Original hand-written working notes of Bram Stoker on paper, grist that would find its way into his famous signature book, Dracula;
An original manuscript of James Joyce’s Ulysses;
The first and only existing printing of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac;
More than 100 personally inscribed letters of George Washington;
Parts of manuscripts from Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby…………
These are but a tiny sampling of the holdings of the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia, tucked almost inconspicuously among a row of 19th-century townhouses in the Rittenhouse-Fitler historic district in the center of bustling Philadelphia. It presents a streetside appearance that doesn’t turn heads like other major tourist sites in this city.
But make no mistake. Its outward appearance belies its significance. Within its walls is a collection of thousands of the original first-print books, manuscripts, letters, illustrations and other works of art of some the most famous and noteworthy literary, historical and artistic figures of the past, a treasure house for historians, historical archaeologists, others doing primary research………and for you and me. What arguably distinguishes it from most museums and archives of its kind is its offering of an up-close and personal experience: With a scheduled Hands-on Tour, the museum curators will permit the visitor to hold and turn the pages of an early printing of a book like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, or read from an original manuscript like Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, or view drawings made by William Blake himself.
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The Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Wikimedia Commons
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The namesake institution was founded in 1954 by Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and his brother, Philip. As book, manuscript, and fine art dealers, they were also instrumental in the establishment of private libraries that became the repository for important rare books. Among these libraries are the well known Folger and Huntington Libraries. In the 1970’s, the Rosenbach became the central repository for the works of Maurice Sendak (author and illustrator of the book, Where the Wild Things Are, among others), and remains so today.
Now, for the first time, the Rosenbach has opened a special exhibit for the general public displaying pages from the manuscript of James Joyce’s Ulysses, side-by-side with the Shakespearean plays and poems that inspired it. It will show until August 31, 2014. And until November 2, 2014, visitors can view an exhibit that relates how Maurice Sendak’s art reflected the effects of events in his life that caused personal turmoil.
For those of us who like books, old things, and history, it could pleasantly top off a memorable visit to this historic city.
Cover Photo, Top Left: Fall of Princes by John Lydgate England, probably London, c. 1465–75, Boccaccio Has a Vision of Adam and Eve. Boccaccio’s tale of the fall of noble persons begins with Adam and Eve. The opening miniature shows Boccaccio seated at his desk as Adam steps into the room. Outside, Eve receives the apple from a human-headed serpent twisted around the Tree of Knowledge. Document housed in the Rosenbach Museum
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Popular Archaeology Magazine, an exclusively digital, U.S.-based magazine dedicated to publishing new discoveries, developments and opportunites in archaeology and anthropology for a general and scholarly readership, has released two new versions of its quarterly publication designed for access through smartphones and tablets. The most recent issue, published in June, 2014, features stories about the news-making discoveries related to early humans in the Arabian Peninsula; excavations at a massive Bronze Age city-state site in Jordan; new discoveries at Mycenae, the city of Agamemnon; the excavation and preservation of a lost city in South America; a scientific report on excavations at Sima de las Palomas, a Neanderthal site in Spain; and a scientific report on excavations that have turned up 800,000-year-old early human remains, also in Spain. Readers can access the magazine app at The App and the ebook version at Amazon.com.
Once again, scientists examining an ancient human fossil are finding that the path of human evolution, at least over the last 100,000 years, is not as simple as evolutionists have thought.
In a recent study, researchers Xiu-Jie Wu, Wu Liu and Song Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, Isabelle Crevecoeur of PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, France, and Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis, re-examined a circa 100,000-year-old archaic human skull originally found during excavations 35 years ago at the Xujiayao site in China’s Nihewan Basin. Based on their micro-CT scans of the interior configuration of the temporal bone, they found that the inner-ear formation closely resembled a formation long thought to occur only in Neanderthals.
“We were completely surprised,” Trinkaus said. “We fully expected the scan to reveal a temporal labyrinth that looked much like a modern human one, but what we saw was clearly typical of a Neandertal. This discovery places into question whether this arrangement of the semicircular canals is truly unique to the Neandertals.” Moreover, he said, “the discovery places into question a whole suite of scenarios of later Pleistocene human population dispersals and interconnections based on tracing isolated anatomical or genetic features in fragmentary fossils. It suggests, instead, that the later phases of human evolution were more of a labyrinth of biology and peoples than simple lines on maps would suggest.”
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The Xujiayao 15 late archaic human temporal bone from northern China, with the extracted temporal labyrinth, superimposed on a view of the Xujiayao site. Credit: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Science
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The Xujiayao 15 temporal bone, with the extracted temporal labyrinth and its position in the temporal bone. Credit: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Science
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Often well-preserved in mammal skull fossils, the semicircular canals are remnants of a fluid-filled sensing system that helps humans maintain balance when they change their spatial orientations, such as when running, bending over or turning the head from side-to-side.
Since the mid-1990s, when early CT-scan research confirmed its existence, the presence of a particular arrangement of the semicircular canals in the temporal labyrinth has been considered enough to securely identify fossilized skull fragments as being from a Neanderthal. This pattern is present in almost all of the known Neanderthal labyrinths. It has been widely used as a marker to set them apart from both earlier and modern humans.
The skull at the center of this study, known as Xujiayao 15, was found along with an assortment of other human teeth and bone fragments, all of which seemed to have characteristics typical of an early non-Neanderthal form of late archaic humans.
Trinkaus, who has studied Neanderthal and early human fossils from around the globe, said this discovery only adds to the rich confusion of theories that attempt to explain human origins, migrations patterns and possible interbreedings.
“The study of human evolution has always been messy, and these findings just make it all the messier,” Trinkaus said. “It shows that human populations in the real world don’t act in nice simple patterns.”
Source: Adapted and edited from a Washington University in St. Louis press release, Discovery of Neandertal trait in ancient skull raises new questions about human evolution.
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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.
Gone are the days when paleoanthropologists could characterize the path of human evolution as a simple, single homogenous line of progressive changes in human morphology and behavior. Or so suggests a collaborative group of scientists who, as detailed in a study published in the July 4, 2014 issue of Science, came up with a new synthesis, or at least the rudimentary framework of one. It is a developing scenario that, they argue, more accurately explains how earlier forms of Homo (early humans) and their Australopithecus forerunners eventually led to the emergence of Homo sapiens (modern humans), the last surviving hominin.
Led jointly by Susan Antón, professor of anthropology at New York University, paleoanthropologist Richard Potts, curator of anthropology and director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Leslie Aiello, president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the team studied paleoclimate, fossil, and stone tool evidence, leading to a developing consensus that suggests a rethinking of long-held assumptions about human origins and evolution. Based on a synthesis of the data, the researchers point to change and diversity of environmental conditions and the compelling need to survive by adapting to the changing conditions as a key to understanding how early humans were able to vary, survive and begin spreading from Africa to Eurasia 1.85 million years ago. The process entailed a diversification of species and genera differentiating and overlapping in time and morphology, beginning with some key elements once thought to define Homo but actually evolving in earlier Australopithecus ancestors between 3 and 4 million years ago.
Significant to the development of the new synthesis, Potts developed a new climate framework for East African human evolution that depicts most of the era from 2.5 million to 1.5 million years ago as a time of strong climate instability and shifting intensity of annual wet and dry seasons.
“Unstable climate conditions favored the evolution of the roots of human flexibility in our ancestors,” said Potts. “The narrative of human evolution that arises from our analyses stresses the importance of adaptability to changing environments, rather than adaptation to any one environment, in the early success of the genus Homo.”
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Between 2.1 and 1.8 million years ago, the oldest known species of the human genus, Homo, exhibited diverse traits. These species include the 1470 Group and the 1813 Group, based on the Kenyan fossils KNM-ER 1470 (left) and KNM-ER 1813 (second from left), respectively. By 1.8 to 1.9 million years ago, the species Homoerectus had evolved in Africa and started to spread to Eurasia. Early populations of this long-lived species are represented by the Kenyan fossil KNM- ER 3733 (right) and the Georgian fossil Dmanisi Skull 5 (second from right). The three lineages — the 1470 group, the 1813 group, and Homo erectus — overlapped in time for several hundred thousand years. The Kenyan fossils, from the site of Koobi Fora in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya, are housed in the National Museums of Kenya. Fossils from Dmanisi are housed in the Georgian National Museum. Credits: Kenyan fossil casts – Chip Clark, Smithsonian Human Origins Program; Dmanisi Skull 5 – Guram Bumbiashvili, Georgian National Museum
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Hominin evolution from 3.0 to 1.5 Ma. Green: Australopithecus, Yellow: Paranthropus, Red: Homo. The icons indicate from the bottom the first appearance of stone tools at ~2.6 Ma, the dispersal of Homo to Eurasia at ~1.85 Ma, and the appearance of the Acheulean technology at ~1.76 Ma. The number of contemporaneous hominin taxa during this period reflects different strategies of adaptation to habitat variability. The cultural milestones do not correlate with the known first appearances of any of the currently recognized Homo taxa. Image courtesy of Antón et al., Science/AAAS 2014
Their analysis and conclusions could explain, at least in part, much of the new evidence that has emerged in recent years suggesting that multiple coexisting species of Homo overlapped geographically and developed differentiating morphological and behavioral characeristics. It contrasts with the long-held model of a large brain, long legs, the ability to craft tools and prolonged maturation periods evolving together as a single package at the start of the Homo lineage as African grasslands expanded and Earth’s climate became cooler and drier.
The researchers also analyzed ancient stone tools, isotopes found in teeth and cut marks found on animal bones in East Africa.
“Taken together, these data suggest that species of early Homo were more flexible in their dietary choices than other species,” said Aiello. “Their flexible diet—probably containing meat—was aided by stone tool-assisted foraging that allowed our ancestors to exploit a range of resources.”
The study authors concluded that flexibility likely strengthened the ability of human ancestors to successfully adapt to changing environments and emerge out of Africa, and explains the ability of the modern human species to occupy diverse habitats throughout the world.
The detailed study is published in the July 4, 2014 issue of Science magazine.
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Source: Adapted and edited from a press release of the Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian scientist and collaborators revise timeline of human origins, 3 July 2014; and Early Human Traits Not Delivered in Single Package, Science, 3 July 2014.
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of a recent issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
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.
Tibetans were able to adapt to high altitudes thanks to a gene acquired when their ancestors mated with a species of human they helped push to extinction, according to a new report by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
An unusual variant of a gene involved in regulating the body’s production of hemoglobin – the molecule that carries oxygen in the blood – became widespread in Tibetans after they moved onto the high-altitude plateau several thousand years ago. This variant allowed them to survive despite low oxygen levels at elevations of 15,000 feet or more, whereas most people develop thick blood at high altitudes, leading to cardiovascular problems.
“We have very clear evidence that this version of the gene came from Denisovans,” a mysterious human relative that went extinct 40,000-50,000 years ago, around the same time as the more well-known Neanderthals, under pressure from modern humans, said principal author Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. “This shows very clearly and directly that humans evolved and adapted to new environments by getting their genes from another species.”
This is the first time a gene from another species of human has been shown unequivocally to have helped modern humans adapt to their environment, he said.
Nielsen and his colleagues at BGI-Shenzhen in China will report their findings online July 2 in advance of publication in the journal Nature.
The gene, called EPAS1, is activated when oxygen levels in the blood drop, triggering production of more hemoglobin. The gene has been referred to as the superathlete gene because at low elevations, some variants of it help athletes quickly boost hemoglobin and thus the oxygen-carrying capacity of their blood, upping endurance. At high altitude, however, the common variants of the gene boost hemoglobin and its carrier, red blood cells, too much, increasing the thickness of the blood and leading to hypertension and heart attacks as well as low-birth-weight babies and increased infant mortality. The variant or allele found in Tibetans raises hemoglobin and red blood cell levels only slightly at high elevation, avoiding the side-effects seen in most people who relocate to elevations above 13,000 feet.
“We found part of the EPAS1 gene in Tibetans is almost identical to the gene in Denisovans and very different from all other humans,” Nielsen said. “We can do a statistical analysis to show that this must have come from Denisovans. There is no other way of explaining the data.”
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A Chinese researcher collects a blood sample from an ethnic Tibetan man participating in the DNA study. Credit: Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI-Shenzhen) photo
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The researchers first reported the prevalence of a high-altitude version of EPAS1 in Tibetans in 2010, based on sequencing of the genomes of numerous Han Chinese and Tibetans. Nielsen and his colleagues argued that this was the result of natural selection to adapt to about 40 percent lower oxygen levels on the Tibetan plateau. That is, people without the variant died before reproducing at a much higher rate than those with it. About 87 percent of Tibetans now have the high-altitude version, compared to only 9 percent of Han Chinese, who have the same common ancestor as Tibetans.
Nielsen and his colleagues subsequently sequenced the EPAS1 gene in an additional 40 Tibetans and 40 Han Chinese. The data revealed that the high-altitude variant of EPAS1 is so unusual that it could only have come from Denisovans. Aside from its low frequency in Han Chinese, it occurs in no other known humans, not even Melanesians, whose genomes are nearly 5 percent Denisovan. A high quality sequence of the Denisovan genome was published in 2012.
Nielsen sketched out a possible scenario leading to this result: modern humans coming out of Africa interbred with Denisovan populations in Eurasia as they passed through that area into China, and their descendants still retain a small percentage – perhaps 0.1 percent – Denisovan DNA. The group that invaded China eventually split, with one population moving into Tibet and the other, now known as Han Chinese, dominating the lower elevations.
He and his colleagues are analyzing other genomes to pin down the time of Denisovan interbreeding, which probably happened over a rather short period of time.
“There might be many other species from which we also got DNA, but we don’t know because we don’t have the genomes,” Nielsen said. “The only reason we can say that this bit of DNA is Denisovan is because of this lucky accident of sequencing DNA from a little bone found in a cave in Siberia. We found the Denisovan species at the DNA level, but how many other species are out there that we haven’t sequenced?”
Nielsen’s coauthors include former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Emilia Huerta-Sánchez, now at UC Merced; postdocs Benjamin Peter and Nicolas Vinckenbosch of UC Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology; and colleagues in China, Hong Kong, Denmark, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
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Source: Adapted and edited from a University of California press release: Extinct human cousin gave Tibetans advantage at high elevation
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of a recent issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
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.
For the Indiana Jones in all of us, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, arguably the finest museum of its kind in the United States, is offering a summer packed with special guided tours, musical performances and other activities for all ages during the summer of 2014. Events and activities will include such things as Egyptian gallery tours, a Mexico and Central American gallery tour, summer night concerts, and special performances for children. This, of course, is in addition to the usual offering of galleries and exhibits always available to visitors on a regular basis.
Otherwise known as the Penn Museum, it is located at 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104at the intersection of Spruce Street and 33rd Street. Nearby landmarks include Franklin Field, across South Street, and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, across 34th Street.
See the schedule and the websitefor more information about the museum.
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Cover Photo, Top Left: View of the Penn Museum. Mefman00, Wikimedia Commons
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of a recent issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
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.
Researchers have found that birth rates and life expectancy in the American Southwest between 900 BC and 1400 AD indicated a period of rapid population growth between about 500 AD and 1100 AD followed by a significant decline after 1300 AD, never again to recover the former growth.
The study, conducted with National Science Foundation funding by anthropology professor Tim Kohler and graduate student Kelsey Reese, both of Washington State University, analyzed data on thousands of human remains found at hundreds of sites across the Four Corners region of the Southwest. The data helped to create a chronology of the region’s “Neolithic Demographic Transition” — a time period when stone tool artifacts signaled the agricultural transition from cutting meat to pounding grain.
“It’s the first step towards all the trappings of civilization that we currently see,” said Kohler.
Maize (corn), the region’s staple crop, was introduced as early as 2000 BC, but productivity was slow to rise until about 400 BC, said Kohler, when the crop is estimated to have provided around 80 percent of the regional population’s calories. A corresponding gradual rise in birth rates ensued until about 500 A.D.
Then, growth rates varied across the region. People in the Sonoran Desert and Tonto Basin, in what is today Arizona, were more culturally advanced, with irrigation, ball courts, and eventually elevated platform mounds and compounds housing elite families. Yet birth rates were higher among people to the north and east, in the San Juan basin and northern San Juan regions of northwest New Mexico and southwest Colorado.
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Aerial view of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Bob Adams, Wikimedia Commons
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Kohler suggested that the Sonoran and Tonto people might have had difficulty finding new farming opportunities for their posterity, as corn farming required irrigation. Water from canals may have also carried harmful protozoa, bacteria and viruses. But groups to the northeast would have been able to expand maize production into new areas as their populations grew, he said.
Around 900 A.D., populations remained high but birth rates began to fluctuate. The mid-1100s saw one of the largest known droughts in the Southwest, when the region had likely hit its carrying capacity, with continued population growth and limited resources similar to what Thomas Malthus predicted for the industrial world in 1798.
From the mid-1000s to 1280—by which time all the farmers had left—evidence indicates that conflicts raged across the northern Southwest, but birth rates remained high.
“They didn’t slow down—birth rates were expanding right up to the depopulation,” said Kohler. “Why not limit growth? Maybe groups needed to be big to protect their villages and fields.”
“It was a trap,” said Kohler. “A Malthusian trap but also a violence trap.”
The northern Southwest had as many as 40,000 people in the mid-1200s, but within 30 years it was empty. Kohler hypothesizes that the population may have become too large to be sustained as climates deteriorated, and the lower population would not have adequately maintained the social unity needed for defense and new infrastructure.
But whatever the reason, he said, the experience of the ancient Puebloans could suggest that “population growth has its consequences.”
The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as “Long and spatially variable Neolithic Demographic Transition in the North American Southwest,” by Timothy A. Kohler and Kelsey M. Reese.
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Edited and adapted from aWashington State University press release, “WSU Researchers chart an ancient baby boom”.
Cover Photo, Top Left: A digital model of ancient Pueblo Bonito (Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, U.S.) before it was abandoned. Wikimedia Commons
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of the current issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
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.
Researchers continue to make progress in their efforts to understand an essential aspect of prehistoric lifeways and a major contributing factor in the dynamics of human evolution — the human diet. In two studies, one focusing on an archaeological site in Spain, the other in the Turkana Basin in Africa, scientists are suggesting that early humans had a more diverse diet than traditionally thought.
In the first study, published June 25 in the open access journal PLOS ONE, Ainara Sistiaga from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of La Laguna and colleagues examine human fecal matter (poop) detected in sediment samples taken from different occupational floor levels at the site of El Salt in Spain, a site known to have been inhabited by Neanderthals 50,000 years ago. The fecal matter indicated, based on the analysis of fecal biomarkers, that these Neanderthals predominantly consumed meat, consistent with the widely accepted dietary model for Neanderthals, but that they also consumed plant foods. One of the fecal biomarkers was formed by the bacterial reduction of cholesterol in the gut (coprostanol), an indicator of meat consumption, but the other showed the presence of a compound found in plant sources, evidence of significant plant intake.
“Taken together, these data suggest that the Neanderthals from El Salt consumed both meat and vegetables, in agreement with recent hypotheses based on indirect evidence,” conclude Sistiaga and colleagues in the study. “Future studies in Middle Palaeolithic sites using the fecal biomarker approach will help clarify the nature, role and proportion of the plant component in the Neanderthal diet, and allow us to assess whether our results reflect occasional consumption or can be representative of their staple diet.”*
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View of El Salt archeological site. Credit: Ainara Sistiaga
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In another study, to be published soon in the Journal of Human Evolution, scientists have found that aquatic fauna (fish and other water-based animals) may have been a highly nutritious source of food for early Pleistocene humans living in the Turkana Basin of East Africa almost 2 million years ago. In this case, Will Archer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues employed multiple datasets to examine aquatic resource use in the early Pleistocene by focusing on four components of aquatic faunal assemblages: taxonomic diversity; skeletal element proportions; bone fragmentation; and bone surface modification from tool use. These components were used to identify associations between early Pleistocene aquatic remains and hominin behavior at the site of FwJj20 in the Koobi Fora Formation of the Turkana Basin in Kenya. The researchers focused on two dominant aquatic species: catfish and turtles.
Based on their findings, the researchers suggest that aquatic food sources provided hominins (early humans) with a significant alternative or supplement to other, terrestrial food sources. They also suggest that aquatic food sources provided some important advantages, such as “(1) a probable reduction in required investment of energy relative to economic return in the form of nutritionally dense food items, (2) a decrease in the technological costs of resource acquisition, and (3) a reduced level of inter-specific competition associated with carcass access and an associated reduction of predation risk relative to terrestrial sources of food.”**
The Turkana Basin, which includes Lake Turkana and the Koobi Fora (ridge) Formation, is well known in human evolution studies as one of the richest and most important sources of hominin fossils shedding light on the evolution of man over the past 4.2 million years.
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Lake Turkana in the Turkana Basin. Near the ancient shores of this lake, some of the most important early human finds were discovered. Doron, Wikimedia Commons
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*Sistiaga A, Mallol C, Galvan B, Summons RE (2014) The Neanderthal Meal: A New Perspective Using Faecal Biomarkers. PLOS ONE 9(6): e101045. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0101045 http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101045
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of the current issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
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 are now onsite at Tel Megiddo, in northern Israel, to continue large-scale excavations at what has often been called the “crown jewel” of archaeological sites of the Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean region.
Led by well-known archaeologists Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University and Eric Cline of the George Washington University, a team of archaeologists, students, volunteers and other specialists will be excavating where they left off in 2012, when they encountered a large building featuring 18 pillars dated to the Iron Age IIA period, (around 1000 BCE). South of the building they uncovered a hoard of six iron daggers and two bronze bowls, dating to the Iron Age I (1200 – 1000 BCE).
Tel Megiddo, a World Heritage site, is best known for the remains of a large Canaanite center that once ruled at a location strategically placed at one of the most important military and trade routes in the ancient Near East, the Via Maris, dominating trade and commercial traffic for over 6,000 years beginning around 7000 BCE. The city is often mentioned in ancient literature and documents such as the Hebrew Bible and the el-Amarna letters of ancient Egypt, particularly as the site of epic battles that changed the course of ancient history in the region. As the inspiration for James Michener’s novel, The Source, the site affords a layer-cake of remains of ancient civilizations that came and went at the location, each succeeding civilization building upon the ruins of predecessors. This has created a treasure for archaeologists and their sponsors, who for decades have been unearthing monumental temples, palace complexes, massive fortifications, and sophisticated water systems, adding to our understanding of Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement and lifeways in the Levant. Some of the major finds of recent seasons have included a hoard of gold, silver and bronze jewelry, all wrapped in fabric and hidden in a vessel dated to around 1100 B.C.; and an Early Christian prayer hall with a mosaic floor discovered at a prison site near the Tel.
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The Iron Age city gate at Megiddo, one of the main attractors for toursits at the site. Golf Bravo, Wikimedia Commons
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Model of Megiddo in its ancient fortified glory. Alma Guinness, Wikimedia Commons
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For the 2014 season, archaeologists will continue work on the pillared structure exposed in 2012; expose some late Middle Bronze Age (1800 – 1540 BCE) domestic architecture; continue to excavate parts of the early Middle Bronze Age fortification system which includes a massive mudbrick wall and glacis (defensive slope construction); study areas related to Late Bronze-Iron Age street levels; expose more of the Late Bronze Age levels excavated previously; and conduct exploratory soundings in three new locations.
The Tel Megiddo Expedition offers one of the best field school and excavation experiences for students and volunteers in the Levant. More information about the Expedition and the field school can be obtained at their website.
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Cover Photo, Top Left: The Megiddo altar. James Emery, Wikimedia Commons
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of the current issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition. We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.
A team of archaeologists and officials left Wednesday for the Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand to assess the condition of the shrine that was badly damaged in flash floods a year ago……. Mid-Day
The recent recovery and analysis of 17 early human fossil skulls from the Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”) cave pit site in the Sierra de Atapuerca cave system of northern Spain have illuminated our understanding of how Neandertals, a more ancient, extinct sister species of Homo sapiens (modern humans), actually evolved, according to a study report published this week in Science.
Currently led by Juan Luis Arsuaga of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, archaeological teams have been excavating at the site for four decades, and have recovered the largest assemblage of early human fossils ever discovered at any one site in the world.
“After thirty years, we have recovered nearly 7,000 human fossils corresponding to all skeletal regions of at least 28 individuals,” says study co-author Ignacio Martinez, Professor of Paleontology at the University of Alcalá. “This extraordinary collection includes 17 fragmentary skulls, many of which are very complete.”
The 17 skulls, according to the researchers, represent a single population of a hominin (early human) species. Although some of have been studied before, seven are presented anew here, and six are more complete than ever before, after many hours of painstaking assemblage in the lab. Now, with the mostly intact samples for study, the researchers have been able to more clearly define the common features of what they believe to be a single population.
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The Sima de los Huesos site. Image courtesy Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films
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The fossils exhibited a mosaic of physical characteristics that could not be wholly attributed to any single, recognized human species to date. The skull samples showed clear Neandertal features in the face and teeth. The researchers suggest these ‘Neandertal-derived’ features were functionally related to mastication, or chewing. “It seems these modifications had to do with an intensive use of the frontal teeth,” Arsuaga said. “The incisors show a great wear as if they had been used as a ‘third hand,” typical of Neanderthals.” But elsewhere, the skulls showed characteristics that diverted from the Neandertal model. The braincase itself, for example, still showed features associated with more primitive hominins.
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Skull 17 from the Sima de los Huesos site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. Image courtesy Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films
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Skull 15. Image courtesy Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films
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Skull 9. Image courtesy Javier Trueba / Madrid Scientific Films
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Observations like these led the researchers to suggest support for the ‘accretion model’ of Neandertal evolution, or something similar to cladogenesis, wherein evolution takes place through a splitting of species into branches or “clades”, leading to the development of a greater variety of sister species.
However, according to Arsuaga,”we think based on the morphology that the Sima people were part of the Neanderthal clade, although not necessarily direct ancestors to the classic Neanderthals.”
“One thing that surprised me about the skulls we analyzed,” Arsuaga continued, “is how similar the different individuals were. The other fossils of the same geological period are different and don’t fit in the Sima pattern. This means that there was a lot of diversity among different populations in the Middle Pleistocene.”
In other words, because other European Middle Pleistocene fossil specimens found in Europe do not exhibit the suite of features seen in this fossil group, the researchers suggest that more than one evolutionary lineage appears to have coexisted during the European Middle Pleistocene, with that represented by the Sima sample being closer to the Neandertals. The work of Arsuaga et al. suggests that facial modification was the first step in Neandertal evolution, a mosaic pattern fitting the prediction of the accretion model.
Key to the study findings was the homogeneity of the Sima samples. “All of the individuals recovered at the site represent the same biological population which makes it possible for anthropologists to study individual variation as well as sexual differences in the skeleton and patterns of growth and development, among other aspects,” report Arsuaga, et al. in a press release of the Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humano. “While considerable differences in size are apparent within the collection, with some larger skulls and some smaller ones, the anatomical features that anthropologists study to examine evolutionary relationships do not vary much within the Sima population. This combination of mosaic evolution and anatomical homogeneity led the authors to favor a branching pattern of evolution, known as cladogenesis in evolutionary studies, in the European Middle Pleistocene.”
So what species do these Sima fossils represent? The study authors do not assign the fossils to any specific species. But mitochondrial DNA was recently extracted and analyzed from one of the Sima fossils. The results suggest that this population was not a group of “early Neandertals”. Nor, as has been previously suggested, were they representatives of another early human species called Homo heidelbergensis, thought to be ancestral to the Neandertals. The Sima jawbones (mandibles) were observed to be anatomically distinct from that of heidelbergensis.
But there is much more to come from the Pit of Bones.
“With excavations continuing and new fossils being discovered each field season,” report Arsuaga, et al., “there is certainly reason to believe that the Sima de los Huesos will yield more surprising findings in the future.”
A detailed feature article about the work and latest findings at Sima de los Huesos will be published in the upcoming September 2014 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.
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Information Sources: Press releases of the Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humano and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
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Archaeologists are excavating the early nineteenth-century cabin of Joseph Smith Sr. and wife Lucy Mack, who were parents of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church. They have also uncovered prehistoric artifacts. The Quincy Herald-Whig
Excavations at historic Jamestown in Virginia are now focusing on searching for evidence of the outlying palisades, soldiers’ tents, and other structures. The Daily Press
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of third-century plague victims at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru of ancient Thebes. Live Science
Teams of archaeologists, students and volunteers will return this month to the site of ancient Jaffa on the central coast of Israel to pick up where they left off in 2013, when they uncovered more of the sensational evidence of a fiery destruction at the site’s ancient Amarna period New Kingdom Egyptian fortress gate. The continuing investigations will also include new elements — the search for the ancient harbor complex, and excavation of evidence of a 14th century B.C. destruction layer at the remains of the site’s Lion Temple.
Under the direction of project co-directors Aaron Burke, Associate Professor of the Archaeology of Ancient Israel at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Martin Peilstöcker of the Isral Antiquities Authority, one team will continue the excavations at the famous fourteenth century B.C. Egyptian fortress gate complex, where in 2013 they uncovered the stark remains of an extensive violent destruction.
Excavations in 2012 first revealed the evidence, with clues to its extent indicated when excavators discovered a commemorative scarab of Amenhotep III dated to the mid-fourteenth century B.C., found within the upper destruction layers and apparently fallen from what the archaeologists interpreted as a second story administrative office floor. A year later, in 2013, they exposed the city gate’s passageway below more than 1.5 meters of destruction debris. The finds included arrowheads, a spearhead and lead weight, decorative ivory inlays, numerous charred seeds, a number of ceramic vessels, antlers from deer, and nearly two dozen cedar timbers thought to have once made up the gate’s roof and upper story. The seeds, identified as those of barley, olive pits, grape pips, and chick peas were a welcome find, as they provide an insight to the foods consumed at the site.
The assortment of artifacts paint a picture of a city gate that functioned as something more than purely a defensive structure — a complex that housed administrators, storerooms, and other support facilities. Speaking of the antlers, for example, Burke and Peilstöcker noted that they “suggest that the gate was not a stark and utilitarian space as many reconstructions of Egyptian gates suggest. Instead, it would seem that Egyptian soldiers hung these items within the passageway as trophies of their hunting around Jaffa.”**
The timbers, the earliest and largest such ancient timbers from that time period found in Israel to date, are thought to have been used in the construction of the gate’s second story and roof. Reported Burke and Peilstöcker in a press release: “They will provide not only important chronological data such as evidence for the date of the construction of the gate complex but also will contribute to refining our understanding of the evolution of Egyptian rule in Canaan since the gate is one in a sequence of gates providing evidence for the earliest Egyptian fortress in Canaan. As important proxies for climate change, the timbers also offer a unique opportunity for an improved study of the Late Bronze Age environment.”**
Burke and Peilstöcker hope to shed light on the nature of coexistence between the Egyptian occupiers and the native Canaanite inhabitants of the area. “New archaeological data combined with well-known historical texts of the Late Bronze Age are now shedding light on the nature of interactions between the Canaanite inhabitants of Jaffa and its environs and the Egyptian inhabitants of the New Kingdom fortress built atop the city’s earlier remains,” reports Burke and Peilstöcker. “The resulting picture is one colored by episodes of violence and peaceful social interactions in Jaffa over a period of more than 300 years, from ca. 1460 to 1130 BC.”*
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Above: The Gate passageway and south tower following excavations in July 2013. Photo 2013-P0408, courtesy Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project. ____________________________________________
The charred remains of cedar timber/beams were encountered during the 2013 excavation.Courtesy Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project
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The city of Jaffa has been an important port city for over 4,000 years. By the Late Bronze Age, Jaffa had become a principal port and garrison for the New Kingdom Egyptian empire. Mentioned four times in the Hebrew Bible, it was named as one of the cities given to the HebrewTribe of Dan (Book of Joshua 19:46), as a port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon for Solomon’s Temple (2 Chronicles 2:16), as the place from which the prophet Jonah embarked for Tarshish (Book of Jonah 1:3) and as the port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon that were used in the construction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem (Book of Ezra 3:7). The city is also mentioned in the ancient Egyptian Amarna letters.
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The view of Jaffa from the sea (as seen in 1895). From the Detroit Publishing Company Collection, Trialsanderrors, Wikimedia Commons
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Additional investigation at the site will entail excavation in the area of the “Lion Temple”, a structure thought to exhibit characteristics of a sacred or religious nature. The structure acquired its name from the discovery of a lion skull in its southeastern corner by Jacob Kaplan during his excavations there in the early 1970’s. It is thought to be a Caananite building.
The 2014 season will also see exploratory efforts under Shelley Wachsmann of Texas A&M University, whose team will be investigating the area thought to contain the remains of the ancient harbor of Jaffa. The team will use remote-sensing in a deep-water survey for ancient shipwrecks, testing the application of archaeogeophysical and geoarchaeological techniques to identify the ancient harbor. The investigation will also employ a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to verify anomalies at the 50 to 300 meter depth range that were previously detected.
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“The weather made me do it,” as the saying might have gone for many, long-deceased and unnamed ancient Peruvians. Like some other populations throughout history, they were refugees of climate change who then flourished in their newly found home.
This is the story told by a recent genetic study that suggests that the evidence indicates periods of migration in pre-Columbian Andean societies in Peru, spurred on by local climate changes. It supports the archaeologists, who for years have been saying that the excavated evidence hints of such shifts by the Nasca, Wari and Tiwanaku peoples.
To get to this conclusion, anthropologist Lars Fehren-Schmitz and colleagues collected samples of mitochondrial DNA from 207 individuals in Peru’s Rio Grande de Nasca region and determined that the mitochondrial DNA likely represented Andean populations living between approximately 840 BC and 1450 AD. Using a Bayesian modeling approach, the authors found that the genetic results suggest a migration from the coastal valleys of Southern Peru to the Andean highlands during a period of increasing climate variability around 640 AD. They also found a possible backward migration from the highlands to the coast during a period of drought in the highlands and favorable conditions at the coast around 1200 AD. The study results suggest that climate-driven migrations may have led to a genetic homogenization in Southern Peru over time.
“The supported migration events coincide with observed climatic alterations, which must have led to a genetic homogenization in the RGND [Rio Grande de Nasca drainage area in southern coastal Peru] over time,” report Fehren-Schmitz and colleagues in the published study. “Most studies analyzing the impact of climate on the mobility and demography of ancient populations have concentrated on foraging societies. Here we reveal climatic impacts on socially complex, agricultural societies. Despite a range of anticipatory agricultural adaptations observed in the archaeological record, the instability of the coastal and highland ecosystems in southern Peru exceeded critical points in the past in which migration became inevitable to sustain the population.”*
*“Climate change underlies global demographic, genetic, and cultural transitions in pre-Columbian southern Peru,” by Lars Fehren-Schmitz et al., www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1403466111
Source: Adapted and edited from a University of California, Santa Cruz press release.
Cover Photo, Top Left: Piquillacta archaeological site (ancient Wari construction). AgainErick, Wikimedia Commons
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Beginning the fourth year of a five-year program of investigation, a team of archaeologists, students and volunteers commissioned by the Senhouse Museum Trust have returned to a site near the Maryport Roman fort in the U.K. to continue excavation of the remains of a Roman temple and associated structures and features.
Led by Newcastle University’s Professor Ian Haynes and site director Tony Wilmott, they hope to recover more of the structural remains and artifacts at a site that had undergone investigation in previous years, yielding some intriguing results.
“This year we will be looking at the eastern edge of the [Maryport] settlement, to the north east of the fort, where at least one temple stood,” said Haynes. “This structure was originally excavated in the 1880s, and we re-examined it last year.
“Immediately under this building we found the remains of a burnt lamb and bird bones. At other sites across Britain and in other countries these have signified a ritual dedication or offering for the building.
“We also found evidence of a mysterious circular structure next to the rectangular temple and we’re going to be investigating this area to find out what this might have been built for – maybe it was another temple, or a mausoleum.”
Haynes hopes that investigation of this site will help shed additional light on the meaning and importance of stone military altars from the Roman fort of AlaunaCarvetiorum and its associated civilian settlement located at what is now Maryport.
“The Temples project is designed to learn more about the internationally famous altars which form the core of the Senhouse Roman Museum display and to understand better the complex religious landscape of Roman Maryport,” said Haynes.
“The collection of altars in the museum is really remarkable. The inscriptions provide information on the lives of the commanders of the fort and their postings across the Roman Empire.
“We want to find out more about exactly where and how they were originally displayed here in Roman times, and how people living in the fort and settlement used rituals such as dedications and offerings.”
Nigel Mills, heritage advisor to the Hadrian’s Wall Trust, said: “The Roman fort and nearby civilian settlement at Maryport were a significant element of the coastal defenses lining the north western boundary of the Roman Empire for more than 300 years.
“Both the Temples project and the Settlement project show there is huge potential to attract more visitors to the Roman Cumbrian coastal defenses which, along with Hadrian’s Wall, are part of the transnational Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site.”
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Team at work on the Maryport Roman Temples site. Courtesy Senhouse Museum/ Hadrians Wall Trust
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Artist’s impression of Maryport Roman Temple. Courtesy Oxford Archaeology Ltd, commissioned by Hadrian’s Wall Trust
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The fort built at Maryport was ordered by Hadrian for construction in the second century AD. It served as the command headquarters and supply base for a series of small forts and towers that extended southward along the west coast from Hadrian’s Wall. The Roman fort and civilian settlement at Maryport are part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, which includes Hadrian’s Wall and its attendant forts. The FRE WHS represents the borderline of the Roman Empire at its furthest extent in the 2nd century AD. It stretched from the west coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast.
More information about the project, how to participate, and the Senhouse Museum generally can be obtained at their website.
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Additional Information
Tours of the Temples excavation site led by the museum’s volunteer guides start from the museum on weekday afternoons at 2pm and 3.30pm until 18 July. They include entry to the museum and costs are adult £3, child £1, family £8.
Lectures, open days and workshops have also been arranged.
Lectures
· Thursday 12 June, 7.30pm: The archaeology of drains and cesspits– Don O’Meara. £3
· Tuesday 1 July, 7.30pm: Interim lecture about the Temples Excavation– Professor Ian Haynes and Tony Wilmott. £3
· Thursday 17 July, 7.30pm: Final lecture about the Temples Excavation– Professor Ian Haynes and Tony Wilmott. £3
Open days
· Saturday 21 June, 11am – 5pm: Temples excavation open day.Museum admission applies – adult £3, child £1, family £8
· Saturday 19 July, 11am – 5pm: Temples excavation open day.Museum admission applies – adult £3, child £1, family £8
Workshops
· Monday 30 June, 7.30pm: Soils, sediments and landscape– with Don O’Meara. £3 (prebooking essential, limited places)
· Friday 18 July, 7.30pm: Inorganic material from samples–with Don O’Meara. £3 (prebooking essential, limited places)
The Senhouse Roman Museum is open every day from 10am to 5pm. More information is at www.senhousemuseum.co.uk.
For more information on becoming a volunteer contact Jane Laskey, museum manager.
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As you read this article, a team of archaeologists, students and volunteers are busy methodically digging up ancient structures and artifacts at archaeological sites in Belize with names like Xnoha, Nojol Nah, and Tulix Mul. These sites contain the remains of ancient Maya settlements. The work is carefully planned, slow, and meticulously executed; and like any physical labor in a subtropical environment during the summer months, it can be sweaty, dirty, and tiring. For these students and volunteers, there is no monetary reward for this. They do it because of the excitement of discovery and the new knowledge it will generate about the life-ways of people who are long gone.
But this team is working against time. These sites, especially Nojol Nah, face the real possibility of destruction before the investigators can glean all of the information they need, and conserve what they can find. In the interest of local farming, ranching and economic progress, these cultural treasures may have to take a back seat. It is a story much like many others across Central America, not to mention the rest of the world.
There is a solution. It has already been realized for a site called Grey Fox, also in Belize and not far from where the archaeological team is now excavating. Under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Guderjan of the Maya Research Program (MRP), a U.S.-based non-profit corporation, archaeologists, preservationists and donors successfully purchased the Grey Fox site and now hope to protect it for future conservation and research. It is also under the MRP that teams are now excavating at Xnoha, Nojol Nah, and Tulix Mul. The MRP, affiliated with the University of Texas at Tyler, has been conducting field operations in northwestern Belize for more than two decades.
“We found the site [Grey Fox] about 14 years ago and mapped it in 2010,” said Dr. Thomas Guderjan, current President of MRP. “It is significant in that it is one of several unlooted sites remaining in northwestern Belize. If we had not purchased it, Grey Fox would surely have been bulldozed within the next 5 years. The land was owned by a group of farmers who were preparing to remove the forest and bulldoze the site.”
Guderjan and colleagues now hope to do the same for the other sites; particularly Nojol Nah, which faces the most acute danger. In partnership with Popular Archaeology Magazine’s Adopt-a Site program, the MRP is getting the word out to potential donors who may be interested in becoming a part of saving this Maya heritage for continuing research, conservation, public education, and tourism. The goal is to purchase approximately 100 acres at a cost of $40,000, an acreage and sum that site investigators believe will secure it for posterity.
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Pieta Greaves, busy at work on thenewly discovered mural at Tulix Mul. Pieta is the Staffordshire Hoard Conservation Project Manager at the Birmingham Museums Trust in the U.K. This mural, now being uncovered, examined and preserved, is one among only a few other known Maya murals found in Central America. Courtesy Maya Research Program
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Close-up view of the partially uncovered Tulix Mul mural. Courtesy Maya Research Program
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Overview of the excavated remains of an elite residential structure at Nojol Nah. Courtesy Maya Research Program
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“Now that it is possible to purchase more land,” said Guderjan, “I hope to purchase more properties and open an archaeological reserve.”
For more information about the endangered sites and how to donate, anyone can go to the Adopt-a-Site website and help make a difference.
On the go? Purchase the mobile version of the current issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine here for only $2.99.
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.
scientists have reported a study that suggests that all human males can trace their roots to an ancestor with violent tendencies — a hominin who was not a gentle, ‘noble savage’ whose descendents were later corrupted or changed by the onset of society, as depicted or suggested by many theorists.
University of Utah biologist David Carrier and Michael H. Morgan, a University of Utah physician, have been conducting a comprehensive study of the human fossil record, including that of Australopithecus, an extinct hominin species that is thought to be ancestral to Homo (the human genus of which Homo sapiens, or the modern human, is the soul surviving species). What they have consistently found, among other things, is that certain bones of the face of the male skull have become increasingly more robust over several million years of evolution, and that these bones were critical for protection against impact from objects — like a human fist, which, they maintain, has also evolved over time to form a more effective fist for striking.
“The australopiths were characterized by a suite of traits that may have improved fighting ability, including hand proportions that allow formation of a fist; effectively turning the delicate musculoskeletal system of the hand into a club effective for striking,” said Carrier. “If indeed the evolution of our hand proportions were associated with selection for fighting behavior you might expect the primary target, the face, to have undergone evolution to better protect it from injury when punched.”
Their study of the bones of the face and cranium supported that hunch.
“When modern humans fight hand-to-hand the face is usually the primary target,” said Carrier. “What we found was that the bones that suffer the highest rates of fracture in fights are the same parts of the skull that exhibited the greatest increase in robusticity during the evolution of basal hominins. These bones are also the parts of the skull that show the greatest difference between males and females in both australopiths and humans. In other words, male and female faces are different because the parts of the skull that break in fights are bigger in males. Importantly, these facial features appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time that our ancestors evolved hand proportions that allow the formation of a fist. Together these observations suggest that many of the facial features that characterize early hominins may have evolved to protect the face from injury during fighting with fists.”
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University of Utah biologist David Carrier and Michael H. Morgan, a University of Utah physician, contend that human faces — especially those of our australopith ancestors — evolved to minimize injury from punches to the face during fights between males. Their research is published in the June 9 issue of Biological Reviews. Image courtesy University of Utah
The findings may have important implications for understanding human nature, and will no doubt become part of the general debate about human evolution.
“The debate over whether or not there is a dark side to human nature goes back to the French philosopher Rousseau who argued that before civilization humans were noble savages; that civilization actually corrupted humans and made us more violent,” said Carrier. “This idea remains strong in the social sciences and in recent decades has been supported by a handful of outspoken evolutionary biologists and anthropologists. Many other evolutionary biologists, however, find evidence that our distant past was not peaceful.”
“The hypothesis that our early ancestors were aggressive could be falsified if we found that the anatomical characters that distinguish us from other primates did not improve fighting ability. What our research has been showing is that many of the anatomical characters of great apes and our ancestors, the early hominins (such as bipedal posture, the proportions of our hands and the shape of our faces) do, in fact, improve fighting performance.”
The theory that humans evolved from a violent ancestor is actually a long-standing and contentious one. It was Raymond Dart, South African anatomist and discoverer of the famous fossilized ‘Taung child’ Australopithecus skull in 1924, who advanced the theory that humans evolved from a “killer ape”, supporting the hypothesis that war and interpersonal aggression was the driving force behind human evolution. The writer Robert Ardrey, author of African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative, further popularized the theory through his books during the 1960’s. But the notion has encountered stiff resistance or dispute among other scholars and anthropologists over the years, whose research has indicated that this is not necessarily the case.
Carrier and Morgan make it clear, however, that their study results are not about casting humans as a hopelessly violent and destructive species.
“Our research is about peace,” said Morgan. “We seek to explore, understand, and confront humankind’s violent and aggressive tendencies. Peace begins with ourselves and is ultimately achieved through disciplined self-analysis and an understanding of where we’ve come from as a species. Through our research we hope to look [at] ourselves in the mirror and begin the difficult work of changing ourselves for the better.”
Their paper, titled “Protective buttressing of the hominin face,” is published in the journal Biological Reviews.
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Source: Statements by David Carrier and Michael Morgan re-published from a University of Utah press release.
Cover Photo, Top Left: Courtesy University of Utah
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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery Edition eBook is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition. We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.
A DNA study suggests that early Neolithic people may have migrated into Europe about 9,000 years ago by island-hopping from Anatolia across the Mediterranean through the Dodecanese islands and Crete and across southern coastal routes.
Preistera Paschou and colleagues came to this conclusion after analyzing single nucleotide polymorphisms from a sample dataset of 32 populations, taken from the islands of Crete and the Dodecanese, Central Anatolia, Greece, Southern and Northern Europe, the Near East, and North Africa. They used a population genetics network approach that thye say determines the pathway of gene flow between populations.
Anthropologists and other scientists studying early Neolithic population migration have proposed three general routes that these early peoples may have taken to enter Europe. One was land-based to North-Eastern Anatolia and then through Bosporus and the Dardanelles and Thrace and into the Balkans; the second was maritime, from the Aegean Anatolian coast and across northern Mediterranean islands and along the coast of Southern Europe; and the third from the Levantine coastline across to the Aegean islands and into Greece. It is the second model that the recent genetic study most supports.
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Map of some earlier proposed theories related to Neolithic entry and expansion into Europe.
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“Our data support the Anatolian rather than the Levantine route because they consistently show the Aegean islands to be connected to the Near East through Anatolia,” write Paschou and colleagues in the research report*.
Genetics is not the only evidencial support cited for a maritime model. Archaeology has played its role. “Navigation across the Mediterranean was active during the Early Neolithic and Upper Paleolithic, as illustrated by the finding of obsidian from the island of Milos in Paleolithic sites of the Greek mainland and the early colonization of Sardinia, Corsica, and Cyprus,” add the authors………….”Archaeological evidence from Greek and Near Eastern and Anatolian Neolithic sites suggests that multiple waves of Neolithic migrants reached Greece and Southern Europe. Most likely multiple routes were used in these migrations but, as our data show, the maritime route and island hopping was prominent.”*
The detailed report is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
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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 with the Jamestown Rediscovery Project are now exhibiting a representative sampling of the thousands of Native American artifacts they have uncovered over the past 20 years in or near the site of the 1607 James Fort remains on Jamestown Island, the site of the first successful English colony in North America.
Under the rubric, “The World of Pocahontas Unearthed”, the artifacts can now be seen artfully displayed in their own section within the relatively new Voorhees Archaearium, a large one-story copper-sheathed building that rests on pilings designed to protect the seventeenth century-archaeological features and artifacts that lie beneath.
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View of the Archaearium on Jamestown Island. Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Wikimedia Commons
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“Over the past 20 years we have found thousands and thousands of Virginia Indian artifacts in the excavations………many of them date to the contact period which is, for us, about 1607 to about 1610. So for years, we have had a very elegant museum talking about the English equation or the English side of the story, and clearly there is another half — and that’s the indigenous, the Virginia Indian folks who were here,” says David Givens, a senior staff archaeologist with the Jamestown Rediscovery Project.
Artifacts exhibited include flaked stone projectile points, some of which were made of non-local materials and likely used for cultural exchange, as opposed to hunting and fighting purposes; Indian beads; examples of the 48,000 Indian pottery sherds thus far excavated; clay tobacco pipes that served as models for the English equivalent tobacco pipes; and even one clay pot that features an imprinted pattern of fiber from an Indian basket.
“So when you come to see the exhibit, you can actually ‘see’ a Virginia Indian basket for the first time in over 400 years,” said Givens.
The James Fort site is unique in that it is considered to contain the richest recovered trove of Virginia Native American artifacts in the Chesapeake region, despite the fact that it is primarily an early English colonial site. This is because centuries of mechanized agriculture have disturbed or destroyed most of the Native American village footprints in the ground, while later colonial structures survived as they were set deeper into the soil than those, for example, of the Powhatan villages in the vicinity of the Jamestown settlement.
The Powhatan was a powerful Native American confederation of tribes in present-day Virginia when the Jamestown settlers first arrived. The confederation was led by Chief Powhatan, who was also referred to as “Emperor”. It is thought that there were possibly about 14,000–21,000 Powhatan people in the eastern part of Virginia in 1607 when the English first established James Fort. It was Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, who saved Captain John Smith’s life and later married colonist John Rolf. She bacame a symbol of the relationship that developed between the English Crown and the Native American people of southeastern Virginia.
“The World of Pocahontas Unearthed” can be seen at the Voorhees Archaearium on the grounds of Jamestown Island, not far from the restored colonial town of Williamsburg, Virginia, another major historical site. See the Jamestown Rediscovery website for more information about this and the ongoing excavations and programs related to James Fort and Jamestown.
Cover Image, Top Left: “The Coronation of Powhatan”, by John Cadsby Chapman, courtesy of the Greenville Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina
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Winter in Saudi Arabia is nearly perfect for archaeological fieldwork—it is neither too hot nor too cold, and it is most always sunny, says Dr. Huw Groucutt, an archaeologist with the University of Oxford. Groucutt has been conducting archaeological research on the Arabian Peninsula for years, along with other senior colleagues such as Prof. Michael Petraglia, also of Oxford University, and Dr. Rémy Crassard, of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). They are prominent pioneers in the ongoing research of human prehistory in this region of the world, especially related to Paleolithic times.
It has been something of an archaeological flurry. In recent years, Groucutt and his colleagues have been discovering sites across the Arabian Peninsula that bear on the entire time spectrum of human prehistory, beginning with the Lower Paleolithic (probably dating to more than one million years ago in some cases). No longer regarded as a cul-de-sac for studies on human evolution and dispersals, the area has quickly emerged as a major theater for exploration and scholarship in the evolving story of early humans and their dispersal across the globe.
Early on, while doing his PhD work, Groucutt began working with Petraglia to research the Arabian Middle Paleolithic in Saudi Arabia. Petraglia had already spent 10 years doing research in the country, and “things were ready for a big expansion in research,” according to Groucutt.
And expand it did.
“Over the last two years we have done two months of fieldwork a year, and the discoveries have been flowing in thick and fast,” he says.
Now with his Ph.D, Groucutt is referring here to the work that is being done in connection with thePalaeodeserts Project. Headed by Petraglia, it organizes the efforts of a multidisciplinary team of researchers to find answers to questions related to the effect environmental change has had on early humans and animals that have passed through and settled this desert subcontinent over the past 1+ million years. Along the way, they have uncovered a profusion of lithic (stone tool) assemblages left by humans at locations in Saudi Arabia. The finds testify to a human presence that dates back hundreds of thousands of years, researchers suggest, marking the trail and habitation zones of humans that followed and exploited green zones created by climatic humid or “wet periods” in an otherwise harsh, arid Arabian palaeoenvironmental history. Focusing for the purposes of this article on the mid-to-late Paleolithic period, the research could have profound implications in the debate on early human dispersal theories out of Africa, particularly those related to anatomically modern humans (AMH), and it is already making its mark in the scholarly world of human prehistory studies.
The recent study reports on the topic have been pored over by scientists and academes alike. But they contain terms, concepts, and process descriptions that are familiar only to them. To elucidate the picture for a general readership in detail, Popular Archaeology interviewed Groucutt and Crassard, with additional input from Dr. Ash Parton, specialist on palaeoenvironmental change for the Palaeodeserts project. What follows is what they had to say:
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Q: What have been the most significant Middle Paleolithic finds on the Arabian Peninsula that bear on the presence of anatomically modern human hunter-gatherers there?
Crassard:
To date, there has been no trace of fossilized hominin prior to the Holocene on the Arabian Peninsula. It is thus difficult to affirm with no doubt that AMHs (Anatomically Modern Humans) were present in Arabia during the Middle Paleolithic. This means that Neanderthals could have been there as well, as suggested in a paper we did on a site excavated in Yemen (Delagnes et al. JHE 2012: “Whether or not the Middle Paleolithic occupation of Wadi Surdud can be attributed to modern humans or to a human group related to the Neanderthals remains a totally open question. As no sound technological markers exist for distinguishing Neanderthals from early modern humans, neither of these alternatives can be ruled out”).
The stratified and thus dated sites are still very rare in the whole Peninsula for the Paleolithic period (most identified sites are surface scatters), and the only available data consists of stone tools. There is no evidence of symbolic activity, nor a robust faunal record, so the subsistence strategies are also unknown. One possibility for testing hypotheses relating to identifying the kinds of human species in Arabia during the Middle Paleolithic is to compare stone tools. Among several types of stone tools, bifacial tools, or hand axes, have been found at Jebel Faya in the United Arab Emirates, and they have been considered as a AMH production, dated to about 125,000 years. This interpretation is not always accepted by the scientific community, as they could have been produced by other human antecessors.
Another type of stone technology is interesting for tracing the demographic expansion of Homo sapiens. This is the Nubian technology. This kind of predetermined flake production on stone (chert, flint, quartzite…) was previously known only in northeastern Africa, until it was found in south Arabia (especially in the region of Dhofar (see Rose et al. Plos One 2011), in Oman, but also in Hadramawt in Yemen), and more recently in central Saudi Arabia, close to the modern city of Al-Kharj (Crassard & Hilbert, Plos One 2013). This technology is dated to more than 100,000 years in Arabia, a technology that seems to have only otherwise been produced by AMHs in Africa. Further research is needed, including new dates and stratified sites, to confirm these interpretations.
Groucutt:
Firstly, we must emphasize that interpretive caution is needed as no hominin fossils are known from before the Holocene (i.e. the last 12,000 years) in Arabia. So we are talking exclusively about lithic (‘stone tool’) technologies. Variation in lithic technologies reflects many factors, such as the influences of different types of raw materials (chert, quartzite, quartz, volcanic raw materials, etc.) used and other such ‘pragmatic’ factors, as well as the role ‘cultural’ variation may have played. Variants of Middle Palaeolithic technology are complicated and sophisticated, showing patterning in space and time. Such factors are important indications that we are dealing with learned (i.e. cultural) behaviors. As a result we should be able to look at how lithic technology varies in space and time and understand how populations moved through the landscape (i.e. dispersals) and how they responded to changes in their environment.
With that background, three major finds/groups of finds in Arabia have been argued to relate to the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMH). The first, published by Professor Simon Armitage, et al. (2011), in the journal Science, relates to the Jebel Faya rockshelter in the United Arab Emirates. This was the first site in Arabia for which absolute age estimates were published (using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence or OSL dating, which allows us to date sites which are beyond the limits of radiocarbon dating). The excavators at Jebel Faya recovered several buried assemblages of lithics. They argue that the younger ones are unique and so represent a local population, perhaps isolated in this region. Attention has focused on the deeper (older) assemblage (‘Assemblage C’) which appears to have been been buried ~125 thousand years ago (the ‘Last Interglacial’). The discoverers argue that features of this assemblage demonstrate similarities to African ‘Middle Stone Age’ sites associated with early AMH. This is based on the combination of tool types found at the site – Levallois cores and flakes (flakes struck from specially prepared nodules of rock (cores) which result in flakes of a particular, predetermined shape), blades (long, thin flakes) and bifacial tools. Not much information has been published on the lithics yet, so it is difficult for other scholars to critically examine these claims. But arguably caution is needed and the position of Jebel Faya is still very much open to debate. For example, the discoverers reject connections with areas of the Levant as these are suggested to lack the tool types found at Jebel Faya. Yet sites such as Skhul in modern day Israel have bifaces, Levallois technology and blades.
The second major claim from Arabia comes from the discovery of a large number of archaeological sites which the discoverers describe as belonging to the ‘Nubian Complex’. Most of the sites in Arabia, published by Dr Jeff Rose and his colleagues, are in the Dhofar region of Oman, but before that similar technology had been found at lower frequencies in Yemen by Dr Rémy Crassard and others. More recently Dr Crassard and others have also found Nubian technology at Al Kharj in central Saudi Arabia. Nubian Levallois technology is a particular form of Levallois technology, where nodules of rock (‘cores’) are specially shaped. In this variant they are shaped in a way which produces pointed flakes (‘Levallois points’). Nubian technology was previously best known from northeast Africa (‘Nubia’), so a lot of people are very excited about its discovery in Arabia, seeing it as strong evidence that populations of AMH dispersed into Arabia more than 100 thousand years ago. This is again possible, but there have not yet been many detailed comparative studies. And with different types of Levallois technology we must always be wary of technologies being re-invented. Nubian or analogous technology is in fact known from Mauritania to India, and from central Saudi Arabia to Kenya. The presence of Nubian Levallois technology in Arabia is important, but it is not necessarily a smoking gun for dispersal out of Africa.
Finally, we on the Palaeodeserts Project (based at the University of Oxford but with collaborators at various international institutions), working in collaboration with the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, have made a number of discoveries in Saudi Arabia. A basic point which must be made is that to understand movements out of Africa, we need to look at areas close to Africa. Jebel Faya, for instance, is about 2,000 km from Africa. Palaeodeserts Project fieldwork has identified dozens of new Middle Palaeolithic sites in Arabia, mostly associated with either ancient lakes and rivers, and/or with sources of raw material suitable for making lithics. We have worked in the Nefud desert of northern Arabia, central Arabia and southwestern Saudi Arabia. In these areas we have found Middle Palaeolithic sites of many ages and varieties. We are currently analyzing these discoveries and conducting laboratory assessments of sediments to understand the age of the sites and the nature of the environments, when occupied. What we are finding is that a lot of the sites date to what is called Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5, a climatic period which dates from around 130 to 75 thousand years ago. This time saw several periods of much warmer climate, which led to wetter conditions in Arabia. Lots of these MIS 5 sites share similar technology, particularly centripetal Levallois cores, which are flaked in a radial fashion around the edges of the core producing large numbers of flakes of predetermined shape. This is the standard way of producing flakes for much of the African Middle Stone Age, unlike more specific forms such as Nubian Levallois technology. We are also finding some particular tool types such as retouched points. These kinds of toolkits, both in terms of ‘core reduction strategies’ (types of Levallois technology) and of the tools then made are found in Africa for a long period associated with AMH, in the Levant with the earliest known AMH outside Africa (e.g. Skhul, Qafzeh) and at sites in India dating to more than 75 thousand years ago.
So what we really need to understand about the movement of AMH into Arabia is the demonstration of similarities with multiple constellations of technological features, not one feature or one tool type. Conclusions will be much more robust when this is done (we are currently doing this). But history shows that caution is needed. For example, a single site in Saudi Arabia had been suggested to share similarities with the ‘Aterian’ industry of North Africa (again MIS 5, and associated with AMH). A detailed reanalysis of the material by Dr. Eleanor Scerri (currently Université de Bordeaux and University of Oxford) however strongly suggested that the undated Saudi assemblage did not relate to the Aterian at all, but was a more-or-less similar form of technology that had been reinvented there in the last few thousand years. We think such findings are very important when making major claims based only on one aspect of technology. So aside from trying to identify repeated constellations of features it is also critical to have sites which are from secure contexts so that they can be dated. This is what the scientists with Palaeodeserts are doing at several sites in interior Saudi Arabia.
Finally, we must note that other claims for the dispersal of AMH out of Africa, such as the view of Professor Sir Paul Mellars that there was a single dispersal, around 60-50 ka, along the coastline out of Africa and around Arabia apparently associated with small and finely shaped ‘geometric microliths’, is not supported by any evidence in Arabia. Mellars’ model may indeed be true, and he has published his ideas in a number of the leading journals of the world, and he points to a rise in sea levels which would have covered the route taken by the earliest successful (i.e. ancestors of today, not dead-end populations) AMH to leave Africa. This is possible, but in many areas of southern Arabia there is a very steep coastal shelf so changing sea level hasn’t changed that much. Also in some areas tectonic uplift means that we have preserved sections of coastline. Given that extensive surveys have been conducted along the southern Arabian coastline, which have failed to produce any evidence at all for the kind of evidence predicted by Mellars’ model, we think this single dispersal model unlikely for now.
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View of area being surveyed for archaeological sites in the western part of the Nefud desert. (credit: Eleanor Scerri/Palaeodeserts Project)
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Dr Huw Groucutt (University of Oxford) systematically collecting a dense scatter of artifacts on the shore of an ancient lake dating to around 85,000 years ago at Mundafan, southwestern Saudi Arabia. (credit: Richard Jennings/Palaeodeserts Project)
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Excavation of a Middle Palaeolithic site at Jubbah (credit: Richard Jennings/Palaeodeserts Project)
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Q: What possible implications do the finds have within the context of current theories about the dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa?
Crassard:
Arabia is regularly seen as a periphery to Africa. And this is logical, as it is the closest subcontinent to the region of emergence of the first AMHs. But the question of how this dispersal out of Africa was accomplished is really central to current debates. Two main hypotheses are being tested today through a very active (that is recent) research in Arabia: the coastal dispersal and the more inland, perhaps more complex dispersal into and within Arabia.
The international teams working today on these questions are placing a lot of emphasis on the relationship between human groups and climate evolution, as well as topography of the environment in general. Genetics studies are also important in these debates, as molecular geneticists have suggested that human populations have rapidly migrated to the East along the Indian Ocean coasts about 65,000 years ago; but recent discoveries may demonstrate a much earlier dispersal of AMH, or Homo sapiens.
The first results from the Jubbah and Mundafan paleolakes research (international team lead by Michael Petraglia (University of Oxford)) are very promising, as well as the research conducted along the Red Sea coasts by another international project lead by Geoff Bailey (University of York) and Geoffrey King (Institut de Physique du Globe, Paris). The Green Arabia conference, recently held in Oxford and organized by the Palaeodeserts team, featured presentations that very accurately elaborated on the state of the art relating to the actual debates in the region.
As mentioned before, the Nubian technology is an important discovery that needs more dating and more stratified sites; but the comparison with a very peculiar technology that was only known in Africa can really add a lot to this debate. This will be investigated by several teams working in Saudi Arabia (including my work and colleagues) and Oman (including the work of Jeffrey Rose and colleagues).
Groucutt:
As I mentioned, there are several theories about the dispersal of AMH out of Africa, and this in fact is one of the most exciting areas of research in hominin evolutionary studies. The differences between the theories concern a number of factors such as the causes of dispersal, the timing, the routes taken and the number of dispersals.
These different theories for dispersal out of Africa can be divided in many ways. There is a major split between those who think that dispersal at least began during the wetter climatic conditions of MIS 5, when either side of the Red Sea was a broadly similar environment, and those who think that successful dispersals out of Africa only occurred after MIS 5, around 60-50 thousand years ago. Within these different models, many different variants have been published and discussed. Aside from debates about the onset of dispersal, there are debates between those who think there were multiple dispersals out of Africa (a theory that seems likely me to) and those who argue there was only ever a single dispersal (based on some genetics ‘story telling’, discussed more below).
Each of these theories cites combined evidence from several disciplines (e.g. archaeology, the study of human fossils, genetic variability). Outside the small area of the Levant very little is known about archaeology in Asia before about 40 ka, with few well excavated and dated sites. Likewise, outside the Levant there are very few fossils of early modern humans. This may be because they were not there, but perhaps equally as likely it is just about limited research and poor preservation in some areas. As a result of these historical weaknesses in the archaeological and fossil record, patterns of genetic variability have become very important. And it can be argued that many theories really hang on the genetics, backfitting other evidence to this. Traditionally most genetic studies looked at ‘single loci’ such as mitochondrial DNA or the Y chromosome. These give useful information, but only reflect a very small component of our genetic makeup and are prone to over-interpretation. More recent studies looking at complete genomes are changing the picture and suggesting that genetic evidence is congruent with an earlier onset to dispersal than had been suggested by the single locus studies.
So what we are doing in Arabia is really testing these different models on the ground, and calling for scholars to keep an open mind on what is being found. Fossils would be great, but have so far been elusive. But we have found a very well preserved site in northern Saudi Arabia with lots of animal fossils. The fact that small animal bones, dating back hundreds of thousands of years, have been identified, clearly suggests that there is the great potential for hominin fossil material to be discovered. Great surprises may be in store. For instance, the discovery of a Neanderthal fossil in southern Arabia would be a remarkable finding. Likewise, we predict the discovery of AMH fossils in Arabia dating to MIS 5. This would show that these populations did not just expand into the Levant at this time (where according to scholars like Mellars they survived for a ‘brief’ few tens of thousands of years and then died out), but actually expanded an unknown distance into southern Asia. These small initial populations were then joined by further, later dispersals.
We think it is significant that virtually every archaeological team working on Middle Palaeolithic sites in Arabia supports an early onset to the dispersal of AMH out of Africa. This is in stark contrast to the views of other scholars who argue for a later AMH dispersal based solely on literature reviews. Different teams working in Arabia emphasize different sites and different forms of technology, but most are agreed that we are talking about dispersals starting in MIS 5 with Middle Palaeolithic technology and moving primarily by interior rather than coastal routes. Every new site being discovered in Arabia reveals remarkable new information which makes it a very exciting time to be working in the area. We are confident that over the next ten years we will make some major discoveries. We are also keen to see archaeological data emphasized when it seems that many archaeologists have been living in the shadow of genetics interpretations over recent years. Yet archaeological data is the only record of how humans were behaving in particular times and places, so we are trying to restore the balance to the subjects contributing to the story of modern human origins.
Q: What in your mind are the most important finds that suggest possible links to lithic technologies in Africa?
Crassard:
As I mentioned before, this would definitely be the presence of the Nubian technology in Arabia, previously known only in northeastern Africa. This method of flint knapping, which archaeologists can understand through a rigorous use of technological and taxonomic analysis, is part of the greater family of the ‘Levallois’ concept known in many parts of the prehistoric Old World. The Nubian technology entails producing flakes with a predetermined shape, most of the time triangular. This discovery, finding such a technology in Arabia, thus has important implications related to questions of human dispersal and influences between Africa and Arabia. For reference, I co-authored a paper about this technology as it was discovered at the Al-Kharj site in Saudi Arabia, published in PLOS ONE in July of 2013*.
Groucutt:
Again, we need to be cautious about linking individual types of technology when attempting to make the case about similarities with Africa. Our starting point should be rooted in biogeography. For example, we now know that in periods such as MIS 5 there were similar savannah environments on either side of the Red Sea, both dotted with lakes and rivers. AMH would therefore not have had to cross a significantly different ecological zone to disperse into Arabia, whilst Neanderthals to the north would have had to do so. This does not mean that it is impossible that Neanderthals were in Arabia, and indeed it is an exciting possibility that Arabia may have been an important frontier for archaic and modern human interactions.
So the point is that lithic similarities are more likely to be real when there are other reasons to think that similarity due to descent (‘homology’) is more likely than similarity due to convergent, independent evolution (‘analogy’). Middle Palaeolithic technology was sophisticated, but its users picked major characteristics from a relatively limited number of options. There are several reasons why we might think that particular forms would be re-invented. So we need to be careful. If we can demonstrate several, independent, measures of similarity between assemblages in Arabia and Africa which date to similar times then we think this provides good evidence for population connections. We do not think that there is a single ‘smoking gun’ which proves the ‘exodus’ out of Africa. We are using various techniques to understand lithic variability, particularly the development of multivariate statistical techniques rather than traditional typological approaches.
These factors said, we find it provocative that we are finding both similar core reduction strategies (particular methods of removing sharp flakes of rock from nodules of rock) and tools which were then made at several sites in interior Arabia, with areas such as East Africa, the possible homeland of Homo sapiens according to many specialists. We think that the discovery of several sites in the interior of Arabia with centripetal Levallois technology is very important, and as mentioned above its similarities with assemblages in Africa (where this kind of technology is found first, more than 200 thousand years ago), the Levant (around 120-80 thousand years ago) and India (around 80 thousand years ago) are something we think very significant. It is also key that similar technology was being used in different ecological zones, with different raw materials etc. This removes some of the ‘pragmatic’ factors, which can make lithics look similar or different, and suggests cultural connections.
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Distribution of main sites with Nubian cores in Eastern Africa and Arabian Peninsula. Illustrated cores do not represent actual size. 1. Al-Kharj 22; 2. Aybut Al Auwal; 3. Shabwa; 4. Hadramawt; 5. Aduma; 6. Gademotta; 7. Asfet; 8. Nazlet Khater 1; 9. Abydos. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069221.g011*
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Nubian preferential Levallois cores from Al-Kharj 22. Drawings by G. Devilder, CNRS. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069221.g006*
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An example of a Levallois core from southern Arabia. Note the large flake scar which has been shaped in a specific manner by preparatory flaking of the margins. (credit: Huw Groucutt)
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Q: What is the latest assessment based on the most recent evidence of the environment that existed during Middle Paleolithic times in parts of the Arabian Peninsula, specifically focusing on those areas that were suggested to be friendly to human habitation?
Crassard:
Several international teams are now working in the Arabian Peninsula, and environmental studies are key in understanding how and when it was more viable for human groups to colonize (and stay in) Arabia. These studies need to be combined with archaeological findings and genetics studies. It has been hypothesized from the first studies that human groups could have migrated to Arabia only during ‘windows of opportunity’, meaning only when climate was more humid, allowing better access to food (fauna and plants) and water (drinking water from springs, water resources and biotopes from lakes, for example). But new data gathered now suggest a more complex situation in Arabia, as a succession of contraction and expansion of population may have occurred, sometimes in direct relation to humidity increasing or decreasing, though not necessarily, as human groups could have gathered together in refugia at specific periods of time. It is nevertheless very difficult to consider Arabia as a single region that would develop in a homogeneous way: Arabia is very diverse, topographically and in term of climates, even today. Palaeoenvironmental studies need to take this factor into account and need to focus more and more on regional and local studies, rather than on global studies considering Arabia as a whole.
Ash Parton (specialist on palaeoenvironmental change for the Palaeodeserts project):
The expansion of Middle Palaeolithic communities across Arabia is intrinsically linked to periods of increased rainfall when the land became green. In the present day, monsoon rains only reach the very south-southwestern edges of the peninsula; however, palaeoclimatic evidence suggests that over the past 130,000 years there have been several periods in which these rains extended all the way into the desert interior. Utilizing a technique that allows researchers to know when individual grains of sand were buried (optically stimulated luminescence dating), findings suggest that the ‘greening of Arabia’ occurred approximately every 22,000 years between around 130,000 and 50,000 years ago. During these times drainage systems became active, leading to the expansion of large meandering rivers and the development of vast freshwater lakes, some of which were up to 2000 km². Palaeoenvironmental evidence from relict lake beds in what are now the hyper-arid Nefud and Rub al Khali deserts of Saudi Arabia, also shows that these large lakes were fringed with grasslands and trees, and home to a wide variety of fauna. Additionally, advanced mapping techniques using satellite data in conjunction with ground-based landscape studies indicate that alongside the larger lakes were many, possibly thousands, of smaller water bodies. This dramatically different landscape would have proved critical to the early peopling of Arabia, and instrumental in determining the development of our species.
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Sediments at the Jubbah site show environmental change through time. Young orange sand on the surface, white sediments represent a phase of lake formation around 125,000 years ago, the fine sands below this date to more than 200,000 thousand years ago and contain the oldest identified Middle Palaeolithic artifacts in Arabia. (credit: Huw Groucutt/Palaeodeserts Project)
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Dr. Tom White (University of Oxford) samples ancient lake sediments dating to around 100 thousand years ago for molluscs and other indicators of ancient environmental conditions. (credit: Richard Jennings/Palaeodeserts Project)
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Q: What have been the challenges of doing work in those key areas of investigation?
Crassard:
Challenges in the area were clearly linked to the lack of research in the last decades, comparing with better-known regions such as the Near East or Europe. It was always difficult at the beginning of my research to face with the lack of interest of some colleagues, sometimes seeing Arabia as a ‘cul-de-sac’ (where nothing could have really happened…). I am happy to see that this vision has totally changed today and that many teams are now working in the region which progressively became one of the ‘hot spots’ in the world for prehistoric research today. Other challenges are also due to the political instability of the region, as for example in Yemen that is today a difficult place to work in. I am though very optimistic for the future of Arabia, and it is now a great opportunity for international teams to work in close cooperation with local and professional teams.
Groucutt:
We have found Saudi Arabia to be an extremely welcoming country, and the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities have helped massively with our collaborative field efforts. Weather in the winter in Saudi Arabia has generally been close to optimum for fieldwork, not too hot or cold and generally sunny. Saying that, on occasion it has become extremely hot, making excavations difficult. Likewise, during times when the wind picks up, one is blasted by stinging sand which finds its way into any gap that is not covered. Driving poses a challenge in remote areas, and we travel in convoys of four-wheel drive vehicles. The Saudis are excellent off-road drivers, but we have had a few incidents of getting stuck in vast sand dunes! Some of the sites are very remote, so a lot of driving is involved.
Because Arabia is so unknown, the biggest challenge has been the lack of reference points. We are largely discovering things from scratch. This has been a challenge, but also allows us to approach the fieldwork with an open mind and not focus on one particular type of site. The academic freedom of working in such a poorly understood area is extremely liberating. When we find a site it is very exciting as whatever age it turns out to be is still an important discovery, unlike better-known areas where only finds of particular time periods are of much importance, as many sites are already known. So the lack of knowledge on Arabia is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Q: What is the focus of future efforts?
Crassard:
Future efforts are focused on the finding of more stratified sites. Most of the artifacts have been found on the surface, presenting difficulties in dating, and thus limiting our understanding of critical aspects such as chronology, dispersals, migration routes, and human species. The finding of human fossils is also a goal for every team working in Arabia, and this will definitely be a huge discovery. Multidisciplinary research is really the key to future work in Arabia and the teams working there have understood this. Arabia is today a fantastic laboratory to develop research on human origins — not only on its characteristics, but also in developing new methodologies (modeling, dating, surveying). We are experimenting in a very important moment in the development of prehistoric research in Arabia, and I hope this will continue in an exponential way.
Groucutt:
In terms of future archaeological fieldwork, a key aim is to increase the number of excavated and dated sites so that we can robustly compare findings. As almost every new site (or group of sites) reveals a different form of technology, often using different raw materials and dating to a different time, we still have a lot left to work out. The record seems to indicate repeated dispersals into Arabia, followed by local adaptation. In that sense researchers need to stop treating Arabia as just a passive receiver of dispersals from outside, or as a route to somewhere else, and see it as an area with its own complicated history. Aside from the general ‘more digs, more dates’ aim, two key areas we in the Palaeodeserts project are working on are 1) developing landscape perspectives, i.e. not just looking at single sites, but trying to understand how hominins used and moved around landscapes, and 2) developing and applying multiple new techniques of lithic analysis, from biochemical analysis of residues found on lithics which can tell us what they were used for, through to sophisticated multivariate statistical approaches to objectively understand similarities and differences.
In environmental terms we are trying to understand more nuanced and sensitive archives. Much of the traditional picture of ancient climate change in Arabia has been built on speleothems (e.g. stalactites, etc.). These are important, but their formation tends to only reflect the very wettest times. We are studying records such as lake sediment records and alluvial fans, as these are more sensitive indicators of environmental and landscape change. Through these we are trying to move beyond simply saying Arabia was either ‘wet’ or ‘dry’. We are also working on developing our understanding of palaeoecology. For instance, another postdoc at Oxford working on the Palaeodeserts Project, Dr. Tom White, is an expert on ancient molluscs. These can provide very interesting information on the characteristics of ancient lakes (i.e. how salty the water was) and nuances such as the level of seasonality. This kind of information is much more valuable than simple dichotomies of wet and dry, and allows us to understand environmental variability at a scale closer to that of human lives.
Finally, the hunt for fossils of early humans continues. Arabia is full of ancient lake beds, caves and other places where fossil material can be preserved. I am confident that human fossils will be found in Arabia. It is just a matter of where and when.
About the Scientists
Rémy Crassard
Rémy’s personal route to Arabia is due to a first experience in Oman in 1998, when he was a student of anthropology at La Sorbonne University in Paris. He discovered a region of the world that was totally unknown to him, as his original aim was to specialize in Mesoamerican archaeology. Gradually, through many meetings with researchers and scholars, he had the opportunity to work in Yemen where it was already difficult to go. After several experiences both in Europe and Arabia, he spent three years in Yemen to do PhD research and in the process became a specialist of the region. As his PhD was focused on doing a ‘panorama’ of the prehistory of Yemen, from the origins to the last productions of stone tools (at the beginning of the Common Era), he became involved in many international projects dealing with all kinds of artefacts and periods. Today, he finds himself in many places within the Arabian Peninsula, with the goal of developing his research through at least two very different perspectives: the Middle Paleolithic and the origins of the peopling by AMHs, and the rise of the Neolithic in Arabia and its specificities: Arabia being closed to ‘core areas’ of the Neolithic such as the Levant, although apparently developing in an isolated way. “I am very excited about the actual development of archaeological research in the Arabian Peninsula,” he says, “as researchers around the world have recently recognized the importance of Arabia that was for so many years an empty spot on the global archaeological map.” Rémy is considered a leading authority on the study of lithic industries of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods in the Arabian Peninsula and has co-authored major research papers related to the subject. (Photo courtesy Rémy Crassard and the Palaeodeserts Project)
Huw Groucutt
While acquiring his Masters degree, Huw began to recognize that Arabia represented a large gap in scholarly understanding of the human prehistoric past. There was a prolific amount of research happening in areas at the edge of the Pleistocene world (South Africa, Europe) and small areas (the Levant), yet vast and central areas such as Arabia were all but unknown. He contacted Professor Michael Petraglia to determine if he would be interested in supervising his PhD research on the Arabian Middle Palaeolithic. He was very keen and we soon got to work. Mike had been working in Saudi Arabia for about ten years and all indications were that the region was ready for a major expansion in research. “When I started my PhD in 2009, not a single Middle Palaeolithic site in Arabia was dated,” says Groucutt. “That picture is rapidly changing. Mike and I and various collaborators started to do increasingly long field seasons in Saudi Arabia. I completed my PhD and Mike was awarded a large grant by the European Research Council for what is called the ‘Palaeodeserts’ project, which is run by Mike.” Huw has co-authored a number of recent research papers related to his work in Arabia and will continue to be a major player in developments in this area for years to come. (Photo courtesy Palaeodeserts Project)
Ash Parton
Dr. Ash Parton, of the University of Oxford, is a specialist on palaeoenvironmental change for the Palaeodeserts project. He focuses on researching the palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental changes in Arabia throughout the Late Quaternary. In particular, his research investigates the nature and timing of humid phases from Marine Isotope Stage 7 to 3, through the development of geomatic and multiproxy palaeoenvironmental records.
The broader aim of this research is to establish how incursions of monsoon rainfall into Arabia facilitated the dispersal of hominin populations. (Photo courtesy Palaeodeserts Project)
Michael Petraglia
Although not interviewed for this article, Michael Petraglia heads the Palaeodeserts Project. He is Professor of Human Evolution and Prehistory, Senior Research Fellow and the Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Archaeology, Art & Culture, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. He is also a Senior Research Fellow, Linacre College (Oxford), and a member of the Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
His research work includes modern human origins, palaeolithic archaeology, lithic technology, evolution of cognition and out of Africa dispersals. His primary regions of research are the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent and Eastern North America.
A special thanks goes to him for facilitating these interviews and directing the author to key resources related to the fieldwork being conducted on the Arabian Peninsula. (Photo courtesy Palaeodeserts Project)
Groucutt, Huw S., Petraglia, Michael D., The Prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula: Deserts, Dispersals, and Demography, Evolutionary Anthropology 21: 113-125 (2012)
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