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Scientists Push Back the Clock on Early Human Finds

Posted on December 1, 2013 by No Author -

An international multi-disciplinary team of scientists have determined that a well-known group of early Homo (early human) fossils discovered in previous investigations at Koobi Fora in the Turkana Basin of East Africa have an age range that is older than previously estimated.

Led by archaeologist Josephine C.A. Joordens of the Netherlands’ Leiden University, the researchers combined magnetostratigraphy and strontium (Sr) isotope stratigraphy techniques to develop a new age constraint range for 15 selected hominin fossils found in deposits on the Karari Ridge of the Koobi Fora region in the eastern Turkana Basin (Kenya). Magnetostratigraphy measures the polarity of Earth’s changing magnetic field at the time a stratum (layer) was deposited. Strontium isotope stratigraphy involves measuring the ratios of Strontium isotopes in sediments to determine relative ages between successively deposited sediments. The fossils included key specimens such as cranium KNM-ER 1470, partial face KNM-ER 62000 and mandibles KNM-ER 1482, KNM-ER 1801, and KNM-ER 1802, all well-known among scientists and scholars involved in human evolution research. The fossil KNM-ER 1470, for example, has been classified as belonging to the early human species Homo rudolfensis, discovered by Bernard Ngeneo in 1972 and considered a possible theoretical contender for being ancestral to the human line. It has been dated to about 1.9 million years BPE.

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Satellite view of the Turkana Basin, Koobi Fora region, showing Lake Turkana. Fossils were found in an area just east of Lake Turkana. Wikimedia Commons

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Surface level view of Turkana Basin looking toward Lake Turkana. AdamPG, Wikimedia Commons

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Now, however, the results of their tests and analyses show a new age-range constraint of between 1.945 ± 0.004 and 2.058 ± 0.034 Ma, making the fossil finds older than previously estimated, and providing a sharper, more specific age range for their deposit.

“To address questions regarding the evolutionary origin, radiation and dispersal of the genus Homo,” writes Joorden, et al. in their report, “it is crucial to be able to place the occurrence of hominin fossils in a high-resolution chronological framework. The period around 2 Ma (millions of years ago) in eastern Africa is of particular interest as it is at this time that a more substantial fossil record of the genus Homo is first found.”

In addition to the new age range, their research shed light on the possible geographic origins and ecological/climatological adaptability of these early humans. As they report:

“……..our results show that in this time interval, hominins occurred throughout the wet–dry climate cycles, supporting the hypothesis that the lacustrine Turkana Basin was a refugium during regionally dry periods. By establishing the observed first appearance datum of a marine-derived stingray in UBU [upper Burgi] deposits at 2.058 ± 0.034 Ma, we show that at this time the Turkana Basin was hydrographically connected [via a postulated ancient ‘Turkana River’] to the Indian Ocean, facilitating dispersal of fauna between these areas. From a biogeographical perspective, we propose that the Indian Ocean coastal strip should be considered as a possible source area for one or more of the multiple Homo species in the Turkana Basin from over 2 Ma onwards.”

The study report, Improved age control on early Homo fossils from the upper Burgi Member at Koobi Fora, Kenya, has been published in the December 2013 issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.

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Cover photo, Top Left: Homo rudolfensis skull (KNM ER 1470) reconstruction displayed at Museum of Man, San Diego. Durova, Wikimedia Commons

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery edition 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.

Subscription Price: A very affordable $5.75 for those who are not already premium subscribers of Popular Archaeology Magazine (It is FREE for premium subscribers to Popular Archaeology). Premium subscribers should email [email protected] and request the special coupon code. Or, for the e-Book version, it can be purchased for only $3.99 at Amazon.com.

Archaeologists Uncover Earliest Evidence of Birth of Buddha

Posted on November 25, 2013 by No Author -

Scientists excavating within the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Maya Devi Temple in Lumbini, Nepal, have unearthed a timber structure that they date to the sixth century BCE. It is situated within and underlies a temple that is considered sacred to many as the birthplace of Siddhārtha Gautama, or Buddha. Until now, there has been no archaeological evidence supporting a date any earlier than the third century BCE for Buddha’s life. Some historians have suggested the death of Buddha took place sometime in the late 4th century or early 3rd century BCE, although there are a number of traditions with varying dates.

“This sheds light on a very long debate,” said excavation co-leader Robin Coningham of Durham University, U.K.

Working amidst meditating monks, visiting pilgrims and nuns, the international team of archaeologists, led by Coningham along with Kosh Prasad Acharya of the Pashupati Area Development Trust in Nepal, discovered the timber structure remains while excavating under an overlying series of successive brick temples. To determine the dating of the timber structure, including a previously unknown first brick structure superimposed above it, charcoal and sand grain samples removed from the relevant layers of the early timber structure were tested using radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence techniques. Interestingly, geoarchaeological research also revealed evidence of ancient tree roots within the timber structure’s central space. This latter find is important because, according to Buddhist tradition, Queen Maya Devi, the mother of Buddha, gave birth to him while grasping a branch of a tree. Coningham and his colleagues suggest that the open central space from which the charcoal and sand samples were removed was large enough to accommodate the tree. Thus, concludes Coningham, “we have very clear evidence that this [timber] shrine was focused around the tree.” The later brick temples built over the timber structure, which was built around the open central space, were also arranged around this central space. Moreover, the results of their investigation indicated that the central space had “never been covered by a roof,” suggesting the significance of a space that clearly required special or unique treatment.

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Archaeologists Robin Coningham (left) and Kosh Prasad Acharya direct excavations within the Maya Devi Temple, uncovering a series of ancient temples contemporary with the Buddha. Thai monks meditate. Photo by Ira Block/National Geographic/National Geographic Buddha Birthplace

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Monks chant within the Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini in Nepal. The modern temple enshrines the birthplace of the Buddha. Photo by Ira Block/National Geographic/National Geographic Buddha Birthplace

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Pilgrims meditate at the wall below the nativity scene within the Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini, Nepal. The remains of the earliest temples at the site are in the background. Photo by Ira Block/National Geographic/National Geographic Buddha Birthplace

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Said Coningham: “Very little is known about the life of the Buddha, except through textual sources and oral tradition. We thought ‘why not go back to archaeology to try to answer some of the questions about his birth?’ Now, for the first time, we have an archaeological sequence at Lumbini that shows a building there as early as the sixth century B.C.”

Long lost and hidden by jungle overgrowth, ancient Lumbini was rediscovered in 1896 and, because of an inscription on a sandstone pillar discovered at the site, was identified as the birthplace of the Buddha. The inscription bears record of a historic visit by 3rd century India’s Emperor Ashoka to the site of the Buddha’s birth. The inscription also included the site’s name as Lumbini. Under Ashoka’s patronage, Buddhism spread from present-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh.

Other key historic sites related to Buddhism are Bodh Gaya, where Gautama became the Buddha; Sarnath, where he began his preaching; and Kusinagara, where he died.

Among the world’s major religions, Buddhism is followed by about 500 million people, with hundreds of thousands who make the pilgrimage to Lumbini annually.

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The research was funded by the government of Japan in partnership with the government of Nepal under a UNESCO project for conserving and managing the Lumbini site. Funding was also provided by the National Geographic Society, Durham University, and Stirling University. The report details are published in the December 2013 issue of the international journal Antiquity.

A documentary on Coningham’s exploration of the Buddha’s life, “Buried Secrets of the Buddha,” will premiere in February internationally on National Geographic Channel.

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For an alternative perspective, an excellent and interesting commentary can be read about this discovery at The Subversive Archaeologist.

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Archaeologists Uncover One of Civilization’s Oldest Wine Cellars

Posted on November 22, 2013 by No Author -

While excavating within the palace ruins of Tel Kabri, a 75-acre ancient Canaanite city site in northern Israel that dates back to 1700 BCE, a joint American-Israeli team came across a three-foot-long jar. They later christened it “Bessie.” The single find by itself was nothing remarkable. But they kept digging.

“We dug and dug, and all of a sudden, Bessie’s friends started appearing—5, 10, 15, ultimately 40 jars packed in a 15-by-25-foot storage room,” said excavation co-director Dr. Eric Cline, chair of George Washington University’s Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations within the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. “This is a hugely significant discovery—it’s a wine cellar that, to our knowledge, is largely unmatched in its age and size.”

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The team worked in day and night shifts to excavate a total of 40 intact 3,700-year-old vessels in the ancient palatial wine cellar during its six-week dig in July 2013. Courtesy Eric Cline

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Detail view of some of the ancient wine jars unearthed at Tel Kabri. Courtesy Eric Cline

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The 40 jars, each of which could have held 50 liters, had a total capacity of about 2,000 liters, meaning the cellar could have held the equivalent of nearly 3,000 bottles of red and white wine. This places the cellar among the largest ancient wine cellars in the world.

The finds were made while they were digging an area adjacent to and west of a monumental building first excavated in 2011, a one-of-kind structure that was lined with precisely-shaped orthostat blocks.

“This is the largest concentration to date of restorable pottery found anywhere in the palace of Kabri and the only place on site where we have found an entire room still full of artifacts,” writes co-director Yasur-Landau and colleagues in their preliminary report. Yasur-Landau is chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa.

They add that it is “the first time that such a storeroom with jars still present has been uncovered within an MB (Middle Bronze Age) palace in Canaan.”

What is more, “the wine cellar was located near a hall where banquets took place, a place where the Kabri elite and possibly foreign guests consumed goat meat and wine,” said Yasur-Landau. “The wine cellar and the banquet hall were destroyed during the same violent event, perhaps an earthquake, which covered them with thick debris of mud bricks and plaster.”

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Overall view of the excavated storage room with jars. The room measured approximately 15-by-25 feet, and held 40 wine jars that were 3,700 years old. Courtesy Eric Cline

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This image of the Tel Kabri wine cellar was created using LIDAR, a technique that uses a pulsed laser to measure distances and generate an accurate 3D map of a location. LIDAR helped the archaeologists map the storage room and each of the 40 wine jars discovered in July 2013. Courtesy Tel Kabri Archaeological Project

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At first, it wasn’t clear that the jars once contained wine. To determine that, Dr. Koh, an assistant professor of classical studies at Brandeis University and associate director of the excavation, analyzed the jar fragments using organic residue analysis. He found traces of tartaric and syringic acids, both key components in wine, as well as compounds suggesting the presence of ingredients popular in ancient wine-making, including honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins. The recipe is similar to medicinal wines used for 2,000 years in ancient Egypt.

“This wasn’t moonshine that someone was brewing in their basement, eyeballing the measurements,” Dr. Koh said. “This wine’s recipe was strictly followed in each and every jar.”

Researchers now want to continue analyzing the composition of each solution, possibly discovering enough information to recreate the flavor.

Archaeologists anticipate the possibility of more storage rooms ahead. A few days before the end of the 2013 field season, they discovered two doors leading out of the wine cellar—one to the south, and one to the west. They suspect they lead to other storage rooms. But they will have to wait another two years — the next field season doesn’t start until the summer of 2015.

Tel Kabri contains the remains of a Canaanite palatial center dated to the Middle Bronze Age (2,000-1,550 BCE). First settled about 16,000 years ago during the Neolithic period, permanent structures began to appear around 10,000 BCE. Excavations were conducted at Tel Kabri from 1986 to 1993 under Israeli archaeologist Aharon Kempinski, and then renewed beginning in 2005 by an international team co-directed by Assaf Yasur-Landau of the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa and Prof. Eric H. Cline of The George Washington University. Tel Kabri is best known for its Minoan-style frescoe fragments, the only such finds ever unearthed in Israel. Beginning in 2009, fragments of additional Minoan style frescoes were discovered at the site.

Ultimately, the researchers hope the Tel Kabri excavations and research will offer what might be the most complete picture of palatial political, social and economic life in the Canaanite period, answering questions such as whether or not the Canaanites had a central government, whether taxes were levied, the type of agriculture practiced, and the trade networks operating during the time.

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An aerial view of Tel Kabri. Among other objectives, researchers are investigating the site to obtain clues as to what drove the economy of the area. Courtesy Skyview Photography, Ltd.

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Source: Adapted and edited from press releases of the George Washington University and Brandeis University and a previous article published by Popular Archaeology Magazine, Archaeologists Uncover Rare Finds at an Ancient Canaanite Center.

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Fossil Fragments of Unknown Early Human Come Together

Posted on November 19, 2013 by No Author -

Scientists at a cave site in South Africa are kicking into high gear as they continue to uncover more fossil bones of what is suspected to be an early human ancestral (“hominid”) species.

The location is known as the “Rising Star” Cave site in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, about 40 kilometers north of Johannesburg, and although it is far too soon to determine the classification and age of the fossil finds, the site could turn out to yield the richest collection of hominid fossil finds at any one site in South Africa, a country that has made history in the chronicles of human evolution research. More than 300 fossil fragments of multiple individuals have been recovered, with potentially much more to come. In the world of early human fossil hunting, this is a rare occurrence.

“Even [for] the best known species of early hominid, there are pieces missing,” said University of the Witwatersrand paleoanthropologist Lee Berger in a blog report from National Geographic reporter Andrew Howley. “What is exceptional about these fossils is we already have parts of the anatomy that have almost never been seen before in any species, and certainly not in this kind of abundance.”*

And now, one of the most critical tasks of the expedition begins to unfold — the assembly and examination of key fragments of the expedition’s first-recovered fossil cranium, an exercise that will lend some of the first important clues to the identity of the early human who inhabited the area of the cave eons ago. Back in the tent lab near the site, Darryl de Ruiter of Texas A & M University and the Evolutionary Studies Institute will do the honors. According to de Ruiter, it is arguably the cranium that retains the most overall consistency among early human species, as other parts, such as the mandible (jaw bone), may vary considerably in size and shape, even within a species.

The fragile cranium fragments had to be slowly and carefully excavated and then removed from their cave context before much further work could be done to excavate what could lie beneath. Now that they have been removed, excavations will progress full-speed ahead to recover what could be many more finds.

The trove of bones were first discovered in October by a pair of recreational cavers, who alerted Lee Berger, a well-known paleoanthropologist with the University of Witwatersrand, who has been at the forefront of major hominid fossil discoveries in South Africa, such as the recent Australopithecus sediba finds at the Malapa cave site. To investigate the cave and its contents, Berger spearheaded the assembly of an expeditionary group (called the “Rising Star Expedition”) of scientists. Along with chief scientists, the group included six researchers who were hand-picked to actually enter the cave system to excavate and remove the fossil bones. To qualify for this job, these team members had to have a master’s degree or Ph.D. in paleontology, archaeology or a related field; they had to be experienced spelunkers, or cavers; and they had to be small enough to successfully and safely negotiate an 18-centimeter-wide opening leading to the targeted cave chamber. The effort has to date proven to be a great success.

More about the expedition and its discoveries, including videos and photos, can be found at the National Geographic website, Rising Star Expedition.

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* http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/19/the-skull-man-arrives/

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Story of the First Americans Unfolding Through DNA Research

Posted on November 18, 2013 by No Author -

Recent strides in DNA research are beginning to fill many of the gaps left in multidisciplinary scientific attempts to reveal and understand human prehistory. Some of these studies have provided clues to the dispersal of ancient humans across the globe going back tens of thousands of years.

Now, University of Illinois anthropology professor Ripan Malhi is analyzing DNA to tell the story of how and when humans first arrived in the Americas, and then what happened to them afterwards. Through study sites in British Columbia, California, Guatemala, Mexico and Illinois, he hopes to help find long-sought answers to the big, debated questions addressing the who, when, and where of the first Americans and the dynamics of their spread and activity across the Americas.

“The best opportunity to infer the evolutionary history of Native Americans and to assess the effects of European colonization is to analyze genomes of ancient Native Americans and those of their living descendants,” Malhi said. “I think what makes my lab unique is that we focus not only on the initial peopling of the Americas but also what happened after the initial peopling. How did these groups move to new environments and adapt to their local settings over 15,000 years?” Researchers may draw the wrong conclusions about human history when looking only at artifacts and language, he maintains.

Malhi, an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois, is taking a collaborative approach to his quest. He works with present-day Native Americans to study their genetic history. By recently cooperating with members of the Tsimshian Nation on the northwest coast of British Columbia, for example, he found a direct ancestral link between ancient human remains in the Prince Rupert Island area and the native peoples living in that region today. That study examined changes in the mitochondrial genome over time. (Mitochondria are structures within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use. Abbreviated as mtDNA, they are inherited by children solely from the mother.)

Other studies from Malhi’s lab analyze changes in the Y chromosome or the protein-coding regions of the genome. DNA in the Y chromosome is passed from father to son.

“What’s interesting about the northwest coast and California is that these communities were complex hunter-gatherer societies,” adds Malhi, “whereas in Mexico and Guatemala, it’s more communities that transitioned to farming and then experienced the effects of European colonization.”

Malhi is reporting some of his findings before the Royal Society in London on Nov. 18 and 19.

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Anthropology professor Ripan Malhi works with Native Americans to collect and analyze their DNA and that of their ancestors. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Metlakatla people of British Columbia in ceremonial attire. Wikimedia Commons

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Ancient Egyptians Used Organic Compounds to Embalm Meat Mummies

Posted on November 18, 2013 by No Author -

A study team consisting of researchers from the University of Bristol, UK, and the American University in Cairo, Egypt, are suggesting that some ancient Egyptian meat mummies were embalmed with organic compounds, including one meat mummy that showed evidence for the use of Pistacia resin, a highly valued luxury item.

Meat victual mummies, which are wrapped and embalmed meaty portions or joints of animals such as cattle or poultry, have typically been found within the ancient tombs of royal and high status individuals in Egypt. They are thought to have been meant as food items for consumption by the deceased in the afterlife. Such were discovered, for example, within 48 carved wooden cases in the tomb of King Tutankhamun (died c. 1323 BCE). Unlike other foods found preserved by dehydration within the tombs, however, the victual meats had to be treated in ways similar to that of the humans and animal mummies, “as untreated meat would not last more than a few hours in the Egyptian heat.”* But the exact elemental components of the substances used in the process of victual meat mummy treatment has been unclear, until now.

To investigate this, Richard Evershed and colleagues from the University of Bristol and the American University analyzed the chemical composition of tissue samples and bandages from four meat mummies – that of a calf from the tomb of Isetemkheb (c. 1064-948 BCE), a duck and goat from the tomb of Henutmehyt (c. 1290 BCE), and beef ribs from the tomb of Yuya and Tjuiu (1386-1349 BCE). They concluded that these meat mummies were prepared using a diverse range of organic compound treatments. As reported by the study group, the external bandages from a victual calf mummy contained a mixture of compounds from animal fat, but no evidence of waxes or resins. They knew this because the bandages they sampled were not in direct contact with the meat, and thus the compounds were interpreted to have been deliberately applied and not simply originating from the meat itself. Similar animal fat-derived compounds were detected with the mummified goat leg sample, but not with the mummified duck sample.

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Beef rib meat mummy from the tomb of Yuya and Tjuiu (1386-1349 BC). Credit: Image courtesy of PNAS.

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The most interesting find, however, came from the analysis of the bandages associated with the mummified beef ribs (pictured above). That sample contained a mixture of fat or oil, beeswax, and Pistacia resin. Pistacia has been considered a comparatively rare luxury item in ancient Egypt.

“The date of the occurrence of Pistacia resin associated with this meat mummy predates any known association with human mummies by some 600 years,” reports Evershed, et al., “although this might change with further investigations of human mummies. The ﬁnding of Pistacia resin on this meat mummy likely relates to the status of the burial; this meat mummy was part of the funerary assemblage of the parents of Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III (c. 1386–1349 BC) (34), making it among the highest status mummy balm thus far chemically analyzed in modern times.”

Conclude the researchers: “Our findings show that the sophistication of the burial extended not only to the organic balming treatments applied to the bodies themselves but also to the foods, particularly the meats, interred with them.”*

The detailed study was published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on November 18, 2013.

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Sources: Edited and adapted from a PNAS press release, excerpts from published study (see reference below).

* Article #13-15160: “Organic chemistry of balms used in the preparation of pharaonic meat mummies,” by Katherine A. Clark, Salima Ikram, and Richard P. Evershed.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Beef rib meat mummy from the tomb of Yuya and Tjuiu (1386-1349 BC). Credit: Image courtesy of PNAS.

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Archaeology News for the Week of November 17th, 2013

Posted on November 17, 2013 by No Author -

November 17th, 2013

In Florida, a spring cleanup yields cornucopia of history

To the untrained eye, many of the hundreds of artifacts pulled in recent months from a Florida spring in the Chassahowitzka River look like stuff nobody wanted to buy at a yard sale: old bottles, an antler, broken pieces of a plate, a toy cap gun, a bowl, a fishhook, pins. But to archaeologist Michael Arbuthnot, who oversaw a five-month project that pulled hundreds of such items from a 2 1/2-acre field of muck as deep as 25 feet below the surface of the spring, they are much more. “We found an amazing array of artifacts that basically represent every period of human occupation in Florida,” he told CNN in a telephone interview. (CNN News)

Cave women unearth skull of unknown human ancestor

An all-woman team of spelunking scientists has retrieved hundreds of fossils from a 100-foot-deep (30-meter-deep) cave in South Africa — including the cranium from what appears to be a prehistoric humanlike creature. Friday’s retrieval of the skull was a climactic moment for the three-week expedition to the Rising Star Cave in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, just 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Johannesburg. (NBCNews)

DNA hint of European origin for dogs

The results of a DNA study suggest that dogs were domesticated in Europe. No-one doubts that “man’s best friend” is an evolutionary off-shoot of the grey wolf, but scientists have long argued over the precise timing and location for their emergence. The new research, based on a genetic analysis of ancient and modern dog and wolf samples, points to a European origin at least 18,000 years ago. (BBC News)

Archaeologists Find More Than 100 Mummified Dogs in Peru

The discovery of 137 mummified dogs in Peru, more than 1,000 years old, serves as a reminder that historically, a dog’s responsibilities to his owner didn’t always end when the owner died. Archaeologists found 62 complete bodies and 75 incomplete skeletons buried alongside human remains. Enrique Angulo, a veterinarian who’s looked over the remains, says that the dogs were of a wide range of ages and showed signs of a variety of different illnesses. (Dogster.com)

Scientists disagree on age of Serpent Mound

Serpent Mound arguably is the most recognizable icon of ancient America. Therefore, you might be surprised to learn that much about this mound is arguable, including its age. Serpent Mound was long thought to be an Adena mound, dating to between 800 B.C. and A.D. 100, but opinions shifted in the 1990s when a team of archaeologists obtained radiocarbon dates on charcoal recovered from the mound. (The Columbus Dispatch)

Five pharaonic statue heads found in Egypt

A team of Egyptian and French archaeologists have found five heads of royal statues from the pharaonic era, officials from the antiquities ministry said on Saturday.“The heads, which had crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt and were made from limestone, were discovered” south of Luxor, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said in a statement. The head of the department of pharaonic antiquities, Mohammed Abdel Maqsud, said the heads measured 50 centimetres (20 inches) across and are estimated to be around 4,000 years old.(Hurriyet Daily News)

Deformed, Pointy Skull from Dark Ages Unearthed in France

The skeleton of an ancient aristocratic woman whose head was warped into a deformed, pointy shape has been unearthed in a necropolis in France. The necropolis, found in the Alsace region of France, contains 38 tombs that span more than 4,000 years, from the Stone Age to the Dark Ages. (Live Science)

Study Reveals More Clues to Origins of Domesticated Dog

Posted on November 14, 2013 by No Author -

Scientists have theorized that the origin of the domestic dog stems from the domestication of the Grey Wolf tens of thousands of years ago. But the approximate date and place have been grist for scientific debate for years, with some genetic and archaeological evidence indicating that humans domesticated wolves on more than one occasion, with today’s lineage arising at the latest 15,000 years ago based on findings at the Bonn-Oberkassel site in Germany, and genetic evidence pointing to 33,000 years ago from investigations of the Razboinichya Cave in the Altai Mountains of Russia.

Now, based on a recently completed study, Olaf Thalmann of the University of Turku, Finland, and colleagues are suggesting that Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe as much as 32,000 years ago may have played a significant role in the process.

To come to this conclusion, Thalmann and his team compared mitochondrial DNA from a broad range of modern-day dog and wolf breeds to mitochondrial DNA from canine fossils dated to 19,000-32,000 years ago, as well as fossils from modern canines. Their analysis showed that modern dogs’ genetic sequences most closely matched those of either ancient European canines, including wolves, or modern European dogs, but did not closely match DNA from canines outside of Europe. According to the researchers, this suggests a European origin, and, as only hunter-gatherer populations were present during this period, a domestication that predates the advent of agriculture.

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Above: A lateral view of a Pleistocene wolf from the Trou des Nutons cave (Belgium), calibrated age of 26,000 years Before the Present. This wolf species was particularly large. [Image courtesy of Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences]

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A lateral view of a Palaeolithic dog from the Goyet cave (Belgium), calibrated age of 36,000 years Before the Present. Thalmann et al. believe the species represented by this fossil to be an ancient sister-group to all modern dogs and wolves, rather than a direct ancestor. [Image courtesy of Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences]

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Dog burial from Horizon 11 of the Koster site, Greene County, Illinois, US. The fossil specimen at this site have a calibrated age of 8,500 years Before the Present. [Image courtesy of Del Baston, Center for American Archaeology]

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It has been previously thought that fields and crops attracted wolves to villages, leading to interactions with humans that eventually resulted in a cooperative or symbiotic relationship. Human intervention in canine evolution thus produced the variety of modern dog breeds commonly seen today in homes and dog parks throughout the world. But this study, along with clues from other research and excavations, pushes the origins back further to the Palaeolithic Age, when wild wolves may have been drawn to hunter-gatherers, the researchers suggest, because they could feed on carcasses the hunters left behind.

The details of the research appears in the 15 November 2013 issue of Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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Research Allows Reconstruction of Pre-colonial Landscape in Eastern U.S.

Posted on November 13, 2013 by No Author -

Other than cities, towns, and road systems, what we see today on the eastern mid-Atlantic U.S. landscape is quite different than what Native Americans saw before European contact. It was a world that essentially vanished as colonizers took root and transformed their environment to meet their needs. This is nothing new to most historians.

Thanks to recent research, however, scientists can now reconstruct that landscape with accuracy, providing information that may also help manage the environment of today.

It all has to do with milldams and leaves. According to a team of geoscientists, sediment behind milldams in Pennsylvania preserved leaves deposited just before European contact, providing a glimpse of ancient forests. To get to this, they examined samples of 300-year-old leaves buried by sediment backed up behind Denlinger’s Mill in Lancaster County. The leaves fell from trees from above the location of the dam. As sediment rapidly covered and “entombed” the leaf layer, the leaves that were deposited before the construction of the dam were preserved intact.

“First we had to uncover the leaf mats and then try to get a sample,” said Sara J. Elliott, a research associate at the University of Texas Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology. “The mats were fragile and delicate, and getting them back to the lab or just transferring them from one container to another was problematic.”

But Elliott carefully and successfully peeled away the leaves, layered on top of each other in mud and preserved in remarkable detail. She then treated them in a variety of chemical baths, mounted them between large glass slides and cataloged the various species.

Analysis of the results led to a surprising conclusion.

“We expected to see evidence for single stream channels that meandered back and forth across the valley bottom landscape for millennia, ” wrote researcher Dorothy J. Merritts, chair, Department of Earth and Environment, and colleagues. “Instead, we found that most of the valley bottoms at the time of European contact were dominated by wetland ecosystems with numerous small, stable ‘anastomosing’ streams.” These branching and reconnecting streams were far different from the steep-banked meandering streams that, since the dams were breached, now cut through the silt deposits created by the dams.

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Above shows Denlinger’s Mill study site. Located on the West Branch of the Little Conestoga Creek in Lancaster County, PA. Arrow indicates dark paleo-wetland soil layer containing fossil leaf deposits, with four plus meters of historical sediment buildup on top. Credit: Penn State

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“Milldams were built from the late 1600s to the late 1800s in Pennsylvania and other parts of the east,” said Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences, Penn State University. “We can’t get information from historic records on what the area looked like before the dams because recording of natural history didn’t really begin until the 1730s and was not detailed.”

U.S. census shows that by 1840, tens of thousands of milldams existed in the mid-Atlantic region. About 10,000 of these were in Pennsylvania. In Lancaster County, estimates were one dam for every mile of stream. The abundance of dams in the area altered the landscape dramatically, according to the researchers.

The Denlinger’s Mill site is unusual because of the rock outcrop and the trees that have grown there over the water. The leaves found in the stream bank preserve a snapshot of the trees growing directly above before European settlement, which consisted overwhelmingly of American beech, red oak and sweet birch, similar to modern red oak/beech forests today. But box elder and another maple dominate the current forest that grows above the stream.

“It was intriguing to see samples from American chestnut, which isn’t around anymore because of the chestnut blight,” said Elliott. “On the whole though, the species are around today, just in different proportions and places.”

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Above shows dominant components of the pre-European settlement forest. Red Oak (left), American Beech (center), Sweet Birch (right). These are fossil leaves removed from the Denlinger Mill study site. Credit: Penn State

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This is an artist’s reconstruction of the pre-settlement landscape. The upper slope forest community in the background represents the Red Oak-American Beech-Sweet Birch mixed hardwood forest interpreted here from fossil leaves. The foreground consists of tussock-sedge wetlands with small, interconnected stream channels and pools, quite unlike the steep-banked single channel streams seen today. Credit: Penn State

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The scientists see a potential application of their findings to addressing some environmental problems of today.

“We now know that legacy sediment from the stream banks caused by the milldams is the major source of eutrophication in the Chesapeake area,” said Wilf. “Not, as is usually assumed, modern agricultural runoff.” Establishment of precolonial-like habitats might decrease the amounts of nutrients from the legacy sediments that currently flow into the Chesapeake watershed and cause increased algal and plant growth.

The findings are published in the November 13th issue of PLOS ONE.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a press release of Penn State.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Artist’s reconstruction of the pre-settlement landscape. The upper slope forest community in the background represents the Red Oak-American Beech-Sweet Birch mixed hardwood forest interpreted here from fossil leaves. The foreground consists of tussock-sedge wetlands with small, interconnected stream channels and pools, quite unlike the steep-banked single channel streams seen today. Credit: Penn State

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Genetic Study Reveals New Insight into Origins of Our Species

Posted on November 10, 2013 by No Author -

New genetic research has revealed the existence of certain regions in the human genome that have changed or mutated more rapidly than most others, resulting in differences that make us human among our primate cousins.

By using the latest sequencing and bioinformatics tools, scientists at the Gadstone Institutes were able to identify certain genomic regions that guide the development of human-specific characteristics.

“Advances in DNA sequencing and supercomputing have given us the power to understand evolution at a level of detail that just a few years ago would have been impossible,” said Gladstone Laboratory Investigator Katherine Pollard, who is also a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco’s (UCSF’s) Institute for Human Genetics. “In this study, we found stretches of DNA that evolved much more quickly than others. We believe that these fast-evolving stretches were crucial to our human ancestors becoming distinct from our closest primate relatives.”

Called “human accelerated regions”, or HARs, they were found to mutate at a relatively fast rate. Specifically, HARs act as “enhancers,” controlling when and for how long certain genes are “switched on” or activated during embryonic development. This was revealed through experiments in embryonic animal models and the use of supercomputers to conduct powerful computational genomics analyses. The research team identified more than 2,600 HARs. Then, using a machine-learning algorithm called EnhancerFinder and genetic information input they were able to reduce the list to those HARs they predicted to be likely enhancers. “We predicted that nearly eight hundred HARs act as enhancers at a specific point during embryonic development,” explained Tony Capra, PhD, the study’s lead author. “Confirming this prediction for several dozen HARs, our next goal was to see whether any of these HARs enhanced patterns of gene activation that were uniquely human.”

Five such HARs were identified, active in both human and chimpanzee genomes, but which activated genes in different embryonic regions. For example, the human versions of HARs 2xHAR.164 and 2xHAR.170 are active in a region of the brain between the midbrain and hindbrain, while the chimp versions are not. This so-called “gain of function” of these two HARs in human embryos may point to differences in the development of key brain regions such as the cerebellum, which is known to regulate not only motor control but may also regulate higher cognitive functions, such as language, fear and pleasure.

“These results, while preliminary, offer an unprecedented glimpse into how very recent changes to the human genome have modified the genetic programs that control embryonic development to potentially yield different results,” said Capra. “We anticipate that if we were to look at the activity of HARs that are enhancers during later developmental stages, we would see even more differences between humans and chimpanzees.”

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Source: Adapted and edited from a Gladstone Institutes press release.

Gladstone is an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research organization dedicated to accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and innovation to prevent, treat and cure cardiovascular, viral and neurological diseases. Gladstone is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco.

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Scientists Discover First Domestication of Cattle in China

Posted on November 8, 2013 by No Author -

It began with the discovery of a lower jaw of an ancient cattle specimen during an excavation in north-east China. Carbon dated to be 10,660 years old, it showed a wear pattern on the molars which, according to the researchers, is a strong indication of long-term human management of the animal. Moreover, analysis of the ancient DNA extracted from the jaw indicated that the animal was not related to the same cattle lineages that were domesticated in the Near East and South Asia.

The discovery overturns the long-accepted theory that the first domestication of cattle occurred in the Near East region around 10,000 years ago. Now, if the findings are correct, it seems domestication took place at more than one center around the same time.

The research was co-led by Professor Michi Hofreiter of the University of York and Professor Hucai Zhang of Yunnan Normal University in China. Said Hofreiter: “The specimen is unique and suggests that, similar to other species such as pigs and dogs, cattle domestication was probably also a complex process rather than a sudden event.”

Like the development of agriculture, domestication of cattle is considered a key benchmark in the expansion of human population and the rise of settlements and urban civilization. Until now, scientists have suggested that humans began domesticating cattle first around 10,000 years ago in the Near East, giving rise to humpless (taurine) cattle, followed by the management of humped cattle (zebu) two thousand years later in Southern Asia.

The new research is published in detail in Nature Communications.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a press release of the University of York.

Cover Photo, Top Left: China Rice field with cattle and farmer. Photographer: Markus Raab, Wikimedia Commons

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Study Sheds Light on Dawn of Agriculture in Far Northern Climes

Posted on November 6, 2013 by No Author -

Floods didn’t make floodplains fertile during the dawn of human agriculture in the Earth’s far north because the waters were virtually devoid of nitrogen, unlike other areas of the globe scientists have studied.

Instead, the hardy Norsemen and early inhabitants of Russia and Canada have microorganisms called cyanobacteria to mostly thank for abundant grasses that attracted game to hunt and then provided fodder once cattle were domesticated. The process is still underway in the region’s pristine floodplains.

The new findings are surprising because it’s long been assumed that nitrogen crucial to plant growth mainly arrived with floods of river water each spring, according to Thomas DeLuca, a University of Washington professor of environmental and forest sciences and lead author of a paper in the Nov. 6, 2013 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

Discovering that cyanobacteria in the floodplains were responsible for nitrogen fixation – that is taking it from the atmosphere and “fixing” it into a form plants can use – partially resolves the scientific debate of how humans harvested grasses there for hundreds of years without fertilizing, DeLuca said. It raises the question of whether farmers today might reduce fertilizer use by taking advantage of cyanobacteria that occur, not just in the floodplains studied, but in soils around the world, he said.

It also might lead to more accurate models of nitrogen in river systems because none of the prominent models consider nitrogen being fixed in floodplains, DeLuca said. Scientists model nitrogen loading of rivers, especially where industrial fertilizers and effluent from wastewater-treatment plants cause dead zones and other problems in the lower reaches and mouths of rivers.

Ten rivers and 71 flood plains were studied in northern Fennoscandia, a region that includes parts of Scandinavia and Finland. The rivers were chosen because their upper reaches are pristine, haven’t been dammed and are not subject to sources of human-caused nitrogen enrichment – much like river systems humans encountered there hundreds of years ago, as agriculture emerged in such “boreal” habitats. Boreal habitat – found at 60 degrees latitude and north all the way into the Arctic Circle, where it meets tundra habitat – is the second largest biome or habitat type on Earth.

In the northern regions of the boreal, the surrounding hillsides have thin, infertile soils and lack shrubs or herbs that can fix nitrogen. In these uplands, feather mosses create a microhabitat for cyanobacteria, which fix a modest amount of nitrogen that mostly stays on site in soils, trees and shrubs. Little of it reaches waterways. On the floodplains, high rates of nitrogen fixation occur in thick slimy black mats of cyanobacteria growing in seasonably submerged sediments and coating the exposed roots and stems of willows and sedges.

“We joke and call the floodplains the ‘mangroves of the North’ because there are almost impenetrable tangles of willow tree roots in places, like a micro version of the tropical and subtropical mangroves that are known to harbor highly active colonies of cyanobacteria,” DeLuca said.

“It turns out there’s a lot of nitrogen fixation going on in both,” he said. For example, the scientists discovered that in spite of the dark, cold, snowy winters of Northern Sweden, the cyanobacteria there fix nitrogen at rates similar to those living the life in the toasty, sun-warmed Florida Everglades.

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Huts used for storing fodder dot the floodplains, where sedges have been harvested for hundreds of years without additional fertilization. Early settlers cleared willows to encourage and harvest sedges and grasses. Credit: T DeLuca/U of Washington

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The amount of nitrogen provided by the cyanobacteria to unharvested willows and sedges is perhaps a quarter of what U.S. farmers in the Midwest apply in industrial fertilizers to grain crops and as little as a sixth of what they apply to corn.

Human-made fertilizers can be fuel-intensive to produce and use, for example, it takes the energy of about a gallon of diesel to produce 4 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer. In developing countries in particular, nitrogen fertilization rates are spiraling upward, driving up fossil-fuel consumption, DeLuca said. Meanwhile, cyanobacteria naturally occurring in farm soils aren’t fixing nitrogen at all in the presence of all that fertilizer, they just don’t expend the energy when nitrogen is so readily available, he said.

“Although modest in comparison to modern fertilization, the observation that cyanobacteria could drive the productivity of these boreal floodplain systems so effectively for so long makes one question whether cyanobacteria could be used to maintain the productivity of agricultural systems, without large synthetic nitrogen fertilizer inputs,” he said.

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Source Credit: Sandra Hines, University of Washington press release.

Co-authors of the paper are Olle Zackrisson and Ingela Bergman with the Institute for Subarctic Landscape Research, Sweden, Beatriz Díez

Cover Photo, Top Left: Sedges and willow trees get the nitrogen they need from cyanobacteria living in the sediments of pristine boreal floodplains found at 60 degrees latitude and north into the Arctic Circle. Credit: T DeLuca/U of Washington

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A Secret to the Building of the Forbidden City Revealed

Posted on November 5, 2013 by No Author -

Based on historical research and experiments in mechanical engineering, an international study group has confirmed that Chinese workers in the 16th century CE used artificially created ice paths lubricated with liquid water to transport massive stones to the Forbidden City in Beijing. The method was used, despite the fact that the Chinese civilization had already developed wheeled vehicles capable of moving very heavy objects for 2,000 years.

Study lead author Jiang Li and colleagues first researched the historical literature on the topic, including a 500-year-old document that records the moving of the “Large Stone Carving”. Weighing about 123 tons, a team of men moved it during the deep winter of 1557 a distance of 70 km over 28 days to the Forbidden City using a sliding sledge over a path of ice repeatedly lubricated by water dug from succeeding wells along the path. They tested the technique using materials and conditions that duplicated similar activity, and what they found supported the plausibility of the historical record.

“We show that an ice lubrication technique of water-lubricated wood-on-ice sliding was used instead of the common ancient approaches, such as wood-on-wood sliding or the use of log rollers,” reported Jiang Li and colleagues. “The technique took full advantage of the natural properties of ice, such as sufficient hardness, flatness, and low friction with a water film. This ice-assisted movement is more efficient for such heavy-load and low-speed transportation necessary for the stones of the Forbidden City.”*

The authors determined that fewer than 50 men would have been sufficient to pull the sledge using this method, whereas pulling the same load over ground using the more commonly known ancient methods would have required a force of more than 1,500 men. Given the climatic conditions that existed in the Beijing region in the mid-16th century, the researchers concluded that a wood sledge over lubricated ice could have moved fast enough over a lubricating water film before the water froze to impede forward movement.

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

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Workers likely slid massive stones, such as this 300-ton marble carving in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, Beijing, China, along artificial ice paths. Image courtesy of Chui Hu.

* Article #13-09319: “Ice lubrication for moving heavy stones to the Forbidden City in 15th- and 16th-century China,” by Jiang Li, Haosheng Chen, and Howard A. Stone.

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Rare Early Biblical Manuscripts Return to View at Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery

Posted on November 4, 2013 by No Author -

More than 100 years after they were first on view to the public in museum-founder Charles Lang Freer’s Detroit home, two rare antique biblical manuscripts will return to view at the Freer Gallery of Art Nov. 16. The Washington Codex–one of the oldest manuscripts of the four Gospels in the world–as well as an ancient parchment volume of Deuteronomy and Joshua will be on view through Feb. 16, 2014, in the unexpected setting of James McNeill Whistler’s blue-and-gold Peacock Room.

The Washington Codex, also known as the Codex Washingtonensis or Freer Gospels, is the third-oldest parchment manuscript of the gospels in the world, dating from the fourth to fifth centuries. The scriptures of Deuteronomy and Joshua are substantially complete texts from the Old Testament and date from the same period. Painted wooden covers, designed to protect the Gospels and decorated with representations of the four Evangelists, will also be on view. (More on Freer’s collection of Biblical manuscripts)

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Washington Manuscript III: The Four Gospels (Codex Washingtonensis) Egypt, late 4th–early 5th century Ink on parchment Gift of Charles Lang Freer Freer Gallery of Art, F1906.274 Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art

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Freer purchased the manuscripts in 1906 in Giza, Egypt, and later organized and underwrote significant early biblical scholarship. While researching their cultural context and physical structure, it was discovered that the Washington Codex contains a passage not found in any other biblical text-a segment at the end of the Gospel of Mark known as the Freer logion (a logion is a saying attributed to Jesus), which will be viewable during the exhibition.

However, Freer was mainly interested in aesthetic beauty and harmonies among the various objects in his collection, regardless of type or origin. In November 1912, he opened his Detroit home to the public and used Whistler’s Peacock Room as a display space to curate his acquisitions, filling the shelves with pottery from the Middle East and Asia, tables of Buddhist sculpture and glass cases containing the Washington Codex and Old Testament manuscripts. Having recently promised his collection to the Smithsonian, the room became a beautiful laboratory where Freer could bring seemingly disparate objects into a visual conversation.

“When Freer chose to exhibit his rare biblical manuscripts in the Peacock Room, he was demonstrating his belief in cross-cultural correspondence,” said Lee Glazer, curator of American art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. “Juxtaposing these sacred texts with ceramics and aesthetic decoration underscored Freer’s belief that ‘all works of art go together.'”

Due to their extreme fragility and sensitivity to light, the manuscripts are rarely exhibited, last appearing as highlights of the Sackler’s landmark exhibition in 2006, “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000.” For this reason, the opening of the Peacock Room shutters on the third Thursday of each month will be suspended while the bibles are on view, resuming on Feb. 20, 2014.

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The Freer Gallery of Art, located at 12th Street and Independence Avenue S.W. and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, located at 1050 Independence Avenue S.W., together house the nation’s collection of Asian art on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hours are from 10 a.m to 5:30 p.m. every day except Dec. 25, and admission is free. The galleries are located near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information, the public may call (202) 633-1000 or visit www.asia.si.edu.

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Source: Press release of the Freer Gallery of Art

Cover Photo, Top Left: Detail, Saint Mark and Saint Luke; right cover of Washington Manuscript II: The Four Gospels (Codex Washingtonensis) Egypt, Byzantine period, 7th c. Encaustic painting on wooden panel Gift of Charles Lang Freer Freer Gallery of Art, F1906.298 Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art

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Archaeology News for the Week of November 3rd, 2013

Posted on November 3, 2013 by No Author -

November 3rd, 2013

Tutankhamun’s body spontaneously combusted INSIDE his coffin following botched embalming job after he died in speeding chariot accident

The mummified body of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun burst into flames inside his sarcophagus after a botched attempt to embalm him, according to scientists in a new documentary. After his death in 1323 BC, Tutankhamun was rapidly embalmed and buried, but fire investigators believe a chemical reaction caused by embalming oils used on his mummy sparked the blaze. A fragment of flesh from the boy pharaoh, whose tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, was tested by researchers who confirmed his body was burnt while sealed in his coffin.(Daily Mail)

Persian silk in Viking burials

The silk trade was far more comprehensive than we have hitherto assumed and recent research may change our perceptions of the history of the Norwegian Vikings. After four years of in-depth investigation of the silk trade of the Viking Age, Marianne Vedeler, Associate Professor at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo has found that the Norwegian Vikings maintained trade connections with Persia and the Byzantine Empire through a network of traders from a variety of places and cultures who brought the silk to the Nordic countries. (Iranian.com)

King Herod’s Tomb a Mystery Yet Again

Herod the Great, the king of Judea who ruled not long before the time of Jesus, seems to have eluded historians once again. In 2007 archaeologists announced they had found the great king’s tomb, a surprisingly modest mausoleum that was part of the Herodium, a massive complex built by Herod on a cone-shaped hill in the desert outside Jerusalem. (LiveScience)

Blow to multiple human species idea

The idea that there were several different human species walking the Earth two million years ago has been dealt a blow. Instead, scientists say early human fossils found in Africa and Eurasia may have been part of the same species. Writing in the journal Science, the team says that Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus are all part of a single evolving lineage that led to modern humans. (BBC News)

Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old religious center in northern Peru

A religious center more than 3,000 years old from the pre-Incan Chavin culture has been discovered by Peruvian researchers in the Congona archaeological zone in northern Peru’s Lambayeque region, archaeologist Walter Alva said Thursday. (Global Post)

Aztalan offers a peek into the past

Westbound from Milwaukee, the scenery on I-94 gradually shifts from subdivision and strip malls to rolling Wisconsin prairie blanketed in cornfields. At Exit 259, about two-thirds of the way to Madison, some make a seven-minute detour to Aztalan State Park, a tranquil rest stop on the banks of the Crawfish River. It’s a chance to see an unusual archaeological site, an outpost of a long-lost Indian civilization. Toward twilight, you can sit atop a grass-covered, 900-year-old ceremonial mound and take in the pastoral vistas. (BendBulletin)

Archaeology project unearths history at Quail Creek

The digging is over but the work has just begun on an archaeological project just inside the entrance to Quail Creek.
WestLand Resources in Tucson has had 10 workers at the two-acre site for about six weeks, and on Thursday ended what it calls data recovery. They’ll spend the next several months processing and analyzing artifacts and preparing a report for Quail Creek developer Robson Communities, which requested the work. (Sahuarita Sun)

Executions in Roman London

At a cemetery on the eastern fringes of Roman London in 100AD, a sombre, yet grand ceremony was taking place. A prosperous citizen was being buried just outside the city boundaries — no Roman, however rich, could be buried within the city walls to prevent the spread of disease. (IOL Scitech)

Resourceful Neanderthals in France

Posted on November 1, 2013 by No Author -

How “smart” were the Neanderthals, really? The question has been at the center of scholarly debate for decades. But the findings of recent research, including archaeological investigations at a site known as Abri du Maras, near Ardèche, southeastern France, have yielded clues that may expand the known repertoir of tools and behaviors that Neanderthals used to survive in the world that existed about 74,000 years ago.

An international team of scientists from France, the U.S. and Spain recently conducted residue analysis and zooarchaeological analysis on stone tools and other materials, including otherwise perishable materials such as wood fragments, recovered from excavations at the archaeological site of Abri du Maras in France’s Middle Rhône Valley.

What they found was enlightening.

“Neanderthal behavior is often described in one of two contradictory ways: 1) Neanderthals were behaviorally inflexible and specialized in large game hunting or 2) Neanderthals exhibited a wide range of behaviors and exploited a wide range of resources including plants and small, fast game,” state the authors in a publicly available abstract of a study soon to be published in Quaternary Science Reviews. But the results of their research show that Neanderthals actually “exploited a wide range of resources including large mammals, fish, ducks, raptors, rabbits, mushrooms, plants, and wood.”* The finds included such evidence as cut marks on bones of the European rabbit, rabbit hair residue, plant fragments and fibers, fragments of bird feathers and fish scales, and a variety of projectile points and Levalloise flakes. Levalloise flakes are usually associated with Neanderthal stone tool technology.

It flies in the face of the popular image of Neanderthals as a human species with a relatively limited set of tools, techniques and resources, a suggestion often cited by many scholars as one reason why they could not effectively compete with the new arrivals on the Eurasian scene, Homo sapiens, or modern humans, leading to the eventual extinction of the Neanderthals.

The evidence also included traces of twisted fiber, suggesting the manufacture of cordage or string, and six lithic points that show characteristics implying the use of complex projectile technology, a development that has been usually associated with early modern humans.

Concludes the study authors: “This evidence shows a level of behavioral variability that is often denied to Neanderthals. Furthermore, it sheds light on perishable materials and resources that are not often recovered which should be considered more fully in reconstructions of Neanderthal behavior.”*

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* Abstract, Bruce L. Hardy, et al., Impossible Neanderthals? Making String, throwing projectiles and catching small game during Marine Isotope Stage 4 (Abri du Maras, Farnce), Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 82, 15 December 2013.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Neanderthal skull, Muséum d’Anthropologie, campus universitaire d’Irchel, Université de Zurich (Suisse), Guerin Nicolas, Wikimedia Commons

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A Motherlode Raised from Blackbeard’s Pirate Ship

Posted on October 29, 2013 by No Author -

With the help of the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday, October 28, 2013, archaeologists with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources raised what is to date the biggest motherlode of artifacts yet from the wreckage of Blackbeard’s sunken pirate ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, still lying on the seafloor in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. The catch included five complete cannons and two large concretions. A concretion is hardened conglomerations of sand, shells, and coral which begin to build up around artifacts, especially iron objects, soon after they are deposited on the seabed.

Blackbeard is known to have gathered a hodge-podge of cannons from different countries as he equipped his vessel with 40 guns. To date, 29 guns have been located at the shipwreck site near Beaufort. The research team, led by the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, has recovered artifacts from 60 percent of the site, including cannons, anchors, gold dust, animal bones, lead shot, medical and scientific instruments, and much more. Altogether about 280,000 artifacts have been recovered. Full recovery is planned by 2014. An extensive Queen Anne’s Revenge exhibit is at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

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One of the five cannons being raised from Blackbeard’s sunken pirate ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Courtesy NC Department of Cultural Resources.

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A large concretion raised from the wreckage of Backbeard’s pirate ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. Courtesy NC Department of Cultural Resources.

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Otherwise variously known as Edward Teach or Edward Thatch, Blackbeard served as a privateer during Queen Anne’s War (1701 – 1714). It was sometime soon after the war that he turned to piracy, plying the shipping lanes off the North American coastline and throughout the Caribbean with fellow pirate captains Benjamin Hornigold and Stede Bonnet, plundering scores of vessels for their goods and capturing and co-opting some of their sailors and others with needed skills to man their fleet. Things took a good turn for Blackbeard when in the late fall of 1717, after making their way to Martinique island in the eastern Caribbean, Blackbeard’s fellow pirate Hornigold captured a French slave ship, then known as La Concorde. Large and well-equipped, it made an attractive addition to their fleet, and Hornigold turned it over to Blackbeard. Blackbeard made it his new flagship, renaming it Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR).

Now empowered with his new flagship, Blackbeard sailed throughout the Caribbean and up the North American coast, plundering new targets and adding yet more to his treasures and his fleet. His flagship’s career ended in 1718, however, when Blackbeard attempted to enter Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina, today known as Beaufort Inlet. During the attempt, Queen Anne’s Revenge, accompanied by the companion sloop Adventure, ran aground on an ocean bar and were abandoned, never to be used again.

But well over two centuries later, on November 21, 1996, a team from the private research firm Intersal, Inc., discovered a cluster of cannon and anchors on the seabed of Beaufort Inlet. It was first located by Intersal’s director of operations, Mike Daniel, using data from historical research provided by Intersal’s president, Phil Masters, and archaeologist David Moore, nautical archaeology curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum. A number of artifacts were recovered from the site, including a bronze bell dated to 1705, a sounding weight, an English blunderbuss barrel, a lead cannon apron, 2 cannonballs, cannon tubes, and 2 large anchors. The artifacts, in combination with historical documentation, geographic context, and further research, led the team to conclude that this was indeed the wreckage of Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. A follow-up dive in 1997, this time by the Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) of the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, afforded archaeologists the opportunity to thoroughly examine the shipwreck, leading to the additional recovery of two cannons, four cannonballs, a pewter platter, pottery fragments and other artifacts.

Since then, more than 280,000 artifacts have been recovered, including 20 cannons, ship timbers, 2 anchors, pewter flatware, medical instruments, gun parts, cannon shot, gold grains, glass wine bottles, and ceramic pieces, to name but a few of the types.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Cannons safely aboard deck after being raised from the seafloor. Courtesy NC Department of Cultural Resources.

Sources: Some of the material adapted from a press release by the NC Department of Cultural Resources.

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Nazi Death Camp Yields Its Secrets

Posted on October 27, 2013 by No Author -

October 14, 1943 is a date that is not well known in the annals of World War II. Yet it marks a remarkable event that reflected a moment of triumph in the story of thousands of human victims who went helplessly to their deaths at the hands of their Nazi captors inside the Sobibór extermination camp in eastern Poland. It was the day when 500 Jewish prisoners executed a rebellion and successful escape.

Israeli archaeologist Yoram Haimi made excavation and investigation of this site a personal journey — he had two uncles who died there during the War. Working with Dr. Philip Reeder, Dean of Duquesne University’s Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, he had the site surveyed, mapped, and then excavated over a period of 5 years beginning in 2007. Using technology and conventional archaeological excavation and recording techniques, an archaeological team uncovered evidence of structures and artifacts of victims, including those of children, in their original locations along the traces of walkways and buildings used to exterminate nearly 250,000 Jews during the camp’s operation from April 1942 to October, 1943.

It was not the first time anyone had attempted to excavate the site. In 2001, a group of Polish researchers, archaeologists, and historians began investigating the site, but very little of its material remains had been found. Following the revolt in 1943, the Nazis had effectively liquidated the site by removing most of its traces by demolishing the structures, covering it with soil, planting trees and disguising it as a farm. It took modern techniques of detection, including ground-penetrating radar, and work by a joint Polish-Israeli team with actual fieldwork carried out by a team of Polish archaeologists led by Wojciech Mazurek, to recover substantial numbers of artifacts along with significant evidence of the camp’s features and structures.

By August 2012, the team of workers had recovered numerous artifacts interpreted to be the last possessions of some prisoners. In addition to evidence of structures and other features on the camp area landscape, artifacts included teeth, bone shards, jewelry, keys and coins that gave clues to identifying the victims. “The most important of these was an aluminum identification tag belonging to a six-year old girl, Lea Judith De La Penha of Amsterdam,” writes Haimi in a recent preliminary report, “who arrived from the Westerbork Camp in Holland together with her parents, on a transport that left on July 6, 1943 and arrived to Sobibór on July 9, 1943. The child’s mother was Judith de Abraham Rodrigues Parreira, b. 1903 and her father was David de Hartog Juda De La Penha, b. 1909. The De La Penha family belonged to a community of ‘Portuguese Jews’ who arrived from Spain and Portugal to Holland approximately one hundred years after the Spanish Inquisition in 1492……Following the German invasion, the situation for Dutch Jews became critical and in July 1942, the first transports of Jews to Poland began.”

Arguably the most important discovery was, however, the traces of the postholes that marked the path of what the Nazis called the Himmelfahrstrasse, or “Road to Heaven”, the path along which the prisoners were marched naked to the gas chambers.

Sobibór is distinguished from other similar camps throughout Nazi occupied Europe in that approximately 500 Jewish camp workers organized a revolt that was carried out on October 14, 1943, leading to the successful escape of 300 Jews. Of the others, dozens were killed in the mine fields around the camp and still others were hunted down in the succeeding days.

A documentary honoring the 70th anniversary of the rebellion will be screened at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh on the evening of November 11, 2013. The film will be followed by speakers Philip Reeder and Yoram Haimi, who will relate the details of the excavation project at Sobibor. It is free to the public. More information is detailed below.

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When: Monday, Nov. 11, from 7 to 10 p.m.

7 p.m., Reeder address

7:20 p.m., Film screening and questions-and-answer session with Haimi

8:30 p.m., Haimi lecture, Archaeology of the Holocaust: Excavations at Sobibor

9:30 p.m., reception and informational discussions

Where: Power Center, Duquesne University, Forbes Avenue at Chatham Square, Pittsburgh

Admission: Free and open to the public

Sponsored by: The Nathan J. and Helen Goldrich Foundation, Duquesne University and its Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences

Contacts: Rose Ravasio, 412.396.6051/cell 412.818.0234

Karen Ferrick-Roman, 412.396.1154/cell 412.736.1877

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Cover Photo, Top Left: I.D. tag of Lea Judith De La Penha. Courtesy Yoram Haimi

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Big Catch of Big Cannons at Blackbeard Shipwreck Site

Posted on October 26, 2013 by No Author -

BEAUFORT, N.C. — The final week of the expedition at the wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship,Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), is pulling out the big guns. Literally. Five cannons, four weighing 2,000 pounds and one nearly 3,000 pounds, will be lifted from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean Monday, Oct. 28, weather permitting. All the cast iron cannons fired six pound cannon balls, and will bring to 20 the cannons raised from the site. This will be the biggest ‘catch’ of cannons recovered at one time.

“We think the largest of the four cannons may be of Swedish origin since the only other recovered gun this size was made in Sweden,” Project Director Billy Ray Morris observes. “We also hope to recover two large concretions each the size of a twin bed. They may contain barrel hoops, cannon balls and other treasures.”

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Source: Press release of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Cover Photo, Top Left: Cannon being lifted from the sea floor at the site of the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck site. Credit: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

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For more information about the Queen Anne’s Revenge archaeological project, see the official website and a major feature article, Raising Pirates, in the September 2013 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Last Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans Still a Mystery

Posted on October 21, 2013 by No Author -

It appears that the search for and identification of fossil remnants of the last common ancestor (termed ‘LCA’ by paleoanthropologists) of both Neanderthals and modern humans, long a subject of debate among scientists studying human evolution, will remain a mystery. At least for now.

So suggests the conclusions of a PNAS-published study conducted by Aida Gómez-Robles, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral scientist at the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology of The George Washington University, and an international team of colleagues.

The study, the first of its kind, used quantitative data collection and analysis techniques to reconstruct a mathematically-informed model of the probable dentition of the Neanderthal/modern human LCA. They then compared known fossil dentitions of classified species of Homo (the genus of great apes that includes modern humans and species closely related to them) to the reconstructed LCA model. Fossil examples from the European Middle Pleistocene (ca. 781 to 126 thousand years ago) and others from Africa were used in the comparison. They included fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species of Homo, including fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites in Spain, which have yielded some of the earliest known fossils of ancient humans in Europe. They considered two alternative Neanderthal/modern human divergence times based on previous research: 450 ka (thousand years) based on molecular clock estimate research results; and 1 Ma (million years) based on the morphological (physical form and structure) affinities among the various subject species found in the fossil record.

What they found was that “no known hominin species matches the expected morphology of this common ancestor”.*

“Furthermore,” write Gómez-Robles in their report, “we found that European representatives of potential ancestral species have had affinities with Neanderthals for almost 1 My (million years), thus supporting a model of early divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans.”*

This is a significant finding because Neanderthals and modern humans have previously been thought to have diverged from each other about 300,000 – 700,000 years ago (molecular clock estimate of 450 ka falling within that range) based on genetic studies. Thus the divergence time suggested by the fossil record may possibly be closer to the actual divergence time.

But this early divergence is by no means conclusive.

“Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans,” said Gómez-Robles. “These discrepancies cannot be simply ignored, but they have to be somehow reconciled.”

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This image shows diversity in premolar and molar morphology in Neanderthals, modern humans and potential ancestral species. Credit: Aida Gómez-Robles, PNAS

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Moreover, their research results show that African fossils dated within the range of 500 ka to 1 Ma “merit continued study and are currently the most promising source of candidates for the [Neanderthal/modern human] LCA.”*

But the relevant fossil record in Africa is currently too thin to be used as a viable database.

“The study tells us that there are still new hominin finds waiting to be made,” says P. David Polly, professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the study.

For going forward, the researchers suggest that quantitative and statistical methods provide a better way to settle debates about human origins than the descriptive analyses that have been used in the past. “Our primary aim,” they write, “is to put questions about human evolution into a testable, quantitative framework and to offer an objective means to sort out apparently unsolvable debates about hominin phylogeny.”* They also suggest applying their methodology to study other body parts represented in the hominin fossil record.

The details of the study report can be reviewed in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

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*Aida Gomez-Robles, et al., No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1302653110.

Source: Aida Gomez-Robles, et al., No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, and press release of the George Washington University.

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