s skeleton has an astounding eighteen wounds that penetrated to the bone. The trauma includes major cuts to his feet, ankles, knees, hands, and lower back. Three major blows to Senebkay’s skull preserve the distinctive size and curvature of battle axes used during Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period. This evidence indicates the king died violently during a military confrontation, or in an ambush.

Emerging Role of the Horse

The patterns of wounds to Senebkay’s body suggest he was attacked while in an elevated position relative to his assailants, quite possibly mounted on horseback. Another surprising result of the osteological analysis is that muscle attachments on Senebkay’s femurs and pelvis indicate he spent a significant amount of his adult life as a horse rider. Another king’s body discovered this year in a tomb close to that of Senebkay also shows evidence for horse riding, suggesting these Second Intermediate Period kings buried at Abydos were accomplished horsemen. Senebkay and other royal remains at Abydos provide valuable new insight into the early introduction of the horse (Equus ferus caballus) to Egypt. Although use of horseback riding in warfare was not common until after the Bronze Age, the Egyptians appear to have been mastering the use of horses during the Second Intermediate Period. Horseback riding may have played a growing role in military movements during this era, even before the full advent of chariot technology in Egypt, which occurred slightly later, at the beginning of Egypt’s New Kingdom (ca. 1550 BCE).

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Schematic showing the distribution of traumatic battle wounds to Senebkay: front view. Image: Dr. Jane Hill.

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Schematic showing the distribution of traumatic battle wounds to Senebkay: rear view. Image: Dr. Jane Hill.

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Image composite depicting the right ankle and left knee of Woseribre Senebkay’s skeleton. The patterns of wounds to Senebkay’s body suggest he was attacked while in an elevated position relative to his assailants, quite possibly mounted on horseback. Image: Jane Hill and Josef Wegner.

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Front and top views of Woseribre Senebkay’s skull, indicating the location of an axe wound to the front of the cranium. This and two other major blows to Senebkay’s skull preserve the distinctive size and curvature of battle axes used during Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period. Photo: Josef Wegner, Penn Museum.

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Rear view of Woseribre Senebkay’s skull, indicating the locations of two axe wounds to the back of the cranium. Photo: Jane Hill and Josef Wegner.

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A Battle with Whom?

The death of Senebkay in battle appears to have taken place at considerable distance from his burial place at Abydos. The king’s body also shows that significant time elapsed between his death and preparation of the body for burial. What remains a mystery is where the king died and who Senebkay’s opponents were. Possibly the king died in battle fighting against the Hyksos kings who at that time ruled northern Egypt from their capital at Avaris in the Nile Delta. However, Senebkay may have died in struggles against enemies in the south of Egypt. Historical records dating to Senebkay’s lifetime record at least one attempted invasion of Upper Egypt by a large military force from Nubia to the south. Alternatively, Senebkay may have had other political opponents, possibly kings based at Thebes.

Who was Senebkay? Tombs of seven other kings have now been excavated at Abydos opening a new window onto one of Ancient Egypt’s most obscure periods. It appears probable that Senebkay and these other rulers form a short-lived dynasty who chose Abydos as their burial ground. Continued excavations of the Penn Museum researchers in collaboration with the National Geographic Society hope to shed light on Senebkay and the other kings buried near him.

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A facial reconstruction of the pharaoh Senebkay based on detailed cranial study, by Mireya Poblete Arias. Analysis of the king’s skeleton shows that he died at an age of 35-40 years. Image: Mireya Poblete Arias.

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Abydos and the Penn Museum

Penn Museum scholars have been excavating at the site of Abydos since 1967, as part of the Pennsylvania-Yale-Institute of Fine Arts/NYU Expedition to Abydos. Abydos is located on the western side of the Nile in Upper Egypt and was a religious center associated with the veneration of the funerary god Osiris. Dr. Josef Wegner has been excavating at the site of Abydos since 1994. Excavations in the area of South Abydos have revealed a thriving royal cult center that developed around the subterranean tomb of pharaoh Senwosret III located at the area called Anubis-Mountain, where Senebkay’s tomb and other Second Intermediate Period tombs have been found.

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Source: Press release provided by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

About the Penn Museum

Founded in 1887, the Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology), 3260 South Street in Philadelphia, is one of the world’s great archaeology and anthropology research museums, and the largest university museum in the United States. With nearly one million objects in the collection, the Penn Museum encapsulates and illustrates the human story: who we are and where we came from. A dynamic research institution with many ongoing research projects, the Museum is an engaging place of discovery. The Museum’s mandate of research, teaching, collections stewardship, and public engagement are the four “pillars” of the Museum’s expansive mission: to transform understanding of the human experience. Penn Museum can be found on the web at www.penn.museum. For general information call 215.898.4000.

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A Brain-Building Gene, Unique to Humans?

Posted on February 26, 2015 by No Author -

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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A Wheat Trade in Britain Before Farming, Suggest Researchers

Posted on February 26, 2015 by No Author -

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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Archaeologists Unearth Possible Ancient Judean Administrative Center

Posted on February 24, 2015 by No Author -

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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Drones to scan for evidence of ancient civilizations in Amazonia

Posted on February 23, 2015 by No Author -

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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Social networks key to city growth both ancient and modern, say researchers

Posted on February 20, 2015 by No Author -

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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Scientists evolve bigger brains in mice by using human DNA

Posted on February 19, 2015 by No Author -

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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Italian cemetery may provide insights to cholera’s evolution

Posted on February 15, 2015 by No Author -

Archaeologists and a team of other researchers are hoping that an Italian graveyard will provide clues about the evolution of the bacterium that causes cholera.

Located near the ruins of the abandoned Badia Pozzeveri church in Italy’s Tuscany region, the graveyard contains bodies of cholera victims of the world cholera epidemic of the 1850’s.

“To our knowledge, these are the best preserved remains of cholera victims of this time period ever found,” said Clark Spencer Larsen, professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University and one of the leaders of the excavation team. “We’re very excited about what we may be able to learn.”

Larsen presented the details of the project on Feb. 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose.

To date, the team has completed four field seasons at the site, a section of the graveyard that was designated for the burial of cholera victims. Excavations of about 20 – 30 skeletons in each of the past four field seasons revealed hasty burial of the bodies that were then covered with lime encasings, a treatment that the researchers think was designed to prevent the disease from spreading.

“But the lime encasing is pretty amazing for bone preservation, too,” said Larsen. Even more, according to Larsen, the lime trapped soil surrounding the bodies, soil that possibly contains the DNA of the deadly bacteria—Vibrio cholera—and other organisms that the now-buried humans hosted while they were alive. Ancient DNA expert Hendrik Poinar, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, is scanning the soil samples for the DNA.

“We haven’t found it yet, but we are hopeful,” Larsen said. “We’ve found other DNA associated with humans so we’re continuing the search,” Larsen said. “If we find the DNA we could see how cholera has evolved and compare it to what the bacteria is like today. That’s the first step to possibly finding a cure.”

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Cholera bacterium. Wikimedia Commons

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Larsen says there is much more to the site than the cholera victim graves. The landscape surrounding the church also features several other cemeteries, spanning different time periods.

“We have a thousand-year window into the health of this village,” said Larsen. “It is a microcosm of what is happening in Italy and all of Europe during this time frame.” He points, for example, to the graves of people who died of the Black Death during the pandemic that devastated populations in Europe from 1346 to 1353.

“What we are trying to do is to reconstruct these populations as if they were alive, to get a glimpse about what their day-to-day lives were like and what their health was like, as well as how they died.”

Larsen and colleagues plan to extract bone and tooth samples during the upcoming 5th season.

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Excavations under this project began in 2010 through the combined efforts of the Ohio State University, University of Pisa and the local community near the cemetery location. The project also operates the Field School in Medieval Archaeology and Bioarchaeology at Badia Pozzeveri, an academic program for training students in archaeological and laboratory methods.

Source: Adapted and edited from information in a Ohio State University press release.

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Researchers discover patterns of warfare in prehistoric Eastern North America

Posted on February 13, 2015 by No Author -

The native populations that European colonists encountered in North America as they spread across toward the west of the continent were defined at least in part by their patterns of warfare, say a team of researchers.

“Archaeological evidence unambiguously shows that warfare varied widely over time and space among the small-scale societies of late prehistoric eastern North America,” said George R. Milner, department head and professor of Anthropology at Penn State University at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose on February 13.

Milner and colleague George Chaplin, a senior research associate in anthropology at Penn State, analyzed indicators of conflict, including the archaeological record of fortified settlements and the physical signs of violence and warfare in skeletal remains such as embedded arrowheads, evidence of damage by stone axes and bodily mutilation. They also investigated intergroup interaction among the prehistoric native populations by examining distribution of disk-shaped smoking pipes used in everyday life, including the sealing of important social transactions, such as forging alliances.

“We are looking at Eastern North America,” said Milner. “Nowhere else in the world has similar archaeological data been compiled for such a large area.”

Across the East Coast and Midwestern United States, the researchers found that conflict occurred from the 11th century onward when population pressure and environmental factors due to climate change converged. Warfare then ebbed and flowed over time, eventually causing movement of nearly everyone out of the midcontinent by the 16th century. The chiefdom societies disappeared and the population decreased dramatically.

“By late prehistory in the 1500s, the whole Midwest is depopulated down to Tennessee and Kentucky,” said Milner. “Bordering this area on the east and south a band of conflict-prone societies formed. “

These, say the researchers, were the populations first encountered by the European settlers as they pushed westward, forcing the groups back into the central depopulated areas they abandoned earlier.

But even with the decreased population, the various indigenous societies continued to fight.

“The groups had a hard time quelling the conflict, even when there was no population or resource pressure,” said Milner. “Episodes of retribution went back and forth with an apparent inability of groups to pull out of the cycles of warfare.”

Some of the societies in Eastern North America were, at times, highly organized societies usually referred to as chiefdoms, while other less hierarchically organized groups were tribal in nature. While chiefdoms may have been capable of producing larger or stronger fortifications, the archaeological remains of walls, ditches or embankments around settlements exist in both types of societies.

Milner admits that the data are not seamless or complete, but says it is sufficient in Eastern North America to begin to look at patterning across extremely large areas.

Milner and his colleagues state that there is a need in archaeology and anthropology to study larger areas of land and link those studies to the measurable environmental, societal and demographic changes to understand variations in prehistoric societies. The large areas are necessary to say anything meaningful about human behavioral response to social and environmental events.

“One of the big challenges in archaeology today is how to go about identifying types of behavior over larger geographic areas,” said Milner. “We are good at individual sites and regional surveys, but one thing that has not been done until now anywhere in the world is to look at larger geographic areas for conflict, movement and interaction.”

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The National Science Foundation supported this research.

Source: Edited and adapted from a press release of Penn State University.

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Demise of the ancient Pueblo civilization a harbinger of things to come?

Posted on February 12, 2015 by No Author -

It has long been theorized by many scientists that the collapse of the great Pueblo civilizations of the American Southwest were due at least in part to intensive drought conditions during the 12^th and 13^th centuries—what climatologists have called the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. The archaeological evidence and tree-ring data they have collected and analyzed have, they say, provided some support for this.

Results from a newly completed study are now suggesting, however, that what the Pueblo-dwellers faced some 800 – 900 years ago might have been a walk in the park compared to what may be coming in the 21^st century.

Using drought records of the Medieval Period documented in the growth rings of trees, a research team led by Benjamin Cook of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and colleagues from Cornell and Columbia universities compared the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and other past climate data to 17 different computer model projections of 21st century climate. The results showed a robust combination of reduced precipitation and warmer temperatures, causing a drying out of the soil in the models. Most significantly, the results suggested a drought-ridden American Southwest and Central Plains that they say will likely be drier than any other period during the last one thousand years.

“I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be,” said Toby Ault, an assistant professor at Cornell University and co-author of the research.* The results suggest extended drought conditions that will be even dryer than the mega-drought period of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Ault emphasizes that the study points to megadrought risk, not a foretelling of the future. The degree of megadrought risk declines as potential mitigating measures, such as national polices and human actions, individually and collectively, are taken.

But understanding what has gone before can at least in part inform our understanding of possible future paradigms, particularly as human action should be viewed as only part of the equation.

“Understanding climates of the past provides a strong benchmark of natural variability, allowing us to better contextualize the magnitude of modern and future human-driven climate change, including contributions to extreme events such as droughts,” said Benjamin Cook, lead author of the study and research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.*

___________________________________________________ Aerial view of the Pueblo Bonito Great House in northern New Mexico, an iconic representation of Pueblo culture in the American Southwest. Bob Adams, Wikimedia Commons

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The researchers say that the metrics used in the study could provide useful data for informing future water resource management policies and practices and agricultural planning.

“I look at these future mega-droughts like a slow moving natural disaster. We have to put mega-droughts into the same category as other natural disasters that can be dealt with through risk management,” said Ault.*

The study report appears in the inaugural issue of the new open-access scientific journal, Science Advances.

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*Source: Scientist statements were integrated from a Science Advances press release, Southwest and central plains face unprecedented drought risk in the 21st century.

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New film footage reveals potential ‘killer blow’ to King Richard III

Posted on February 12, 2015 by No Author -

New film footage revealing for the first time details of the potential killer blow that claimed the life of King Richard III has been released by the University of Leicester.

The sequence – showing the dramatic injury to the base of the skull as well as the inside of the top of the skull – is part of a package of films charting the scientific and archaeological investigations led by the project team from the University of Leicester.

It is among 26 sequences taken by University video producer Carl Vivian who is chronicling the key events in the Discovery, Science and Reburial of the last Plantagenet king. These sequences are accessible to the media by contacting Carl Vivian (details below).

Among the sequences there is one that has never been released before and shows the moment when Professor Guy Rutty of East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit, based at the University of Leicester, found the potential killer blow.

Drawing on 19 years of experience as a Home Office Forensic Pathologist, Professor Rutty examined the skull and linked marks on the vertebra, the smaller of the two wounds to the base of the skull and a mark on the inside of the skull, suggesting that weapon had been thrust up from the base of Richard’s neck and into his head.

Professor Rutty said: “I approached this examination as that of any patient – just because he was a King did not make a difference. Everyone is treated the same with the same doctor/patient relationship, the same respect in death and the same level of professional investigation.

“The key to this sequence is that alongside my role at the University of Leicester, I am a Home office forensic pathologist. Thus I was able to look at the large injury in the base of the skull and, through experience, I was able to identify the key injury.

“Using the specialist lighting equipment we have in the forensic mortuary at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, which was key to the examination, I then was able to put the three injuries together on pathological grounds and we all realised I had identified the potential lethal injury to King Richard III.

“It was one of those eureka moments which Carl Vivian happened to capture on film which we will all remember.”

The video shows the initial examination of the trauma to the skeleton by Professor Rutty working with Dr Jo Appleby of the University’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History.

Osteologist Dr Jo Appleby, who led the exhumation of the skeleton from the Greyfriars car park where Richard was discovered in 2012, said: “Following the identification of a major sharp force trauma to the base of the skull, which was probably inflicted by a sword or the top spike of a bill or halberd, we were interested to determine the angle of the blow.

“During filming, Professor Rutty noted a small traumatic lesion on the interior surface of the cranium, directly opposite the sharp force trauma. Careful examination showed that the two injuries lined up with one another, and also with an injury to Richard’s first cervical vertebra.

“The combination of all three injuries provided evidence for the direction of the injury and also the depth to which the weapon had penetrated the skull.”

The researchers, who examined the remains in a clinical environment at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, have already published in The Lancet their research into the trauma inflicted on King Richard III’s body at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August, 1485.

Using modern forensic analysis of the King’s skeletal remains, they discovered that three of his injuries had the potential to cause death quickly- two to the skull and one to the pelvis.

The forensic imaging team, working with the Forensic Pathology Unit and our Department of Engineering, used whole body CT scans and micro-CT imaging of injured bones to analyse trauma to the 500-year-old skeleton carefully, and to determine which of the King’s wounds might have proved fatal. They also analysed tool marks on bone to identify the medieval weapons potentially responsible for his injuries.

Professor Sarah Hainsworth, Professor of Material Engineering at the University, said: “Using modern forensic examination, we have discovered that Richard’s skeleton sustained 11 wounds at or near the time of his death – nine of them to the skull, which were clearly inflicted in battle. The injuries to the head suggest he had either removed or lost his helmet. The other two injuries that we found were to a rib and his pelvis.”

Readers can see the video sequence here:

Richard III – Discovering the Fatal Blow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31eXVysiI-Y

Read an account by Professor Hainsworth into the injuries inflicted on Richard’s body on The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/nine-blows-to-the-head-and-then-he-was-dead-forensics-shed-light-on-killing-of-richard-iii-31751

More background info is available here: http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2014-archive-1/september/most-likely-cause-of-king-richard-iii2019s-death-identified

The Dig for Richard III was led by the University of Leicester, working with Leicester City Council and in association with the Richard III Society. The originator of the Search project was Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society.

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Source: University of Leicester press release.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Examining the skull evidence in the lab. Credit University of Leicester

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The Unfinished Business at Ancient Herodium

Posted on February 10, 2015 by No Author -

It was in 2007 when the late archaeologist Ehud Netzer announced to the world what was arguably the prize find of his life—the discovery of the remains of the tomb and possible sarcophagus of the one and only Herod the Great himself, who for many, both anciently and today, stands among the great villains of history. But aside from his designs, according to the Christian New Testament gospels, to dispatch the Christ child along with the firstborn of many other families, as well as banishment of members of his own family according to other writings, he was also perhaps the savviest politician, statesman, and greatest builder in first century Judea. It was he who planned and commissioned the building of the massive expansion of the Second Temple, the Temple Mount, and its associated structures in Jerusalem, in its time perhaps the most monumental religous enterprize and wonder of the world. It was he who planned and built the city and harbor of the monumental city of Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean coastline, a major port, and the towering fortress complex of Masada near the Dead Sea. And it was also he who planned and commissioned the construction of the only fortified palace complex which bears his name by decree and where he planned to be buried—Herodium.

Netzer died before he could finish his excavation work at Herodium. On October 27, 2010, while leaning on a wooden railing that overlooked a steep slope near where he had made his spectacular tomb discovery, the railing gave way. He fell ten feet, rolled, then fell another ten feet, critically injuring his head, neck and back. Two days later, he passed on. The news of his death shocked the community of scholars, scientists, students, volunteers and everyone who had worked intimately with him for decades.

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Detail view of a section of the remains at Herod’s tomb. Courtesy Shmuel Browns

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But excavation work goes on at Herodium to this day. Archaeologists have recently uncovered a staircase at the site, left unfinished for whatever reasons by its architects and workers 2,000 years ago. Associated with the staircase were impressive archways and an entrance hall with plastered walls and frescoes.

Shmuel Browns, a photographer and professional tour guide who participated in the Netzer excavations of the mausoleum complex in 2008, writes briefly of his recent visit to Herodium and his experience with the excavators at the staircase site. His account can be read at his blog, Israel Tour Guide/Israel Tours. Other work at Herodium includes ongoing restoration and investigation of the loggia, or VIP box at the Herodium theater, which features colorful panels on plaster and unique paintings in secco (paint applied on top of dry plaster). More about the loggia can be read at A Look into the Loggia at Herodium.

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The staircase and archways as exposed through recent excavations. Courtesy Shmuel Browns

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Readers can find out more about the excavations at Herodium in the article, Netzer’s Legacy: The Wonders of Herodium, written by Shmuel Browns for Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Earliest evidence of large-scale human-produced air pollution in South America found

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Pam Frost Gorder -

COLUMBUS, Ohio—In the 16th century, during its conquest of South America, the Spanish Empire forced countless Incas to work extracting silver from the mountaintop mines of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia–then the largest source of silver in the world. The Inca already knew how to refine silver, but in 1572 the Spanish introduced a new technology that boosted production many times over and sent thick clouds of lead dust rising over the Andes for the first time in history.

Winds carried some of that pollution 500 miles northwest into Peru, where tiny remnants of it settled on the Quelccaya Ice Cap.

There it stayed–buried under hundreds of years of snow and ice–until researchers from The Ohio State University found it in 2003.

In the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report discovery of a layer within a Quelccaya ice core that dates to the Spanish conquest of the Inca, contains bits of lead and bears the chemical signature of the silver mines of Potosí.

The core provides the first detailed record of widespread human-produced air pollution in South America from before the industrial revolution, and makes Quelccaya one of only a few select sites on the planet where the pre-industrial human impact on air quality can be studied today.

“This evidence supports the idea that human impact on the environment was widespread even before the industrial revolution,” said Paolo Gabrielli, a research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at Ohio State and corresponding author of the study.

Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished University Professor of earth sciences at Ohio State and co-author of the study, called the find “another keyhole into the past of human activity in that part of the world,” and suggested that further investigation could ultimately help us better understand the fate of pollution circulating in the atmosphere today.

Previously, Thompson has called the Quelccaya ice cores a “Rosetta Stone” for gauging Earth’s climate history. The samples were cut from ice that formed over 1,200 years as snow settled on the Peruvian Andes. Layer by layer, the ice captured chemicals from the air and precipitation during wet and dry seasons for all those years. Today, researchers analyze the chemistry of different layers to measure historical changes in climate.

For this study, the researchers used a mass spectrometer to measure the amount and type of chemicals present in the ice dating back to 800 AD. They looked for antimony, arsenic, bismuth, molybdenum and especially lead. That’s because the refining process that the Spanish introduced to South America involved grinding silver ore–which contains much more lead than silver–into powder before mixing it with mercury in a process called amalgamation. So atmospheric pollution from silver production would chiefly contain traces of lead particulates.

The mass spectrometer revealed some spikes in the concentrations of these elements in the years before Spanish rule, but those layers all likely coincide with natural contamination sources, such as volcanic eruptions. Starting just before 1600, however, the Quelccaya ice began capturing much larger quantities of these elements, and the high amounts persisted until the early 1800s, when South American countries declared independence from Spain.

To pin down where the pollution came from, the researchers compared their data with those from a peat bog in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, and from sedimentary lake records from regions including Potosí and other mines throughout Bolivia and Peru. These latter sites would have captured the pollution generated in their local area during that time.

The chemical signatures in the Quelccaya ice meshed with what researchers knew from written records: most of the pollution likely came from Potosí, where the Spanish produced the vast majority of silver. Other mines throughout the region contributed to the Quelccaya pollution to a lesser extent.

Even in their highest concentrations, the elements entrapped in the ice are not visible to the naked eye and can be detected only through chemical analyses, Gabrielli explained. The section of core containing them has the translucent white appearance of perfectly clean ice.

“The fact that we can detect pollution in ice from a pristine high altitude location is indicative of the continental significance of this deposition,” Gabrielli added. “Only a significant source of pollution could travel so far, and affect the chemistry of the snow on a remote place like Quelccaya.”

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This is the north dome of the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru in 2003. Researchers at The Ohio State University found evidence of human-produced air pollution within the ice that predates the industrial revolution by more than 200 years. Photo by Paolo Gabrielli, courtesy of The Ohio State University.

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The spread of human-made pollution across vast distances has become common since the industrial revolution of the late 18th century. Greenland received substantial amounts of airborne lead pollution from Europe and the United States until the 1970s, when national policies began requiring producers to change the formulation of gasoline. And some of the pollution currently troubling North American skies has been traced back to Asia, which is experiencing its own industrial boom right now.

A question in the scientific community is whether much earlier activity should be included in measures of human environmental impact. For example, ice cores in Greenland contain traces of lead from as far back as the 5th century BC, which were sent airborne by smelting in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. This latest ice core from Quelccaya shows that humans generated substantial pollution in the 16th century. Still, the 20th century produced more pollution than any other time in human history.

International geological governing bodies are currently considering whether to officially call our current epoch the Anthropocene, or “Age of Humans,” to designate the span of time that humans have been changing the environment. Gabrielli, Thompson and their colleagues hope that the Quelccaya core will inform that debate.

In the meantime, they are turning their attention to a core that Thompson’s team drew from the Dasuopu Glacier in southwest China. It is the highest-altitude ice core ever retrieved, and it contains some 8,000 years of climate history. Some of that new trace element record, they hope, will tell new and powerful stories of ancient human activity.

Co-authors of the study include Chiara Uglietti, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and now at the Paul Scherrer Institute; Colin A. Cooke, formerly at Yale University and now at the Alberta Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development; and Paul Vallelonga of the University of Copenhagen.

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Paleoclimate Program and by Ohio State as part of the Byrd Polar Research Fellowship. The mass spectrometer used in the study was funded by the NSF and by Ohio State’s Climate, Water and Carbon Program.

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The Ohio State University

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Archaeologists excavate fortified site from ancient Kingdom of Judah

Posted on February 7, 2015 by No Author -

An archaeological team is excavating a site that is showing evidence of having been a fortified settlement belonging to the kingdom of Judah both before and during the time when the Assyrians were sacking the kingdom’s cities in the 8^th century BCE.

Known today as the site of Tel Burna, the mound is located in the fertile rolling plains of the Shephelah, a region between the coastal plains and the Jerusalem mountains in central Israel. It is an area that, anciently, served as a strategic borderland between the Philistines in the west and ancient Israel and the kingdom of Judah to the east. Today, Tel Burna is surrounded by other ancient sites that have been intensely investigated and excavated over the years. But this site has seen relatively little exploration and research—until now.

According to project director and Ariel University assistant professor Dr. Itzhaq Shai, the site was long known to exist but full-scale excavations did not begin at the location until a few years ago.

“Several surveys have been conducted in the region,” said Shai, “however, the site had never been excavated until the summer of 2009, when we began a long-term archaeological project on the site.”

Though still young, the excavations have already revealed important clues to the site’s identification within the context of biblical history.

“The identification of the site has been debated for more than a century,” states Shai. “There are scholars who have claimed that Tel Burna is biblical Libnah, which was mentioned several times in the Bible. This identification was based mainly on geographical and historical arguments……… To date, there are other candidates for the location of ancient Libnah, including nearby Tel Zayit; however, the exposed archaeological remains at Tel Burna support this identification, with both the geographical, survey and excavation data fitting well with what we know and expect from a border town in the Iron Age.”

Thus far, excavations have revealed part of a 13^th century BCE public structure, with finds that included Cypriot votive vessels, a scarab with dozens of beads, a cylinder seal, a rich ceramic assemblage of goblets, chalices, Cypriot zoomorphic vessels, local and imported Cypriot and Mycenaean figurines, fragments of ceramic masks and two large Cypriot pithoi. “All in all, the building size and the effort that was undertaken in order to build it alongside the presence of unique vessels indicate that this was a 13^th century public building where ritual activity took place,” said Shai.

Clear evidence of fortification walls was also uncovered defining the summit of the mound, and dating suggests their use during the 9^th and 8^th centuries BCE.

Said Shai, “the Iron Age II (1000 – 586 BCE) wall reflects the role of this site during this period. The location of Tel Burna—midway between Gath, the dominant Philistine city in the Iron Age IIA (1000 – 925 BCE), and Lachish, the main Judahite city, monitoring the road along Nahal Guvrin, with visibility all the way to the coastal plain — would account for the investment of the central authority of Judah in establishing such a walled city so close to the city of Lachish.”

Other finds included LMLK (of or belonging to the king – like state property) and Rosette stamped pottery handles and pillar figurines, all indicative of a Judahite presence. Six silo structures were also uncovered.

“The Iron Age remains attested to the importance of the settlement at the site and that it was a fortified Judahite border site facing the Philistines in the west,” summarized Shai.

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Aerial view of one of the excavation areas at Tel Burna. Courtesy Itzhaq Shai and the Tel Burna Excavation Project

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Stamped handles: far left, four-winged LMLK; center, seal impression of Ezer Hagai; right, Rosette. Courtesy Itzhaq Shai and the Tel Burna Excavation Project

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Shai and his team plan to return to the site in 2015, when they will expand the excavated areas to uncover more of the Late Bronze public building, the Iron Age fortifications, agricultural installations, and Late Bronze Age burial caves.

Readers may learn more about Tel Burna and how to participate and support the excavations by going to the project website.

A detailed article by Dr. Shai about the Tel Burna excavations will be published in the Spring 2015 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Darwin’s theory continues to shape human evolution

Posted on February 7, 2015 by No Author -

Charles Darwin’s theory on evolution still holds true despite lower mortality and fertility rates in the modern world, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.

Scientists looked at how cultural influences like easy access to contraception and medical advances reducing infant mortality, effects natural selection in modern human populations.

The study, carried out in Finland, observed that while only 67 per cent of children born in the 1860s survived to adulthood the figure rose to 94 per cent during the 1940s. At the same time, people went from having an average of five children to 1.6 children during their lifetime.

But despite artificial influences the study found genetic differences between humans are what continue to fuel evolution.

Dr Virpi Lummaa, from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, and Dr Elisabeth Bolund, now at the Uppsala University in Sweden, used genealogical records collected from Finnish churches starting at the beginning of the 18th century and still being collected today. By assembling family trees over several generations of over 10,000 individuals, they could sort out how much of the variation in a trait is due to genetic influences and how much is due to environmental influences, and how the determinants of key traits for evolutionary success may have changed over the modernisation of society.

The study found that in the 18th and 19th centuries, about four to 18 per cent of the variation between individuals in lifespan, family size and ages at first and last birth was influenced by genes, while the rest of the variation was driven by differences in various aspects of their environment.

“This is exciting because if genes affected differences between individuals in these traits, it means they could also change in response to natural selection,” said Dr Bolund. “But we know that the environment has changed rapidly and dramatically, so we investigated the genetic basis of such complex traits and their ability to continue changing through evolution.”

The study showed that the genetic influence on timing of reproduction and family size tended to actually be higher in recent times. This means that modern human societies can still respond to selection, and genetic differences between us continue to fuel evolution.

“It is possible that we in modern societies have more individual freedom to express our genetic predispositions because social and normative influences are more relaxed, and this leads to the genetic differences among us explaining more of the reproductive patterns,” said Dr Bolund.

Complex traits like the ones in the study are each influenced by many different genes, while at the same time, several different traits can be affected by the same genes. The authors found that the genetic basis that is shared between the studied reproductive traits and longevity did not change over time.

“This is reassuring if we want to use current patterns of natural selection and genetic variation to make predictions of what will happen in modern human populations over the next few generations,” added Dr Bolund.

“Our results can help us when we want to predict population responses in the face of global challenges such as prevailing epidemics, ageing populations and decreasing fertility.”

The paper is being published online by the journal Evolution on Thursday 5 February 2015.

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Source: Press release of the University of Sheffield

With almost 26,000 of the brightest students from around 120 countries, learning alongside over 1,200 of the best academics from across the globe, the University of Sheffield is one of the world’s leading universities.

A member of the UK’s prestigious Russell Group of leading research-led institutions, Sheffield offers world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines.

For further information, please visit http://www.sheffield.ac.uk

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