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First high mountain settlers at the start of the Neolithic already engaged in other livestock activities apart from transhumance

Posted on December 21, 2023 by UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA -

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA—The research on management strategies and use of animal resources in high mountain areas during the Early Neolithic, approximately 6,500 to 7,500 years ago, was conditioned by the presumption that human occupancy of these regions were mainly seasonal and that economic practices focused greatly on making use of wild resources. With regards to livestock rearing, the role of sheep and goat transhumance in high mountain areas has stood out traditionally, while only a marginal role has been given to other livestock activities, in which the temporary maintenance of these animal flocks has been highlighted.

Researchers from the Archaeozoology Laboratory and the High Mountain Archaeology Group of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the University of Évora (HERCULES Laboratory), the Milà i Fontanals Institution-CSIC and the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Government of Aragon, have now for the first time managed to characterize the livestock practices and feeding strategies of domesticated animals in high mountain regions during the Early Neolithic, specifically in the archaeological site of Coro Trasito, located in the region of Sobrarbe, Aragon. Their research has yielded new elements to be used in the study of the complexity of neolithisation processes in the Central Pyrenees.

The study* conducted by the research team focused on assessing animal ecology, livestock management strategies and feeding practices implemented by the first societies settling in high mountain regions (over 1,500 metres above sea level). To do so, the team became the first to apply to high mountain contexts a combination of analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen – the study of these two isotopes can be used to determine the diet and the position in the food chain of the animals – and the archaeozoological analysis of the remains of animals from that period. Thanks to this combination, researchers were able to document that management and feeding strategies differed among flocks.

The results obtained showed that flocks belonging to these first settlers were small and formed by a few number of each species: cows, goats, sheep and pigs (Bos taurus, Capra hircus, Ovis aries and Sus domesticus), and were mainly used for their meat and milk production. In addition, researchers were able to document the rise in the economic importance of pigs (Sus domesticus) during the Neolithic.

The presence in some of the cases studied of different ways of managing the feeding of animals, with access to different pastures and the possible provision of forage, mainly from surplus agricultural products, shows that livestock practices developed at the Coro Trasito site were consolidated practices at the start of the Neolithic and related to agricultural practices. The study also demonstrates how flocks were adapted to the environmental conditions of the cave.

The results of the archaeozoological, isotopic and archaeological analyses reveal that the inhabitants of the Coro Trasito cave made use mainly of domestic resources. In addition, the presence of transformation activities related to dairy products and fat, as well as the existence of storage structures within the cave, point to the complexity of neolithisation processes in the Central Pyrenees and how these areas were rapidly integrated into an even wider and more complex economic system.

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Above: Image of the southern slope of Sierra de Tucas (Huesca, Spain). The arrow indicates Coro Trasito cave. Below: Entrance to Coro Trasito cave. (B) Plan view of Coro Trasito cave, showing the location of the 2011 and 2013 test-pit and the area of the extended excavation. The isocotes indicate every 20 cm. © 2023 Navarrete, Viñerta, Clemente-Conte, Gassiot, Rey Lanaspa and Saña, CC-BY-4.0, Creative Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA news release

*Navarrete V, Viñerta A, Clemente-Conte I, Gassiot E, Rey Lanaspa J and Saña M (2023) Early husbandry practices in highland areas during the Neolithic: the case of Coro Trasito cave (Huesca, Spain). Front. Environ. Archaeol. 2:1309907. doi: 10.3389/fearc.2023.1309907

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Rise of archery in Andes Mountains dated to 5,000 years ago — earlier than previous research

Posted on December 20, 2023 by University of California-Davis -

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS—When did archery arise in the Americas? And what were the effects of this technology on society?

These questions have long been debated among anthropologists and archaeologists. But a study* led by a University of California, Davis, anthropologist, is shining light on this mystery.

Focusing on the Lake Titicaca Basin in the Andes mountains, anthropologists found through analysis of 1,179 projectile points that the rise of archery technology dates to around 5,000 years ago. Previous research held that archery in the Andes emerged around 3,000 years ago.

The new research indicates that the adoption of bow-and-arrow technology coincided with both the expansion of exchange networks and the growing tendency for people to reside in villages.

“We think our paper is groundbreaking because it gives us a chance to see how society changed throughout the Andes throughout ancient times by presenting a huge number of artifacts from a vast area of South America,” said Luis Flores-Blanco, an anthropology doctoral student and corresponding author of the paper. “This is among the first instances in which Andean archaeologists have investigated social complexity through the quantitative analysis of stone tools.”

The study was published online in November in Quaternary International.

Researchers said increasing social complexity in the region is usually investigated through analysis of monumental architecture and ceramics rather than projectile points, which are historically linked to foraging communities.

Pooling from 10,000 years of history

For the study, the team examined more than a thousand projectile points created over 10,000 years. Each projectile point originated in the Lake Titicaca Basin, specifically the Ilave and Ramis valleys, which are located southwest and northwest of the basin, respectively.

Flores-Blanco said it’s among the highest plateau lands explored and conquered by humans, with Lake Titicaca sitting at an elevation of 12,500 feet.

“At Titicaca, Andeans accomplished the remarkable achievement of domesticating plants like the potato, leaving behind a nutritious legacy that is still appreciated today,” he said. “On top of that, the Tiwanaku were one of the major Andean civilizations that built their vast territory here. Even the Inca Empire claimed this territory was their mythical place of origin. Our study digs even deeper and goes to the roots of this Andean civilization.”

In their analysis, Flores-Blanco and his colleagues considered each projectile’s date of origin and then measured its length, width, thickness and weight. They noticed that older projectile points — from the Early Archaic through the Late Archaic — were larger. A significant decrease in size occurred during the Terminal Archaic period, around 5,000 years ago. The team hypothesized that this size shift indicates a change in preference from spear-throwing technology to bow-and-arrow technology, but without abandoning the old technologies.

In addition, the team compared their projectile data to archaeological data from the region concerning settlement sizes, raw material availability and cranial trauma data. During the Terminal Archaic period, settlement sizes increased but the total number of settlement sites decreased, researchers said. Not only that, but the inhabitants lacked signs of social violence, even though they had access to exotic raw materials.

“Based on our discovery, we can suggest that bow-and-arrow technology could have maintained and ensured adherence to emerging social norms that were crucial, such as those observed in the development of new social institutions, like obsidian exchange hubs or among individuals establishing residence in expanding villages,” Flores-Blanco said.

Flores-Blanco co-authored the study with Lucero Cuellar, National University of San Marcos; Mark Aldenderfer, UC Merced; Charles Stanish, University of South Florida; and Randall Haas, University of Wyoming and formerly of UC Davis.

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Lake Titicaca. Mailanmaik, Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS news release

*Did archery technology precipitate complexity in the Titicaca Basin? A metric analysis of projectile points, 11–1 ka,

Quaternary International, 23-Nov-2023. 10.1016/j.quaint.2023.10.012

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Archaeomagnetic analysis of inscribed bricks from Mesopotamia

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers used baked bricks to reconstruct Earth’s magnetic field intensity in Mesopotamia during the first three millennia BCE. Archaeomagnetic techniques attempt to reconstruct the direction and intensity of Earth’s magnetic field over time and can be used to date archaeological materials. However, archaeomagnetic research is often limited by a dearth of data in certain regions and time periods. Matthew Howland and colleagues analyzed 32 inscribed baked bricks from Mesopotamia to produce precise archaeomagnetic datapoints spanning the third to first millennia BCE. During the kiln firing process, iron oxide minerals within the bricks record the intensity of Earth’s magnetic field at the time the bricks were made. The authors interpreted Sumerian and Akkadian inscriptions on the bricks and associated them with the reigns of 12 Mesopotamian kings, enabling dating at a higher resolution compared with radiocarbon methods. The results corroborate data from neighboring regions pertaining to a period of high geomagnetic field intensity from around 1050 to 550 BCE and known as the Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic anomaly. According to the authors, the findings provide insight into the dynamics of Earth’s magnetic field and establish a baseline for accurately dating archaeological materials from Mesopotamia during the first three millennia BCE, a region and period relevant for studies on the development of urbanism and social complexity.

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A mudbrick dated to approximately 1800—1736 BCE, featuring an inscription that reads, “Palace of Iakūn-dīri son of Suma/tanim, king of the land Huršitum.” Matthew D. Howland

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Exploring geomagnetic variations in ancient mesopotamia: Archaeomagnetic study of inscribed bricks from the 3rd–1st millennia BCE,” by Matthew D. Howland et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 18-Dec-2023. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313361120

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North America’s first people may have arrived by sea ice highway

Posted on December 15, 2023 by American Geophysical Union -

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION—SAN FRANCISCO — One of the hottest debates in archeology is how and when humans first arrived in North America. Archaeologists have traditionally argued that people walked through an ice-free corridor that briefly opened between ice sheets an estimated 13,000 years ago.

But a growing number of archeological and genetic finds — including human footprints in New Mexico dated to around 23,000 years old — suggests that people made their way onto the continent much earlier. These early Americans likely traveled along the Pacific coastline from Beringia, the land bridge between Asia and North America that emerged during the last glacial maximum when ice sheets bound up large amounts of water causing sea levels to fall.

Now, in research to be presented Friday, 15 December at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting (AGU23) in San Franciso, paleoclimate reconstructions of the Pacific Northwest hint that sea ice may have been one way for people to move farther south.

The idea that early Americans may have traveled along the Pacific Coast isn’t new. People were likely south of the massive ice sheets that once covered much of the continent by at least 16,000 years ago. Given that the ice-free corridor wouldn’t be open for thousands of years before these early arrivals, scientists instead proposed that people may have moved along a “kelp highway.” This theory holds that early Americans slowly traveled down into North America in boats, following the bountiful goods found in coastal waters.

Archeologists have found evidence of coastal settlements in western Canada dating from as early as 14,000 years ago. But in 2020, researchers noted that freshwater from melting glaciers at the time may have created a strong current that would make it difficult for people to travel along the coast.

Ice highway over dangerous water

To get a fuller picture of ocean conditions during these crucial windows of human migration, Summer Praetorius of the US Geological Survey and her colleagues looked at climate proxies in ocean sediment from the coast. Most of the data came from tiny, fossilized plankton. The abundance and chemistry of these organisms help reconstruct ocean temperatures, salinity and sea ice cover.

Praetorious’ presentation is part of a session on the climate history and geology of Beringia and the North Pacific during the Pleistocene, the current ice age, at AGU23. The week-long conference has brought 24,000 experts from across the spectrum of the Earth and space sciences to San Francisco this year and connected 3,000 online attendees.

Praetorious’ team used climate models and found that ocean currents were more than twice the strength they are today during the height of the last glacial maximum around 20,000 years ago due to glacial winds and lower sea levels. While not impossible, to paddle against, these conditions would have made traveling by boat very difficult, Praetorius said.

However, the records also showed that much of the area was home to winter sea ice until around 15,000 years ago. As a cold-adapted people, “rather than having to paddle against this horrible glacial current, maybe they were using the sea ice as a platform,” Praetorius said.

Arctic people today travel along sea ice on dog sleds and snow mobiles. Early Americans may also have used the ‘sea ice highway’ to get around and hunt marine mammals, slowly making their way into North America in the process, Praetorius said. The climate data suggest conditions along the coastal route may have been conducive to migration between 24,500-22,000 years ago and 16,400-14,800 years ago, possibly aided by the presence of winter sea ice.

While proving that people were using sea ice to travel will be tricky given most of the archeological sites are underwater, the theory provides a new framework for understanding how humans may have arrived in North America without a land bridge or easy ocean travel.

And the sea ice highway isn’t mutually exclusive with other human migrations further down the line, says Praetorius. The team’s models show , the Alaskan current had calmed down by 14,000 years ago, making it easier for people to travel by boat along the coast.

“Nothing is off the table,” she said. “We will always be surprised by ancient human ingenuity.”

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Article Source: AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION news release

*PP51A-05 Did a “Sea-ice Highway” facilitate early human migration from Beringia into North America along the coastal route

Cover Image, Top Left: Pexels, Pixabay

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AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

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Were Neanderthals morning people ?

Posted on December 14, 2023 by Oxford University Press -

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA—A new paper in Genome Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, finds that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be “early risers,” the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to bed earlier.

All anatomically modern humans trace their origin to Africa around 300 thousand years ago, where environmental factors shaped many of their biological features. Approximately seventy-thousand years ago, the ancestors of modern Eurasian humans began to migrate out to Eurasia, where they encountered diverse new environments, including higher latitudes with greater seasonal variation in daylight and temperature.

But other hominins, such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans, had lived in Eurasia for more than 400,000 years. These archaic hominins diverged from modern humans around 700,000 ago, and as a result, our ancestors and archaic hominins evolved under different environmental conditions. This resulted in the accumulation of lineage-specific genetic variation and phenotypes. When humans came to Eurasia, they interbred with the archaic hominins on the continent, and this created the potential for humans to gain genetic variants already adapted to these new environments.

Previous work has demonstrated that much of the archaic hominin ancestry in modern humans was not beneficial and removed by natural selection, but some of the archaic hominin variants remaining in human populations show evidence of adaptation. For example, archaic genetic variants have been associated with differences in hemoglobin levels at higher altitude in Tibetans, immune resistance to new pathogens, levels of skin pigmentation, and fat composition.

Changes in the pattern and level of light exposure have biological and behavioral consequences that can lead to evolutionary adaptations. Scientists have previously explored the evolution of circadian adaptation in insects, plants, and fishes extensively, but it is not well studied in humans. The Eurasian environments where Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for several hundred thousand years are located at higher latitudes with more variable daylight times than the landscape where modern humans evolved before leaving Africa. Thus, the researchers explored whether there was genetic evidence for differences in the circadian clocks of Neanderthals and modern humans.

The researchers defined a set of 246 circadian genes through a combination of literature search and expert knowledge. They found hundreds of genetic variants specific to each lineage with the potential to influence genes involved in the circadian clock. Using artificial intelligence methods, they highlighted 28 circadian genes containing variants with potential to alter splicing in archaic humans and 16 circadian genes likely divergently regulated between present-day humans and archaic hominins. This indicated that there were likely functional differences between in the circadian clocks in archaic hominins and modern humans. Since the ancestors of Eurasian modern humans and Neanderthals interbred, it was thus possible that some humans could have obtained circadian variants from Neanderthals.

To test this, the researchers explored whether introgressed genetic variants—variants that moved from Neanderthals into modern humans—have associations with the preferences of the body for wakefulness and sleep in large cohort of several hundred thousand people from the UK Biobank. They found many introgressed variants with effects on sleep preference, and most strikingly, they found that these variants consistently increase morningness, the propensity to wake up early. This suggests a directional effect on the trait and is consistent with adaptations to high latitude observed in other animals.

Increased morningness in humans is associated with a shortened period of the circadian clock. This is likely beneficial at higher latitudes, because it has been shown to enable faster alignment of sleep/wake with external timing cues. Shortened circadian periods are required for synchronization to the extended summer light periods of high latitudes in fruit flies, and selection for shorter circadian periods has resulted in latitudinal clines of decreasing period with increasing latitude in natural fruit fly populations. Therefore, the bias toward morningness in introgressed variants may indicate selection toward shortened circadian period in the populations living at high latitudes. The propensity to be a morning person could have been evolutionarily beneficial for our ancestors living in higher latitudes in Europe and thus would have been a Neanderthal genetic characteristic worth preserving.

“By combining ancient DNA, large-scale genetic studies in modern humans, and artificial intelligence, we discovered substantial genetic differences in the circadian systems of Neanderthals and modern humans,” said the paper’s lead author, John A. Capra. “Then by analyzing the bits of Neanderthal DNA that remain in modern human genomes we discovered a striking trend: many of them have effects on the control of circadian genes in modern humans and these effects are predominantly in a consistent direction of increasing propensity to be a morning person. This change is consistent with the effects of living at higher latitudes on the circadian clocks of animals and likely enables more rapid alignment of the circadian clock with changing seasonal light patterns. Our next steps include applying these analyses to more diverse modern human populations, exploring the effects of the Neanderthal variants we identified on the circadian clock in model systems, and applying similar analyses to other potentially adaptive traits.”

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Article Source: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA news release.

*Archaic Introgression Shaped Human Circadian Traits, Genome Biology and Evolution, 14-Dec-2023. 10.1093/gbe/evad203

Cover Image, Top Left: Artist recreation of Neanderthal encampment, Pixabay

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Human brain’s high energy demands linked with more complex cognitive circuitry, not just bigger size

Posted on December 13, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—The human brain has exceptionally high metabolic demands compared with other species, accounting for roughly 20% of the body’s energy consumption. Now, brain scans from 30 people suggest that the neuromodulator activity involved in cognitive functions such as reading and memory formation may contribute most to these high energetic costs. The findings shed new light on brain evolution, indicating that human cognition may have emerged in part from the evolutionary expansion of specific brain networks – not just from a larger brain size. Common theories on human evolution propose that humans’ high cognitive capacity is largely due to an adaptive increase in brain size. However, research has shown that the scale of human brain structure is not unique among mammals, with some species having larger brains, higher brain-to-body mass ratios, or more neurons. Recent studies suggest that neuromodulator activity – dynamic regulation of neurons via chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin – may have influenced the evolution of human cognition and behavior over time. However, it has been unclear how these processes and their energy demands vary across the human brain. To investigate, Gabriel Castrillon and colleagues employed a correlative neuroimaging approach to analyze the distribution of energy usage and signaling in the brains of 30 participants, using data from positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging. The researchers measured energetic costs for signaling activities across functional networks of the brain, finding that frontoparietal networks – which have expanded most in human brain evolution – demanded around 67% more energy than sensorimotor networks per gram of tissue. Regions that exhibited more regulation from neuromodulators, such as serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline, required the most energy. “Our findings suggest that the evolution of human cognition may have emerged not only from an overall larger brain but particularly by the development of slow-acting neuromodulator circuits,” Castrillon et al. write.

Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release

*An energy costly architecture of neuromodulators for human brain evolution and cognition, Science Advances, 13-Dec-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi7632

Cover Image, Top Left: Geralt, Pixabay

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Ancient yak and cattle remains provide evidence for domestication on Tibetan Plateau by 2,500 years ago

Posted on December 13, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—New archaeological analyses of the remains of 193 yak, cattle, and their hybrids from recent excavations on the southern Tibetan Plateau reveal that these animals were likely domesticated and crossbred in the high-altitude region by at least 2,500 years ago. Present-day Tibetan herders frequently crossbreed domestic yak with non-native taurine cattle – a long-standing practice known to produce hardy hybrids that combine yaks’ endurance in harsh environments with the meat- and milk-producing capabilities of cattle. Although this practice is thought to extend back thousands of years, researchers have found limited archaeological evidence to constrain its introduction on the Tibetan Plateau. Genetic studies have offered clues about yak lineages, but it’s been difficult to distinguish between wild and domestic ancient yak remains. Recent excavations at Bangga, located about 3,750 meters above sea level on the southern Tibetan Plateau, uncovered remains of more than 10,000 mammals dated to between 3,000 and 2,200 years ago. From these remains, Ningbo Chen and colleagues identified 193 Bos specimens – including bones from 31 taurine (Bos taurus) or indicine (Bos indicus) cattle, and 13 wild or domestic yak, dated to between around 2,700 and 2,350 years ago. The researchers compared the genomes of 5 of these Bos specimens against 11 new genomes of modern Tibetan cattle, as well as previously published genomes of ancient and modern cattle and yak from across the region. Yak remains found at Bangga were closely related to present-day domestic yak, but not today’s wild yak. Cattle DNA from Bangga resembled that of older, lower-altitude taurine cattle from western Asia, as well as present-day Tibetan taurine cattle. These findings suggest that taurine cattle were likely brought to the region at least 2,500 years ago and were bred with domestic yak, Chen et al. say.

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Excavation at Bangga during the 2017 field season. Zhengwei Zhang

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Yak in western Tibetan Plateau, 4,000 meters above sea level. Zhengwei Zhang

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Tibetan yak. Zhengwei Zhang

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release

*Evidence for early domestic yak, taurine cattle, and their hybrids on the Tibetan Plateau, Science Advances, 13-Dec-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi6857

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Archaeologists unearth one of earliest known frame saddles

Posted on December 12, 2023 by University of Colorado Boulder -

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER—In April 2015, looters sacked an ancient cave burial at a site called Urd Ulaan Uneet high within the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. When police apprehended the criminals, they uncovered, among other artifacts, an elegantly carved saddle made from several pieces of birch wood.

Now, in a new study*, researchers from Mongolia collaborating with University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist William Taylor have described the find. The team’s radiocarbon dating pins the artifact to roughly the 4^th Century C.E., making it one of the earliest known frame saddles in the world.

“It was a watershed moment in the technological history of people and horses,” said Taylor, corresponding author of the new study and curator of archaeology at the CU Museum of Natural History.

He and his colleagues, including scientists from 10 countries, published their findings Dec. 12 in the journal Antiquity.

The research reveals the underappreciated role that ancient Mongolians played in the spread of horse riding technology and culture around the globe. Those advances ushered in a new and sometimes brutal era of mounted warfare around the same time as the fall of the Roman Empire.

The discovery also highlights the deep relationships between human and animals in Mongolia. For millennia, pastoral peoples have traveled between the vast grasslands of the Mongolian Steppe with their horses—which, in the region, tend to be short but sturdy, capable of surviving winter temperatures that can plummet far below freezing. Airag, a lightly alcoholic beverage made from fermented horse milk, remains a popular libation in Mongolia.

“Ultimately, technology emerging from Mongolia has, through a domino effect, ended up shaping the horse culture that we have in America today, especially our traditions of saddlery and stirrups,” Taylor said.

But these insights also come at a time when Mongolia’s horse culture is beginning to disappear, said study lead author Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan.

“Horses have not only influenced the history of the region but also left a deep mark on the art and worldview of the Nomadic Mongols,” said Bayarsaikhan, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany. “However, the age of technology is slowly erasing the culture and use of horses. Instead of herders riding horses, more and more people are riding motorcycles in the plains of Mongolia.”

Mounted combat

Bayarsaikhan was working as a curator at the National Museum of Mongolia when he and his colleagues got the call from police in Hovd Province. The team later excavated the Urd Ulaan Uneet cave and unearthed the mummified remains of a horse, which the group partially described in a 2018 paper.

The saddle itself was made from about six pieces of birch wood held together with wooden nails. It bears traces of red paint with black trim and includes two leather straps that likely once supported stirrups. (The researchers also reported an iron stirrup recently discovered from around the same time period in eastern Mongolia).

The group couldn’t definitively trace back where those materials came from. Birch trees, however, grow commonly in the Mongolian Altai, suggesting that locals had crafted the saddle themselves, not traded for it.

Taylor explained that humans had used pads, a form of proto-saddle, to keep their rear ends comfortable on horseback since the earliest days of mounted riding. Rigid wooden saddles, which were much sturdier, paired with stirrups opened a new range of things that people could do with horses.

“One thing they very gave rise to was heavy cavalry and high-impact combat on horseback,” Taylor said. “Think of jousting in Medieval Europe.”

Traveling west

In the centuries after the Mongolian saddle was crafted, these types of tools spread rapidly west across Asia and into the early Islamic world. There, cavalry forces became key to conquest and trade across large portions of the Mediterranean region and northern Africa.

Where it all began, however, is less clear. Archaeologists have typically considered modern-day China the birthplace of the first frame saddles and stirrups—with some finds dating back to the 5^th to 6^th Century C.E. or even earlier.

The new study, however, complicates that picture, Taylor said.

“It’s not the only piece of information suggesting that Mongolia might have been either among the very first adopters of these new technologies—or could, in fact, be the place where they were first innovated,” he said.

He suspects that Mongolia’s place in that history may have gone underappreciated for so long in part because of the region’s geography. The population density in the country’s mountainous expanses is low, among the lowest on Earth, making it difficult to encounter and analyze important archaeological finds.

Bayarsaikhan, for his part, calls for more archaeological research in the nation to better tell the story of horses in Mongolia.

“Mongolia is one of the few nations that has preserved horse culture from ancient times to the present day,” he said. “But the scientific understanding of the origin of this culture is still incomplete.”

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Scientists uncovered a elegantly carved saddle made from several pieces of birch wood from an ancient cave in Mongolia. William Taylor/ CU Boulder

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER news release.

*The origins of saddles and riding technology in East Asia: discoveries from the Mongolian Altai, Antiquity, 12-Dec-2023. 10.15184/aqy.2023.172

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Ancient Balkan genomes trace the rise and fall of Roman Empire’s frontier, reveal Slavic migrations to southeastern Europe

Posted on December 7, 2023 by University of Oklahoma -

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA—A multidisciplinary study* has reconstructed the genomic history of the Balkan Peninsula during the first millennium of the common era, a time and place of profound demographic, cultural and linguistic change. The team has recovered and analyzed whole genome data from 146 ancient people excavated primarily from Serbia and Croatia—more than a third of which came from the Roman military frontier at the massive archaeological site of Viminacium in Serbia—which they co-analyzed with data from the rest of the Balkans and nearby regions.

The work, published in the journal Cell, highlights the cosmopolitanism of the Roman frontier and the long-term consequences of migrations that accompanied the breakdown of Roman control, including the arrival of people speaking Slavic languages. Archaeological DNA reveals that despite nation-state boundaries that divide them, populations in the Balkans have been shaped by shared demographic processes.

“Archaeogenetics is an indispensable complement to archaeological and historical evidence. A new and much richer picture comes into view when we synthesize written records, archaeological remains like grave goods and human skeletons, and ancient genomes”, said co-author Kyle Harper, a historian of the ancient Roman world at the University of Oklahoma.

Massive demographic influx into the Balkans from the East during the Roman Empire – largely from the eastern Mediterranean and even from East Africa

After Rome occupied the Balkans, it turned this border region into a crossroads, one that would eventually give rise to 26 Roman Emperors, including Constantine the Great, who shifted the capital of the empire to the eastern Balkans when he founded the city of Constantinople.

The team’s analysis of ancient DNA shows that during the period of Roman control, there was a large demographic contribution of people of Anatolian descent that left a long-term genetic imprint in the Balkans. This ancestry shift is very similar to what a previous study showed happened in the megacity of Rome itself—the original core of the empire—but it is remarkable that this also occurred at the Roman Empire’s periphery.

A particular surprise is that there is no evidence of a genetic impact on the Balkans of migrants of Italic descent: “During the Imperial period, we detect an influx of Anatolian ancestry in the Balkans and not that of populations descending from the people of Italy,” said Íñigo Olalde, Ikerbasque researcher at the University of the Basque Country and co-lead author of the study. “These Anatolians were intensively integrated into local society. At Viminacium, for example, there is an exceptionally rich sarcophagus in which we find a man of local descent and a woman of Anatolian descent buried together.”

The team also discovered cases of sporadic long-distance mobility from far-away regions, such as an adolescent boy whose ancestral genetic signature most closely matches the region of Sudan in sub-Saharan Africa and whose childhood diet was very different from the rest of the individuals analyzed. He died in the 2nd century CE and was buried with an oil lamp representing an iconography of the eagle related to Jupiter, one of the most important gods for the Romans.

“We don’t know if he was a soldier, slave or merchant, but the genetic analysis of his burial reveals that he probably spent his early years in the region of present-day Sudan, outside the limits of the Empire, and then followed a long journey that ended with his death at Viminacium (present-day Serbia), on the northern frontier of the Empire,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox, principal investigator at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and director of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona.

The Roman Empire incorporated “barbarian” peoples long before its collapse

The study identified individuals of mixed Northern European and Pontic steppe descent in the Balkans from the 3rd century, long predating the final breakdown of Roman imperial control. Anthropological analysis of their skulls shows that some of them were artificially deformed, a custom typical of some populations of the steppes, including groups labeled by ancient authors as “Huns.” These results reflect the integration of people from beyond the Danube into Balkan society centuries before the fall of the Empire.

“The borders of the Roman Empire differed from the borders of today’s nation-states. The Danube served as the geographic and military boundary of the Empire. But it also acted as a crucial communication corridor that was permeable to the movement of people attracted by the wealth Rome invested in its frontier zone,” said co-author Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History at Harvard University.

Slavic populations changed the demographic composition of the Balkans

The Roman Empire permanently lost control of the Balkans in the sixth century, and the study reveals the subsequent large-scale arrival in the Balkans of individuals genetically similar to the modern Slavic-speaking populations of Eastern Europe. Their genetic fingerprint accounts for 30-60% of the ancestry of today’s Balkan peoples, representing one of the largest permanent demographic shifts anywhere in Europe in the early medieval period.

The study is the first to detect the sporadic arrival of individual migrants who long preceded later population movements, such as a woman of Eastern European descent buried in a high imperial cemetery. Then, from the 6th century onwards, migrants from Eastern Europe are observed in larger numbers; as in Anglo-Saxon England, the population changes in this region were at the extreme high end of what occurred in Europe and were accompanied by language shifts.

“According to our ancient DNA analysis, this arrival of Slavic-speaking populations in the Balkans took place over several generations and involved entire family groups, including both men and women,” explains Pablo Carrión, a researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and co-lead author of the study.

The establishment of Slavic populations in the Balkans was greatest in the north, with a genetic contribution of 50-60% in present-day Serbia, and gradually less towards the south, with 30-40% in mainland Greece and up to 20% in the Aegean islands. “The major genetic impact of Slavic migrations is visible not only in current Balkan Slavic-speaking populations, but also in places that today do not speak Slavic languages such as Romania and Greece,” said co-senior author David Reich, professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and professor of human evolutionary biology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Bringing together historians, archaeologists, and geneticists

The study involved an interdisciplinary collaboration of over 70 researchers, including archaeologists who excavated the sites, anthropologists, historians and geneticists.

“This work exemplifies how genomic data can be useful for getting beyond contentious debates around identity and ancestry that have been inspired by historical narratives rooted in nascent nineteenth-century nationalisms and that have contributed to conflict in the past,” Lalueza-Fox said.

The team also generated genomic data from diverse present-day Serbs that could be compared with ancient genomes and other present-day groups from the region.

“We found there was no genomic database of modern Serbs. We therefore sampled people who self-identified as Serbs on the basis of shared cultural traits, even if they lived in different countries such as Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro or North Macedonia”, said co-author Miodrag Grbic, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Co-analyzing the data with that of other modern people in the region, as well as the ancient individuals, shows that the genomes of the Croats and Serbs are very similar, reflecting shared heritage with similar proportions of Slavic and local Balkan ancestry.

“Ancient DNA analysis can contribute, when analyzed together with archaeological data and historical records, to a richer understanding of the history of Balkans history,” said Grbic. “The picture that emerges is not of division, but of shared history. The people of the Iron Age throughout the Balkans were similarly impacted by migration during the time of the Roman Empire, and by Slavic migration later on. Together, these influences resulted in the genetic profile of the modern Balkans—regardless of national boundaries.”

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Skull of an individual of East African ancestral origin found in Viminacium, with the oil lamp featuring an eagle found in his tomb. Photo credit: Miodrag (Mike) Grbic.

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Exceptionally rich sarcophagus found at Viminacium in which a man of local descent and a woman of Anatolian descent were buried. It features several gold and silver objects including two gold earrings, a silver mirror, a silver brooch and 151 gold beads. Photo credit: Ilija Mikić.

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Article Source: University of Oklahoma news release.

*Olalde & Carrión et al., 2023, Cell 186, 1-14; December 7, 2023; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.10.018

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Baboons in captivity in Ancient Egypt: insights from collection of mummies

Posted on December 6, 2023 by PLOS -

PLOS—Baboons were raised in captivity before being mummified in Ancient Egyptian sites, according to a study published December 6, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Wim Van Neer of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium and colleagues.

For over a millennium, from the 9th Century BC to the 4th Century AD, ancient Egyptians venerated and mummified various animal species for religious purposes. Included among these animals were baboons, notably species not native to ancient Egypt, and not much is known about how these animals were acquired and kept. In this study, the researchers examined a collection of baboon mummies from the ancient Egyptian site of Gabbanat el-Qurud, the so-called Valley of the Monkeys on the west bank of Luxor.

The team examined skeletal remains representing at least 36 individual baboons of varying ages, dated to between 800-500 BC. Lesions, deformations, and other abnormalities on the bones indicate that most of the baboons suffered from poor nutrition and a lack of sunlight, most likely as a result of being born and raised in captivity. The authors note that similar conditions are seen in baboon remains from two other sites of similar age, Saqqara and Tuna el-Gebel, suggesting a fairly consistent mode of captive keeping in all three sites.

These results provide insights into how baboons were kept and treated in Ancient Egypt before their eventual mummification, although more details remain to be explored. The authors suggest, for example, that further examination of the animals’ teeth could provide more data on the diets they were fed, and if it is possible to extract DNA from these remains, genetic data might reveal information on where the animals were caught in the wild and what breeding practices their keepers were employing.

The authors add: “Life was not easy for Egypt’s sacred baboons. Scientific study shows they suffered from malnutrition and lack of sunlight.”

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Overview of some skulls available for study. Bea De Cupere, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Van Neer W, Udrescu M, Peters J, De Cupere B, Pasquali S, Porcier S (2023) Palaeopathological and demographic data reveal conditions of keeping of the ancient baboons at Gabbanat el-Qurud (Thebes, Egypt). PLoS ONE 18(12): e0294934. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294934

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Straight-tusked elephant exploitation by Neanderthals

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers report evidence of widespread butchering of straight-tusked elephants by Neanderthals during the Last Interglacial Period. Previous analysis of faunal materials excavated at Neumark-Nord, Germany revealed evidence that Neanderthals hunted and butchered straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) at the site for at least 2,000 years during the Last Interglacial Period, 125,000 years ago. However, how widespread such practices were among Neanderthals is unclear due to a dearth of evidence from other sites. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Lutz Kindler, and Wil Roebroeks documented evidence* of straight-tusked elephant exploitation at two additional, contemporary Neanderthal sites at Gröbern and Taubach in Germany. Fossil P. antiquus remains from all three sites displayed cut marks distributed across the animals’ skeletons, consistent with butchering of entire carcasses to remove all edible meat, fat, and other tissues. A high fraction of individuals among the fossil assemblages were adults, suggesting that prime-aged individuals were preferentially targeted. The authors note that processing an entire adult straight-tusked elephant, which could weigh up to 13 metric tons, could provide more than 2,500 portions of daily calories. The results suggest that Neanderthals may have possessed the means to store large quantities of meat and fat, may have temporarily gathered in larger groups than previously recognized, or a combination of both explanations. According to the authors, Neanderthals on the North European plain routinely exploited straight-tusked elephants during the Last Interglacial Period.

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Artist’s reconstruction of a group of Neanderthals butchering a straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). (It is unknown whether Neanderthals wore any type of clothing, so the depiction reflects artistic license) Credit: Alex Boersma/PNAS

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Pelvis of Gröbern elephant remains during inspection for cut marks. Image credit: Lutz Kindler.

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Widespread evidence for elephant exploitation by Last Interglacial Neanderthals on the North European plain,” by Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Lutz Kindler, and Wil Roebroeks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 4-Dec-2023. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2309427120

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See the incredible archaeology, architecture, and art of northern Spain. A unique tour with special expert guides and lecturers through the collaboration of Popular Archaeology Magazine and Stone & Compass Tours. Not to be missed. Read More About It: https://popular-archaeology.com/article/northern-spains-triple-a-archaeology-architecture-and-art/.

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Early humans hunted beavers 400,000 years ago

Posted on November 29, 2023 by JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ -

JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ—Around 400,000 years ago, early humans hunted beavers as a food resource and possibly also for their pelts. This is the conclusion of a team from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA), also in Mainz, and Leiden University in the Netherlands. In their publication* in the journal Scientific Reports, the authors show that Middle Pleistocene humans systematically fed on these smaller animals and hence had a more varied diet than thus far known. Previously, the opinion was that that hominins of this age primarily subsisted on large mammals, such as bovids and rhinoceroses, for one simple reason: “The remains of large mammals from this period are generally much better preserved than those of small ones, not to mention plant remains,” says Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Professor in the Department of Ancient Studies/Section Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology at JGU and Director of the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution, MONREPOS, in Neuwied, which is part of LEIZA. She authored the new study together with two colleagues, Lutz Kindler, also from JGU and MONREPOS, and Wil Roebroeks from Leiden University. “Until now, cut marks on Palaeolithic beaver bones had been identified very rarely and on isolated bones only. Dietrich Mania’s extensive and long-term excavations in Bilzingsleben yielded a large number of beaver remains. Their study has now revealed for the first time the long-term strategy behind the exploitation of these animals,” she explains.

Targeted hunting of young adults

The researchers used magnifying glasses and digital microscopes to examine the approximately 400,000-year-old bones of at least 94 beavers, excavated several decades ago in Bilzingsleben, Thuringia. This enabled them to identify cut marks from stone tools that indicate intensive use of the carcasses. “It is interesting that the remains in Bilzingsleben mainly represent young adult beavers,” says Gaudzinski-Windheuser. This indicates that hominins back then would have deliberately hunted inexperienced but fully grown and fat-rich animals. Fat was a very important food resource during the Pleistocene. “Until now, it was generally thought that people in Europe fed primarily on large game until around 50,000 years ago, and that this was an important difference to the more flexible dietary strategies of modern humans. We have now demonstrated that the hominin food spectrum was much broader much earlier,” says Gaudzinski-Windheuser.

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Article Source: JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ news release.

*Beaver exploitation, 400,000 years ago, testifies to prey choice diversity of Middle Pleistocene hominins,

Scientific Reports, 13-Nov-2023. 10.1038/s41598-023-46956-6

Cover Image, Top Left: Deluxtrade, Pixabay

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‘Woman the hunter’: Studies aim to correct history

Posted on November 20, 2023 by University of Notre Dame -

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME—When Cara Ocobock was a young child, she often wondered at the images in movies, books, comics and cartoons portraying prehistoric men and women as such: “man the hunter” with spear in hand, accompanied by “woman the gatherer” with a baby strapped to her back and a basket of crop seeds in hand.

“This was what everyone was used to seeing,” Ocobock said. “This was the assumption that we’ve all just had in our minds and that was carried through in our museums of natural history.”

Many years later, Ocobock, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Human Energetics Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, found herself as a human biologist studying physiology and prehistoric evidence and discovering that many of these conceptions about early women and men weren’t quite accurate. The accepted reconstruction of human evolution assumed males were biologically superior, but that interpretation wasn’t telling the whole story.

Relying on both physiological and archaeological evidence, Ocobock and her research partner, Sarah Lacy, an anthropologist with expertise in biological archaeology at the University of Delaware, recently published two studies simultaneously in the journal American Anthropologist. Their joint research, coming from these two angles, found that not only did prehistoric women engage in the practice of hunting, but their female anatomy and biology would have made them intrinsically better suited for it.

Of her and her co-author’s dual-pronged research, which was the cover story for the November issue of Scientific American, Ocobock said, “Rather than viewing it as a way of erasing or rewriting history, our studies are trying to correct the history that erased women from it.”

Female physiology and estrogen, the ‘unsung hero of life’

In their physiological study*, the two researchers explained that prehistoric females were quite capable of performing the arduous physical task of hunting prey and were likely able to hunt successfully over prolonged periods of time. From a metabolic standpoint, Ocobock explained, the female body is better suited for endurance activity, “which would have been critical in early hunting because they would have had to run the animals down into exhaustion before actually going in for the kill.”

Two huge contributors to that enhanced metabolism are hormones — in this case, estrogen and adiponectin, which are typically present in higher quantities in female bodies than in male. These two hormones play a critical role in enabling the female body to modulate glucose and fat, a function that is key in athletic performance.

Estrogen, in particular, helps regulate fat metabolism by encouraging the body to use its stored fat for energy before using up its carbohydrate stores. “Since fat contains more calories than carbs do, it’s a longer, slower burn,” Ocobock explained, “which means that the same sustained energy can keep you going longer and can delay fatigue.”

Estrogen also protects the body’s cells from damage during heat exposure due to extreme physical activity. “Estrogen is really the unsung hero of life, in my mind,” Ocobock said. “It is so important for cardiovascular and metabolic health, brain development and injury recovery.”

Adiponectin also amplifies fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrate and/or protein metabolism, allowing the body to stay the course during extended periods, especially over great distances. In this way, adiponectin is able to protect the muscles from breaking down and keeps them in better condition for sustained exercise, Ocobock explained.

The female body structure itself is another element Ocobock and Lacy found to be of advantage in terms of endurance and effectiveness for prehistoric hunters. “With the typically wider hip structure of the female, they are able to rotate their hips, lengthening their steps,” Ocobock detailed. “The longer steps you can take, the ‘cheaper’ they are metabolically, and the farther you can get, faster.

“When you look at human physiology this way, you can think of women as the marathon runners versus men as the powerlifters.”

Archaeology tells more of the story of ‘woman the hunter’

Several archaeological findings indicate prehistoric women not only shared in the resulting injuries of the dangerous business of close-contact hunting, but that it was an activity held in high esteem and valued by them. “We have constructed Neandertal hunting as an up-close-and-personal style of hunting,” Ocobock said, “meaning that hunters would often have to get up underneath their prey in order to kill them. As such, we find that both males and females have the same resulting injuries when we look at their fossil records.”

Ocobock described those traumatic injuries as being similar to those received by modern-day rodeo clowns — injuries to the head and chest where they were kicked by the animal, or to the limbs where they were bitten or received a fracture. “We find these patterns and rates of wear and tear equally in both women and men,” she said. “So they were both participating in ambush-style hunting of large game animals.”

Second, Ocobock said, there is evidence of early female hunters in the Holocene period in Peru where females were buried with hunting weapons. “You don’t often get buried with something unless it was important to you or was something that you used frequently in your life.

“Furthermore, we have no reason to believe that prehistoric women abandoned their hunting while pregnant, breastfeeding or carrying children,” Ocobock added, “nor do we see in the deep past any indication that a strict sexual division of labor existed.”

The bottom line, Ocobock noted, was that “hunting belonged to everyone, not just to males,” especially in prehistoric societies where survival was an all-hands-on-deck activity. “There weren’t enough people living in groups to be specialized in different tasks. Everyone had to be a generalist to survive.”

Fighting bias

“This revelation is especially important in the current political moment of our society where sex and gender are in a spotlight,” Ocobock said. “And I want people to be able to change these ideas of female physical inferiority that have been around for so long.”

When talking about reconstructing the past in order to better understand it — and to conduct “good science” — Ocobock said scientists have to be extremely careful about how modern-day bias can seep into one’s interpretations of the past. She cautioned that researchers have to be aware of their own biases and make sure they are asking the proper questions so the questions don’t lead them down the road of looking for what it is they want to see.

“We have to change the biases we bring to the table, or at least to give pause before we assign those biases. And in a broader sense, you cannot outrightly assume somebody’s abilities based on whatever sex or gender you have assigned by looking at them,” Ocobock concluded.

Article Source: University of Notre Dame news release.

*Woman the hunter: The physiological evidence, American Anthropologist, 4-Sep-2023. 10.1111/aman.13915

Cover Photo, Top Left: FOTO:Fortepan — ID 92423:
Adományozó/Donor: Ebner. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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AI: Researchers develop automatic text recognition for ancient cuneiform tablets

Posted on November 20, 2023 by MARTIN-LUTHER-UNIVERSITÄT HALLE-WITTENBERG -

MARTIN-LUTHER-UNIVERSITÄT HALLE-WITTENBERG—A new artificial intelligence (AI) software is now able to decipher difficult-to-read texts on cuneiform tablets. It was developed by a team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and Mainz University of Applied Sciences. Instead of photos, the AI system uses 3D models of the tablets, delivering significantly more reliable results than previous methods. This makes it possible to search through the contents of multiple tablets to compare them with each other. It also paves the way for entirely new research questions.

In their new approach, the researchers used 3D models of nearly 2,000 cuneiform tablets, including around 50 from a collection at MLU. According to estimates, around one million such tablets still exist worldwide. Many of them are over 5,000 years old and are thus among mankind’s oldest surviving written records. They cover an extremely wide range of topics: “Everything can be found on them: from shopping lists to court rulings. The tablets provide a glimpse into mankind’s past several millennia ago. However, they are heavily weathered and thus difficult to decipher even for trained eyes,” says Hubert Mara, an assistant professor at MLU.

This is because the cuneiform tablets are unfired chunks of clay into which writing has been pressed. To complicate matters, the writing system back then was very complex and encompassed several languages. Therefore, not only are optimal lighting conditions needed to recognize the symbols correctly, a lot of background knowledge is required as well. “Up until now it has been difficult to access the content of many cuneiform tablets at once – you sort of need to know exactly what you are looking for and where,” Mara adds.

His lab came up with the idea of developing a system of artificial intelligence which is based on 3D models. The new system deciphers characters better than previous methods. In principle, the AI system works along the same lines as OCR software (optical character recognition), which converts the images of writing and text into machine-readable text. This has many advantages. Once converted into computer text, the writing can be more easily read or searched through. “OCR usually works with photographs or scans. This is no problem for ink on paper or parchment. In the case of cuneiform tablets, however, things are more difficult because the light and the viewing angle greatly influence how well certain characters can be identified,” explains Ernst Stötzner from MLU. He developed the new AI system as part of his master’s thesis under Hubert Mara.

The team trained the new AI software using three-dimensional scans and additional data. Much of this data was provided by Mainz University of Applied Sciences, which is overseeing a large edition project for 3D models of clay tablets. The AI system subsequently did succeed in reliably recognising the symbols on the tablets. “We were surprised to find that our system even works well with photographs, which are actually a poorer source material,” says Stötzner.

The work by the researchers from Halle and Mainz provides new access to what has hitherto been a relatively exclusive material and opens up many new lines of inquiry. Up until now it has only been a prototype which is able to reliably discern symbols from two languages. However, a total of twelve cuneiform languages are known to exist. In the future, the software could also help to decipher weathered inscriptions, for example in cemeteries, which are three-dimensional like the cuneiform script.

The scientists have already presented their work at several internationally renowned conferences, most recently at the International Conference on Computer Vision. A few weeks ago, the team received the “Best Paper Award” at the Graphics and Cultural Heritage Conference.

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Ernst Stötzner during scanning. Uni Halle / Maike Glöckner

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Some of the cuneiform tablets are only a few centimeters in size. Uni Halle / Maike Glöckner

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Article Source: MARTIN-LUTHER-UNIVERSITÄT HALLE-WITTENBERG news release

*Stötzner E., Homburg T., Bullenkamp J.P. & Mara H. R-CNN based Polygonal Wedge Detection Learned from Annotated 3D Renderings and Mapped Photographs of Open Data Cuneiform Tablets. GCH 2023 – Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage. doi: 10.2312/gch.20231157

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Radiocarbon dating meets Egyptology and Biblical accounts in the city of Gezer

Posted on November 15, 2023 by PLOS -

PLOS—New dates provide detailed insights into the timing of events in the ancient city of Gezer, according to a study published November 15, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lyndelle Webster of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and colleagues.

Gezer is an ancient southern Levantine city, well known from Egyptian, Assyrian, and Biblical texts and associated with stories of power struggles and significant historical figures. It is also a rich archaeological site with abundant Bronze Age and Iron Age remains and with great potential for research into the daily lives of its denizens. Recent excavations at the site have uncovered a continuous stratigraphic sequence that allows for detailed dating and the establishment of an absolute chronology for events at the site.

In this study, Webster and colleagues obtained 35 radiocarbon dates on organic materials (mostly seeds) from seven distinct stratigraphic layers at Gezer. These dates range from the 13th to the 9th centuries, a time period that covers numerous significant changes in the city, including multiple destructive events, rebuilding episodes, and the fortification of the city. Some of these events have been proposed to be linked to certain stories from ancient texts.

This study provides a detailed dataset that can be used to test proposed correlations between the archaeological record and ancient texts. These dates suggest, for example, that the correlation of a certain destructive episode with the actions of the pharaoh Merneptah is plausible, while the proposed link between another such episode and the campaign of Hazael is not. Ultimately, this new dataset provides an independent source of absolute dates that will allow researchers to better understand the events at Gezer and to place them in a regional perspective.

The authors add: “The development of a radiocarbon-based chronology at Tel Gezer – a site with uniquely rich historical connections – illustrates the crucial role radiocarbon dating can and must play in reconstructing individual site histories, resolving long-running debates and testing possible correlations between archaeological remains and written sources.”

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Aerial image of the excavations. Image courtesy of the Tandy archaeological expedition to Tel Gezer, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release.

*Webster LC, Wolff SR, Ortiz SM, Barbosa M, Coyle C, Arbino GP, et al. (2023) The chronology of Gezer from the end of the late bronze age to iron age II: A meeting point for radiocarbon, archaeology egyptology and the Bible. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0293119. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293119

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Giant Stone Hand Axe May Rewrite Prehistory in a Region of Saudi Arabia

Posted on November 7, 2023 by Royal Commission for AlUla -

AlUla, Saudi Arabia: A team of researchers working in AlUla, north-west Saudi Arabia, has discovered what is likely to be the largest stone ‘hand axe’ artifact found anywhere in the world. Initial field assessment suggests that this giant artifact dates to the Lower-Middle Palaeolithic period and is over 200,000 years old.

The hand axe was discovered by an international team of archaeologists working with The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), directed by Dr Ömer ‘Can’ Aksoy and Dr Gizem Kahraman Aksoy of TEOS Heritage. The team has been surveying a desert landscape to the south of AlUla, called the Qurh Plain, looking for evidence of human activity in antiquity.

The team has already been successful in discovering archaeological artifacts showing this forbidding land supported a vibrant community from the early Islamic period, and now the discovery of this rare and unique object promises to write a new chapter of human history in Arabia and beyond.

Made of fine-grained basalt, the stone tool measures 51.3cm long and has been worked on both sides to produce a robust tool with useable cutting or chopping edges. At this stage a function can only be guessed, but despite its size the tool fits comfortably in two hands.

The survey is still ongoing, and this find is only one of more than a dozen similar, though somewhat smaller, Palaeolithic hand axes that it has discovered. It is hoped that further scientific research will reveal more details about the origins and function of these objects and the people who made them, hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Dr Ömer Aksoy, Project Director, said: “This hand axe is one of the most important finds from our ongoing survey of the Qurh Plain. This amazing stone tool is more than a half a meter long (length: 51.3 cm, width: 9.5 cm, thickness: 5.7 cm) and is the largest example of a series of stone tools discovered on the site. An ongoing search for comparisons from across the world has not come up with a hand axe of equal size. As such this may well be one of the largest hand axes ever discovered.”

In addition to this Qurh Plain Survey, RCU currently oversees 11 other archaeological specialist projects conducting fieldwork in AlUla and nearby Khaybar. This ambitious research program is being conducted with the aim to further unlock the mysteries of antiquity in this region. This extraordinary discovery highlights how much there is still to learn about the human history of Saudi Arabia.

Archaeology is a vital element in RCU’s comprehensive regeneration of AlUla County as a leading global destination for cultural and natural heritage. The 12 archaeological missions underway during the fall 2023 season, from October to December, constitute one of the world’s largest concentrations of archaeological research and conservation. The fall 2023 season boasts a remarkable international gathering of more than 200 archaeologists and related cultural heritage specialists, representing experts from countries including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the UK. Many of the projects are a continuation of ongoing research, which has involved the training and mentoring of more than 100 archaeology students from Saudi Arabia. The work will continue with additional missions planned in winter and spring 2024.

In September, the inaugural AlUla World Archaeology Summit showcased AlUla’s position as a hub of archaeological activity. The summit attracted more than 300 delegates from 39 countries and generated interdisciplinary conversations with the goal of connecting archaeology to wider communities.

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Dr. Omer Aksoy, Project Director and Giulia Edmond, RCU Care and Conservation Manager, measuring the hand axe. Courtesy Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU).

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Hand axe in situ — Qurh Plain AlUla. Courtesy RCU.

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Three hand axe artifacts from Qurh Plain AlUla. Courtesy RCU.

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Article Source: Royal Commission for AlUla news release.

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About the Royal Commission for AlUla

The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) was established by royal decree in July 2017 to preserve and develop AlUla, a region of outstanding natural and cultural significance in north-west Saudi Arabia. RCU’s long-term plan outlines a responsible, sustainable, and sensitive approach to urban and economic development that preserves the area’s natural and historic heritage while establishing AlUla as a desirable location to live, work, and visit. This encompasses a broad range of initiatives across archaeology, tourism, culture, education, and the arts, reflecting a commitment to meeting the economic diversification, local community empowerment, and heritage preservation priorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 programme.

About TEOS Heritage

Based in Izmir, Turkey, Teos is an independent heritage consultancy specialising in Western Asia. TEOS provides archaeological and architectural advice and guidance, along with a wide range of heritage assessment work and site surveys. Its particular skills are in archaeological fieldwork, recording of heritage sites, preparation of reports and publications, and heritage management strategies.

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Long-distance weaponry identified at the 31,000-year-old archaeological site of Maisières-Canal

Posted on November 6, 2023 by UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE -

UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE

The hunter-gatherers who settled on the banks of the Haine, a river in southern Belgium, 31,000 years ago were already using spearthrowers to hunt their game. This is the finding of a new study conducted at TraceoLab at the University of Liège. The material found at the archaeological site of Maisières-Canal permits establishing the use of this hunting technique 10,000 years earlier than the oldest currently known preserved spearthrowers. This discovery, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, is prompting archaeologists to reconsider the age of this important technological innovation.

The spearthrower is a weapon designed for throwing darts, which are large projectiles resembling arrows that generally measure over two meters long. Spearthrowers can propel darts over a distance of up to eighty meters. The invention of long-range hunting weapons has had significant consequences for human evolution, as it changed hunting practices and the dynamics between humans and their prey, as well as the diet and social organization of prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. The date of invention and spread of these weapons has therefore long been the subject of lively debate within the scientific community.

“Until now, the early weapons have been infamously hard to detect at archaeological sites because they were made of organic components that preserve rarely, explains Justin Coppe, researcher at TraceoLab. Stone points that armed ancient projectiles and that are much more frequently encountered at archaeological excavations have been difficult to connect to particular weapons reliably.” Most recently published claims for early use of spearthrowers and bows in Europe and Africa have relied exclusively on projectile point size to link them to these weapon systems. However, ethnographic reviews and experimental testing have cast serious doubt on this line of reasoning by showing that arrow, dart, and spear tips can be highly variable in size, with overlapping ranges.

The innovative approach developed by the archaeologists at TraceoLab combines ballistic analysis and fracture mechanics to gain a better understanding of the traces preserved on the flint points. “We carried out a large-scale experiment in which we fired replicas of Palaeolithic projectiles using different weapons such as spears, bows and spearthrowers,” explains Noora Taipale, FNRS research fellow at TraceoLab. By carefully examining the fractures on these stone points, we were able to understand how each weapon affected the fracturing of the points when they impacted the target”. Each weapon left distinct marks on the stone points, enabling archaeologists to match these marks to archaeological finds. In a way, it’s like identifying a gun from the marks the barrel leaves on a bullet, a practice known from forensic science.

The excellent match between the experimental spearthrower sample and the Maisières-Canal projectiles confirmed that the hunters occupying the site used these weapons. This finding encourages archaeologists to apply the method further to find out how ancient long-range weaponry really is. Future work at TraceoLab will focus on adjusting the analytical approach to other archaeological contexts to help reach this goal.

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Examples of experimental thrusting spears and javelins armed with replicas of the archaeological flint points. ©TraceoLab/ULiège

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE news release.

*Terminal ballistic analysis of impact fractures reveals the use of spearthrower 31 ky ago at Maisières-Canal, Belgium, Scientific Reports, 25-Oct-2023. 10.1038/s41598-023-45554-w

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Larger-scale warfare may have occurred in Europe 1,000 years earlier

Posted on November 2, 2023 by Scientific Reports -

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS—A re-analysis of more than 300 sets of 5,000-year-old skeletal remains excavated from a site in Spain suggests that many of the individuals may have been casualties of the earliest period of warfare in Europe, occurring over 1,000 years before the previous earliest known larger-scale conflict in the region. The study, published in Scientific Reports, indicates that both the number of injured individuals and the disproportionately high percentage of males affected suggest that the injuries resulted from a period of conflict, potentially lasting at least months.

Conflict during the European Neolithic period (approximately 9,000 to 4,000 years ago) remains poorly understood. Previous research has suggested that conflicts consisted of short raids lasting no more than a few days and involving small groups of up to 20–30 individuals, and it was therefore assumed that early societies lacked the logistical capabilities to support longer, larger-scale conflicts. The earliest such conflict in Europe was previously thought to have occurred during the Bronze Age (approximately 4,000 to 2,800 years ago).

Teresa Fernández‑Crespo and colleagues re-examined the skeletal remains of 338 individuals for evidence of healed and unhealed injuries. All the remains were from a single mass burial site in a shallow cave in the Rioja Alavesa region of northern Spain, radiocarbon dated to between 5,400 and 5,000 years ago. 52 flint arrowheads had also been discovered at the same site, with previous research finding that 36 of these had minor damage associated with hitting a target. The authors found that 23.1% of the individuals had skeletal injuries, with 10.1% having unhealed injuries, substantially higher than estimated injury rates for the time (7–17% and 2–5%, respectively). They also found that 74.1% of the unhealed injuries and 70.0% of the healed injuries had occurred in adolescent or adult males, a significantly higher rate than in females, and a difference not seen in other European Neolithic mass-fatality sites.

The overall injury rate, the higher injury rate for males, and the previously observed damage to the arrowheads suggest that many of the individuals at the burial site were exposed to violence and may have been casualties of conflict. The relatively high rate of healed injuries suggests that the conflict continued over several months, according to the authors. The reasons for the conflict are unclear, but the authors speculate on several possible causes, including tension between different cultural groups in the region during the Late Neolithic.

Article Source: Scientific Reports news release.

*Large-scale violence in Late Neolithic Western Europe based on expanded skeletal evidence from San Juan ante Portam Latinam, Scientific Reports, 2-Nov-2023. 10.1038/s41598-023-43026-9

Image, Top Left: Pixabay, GioeleFazzeri

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Cold War spy satellite imagery reveals Ancient Roman forts

Posted on October 27, 2023 by Dartmouth College -

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—Two-thousand years ago, forts were constructed by the Roman Empire across the northern Fertile Crescent, spanning from what is now western Syria to northwestern Iraq.

In the 1920s, 116 forts were documented in the region by Father Antoine Poidebard, who conducted one of the world’s first aerial surveys using a WWI-era biplane. Poidebard reported that the forts were constructed from north to south to establish an eastern boundary of the Roman Empire.

A new Dartmouth study analyzing declassified Cold War satellite imagery reveals 396 previously undocumented Roman forts and reports that these forts were constructed from east to west. The analysis refutes Poidebard’s claim that the forts were located along a north-south axis by showing that the forts spanned from Mosul on the Tigris River to Aleppo in western Syria.

The results are published in Antiquity.

“I was surprised to find that there were so many forts and that they were distributed in this way because the conventional wisdom was that these forts formed the border between Rome and its enemies in the east, Persia or Arab armies,” says lead author Jesse Casana, a professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Spatial Archaeometry Lab at Dartmouth. “While there’s been a lot of historical debate about this, it had been mostly assumed that this distribution was real, that Poidebard’s map showed that the forts were demarcating the border and served to prevent movement across it in some way.”

For the study, the team drew on declassified Cold-War era CORONA and HEXAGON satellite imagery collected between 1960 and 1986. Most of the imagery is part of the open-access CORONA Atlas Project through which Casana and colleagues developed better methods for correcting the data and made it available online.

The researchers examined satellite imagery of approximately 300,000 square kilometers (115,831 square miles) of the northern Fertile Cresent. It is a place where sites show up particularly well and is archaeologically significant, according to Casana. The team mapped 4,500 known sites and then systematically documented every other site-like feature in each of the nearly 5 by 5 kilometer (3.1 mile by 3.1 mile) survey grids, which resulted in the addition of 10,000 undiscovered sites to the database.

When the database was originally developed, Casana had created morphological categories based on the different features evident in the imagery, which allows researchers to run queries. One of the categories was Poidebard’s forts—distinctive squares measuring approximately 50 by 100 meters (.03 x .06 miles), comparable in size to about half a soccer field.

The forts would have been large enough to accommodate soldiers, horses, and/or camels. Based on the satellite imagery, some of the forts had lookout towers in the corners or sides. They would have been made of stone and mud-brick or entirely of the latter, so eventually, these non-permanent structures would have melted into the ground.

While most of the forts that Poidebard documented were probably destroyed or obscured by agriculture, land use, or other activities between the 1920s and 1960s, the team was able to find 38 of 116 of Poidebard’s forts, in addition to identifying 396 others.

Of those 396 forts, 290 were located in the study region and 106 were found in western Syria, in Jazireh. In addition to identifying forts similar to the walled fortresses Poidebard found, the team identified forts with interior architecture features and ones built around a mounded citadel.

“Our observations are pretty exciting and are just a fraction of what probably existed in the past,” says Casana. “But our analysis further supports that forts were likely used to support the movement of troops, supplies, and trade goods across the region.”

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CORONA images showing major sites: A) Sura (NASA1401); B) Resafa (NASA1398); and C) Ain Sinu (CRN999). Figure by J.Casana et al.; CORONA imagery courtesy U.S. Geological Survey.

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release

*A wall or a road? A remote sensing-based investigation of fortifications on Rome’s eastern frontier, Antiquity, 26-Oct-2023. 10.15184/aqy.2023.153

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In Prehispanic Cancun, immigrants were treated just like Maya locals

Posted on October 25, 2023 by PLOS -

PLOS—Ancient people immigrated to Cancun Island and were treated just like locals, according to a study published October 25, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrea Cucina of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, Mexico and colleagues.

The Late Postclassic (AD 1200-1500) in the northern Maya lowlands was a period of major changes, including the development of many settlements along the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, influenced in part by expanded trade routes. Previous research has found that these settlements were home to many non-local individuals, but it remains unclear whether these people were treated as “foreigners” or if they were integrated into local society.

In this study, Cucina and colleagues analyzed the remains of 50 individuals from two archaeological sites on Cancun Island dating to the Late Postclassic. Investigating strontium isotope signatures in teeth, the team determined that seven of these individuals appear to have been born elsewhere in the Maya lowlands, not local to these sites. However, examination of carbon isotopes (as a proxy for diet) and the construction of the graves of these individuals found no significant difference between locals and non-locals, suggesting that they were all treated similarly in terms of the food they ate and how they were buried.

These results suggest that these non-local individuals had integrated into local culture despite being from other regions. The fact that the non-local people included adults and children suggests that whole families, not just individuals, were in the habit of moving residence. One notable limitation of this study is that these techniques cannot detect “second generation immigrants”, a potentially valuable source of information that will have to be investigated using different methods. Analyzing patterns of mobility in Prehispanic Mesoamerica is essential for a thorough understanding of cultural networks of the time.

The authors add: “In the Postclassic period (AD 1200-1520) the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula saw the arrival of foreign people, who were assumed, based on archaeological and architectural records, to come from several locations in central Mexico. However, the current research shows migration from within the Maya cultural region (from what is now Belize, Peten, Guatemala and other parts of the Yucatan Peninsula). Migration for economic, environmental, political or kinship considerations is a familiar part of the human experience, and the current study documents the past movement and integration of individuals, and possibly entire families, into new communities. People may have relocated for similar reasons as they do today—for economic, environmental, political or kinship considerations.”

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El Rey Archaeological Structure type palace with columns. This kind of structure was common in the east coast of the peninsula of Yucatan during AD 1200-1520. Allan Ortega-Muñoz, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Cucina A, Thornton EK, Ortega-Muñoz A (2023) Human mobility on Cancun Island during the Late Postclassic: Intra- and inter-site demographic interactions. PLoS ONE 18(10): e0292022. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292022

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