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The Great Maya Tombstone

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Georges Fery -

Freelance writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics from history, culture, and beliefs to daily living of ancient and today’s indigenous societies of Mesoamerica and South America. His articles are published online at travelthruhistory.com, ancient-origins.net and popular-archaeology.com, and in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com). In the U.K. his articles are found in mexicolore.co.uk.

The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org, Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. (rgs.org). He is a member in good standing with the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX (mayaexploration.org) the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA (archaeological.org), NFAA-Non Fiction Authors Association (nonfictionauthrosassociation.com) and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. (americanindian.si.edu).

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Ancient European Wayfinders: The Minoans Who Sailed By The Stars

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Alessandro Berio -

Alessandro Berio is a researcher who specializes in skyscape archaeology, which combines his interests in ancient history and the stars. He has a master of arts in Cultural Astronomy from the University of Wales Trinity St. David and has completed continuing education on Minoan and Mycenaean archaeology at Oxford University. He has conducted pioneering field work in Crete on Minoan celestial navigation.

Over a millennia before Homer’s Odysseus followed Ursa Major home from Troy, the Minoans of Crete were already sailing by the stars. According to a new study* published in the Mediterranean Journal of Archaeology and Archaeomety, Bronze Age Minoans used celestial navigation techniques similar to the Polynesians, despite living over 17,800 km and thousands of years apart.

The Minoans flourished on the Greek island of Crete in 2,600–1,100 BCE and are considered the first European civilization. Crete quickly became a place of immense wealth (which was consolidated in the hands of the elites) and specialized in trade with the Near East and Egypt. Access to the gold, ivory, and tin that the Minoans craved required advanced sailing techniques.

The findings have shown that the technique of using star paths to navigate the seas emerged much earlier than previously thought. Ancient Minoan traders, and possibly even the legendary navy of King Minos (thought to be the world’s first professional navy), used the rising of key stars to traverse the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.

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A simulated example of a star path

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Minoan palaces and the stars of the east

The many grand palaces built on Crete by the Minoans point to the importance of international trade. These palaces, including those at Knossos, Kato Zakro, and five other locations, were orientated towards trading partners to the east and south and toward the navigational stars that would take them there. Wealthy Minoans looked out upon famous bright stars, like Sirius, Orion’s Belt, and Spica. As these stars rose to the horizon, they could be used to direct open sea navigators to the east.

Crete maintained important trade partnerships in the east, including with Sidon and Byblos (both in present-day Lebanon), Tel Kabri (in modern Israel), Tell el-Dab’a (Egypt), and other key locations. Evidence of Minoan artifacts and murals has been found in many of these places.

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Map of proposed star path orientations from Crete to the Near East

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Minoan elites: wealth, knowledge, and trading by starlight

Connections with the east mattered to the elites of Bronze Age Crete. The eastward orientation of Minoan palaces symbolized elite influence in foreign trade. Wealthy Minoans likely monopolized long-distance trade (and the profits made from exporting Crete’s wine and oils). Just as the uber-wealthy of the 21st century flaunt their Birkin bags and Rolex watches, Bronze Age elites exhibited their wealth through prestige goods, such as ivory and gold, which came from abroad.

Minoan elites may have protected their trade networks by gatekeeping the knowledge of celestial navigation. Studies in the 1990s showed that the Minoans had knowledge of night sailing and further work in 2013 by Thomas Tartaron suggested that the elites kept the knowledge of using stars for navigation a secret (like the chief navigator families of the Pacific). According to Tartaron, maritime knowledge was ‘worth guarding as a potential source of power and independence…those with access to distant places with their exotic products and…knowledge possessed a special, perhaps even mystical status.’

The wealth of Minoan elites would have allowed them to access foreign knowledge, like an incipient trigonometry perhaps used for establishing the orientations of the palaces, as well as develop their own technologies such as the sidereal compass. Used by traditional sailors in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, the sidereal compass, known from at least the 9th century in the Indian Ocean, could determine the directions to specific islands based on star paths, which were marked as points analogous to a mariner’s compass. It’s possible existence in the Bronze Age highlights the sophisticated understanding of navigation that existed at this time.

A new study looks to Crete’s palaces for answers

The problem often facing classical and ancient scholars – that is, the lack of written evidence – makes an appearance here. But the lack of written evidence from Crete can be partially overcome. The comparative study of Polynesian and Micronesian sea-faring can point to possible techniques used by the Minoans — for example, the Polynesian practice of observing star paths for navigation or even the use of the sidereal compass.

My recent study used ancient sea routes, software simulations of ancient skies, archaeological records, and wind patterns to highlight the link between Minoan palaces and sea-faring techniques.

A key example was the orientation of the palace of Knossos – the largest Minoan palace in Crete and home to the legendary King Minos. This important palace was oriented toward the star Spica – the movement of which would have helped navigators sail to the important Levantine harbor of Sidon, where evidence of Minoan artifacts has been found. Although mythology should not be taken as concrete evidence, the connection between Crete and Sidon was memorialized on ancient Minoan coins which showed the myth of Zeus turning into a bull and abducting Princess Europa (mother of King Minos) on the beaches of Sidon, from where she was taken to Crete.

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A view of the palace at Knossos. ii7017, Pixabay

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Satellite photo of the Minoan Knossos palace showing the short axis of the central court pointing along the star path of Spica toward the ancient trade harbor of Sidon, the location where Minos’s mother Europa was abducted.

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Comprehending the importance of stars for navigation brings us a step closer to understanding the Minoan civilization and its role in the ancient world. By looking to the stars, the study shows us the island’s centrality in the Bronze Age economic and cultural landscape and the importance of trade in shaping Crete’s palaces.

A sophisticated maritime culture existed in Bronze Age Crete, and the study showed that the Minoans ‘relied on long-distance sea voyages for trade’. These findings offer a better understanding of ancient culture and connections in the Bronze Age Mediterranean.

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A. Berio

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*Berio, Alessandro, Minoan Star Sailors: Linking Palace Orientations with Maritime Trade Routes and Celestial Navigation, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 22, No 3, (2022), pp. 149-177

Publishing……Ancient Roman Style

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Frank Korn -

Professor Frank J. Korn has retired from his teaching position on the Classical Studies faculty at Seton Hall University. He is a Fulbright Scholar at the American Academy in Rome and the author of nine books on various aspects of the Eternal City. He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who as “a notable classical educator and writer.” Recipient of the Princeton Prize for Distinguished Teaching, he resides with his wife Camille in Scotch Plains, N.J. The couple’s three sons – Frank, Ronald, and John and their families live nearby. His latest book – Below Rome, the Story of the Catacombs – which he co-authored with his wife, is available on Amazon or from the publisher, St. Johann Press, Haworth, N.J.

Along the Argiletum, a heavily trafficked street in old Rome that led down from the summit of the Esquiline Hill, then through the Subura quarter, entering the Forum Romanum between the Senate House and the Basilica Aemilia, one could encounter a daily microcosm of the city’s populace.

A person could stake out a shady sidewalk spot beneath an umbrella pine and divert themself for hours just watching the ceaseless river of changing faces flow by. The eclectic multitude might include a prominent senator, with a conspicuous entourage of bodyguards, an obnoxious man of great wealth with a cadre of obsequious clients, actors, bankers, businessmen, teachers and teenagers, ladies of the social register, down-and-outers, veterans, and pickpockets.

Their one common denominator?

A passion for good books.

The Argiletum, you see, was Rome’s answer to London’s Paternoster Row, or New York’s ‘’Publishers Row” on 5th Avenue, i.e., the heart of the publishing and book-selling trade. Many of the Eternal City’s publishers not only had their offices along the clamorous paved thoroughfare, but their factories and retail outlets as well. It was also a rendezvous for the distinguished literati of the day who would be on hand to help promote sales of their latest “volumes.” (The Romans often used the word volumen instead of the word liber for book.)

And what did a book look like in Roman times? While no original manuscripts survive, archeologists excavating Herculaneum – the other city buried, like Pompeii, in A.D. 79 by the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano – discovered a house with an extensive library of eight hundred plus “books,” i.e. scrolls, that afford us the answer to that question. These consisted of long strips of fine bark papyrus imported from Egypt. After the papyrus had been pressed into “sheets,” it was pressed a second time and sun-dried before being cut into “page” widths that could be written on, on one side, with a stylus dipped in ink made from lampblack. These pages would be glued one to another at the edges and then rolled tightly around two wooden rods, or dowels, about twelve inches long. The last leaf, or page, would be fastened to the right hand rod. The left hand rod would serve as the take-up reel. The reader would hold the “book” with both hands and unroll it from right to left until a page was centered between the two rods, and repeat this step for each subsequent page. These books ranged in length from as little as six feet (a pamphlet) to as much as sixty feet or more for an edition, say, of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Each of the rods would be tipped with metal or ivory for decorative purposes. To the top end a small tag of parchment bearing the title, and perhaps the author’s name, would be attached, hanging down when the book was placed on its side in a bookcase.

There were no breaks between the words nor the sentences. There was no paragraphing nor punctuation. These devices were introduced in later centuries as a service to the reader.

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The beginning of what we know of today as books made its premier as the unrolling scroll. Smufotos, Pixabay

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Photos of the papyrus fragments PHerc.1103 (a) and PHerc.110 (b,c). Image contrast and brightness were enhanced to better visualize the details visible to the naked eye on their external surface. Sara Stabile, Francesca Palermo, Inna Bukreeva, Daniela Mele, Vincenzo Formoso, Roberto Bartolino & Alessia Cedola. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Up to the first century before Christ, the publishing business was virtually non-existent. There were as yet no public libraries and the literacy rate was woefully low. In the Roman world of letters, such as it was, authors would produce copies of their writings in their own homes for distribution among friends and kin.

Cicero however, the great statesman, orator, and essayist, had the advantage of a wealthy entrepreneurial friend, Titus Pomponius Atticus, who put his corps of skilled slaves to work mass-producing editions of Cicero’s manuscripts. When Atticus noted the literacy rate significantly growing, and the ever increasing market of book lovers, the astute financier jumped into the publishing business with both feet. He soon entered into agreement with a number of accomplished poets, satirists, story-tellers, biographers, and historians. Naturally Cicero, the master wordsmith of the day, headed his list of authors. It was a stroke of genius on Atticus’ part to add to his portfolio a bookshop and a publishing firm. He quickly struck gold with beautiful editions of the two most brilliant of all Ciceronian essays: De Amicitia (on Friendship) and De Senectute (On Old Age).

In a letter to Atticus from 13 February in 61 B.C., Cicero had pointed out the high real estate values on the Argiletum:

“My brother Quintus has purchased the remaining three-quarters of the Argiletum property for 735,000 sesterces.

(Classical scholars calculate that today such a sum would come to about 350,000 U.S. dollars.)

Accordingly, Atticus established his production plant in that fast developing business district. The establishment had a room where slaves pressed the papyrus into sheets, another where they glued the edges together. In the third room – a rather large hall in fact – dozens of his workers skillful in penmanship sat at drafting tables and wrote feverishly on these sheets, while a reader at a lectern dictated, in a loud, deliberate voice, from the original manuscript.

Another word or two, now, about Marcus Tullius Cicero. “Tully,” as third-level Latin students and their teachers fondly refer to him, maintained a prolific correspondence which was destined to have a significant impact on the nascent book-making industry. Tiro, Cicero’s intellectually gifted Greek slave – whom he dearly loved and treated as a member of the family – carefully wrote out the great man’s dictated letters and always made a second copy of each, which he meticulously maintained in a file. After his master’s death in 43 B.C., Tiro turned over some nine hundred of them for publication by the firm of Titus Pomponius Atticus. Their release met with such wide acclaim and wild enthusiasm that soon letter-collections of prominent Romans became a popular new literary form with avid readers, and publishers were only too eager to accommodate this growing mania.

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Cicero with his friend Atticus and brother Quintus, at his villa at Arpinum. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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In the late first and early second century A.D., the personal correspondence of Pliny the Younger topped the sales charts on the Argiletum. These epistolary writings of such literary celebrities afford the modern reader fascinating and authentic insights into numerous aspects of Roman life, e.g. the leisure interests, the politics, the culinary preferences, the religious beliefs and practices, the medical advancements, the family unit, the home decor, the raising of children, the legal profession, the variety of occupations, the compulsory military service, the ownership and treatment of slaves, the entertainment industry, the government welfare programs, the holiday festivals, the trade and commerce, the frantic pace of urban life vis-a-vis the tranquility of residence in a country villa, summer vacations, travel abroad, the Zeitgeist, and so much else of each era of Roman antiquity. All this made for very scintillating reading and a new, very marketable genre for the publishers.

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Pliny the Younger and His Mother at Misenum. Painting by Angelica Kauffmann, Exhibit in the Princeton University Art Museum. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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According to Martial, the first century poet, Roman readers could be quite discerning, fussy if you will, about choosing a book:

“The people of Rome have demanding tastes in literature. The young, the old, even the children have the nose of a rhinoceros [an idiom meaning, back then, knowing how to judge well].”

In 39 B.C., as the literacy rate continued to grow dramatically, the affluent C. Asinius Pollio founded a for-profit lending library on the Aventine Hill. With the resultant growing demand for books, the fledgling publishing trade began to flourish and more and more companies and shops blossomed on the Argiletum. Just before his assassination, Julius Caesar had plans in the works to build the first State Library. It was left to his successor Augustus to complete the ambitious project.

Libraries began to be organized in the provinces and municipalities throughout the empire. By the end of the first century A.D. there were numerous such facilities – as many as twenty-nine in the capital alone, the most impressive among them being the twin libraries built by Trajan, one stocked entirely with works in Latin, the other in Greek. (Interesting note: it was considered the height of bad manners for a library patron to return a book without rewinding it to the first page, as a courtesy to the next borrower.)

In addition to all this, there was now a private collection craze for the publishers to satisfy, as well. Good home libraries tended to include as many as three or four hundred volumes. Book collecting by this time had also become a status symbol and a form of ostentation. (A book was a most welcome gift to bring along if one were invited to a dinner party.) Cicero would say: “A house without books is like a body without a soul.” He would then add: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need to be happy.”

The beginning of Rome’s Imperial Age also saw the establishment of a sort of canon of literature to be taught in the schools, thereby further spiking the output of the publishing companies. Publishing houses soon dominated the Argiletum. Quintilian the rhetorician and Martial the satirist both mention the firms of Tryphon, Attrectus, and Secundus. Horace (first century B.C.) had told of another. After instructing his readers on what should go into a volume of poetry, he writes:

“Brothers, Hic meret aera liber Sosiis (Such a book would be a real money-maker for the Sosii).”

We also see references by other writers to the publishing houses of Dorus, and Q. Pollius Valerianus. All these were the MacMillans, Random Houses, and Simon and Schusters of that day and age.

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While the idea of royalties was still unknown, the publisher and author surely must have reached some kind of share-the-profit agreement. Of course, first time and unknown authors, desperate to have their work produced, show-cased, and disseminated, would settle for a pittance. But then, even well-known writers could, from time to time, be exploited.

Publishers grew rich by shipping their neatly packaged products to Gaul, Spain, Illyria, Sicily, North Africa and other distant provinces. Martial liked to boast that his works were being read and quoted by soldiers deployed in far off Britain, but then complained: “I don’t make a dime off it.”

A publisher would try to estimate the demand and market for any new manuscript and then put as many copiers as called for to work on its production. No copy left his establishment until the whole edition – anywhere from a hundred to two hundred – was ready.

Since copyright laws did not exist, a new publication could be easily pirated and mass-produced by a smaller firm in a cheap and unattractive issue.

By the mid-second century A.D. in addition to raking in huge profits from their provincial trade, the Argiletum dealers continued doing a thriving business right on the premises. The voracious reading, book-buying public would daily jam the street, seeking the latest best-sellers. Stores and stalls would hang advertisements in conspicuous places, giving the prices of new releases. Sometimes tantalizing excerpts would be posted for the convenience of browsers, who would swarm like flies around the entrance to each retail outlet.

In our time, an author of a newly released work is expected to help with the promotion and sales of it by book-signings, by doing interviews with journalists, and mostly, by making the rounds of popular radio and television talk shows. In Roman times, authors would hold readings from their newest efforts in private homes, on street corners, in theaters, in porticoes, and even in the Forum. Some of the more renowned writers might even be invited to the emperor’s palace to provide the entertainment portion of an elegant state dinner and on other special occasions. Hadrian, with his own funds, erected in the heart of Rome a spacious auditorium just for this purpose. The place drew an eager audience for every event.

Many poor illiterates often joined in, this being their only means to enjoy outstanding writing.

Often, an aspiring but as yet unpublished author would invite family and friends, neighbors and co-workers to a private reading of his latest manuscript. So as not to offend the nervous neophyte, most of the invitees would show up, though some with great reluctance. Lame excuses, for not being able to comply, abounded.

Literary clubs and discussion groups eventually also became commonplace – as did the expression: “What’s new on the Argiletum?” It was the golden age of Roman publishing.

In the late fourth century, a kind of industrial revolution hit the publishing trade. A new book format was introduced. This involved the use of parchment (dried and specially treated animal skins) cut into “pages” which could be written on, on both sides. These were numbered and stacked in numerical order, then stitched together in the back to form what was called a codex, or in other words, the prototype for books ever since. The companies lining the Argiletum had to adapt or perish, for the reading public quickly preferred the ease of turning pages to the cumbersome old way.

Today there is hardly a trace of the ancient book bazaar street. It courses somewhere beneath eighteenth century buildings and Mussolini’s Via dei Fori Imperiali. The short stretch of the Argiletum that penetrated the Forum Romanum is now overrun with weeds and shattered paving stones, and is busy playing host to a colony of vagrant cats.

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Cleopatra Through the Ages

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Richard Marranca -

Editor’s Note: The drama and human interest that surrounds the story of Cleopatra in history continues to fascinate story-tellers as well as scholars to this day. Whatever one’s perspective and opinion, her legacy in her corner of the world endures as a testament to her power and influence during the early years of the rise of the Roman Empire……….

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RM (Richard Marranca): Queen Cleopatra with Adele James on Netflix is a big event. And Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton is one of the most expensive films ever made. Both (and much else in the Cleopatra industry) keep Cleopatra’s story going, don’t they?

PC (Paul Cartledge): Streaming movies is now the mass-est of mass media receptions, far bigger ‘box office’ than actual box office at movie theaters. In its day, Joseph Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra was the hottest ticket in town: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056937/. But not only and not most for the quality of the filmmaking (overblown, overdone, overhyped) but rather for the sexual shenanigans going on between its two main stars both on and more especially off set. But there are other media whereby Cleopatra’s name and supposed career are continually – almost continuously – brought before the eyes of the public to gawp and wonder at: books (some quite serious contributions to scholarship, such as M. Miles Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited, 2011, others not), exhibitions (a good one at London’s British Museum, 2001), and of course the perennially popular Shakespeare history/tragedy. Whether it’s right to speak of a ‘Cleopatra industry’ is not so certain, at least not in the sense of a centrally organized production line created by an official fan club. There are – and always have been – more than one Cleopatra – see the next answer.

RM: Harold Bloom (the late literary scholar) has called Cleopatra “the world’s first celebrity.” Wherever she lands in the lineup, he wasn’t kidding. Is she a celebrity?

PC: I would strongly disagree that she was the world’s ‘first’ celebrity – that questionably honorific title surely should go to Helen of Sparta and Troy, thanks to Homer and Euripides – and the initially European Renaissance! A good friend and ancient historian colleague of mine, Robert Garland, wrote a brilliant book on Celebrity in Antiquity (2006) – spoiler alert: I commissioned it for a series I then co-edited with Susanna Morton Braund. There is no question but that Cleo was and is a celebrity, that is, she fulfills both the ancient and the modern criteria for this dubiously honorific label.

The Berlin Cleopatra, a Roman sculpture of Cleopatra VII wearing a royal diadem, mid-1st century BC (around the time of her visits to Rome in 46–44 BC), discovered in an Italian villa along the Via Appia. Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

As to ancient Graeco-Roman criteria, what mattered is that she was in intimate relations with two of the most powerful men in the then known Mediterranean world. As Clytemnestra was to Agamemnon or Aspasia to Pericles, so was Cleopatra to Julius Caesar and Mark Antony – besides being a queen regnant in her own independent right. As far as modernity is concerned, I prefer to see Cleo as a ‘tabloid queen’, as she was treated in the final chapter of Garland’s book, fulfilling the book’s subtitle ‘From Media Tarts to Tabloid Queens’. ‘Tabloid’ has implications of cheapness, of mere celebrity, of being famous for being famous, which is the trend unhappily set for her by the flop movie of 1963 (that discouraged filmmakers and movie moneymen from treating the ancient world for a generation – until Gladiator in 2000). In the historical actuality of the later first century BCE, she was much much more important than that.

RM: In our recent interview, you mentioned that Ptolemy I hijacked Alexander’s corpse and brought it to Egypt. Can you tell us about the genius, power, and peculiarities of the Ptolemies?

PC: *These are two different types of question, although they do overlap. Different because the Ptolemies had to present quite different faces to the native Egyptians and especially the powerful priesthood, on the one hand, and to the Graeco-Macedonians and other peoples, such as the Jews, of Alexandria, on the other. To illustrate the former, there is no better example than what has come to be known as the ‘Rosetta Stone’, now housed in London’s British Museum: a trophy of war (Napoleonic, 1801), it was then ‘greenwashed’ to become the basis of the decipherment (by French scholar Champollion following British scholar Young) of Egyptian hieroglyphs: see e.g. John Ray The Rosetta Stone and the rebirth of Ancient Egypt (Profile Books, London, 2007). The Stone bears three texts, which are supposed to be close copies of each other: one in hieroglyphics, another in Egyptian demotic (cursive script, the language a precursor of Coptic), and the third in (Hellenistic koinê) Greek. It records an agreement struck in 196 BCE between Ptolemy V and the Egyptian priesthood. Several copies were made and exhibited in various Egyptian temples, but only the Rosetta version survives in something approaching completeness.

For Alexandrians, however, mainly of course Greek Alexandrians, the Ptolemy dynasty had to put on a show that would justify their appropriation of the titles ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ and the claim that those titles implied to be the legitimate successors ultimately to the Egyptian pharaohs and more proximately to the kings of Macedon and of (Achaemenid dynasty) Persia. Hence the royal palace – now forever lost, submerged in the Mediterranean; hence the royal tombs (likewise lost, like that of the City Founder, Alexander); and hence the Pharos lighthouse, a bigger and better iteration than anything remotely comparable anywhere else in the known world – functional for trade but also a grandiloquent propaganda statement. It was by no means predictable, however, that one of the ways of promoting themselves both in Greek Egypt and to the wider Hellenic world would be through the promotion of high intellectual culture. It was probably Ptolemy II rather than his father Ptolemy I (died 284 BCE) who actually oversaw the building of the famous Museum (in Greek Mouseion, meaning a religious shrine devoted to the worship of the Nine Muses) with its attached Library. The complex became a beacon of scholarship, even if the scholars attracted to work there including the likes of Callimachus (an early Librarian) and Archimedes did not always do so harmoniously. My own pick of a very distinguished bunch is Eratosthenes, who hailed from the Greek city of Cyrene in eastern Libya along the coast from Egypt. He was nicknamed Beta (‘Second’) because, although he was of alpha quality across many intellectual fields, he was never accounted top dog in any one – being outshone in math, for example, by Archimedes (from Syracuse in Sicily). Perhaps his greatest intellectual achievement was to calculate the circumference of planet Earth with a very acceptably small margin of error.

RM: And what a city, Alexandria – lighthouse, library, vast multicultural population!

PC: You mentioned Alexandria’s vast, multicultural population. It’s been estimated that by the time of Cleopatra – and Augustus – Alexandria may have become the world’s first million-inhabitant city. Of the many cultures represented within the huge population, that of the (diaspora) Jews is one of the most interesting and significant, for two reasons, one good, one very bad indeed. The bad one is that Alexandria witnessed the first very serious outbreaks of antisemitism, or, as some prefer, Judeophobia. Jews were monotheists, not polytheists, and their peculiar customs included circumcision, which Greeks found aesthetically abhorrent. Prejudice and murderous violence ensued. The good reason, at any rate if one is any kind of Christian today, is that it was in Alexandria in the 3^rd century BCE, for Jews who had lost familiarity with their ancestral Hebrew language, that the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, becoming known thereby as the Septuagint. Thus when (St) Paul and his fellow-Jewish (by birth and upbringing) proto-Christians needed an authorizing textual precedent for their utterly untraditional and newfangled scriptures written in koinê Greek (eventually the New Testament), they could call upon the Septuagint, an oven-ready holy textbook.

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The remains of the ancient site of the Temple complex of Sarapis at Alexandria. It once included the temple, a library, lecture rooms, and smaller shrines but after many reconstructions and conflict over the site it is mostly ground level ruins. Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons

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RM: Cleopatra is the last of the Ptolemies. Can you tell us about them? And why were they so murderous with each other? Maybe intermarriage was a bad idea…

PC: They were indeed often murderous: Cleopatra herself is a good – or rather a very bad – example. But they weren’t always. The second Ptolemy married and reigned conjointly with Arsinoe I for over 35 years, apparently harmoniously. This was a classic dynastic marriage, uniting the Ptolemaic house with that of Lysimachus, Arsinoe’s father, who had established himself as an independent post-Alexander Hellenistic ruler in the region of Thrace (modern Bulgaria and part of north Aegean Greece). But when Ptolemy IV married Arsinoe III, he was marrying his full sister, in a brother-sister marriage of the type Cleopatra was herself to practice (if hardly with enthusiasm or kindness). Why did the Ptolemies feel they could cheerfully break the normal Greek incest taboo, or, put it another way, why did they feel that such a marriage would be an asset to their rule rather than a liability? Those questions have plagued modern scholarship, and are well discussed here by Sheila Ager: https://uwlabyrinth.uwaterloo.ca/labyrinth_archives/all_in_the_family.pdf. I have no new suggestions to offer. The obvious points to note are that such marriages avoided possible complications (disputed inheritance, interfamilial and possibly interstate hostility) of exogamy, or out-marriage, and that they overtly reinforced the strongly dynastic, blood-based character of the royal regime.

RM: I think that for many or most people who learned this stuff, the focus was on Julius Caesar getting stabbed to death because he was getting too big – a dictator, maybe a god. Scary for some of the elite. But Julius was killed while Cleopatra was in Rome. The plot thickens…

PC: Certainly a couple of years later, in 46 BCE, by which time Pompey was dead (killed in Egypt) and Caesar was firmly in position as dictatorial sole ruler of the Roman world, Cleopatra came to consort adulterously with Caesar in Rome in full if controversial public view.

Cleopatra Before Caesar by Jean-Léon Gérôme, oil on canvas, 1866. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

A 17-year-old C. Octavius duly noted Cleopatra’s unpopularity with the Roman public – and took full propaganda advantage as he too engaged in civil war, in the 30s, against a Mark Antony by then bigamously married to Cleopatra, father of three children with her, and acting out the full-on role of an oriental Hellenistic potentate. Octavius noted also the unpopularity of Caesar’s all too blatant moves, aided by Antony, to get himself equated in Rome to a Hellenistic regal monarch, a king, the most un-Republican thing in the world. Hellenistic kings and queens, such as Cleopatra, were routinely given divine worship as living gods, but for Caesar to be accorded divine status, as he may well have desired, would have breached another Roman Republican taboo. Brutus and Cassius, leaders of the Republican resistance, therefore had plenty of ideological as well as physical ammunition to do what they did in the Senate House on the Ides of March 44 BCE.

RM: Cleopatra outsmarted Antony in a few ways. She had to. But was she interested in becoming the next Alexander the Great or leader of the Roman empire? Was her son Caesarion intended for that role? It is epic soap opera with extremely high stakes.

PC: Among her many and varied accomplishments, Cleopatra was said to be the first of the Ptolemies to learn the native Egyptian language, presumably so as to be able to speak it as well as read it. That tells me that her first and overriding aim was to preserve the Ptolemaic kingdom and dynasty, and to preserve herself as the incumbent Ptolemy. Rome, unfortunately, could not be ignored and had to be bought or bedded off.

Antony, when the final showdown with Octavian came in the late 30s, had the support of almost all (Sparta was a notable exception) the eastern, Greek-speaking half of the Roman world, whereas Octavian could count on the forces and resources of Italy and the Roman ‘West’. Antony – with Cleopatra – should have fared better than he did in the final naval battle of his civil war, at Actium in 30 BCE. But he was up against a remarkably determined, ambitious and cunning, if unmilitary, opponent in Octavian, who could count on the support of one of the most brilliant figures of his age, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Agrippa commanded the victorious fleet at Actium off northwest Greece, for which he was rewarded successively with elevation to near-parity of status and power with Augustus (as the first Roman emperor became in 27 BCE) and marriage to Augustus’s eldest daughter Julia (as all women of the Julian patriline were named).

RM: What do archaeology and science tell us about Cleopatra—is her tomb gone forever?

PC: As noted in passing above, yes, her tomb is, like my darling Clementine of the song, lost and gone forever. Archaeology, the study of material culture and mute material remains, tells us relatively little about her that we would not have gleaned from the extant written sources, including a papyrus dubiously claimed to be autograph, or that we would not have surmised from comparative archaeological evidence for works commissioned by earlier Ptolemies or for her rival Hellenistic royal contemporaries and predecessors – in the Near or Middle East.

RM: What did we miss? Any last words?

PC: Rest In Peace?!

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In February 33 B.C., Cleopatra approved an order granting certain tax exemptions to Publius Canidius Crassus, who had been with Antonius for a decade and would be senior commander of the land forces at Actium. The relevant document is a papyrus (shown above) recovered from mummy wrappings and first published in the year 2000. Canidius was allowed to import 10,000 artabas of wheat and 5,000 amphoras of wine tax free, and the lands that he owned in Egypt were also exempt. What has excited interest is the subscript in a different hand: γινέσθωι (“make it happen” — last short line, faint, lower right). There is little doubt that this is the writing of the queen herself, as there was a tradition in Ptolemaic Egypt of countersigning by the monarch, in part to avoid forgery of official documents. This autograph of Cleopatra VII certainly is one of the more exciting discoveries of recent years: the only other known royal autographs from antiquity are of Ptolemy X and Theodosios II, both somewhat less interesting than the queen. The document also indicates the dichotomy that still existed at the very end of the Ptolemaic era between the rulers (and their Roman allies) and the ruled, where the former continued to obtain special privileges. Roller, Duane W. (2010) Cleopatra: a biography[1], Oxford: Oxford University Press. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Cover Image, Top Left: Pixabay image.

Endangered Legacy: Cultural Heritage Destruction during the Ethiopia – Eritrea War on Tigray (Nov. 2020- Oct. 2022)

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Negasi Awetehey Nega -

Abstract. War is a serious agent of destruction to cultural heritage. Primarily due to global attention to the Russia-Ukraine war, some have considered the war on the Tigray (also written as Tegray, Tigrai) a regional war less publicized but deadlier than the former. This deadlier war, backed by drone power actors, now passes two and a half years in duration. It is now documented that cultural predation, attacks on cultural heritage, territorial invasion, and ethnic cleansing have been committed in the Tǝgray region. Cultural heritage is highly affected primarily due to premeditated destruction campaigns. Tigray stands out for its archaeological, historical, and sacred heritage as a composite product of long-spanning civilizations. The author collected data via observation of some of the destroyed sites and from local and international media reports. The objective of this article is to alarm world heritage stakeholders that humanity is losing its legacy in one of its origin centers of civilizations, Tigray. The tactics of destruction include shelling and burning, the deliberate dismantling of contextual features, organized looting, pillaging, and littering of cultural heritage sites. Religious and non-religious, from the smallest objects like Axumite coins to larger monuments, both ancient and modern, were targeted. Locally, nationally, and internationally recognized cultural heritage or UNESCO-registered sites were damaged and looted. As the brutally occupied areas are freed , there will be more sites added to the list. Heritage organizations must be alarmed so that those responsible can intervene in the active destruction, and support post-war destruction assessment, repatriation and reconstruction.

Heritage Destruction and War

Although attacks on cultural heritage have caused international outrage, the international community´s understanding and action related to this severe global phenomenon is still limited. This scenario is worse in continents like Africa where micro conflicts, civil wars, and genocidal wars occur. Hence, it is easy to imagine the immensity of cultural heritage destruction in Africa.

Why do fighting parties target cultural heritage and what are the motives for attacking sites, buildings, or objects representing cultural heritage? This is an under-researched question. However, some researchers (see: Brosche et al., 2016) have sorted out:

“four motives and reasons for attacking cultural heritage: (i) attacks related to conflict goals, in which cultural property is targeted because it is connected to the issue the warring parties are fighting over; (ii) military strategic attacks, the main motivation for which is to win tactical advantages in the conflict; (iii) signaling attacks, in which cultural property is targeted as a low-risk target that signals the commitment of the aggressor; and (iv) economic incentives, where cultural property provides funding for warring parties.“

The world has already experienced much destruction. For example, in 2014 the Islamic State (IS) was seen deliberately damaging archaeological sites and museums, alongside its continued attacks on local shrines and holy places that are valued by the local communities. In the well-publicized news reports, prominent heritage sites and museums were reported to have been attacked or threatened with destruction (Harmansah, 2015).

Despite the global significance of cultural heritage and the immense destruction happening across the globe, comparatively little attention has been given to the issue. Though it is a fact that heritage destruction in wars is often unavoidable, it also matters if the damage is collateral damage, or intentional.

Cultural Heritage beyond Political Boundaries

Beginning in the late 2nd or early 1st millennium BC, human groups with different ceramic traditions emerged in the highlands of Hamasien near Asmara (north-central Eritrea), Akkele Guzay (south-central Eritrea), Agame (Eastern Tigray), and Central Tigray. Archaeological and textual evidence demonstrates that a polity, possibly at a state scale of complexity, arose in Tigray and Central Eritrea in the mid-1st millennium BC (Fattovich, 2010).

As a result of shared history, it is the same people within two different political boundaries, with a common art, architecture, sculpture, and inscription found up to the eastern side of the Red Sea, currently Yemen (Manzo, 2009). The people in Eritrea and Tigray share the pre-1991 history of ancient glory during the Da´amat Kingdom of 1000 BC, followed by the Aksumite polity in 1000 AD and the following periods.

Within the current Ethiopian state, because of the historical fact that the regional states of Tigray and Amhara are hubs and continuities of ancient civilizations, they make up many core parts of the Ethiopian empire/state.

As current political boundaries have less or almost nothing to do with the ancient realities and makeup, the cultural heritage, be it in Eritrea, Ethiopia’s Tigray, or Amhara, belongs to all humanity. The war on Tigray, however, demonstrates the reality that heritage in Tigray, regardless of its time and space, is a target for destruction during the Triangular war on Tigray

War of Joint Forces on Tigray and Heritage Destruction

Primarily due to global attention to the Russia-Ukraine war, some tend to call the war on Tigray (within Ethiopia) a hidden but deadlier war than the former. This deadly, unjust, and asymmetrical war backed by drone power actors now marks two years. Experts use different terms for the war: at the beginning it was a genocide in the making, with some warning of only a narrow window of genocide prevention; others, that a genocide is happening in Tigray. In fact, genocide is a legal term.

Considering the close to one million combatants and brutality seen in the war, some have called it a war with World War I style tactics, or an intentional long-range weapon shelling and aerial attacks on churches, cities, and villages; a war against all (history, memory, territory and people); a war with a scorched-earth policy; a vicious, drawn-out war, or war that is motivated by hatred to people; a policy aiming to decimate historical nationhood of the de jure Tigray regional state. These are the phrases used by international commentators and experts to describe it.

Destruction of monuments and sites erases history and causes irreparable harm to the cultural and religious identities of people around the world. As cultural heritage is inextricably linked to a certain society, there is a connection between cultural cleansing and mass atrocities. Commitments that failed to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity are direct failures in cultural heritage protection, as well. Edward C. Luck in his Cultural Genocide and the Protection of Cultural Heritage regrets that framing heritage attacks as cultural genocide could have helped more. Protecting cultural heritage, therefore, may prevent or deter genocide. Destroying cultural heritage is an attack on humanity’s past and present. Despite the ‘never genocide again’ slogans of the Western world, in Tigray neither is prevented. In addition, destruction of cultural heritage fuels the causes of war; avoiding it could indeed have helped minimize tensions and aggressions.

In the war on Tigray, as documented by internationally famed organizations, cultural predation, attacks on cultural heritage, territorial invasion, forced assimilation, and ethnic cleansing are committed by the joint Ethiopia, Eritrea, and local Amhara forces on the Tigrayan population. In addition to the already created humanitarian Armageddon and loss of close to 10% of the Tigray population, cultural heritage has been highly adversely affected, primarily due to premeditated destruction campaigns. It is particularly tragic because embattled Tigray stands out for its archaeological, historical, and sacred heritage, as well as traditions and values as a composite product of long-spanning (ca. 4,000 years) civilizations.

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) on March 5th, 2021, voiced its alarm about news of intentional cultural cleansing in Tigray. Artifacts, manuscripts, books, museums, and other religious and cultural treasures from churches have been looted and pillaged throughout the region’s long and rich history as spoils of historical war. The current heritage destruction, however, is the worst and most monumental one. Foreign heritage experts warned and local individuals and organizations have reported and published the destruction in different ways. Much of the evidence of destruction has been leaked and seen circulating on social media, as the region was in total communications blackout.

In April 2022, the International Society, Heritage Society of Tigray fiercely condemned all human rights abuses and heritage crimes committed in Tigray, calling on the international community and responsible bodies to plan an urgent intervention to protect, salvage, and restore Tigray’s cultural heritage (Hest, 2022).

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Above and below: Dngur, an Aksum palace of 6th century AD walls and its brick feature collapsed (source: Hiyab Gebretsadik, 2021).

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Dgrur palace Axum after destruction.

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The author, despite the limitations from the communication blackout in Tigray, has collected data via observation of some of the destroyed sites and from local and international media outlet reports. The objective is to warn global heritage stakeholders that humanity is losing a legacy in an important area of civilization origins — Tigray. This article focuses on the affected tangible cultural heritage objects and monuments.

The destruction tactics include shelling and burning, the deliberate dismantling of contextual features, organized looting, pillaging, burning, and littering of cultural heritage. As a result, different types of cultural heritage have been adversely affected to various degrees. Religious (Orthodox, Catholic, and Islam) and non-religious, from the smallest objects like Aksumite (4th c AD) coins, to monuments, as well as historical and archeological museums, have been targeted. Prime examples follow:

Al-Nejashi Mosque

Al-Nejashi mosque is an iconic heritage, cherished by Tigrayans for being a symbol of Tigray’s religious symbiosis (or coexistence). It was first bombed and later looted by the Ethiopian and Eritrean troops in December 2021. The mosque’s minaret was destroyed; its dome partially collapsed and its façade is in ruins; inside the mosque, rubble from the collapse is seen littered on the floor; a number of old holy manuscripts and books were looted; a shrine believed to contain the remains of followers of the prophet Mohammed is also damaged and littered.

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Al-nejashi mosque dome partially collapsed; its façade in ruins; rubble littering the floor (source: Tǝgray Televison). Locally, nationally, and internationally recognized cultural heritage sites or UNESCO-registered sites were damaged and looted.

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Mai adrasha, Shire, Northwestern Tigray

The site of mai adrasha in Shire is damaged due to the war and its crisis. Tragically, the archaeological finds storeroom in the regional administrative office is 100% damaged and burnt by both Eritrean and Ethiopian forces as part of the war. A quoted statement below explains in detail:

“Excavated finds from Mai Adrasha have been dated back to 1250 BCE, making it the oldest site in northern Ethiopia. All finds were washed, documented, catalogued and analyzed, after which they were stored in a room in the regional administrative building. In December 2020 this building was bombed by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces. As you can see in the pictures, the shelves are now empty and all boxes thrown to the ground. Later, some of the local people took the opportunity to visit the storeroom and further damage the boxes. Not a single box is now in a good condition; every box is destroyed and most of the finds are broken, some of them stomped into dust.” (Barnardand Wendrich 2022: 53).

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The store room of the UCLA project in the regional administrative office in shire indasilasie in August 2021 (source: Barndard and wendrich 2022)

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Churches and Monasteries

Around 30 churches and monasteries (6th c AD—19th c AD) were severely damaged and destroyed. Thousands of objects have been looted. Some of the looted objects appeared on the antiquities market, including e-Bay.

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Destroyed churches: Saint George Church in Adi Daero (Source: Hadgi Tǝgray facebook)

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Church of Qirqos Liga´at in Northeastern Tigray (Source: Negasi Awetehey)

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Destroyed church of Debre Medhanit, Amanuel Ma‘go (source: Dimtsi Weyane TV).

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A church in Adiabo (northwestern Tigray)

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A church in Adiabo (northwestern Tigray)

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Walduba Monastery

Walduba monastery is a 14th-century monastery located in Western Tigray. As the nuns and monks told local media, the joint armies looted over 3,000 parchment manuscripts and over 300 ancient crosses made of gold and silver, burned and littered many other religious treasures, and destroyed the church museum. The destruction goes beyond the physical destruction — it is a grand loss of human history and wisdom.

Debre Damo Monastry

Debre Damo is a renowned 6^th-century monastery, the first monastery in Sub-Saharan Africa located on a plateau in Eastern Tigray. It is home to a rich collection of manuscripts and known for retaining Aksumite and Pre-Aksumite art and architecture. It was reported to have been bombed, with buildings damaged. More than five Eritrean soldiers were reported to have climbed up to the monastery and vandalized it (Hagos, 2022).

A Call to Humanity

The destruction, sadly internationally overlooked, has painful consequences and is a great loss of cultural heritage. The case of cultural heritage destruction in Tigray is the epitome of intentional attacks of heritage during war. Based on the provisions of the “Policy Document for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention” (UNESCO, 2015) and a draft policy of the International Criminal Court (ICC, 2021), the safeguarding of cultural heritage is a fundamental human right. UNESCO Convention 1972 also states that State governments (e.g. Ethiopia) have the responsibility to protect heritage found within their boundaries. But the case in Ethiopia is an irony and international organizations like UNESCO, ICOM, INTERPOL, and Blue Shield International have yet to address these crimes. Important cultural heritage is compromised.

The author calls on the international community to raise global awareness of the tragic issue, and to support the “post-war“damage and destruction assessment, as well as reconstruction and repatriation.

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References

Abbay, A.: Diversity and State-Building in Ethiopia. African Affairs 103(413): 593–614 (2004).

Alemseged A.: Identity Jilted or Re-imagining Identity? The divergent paths of the Eritrean and Tigrayan nationalist struggles. Red Sea Press, Trenton NJ (1998).

Barnard Hans and Wendrich Willeke: The Forgotten War in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. BackDirt, ANNUAL REVIEW OF THE C OTSEN INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT UCLA (December 2022).

Johan Brosché, Mattias Legnér, Joakim Kreutz & Akram I.: Heritage under attack: motives for targeting cultural property during armed conflict. International Journal of Heritage Studies, (2016).

Fattovich, R.: The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Horn of Africa, c. 3000 BC—AD 1000: An Archaeological Outline. Journal of World Prehistory 23 (3): 145–75 (2010).

Harmanşah, Ö.: ISIS, Heritage, and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global Media. Near Eastern Archaeology 78(3), 170–77 (2015).

Heritage Society of Tigray (Hest): Heritage society of Tigray Condemns the Cleansing of Tigray’s Heritage. Statement Released on April, 2022.

Phillipson, D. W. : Foundations of an African civilization: Aksum & the northern Horn 1000 BC-AD 1300. James Currey, Woodbridge (2012).

Plaut, Martin, Helen Clark, Habte Hagos, Kjetil Tronvoll, Teka Ergonomics, Felicia Mulford, Sally Keeble, Araya Debessay, and Hagos Abrha Abay. 2022. The Tigray War and Regional Implications (Volume 2). https://www.academia.edu/ 71580104/The_Tigray_War_and_Regional_Implications_Volume_2_Final . Last consultation on 19/02/2023.

Manzo, A.: Capra Nubiana in Berbere Sauce? Pre-Aksumite Art and Identity Building. African Archaeological Review 26 (4): 291-303 (2009).

In Tigray’s war, ancient Christian and Muslim houses of worship are increasingly under attack. theglobeandmail.com/world/article-in-tigrays-war-ancient-christian-and-muslim-houses-of-worship-risk/

The invisible plant technology of the prehistoric Philippines

Posted on June 30, 2023 by PLOS -

PLOS—Stone tools bear microscopic evidence of ancient plant technology, according to a study published June 30, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hermine Xhauflair of the University of the Philippines Diliman and colleagues.

Prehistoric communities likely made extensive use of plant materials for textiles and cordages, taking advantage of the flexibility and resistance of plant fibers just like modern communities do. However, plant-based materials like baskets and ropes are rarely preserved in the archaeological record, especially in the tropics, so prehistoric plant technology is often rendered invisible to modern science. In Southeast Asia, the oldest artefacts made of plant fibers are around 8,000 years old. In this study, Xhauflair and colleagues identify indirect evidence of much older plant technology.

This evidence comes from stone tools in Tabon Cave, Palawan Philippines dating as far back as 39,000 years old. These tools exhibit microscopic damage accrued during use. Indigenous communities in this region today use tools to strip plants like bamboo and palm, turning rigid stems into supple fibers for tying or weaving. Researchers experimentally followed these plant processing techniques and found that this activity leaves a characteristic pattern of microscopic damage on stone tools. This same pattern was identified on three stone artifacts from Tabon Cave.

This is among the oldest evidence of fiber technology in Southeast Asia, highlighting the technological skill of prehistoric communities going back 39,000 years. This research also demonstrates a method for revealing otherwise hidden signs of prehistoric plant technology. Further study will shed light on how ancient these techniques are, how widespread they were in the past, and whether modern practices in this region are the result of an uninterrupted tradition.

The authors add: “This study pushes back in time the antiquity of fiber technology in Southeast Asia. It means that the Prehistoric groups who lived at Tabon Cave had the possibility to make baskets and traps, but also ropes that can be used to build houses, sail boats, hunt with bows and make composite objects.”

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Fiber technology at Tabon Cave, 39-33 000 years ago. An artistic view based on the latest archaeological data. Drawing by Carole Cheval-Art’chéograph. Made for the exhibition “Trajectories and Movements of the Philippine Identity” curated by Hermine Xhauflair and Eunice Averion. Scientific advising: Hermine Xhauflair. Carole Cheval – Art’chéograph, Xhauflair & Averion, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Xhauflair H, Jago-on S, Vitales TJ, Manipon D, Amano N, Callado JR, et al. (2023) The invisible plant technology of Prehistoric Southeast Asia: Indirect evidence for basket and rope making at Tabon Cave, Philippines, 39–33,000 years ago. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0281415. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281415

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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.

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Humans’ evolutionary relatives butchered one another 1.45 million years ago

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Smithsonian -

SMITHSONIAN—Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have identified the oldest decisive evidence of humans’ close evolutionary relatives butchering and likely eating one another.

In a new study* published today, June 26, in Scientific Reports, National Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner and her co-authors describe nine cut marks on a 1.45 million-year-old left shin bone from a relative of Homo sapiens found in northern Kenya. Analysis of 3D models of the fossil’s surface revealed that the cut marks were dead ringers for the damage inflicted by stone tools. This is the oldest instance of this behavior known with a high degree of confidence and specificity.

“The information we have tells us that hominins were likely eating other hominins at least 1.45 million years ago,” Pobiner said. “There are numerous other examples of species from the human evolutionary tree consuming each other for nutrition, but this fossil suggests that our species’ relatives were eating each other to survive further into the past than we recognized.”

Pobiner first encountered the fossilized tibia, or shin bone, in the collections of the National Museums of Kenya’s Nairobi National Museum while looking for clues about which prehistoric predators might have been hunting and eating humans’ ancient relatives. With a handheld magnifying lens, Pobiner pored over the tibia looking for bite marks from extinct beasts when she instead noticed what immediately looked to her like evidence of butchery.

To figure out if what she was seeing on the surface of this fossil were indeed cut marks, Pobiner sent molds of the cuts—made with the same material dentists use to create impressions of teeth—to co-author Michael Pante of Colorado State University. She provided Pante with no details about what he was being sent, simply asking him to analyze the marks on the molds and tell her what made them. Pante created 3D scans of the molds and compared the shape of the marks to a database of 898 individual tooth, butchery and trample marks created through controlled experiments.

The analysis positively identified nine of the 11 marks as clear matches for the type of damage inflicted by stone tools. The other two marks were likely bite marks from a big cat, with a lion being the closest match. According to Pobiner, the bite marks could have come from one of the three different types of saber-tooth cats prowling the landscape at the time the owner of this shin bone was alive.

By themselves, the cut marks do not prove that the human relative who inflicted them also made a meal out of the leg, but Pobiner said this seems to be the most likely scenario. She explained that the cut marks are located where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone—a good place to cut if the goal is to remove a chunk of flesh. The cut marks are also all oriented the same way, such that a hand wielding a stone tool could have made them all in succession without changing grip or adjusting the angle of attack.

“These cut marks look very similar to what I’ve seen on animal fossils that were being processed for consumption,” Pobiner said. “It seems most likely that the meat from this leg was eaten and that it was eaten for nutrition as opposed to for a ritual.”

While this case may appear to be cannibalism to a casual observer, Pobiner said there is not enough evidence to make that determination because cannibalism requires that the eater and the eaten hail from the same species.

The fossil shin bone was initially identified as Australopithecus boisei and then in 1990 as Homo erectus, but today, experts agree that there is not enough information to assign the specimen to a particular species of hominin. The use of stone tools also does not narrow down which species might have been doing the cutting. Recent research from Rick Potts, the National Museum of Natural History’s Peter Buck Chair of Human Origins, further called into question the once-common assumption that only one genus, Homo, made and used stone tools.

So, this fossil could be a trace of prehistoric cannibalism, but it is also possible this was a case of one species chowing down on its evolutionary cousin.

None of the stone-tool cut marks overlap with the two bite marks, which makes it hard to infer anything about the order of events that took place. For instance, a big cat may have scavenged the remains after hominins removed most of the meat from the leg bone. It is equally possible that a big cat killed an unlucky hominin and then was chased off or scurried away before opportunistic hominins took over the kill.

One other fossil—a skull first found in South Africa in 1976—has previously sparked debate about the earliest known case of human relatives butchering each other. Estimates for the age of this skull range from 1.5 to 2.6 million years old. Apart from its uncertain age, two studies that have examined the fossil (the first published in 2000 and the latter in 2018) disagree about the origin of marks just below the skull’s right cheek bone. One contends the marks resulted from stone tools wielded by hominin relatives and the other asserts that they were formed through contact with sharp-edged stone blocks found lying against the skull. Further, even if ancient hominins produced the marks, it is not clear whether they were butchering each other for food, given the lack of large muscle groups on the skull.

To resolve the issue of whether the fossil tibia she and her colleagues studied is indeed the oldest cut-marked hominin fossil, Pobiner said she would love to reexamine the skull from South Africa, which is claimed to have cut marks using the same techniques observed in the present study.

She also said this new shocking finding is proof of the value of museum collections.

“You can make some pretty amazing discoveries by going back into museum collections and taking a second look at fossils,” Pobiner said. “Not everyone sees everything the first time around. It takes a community of scientists coming in with different questions and techniques to keep expanding our knowledge of the world.”

This research was supported by funding from the Smithsonian, the Peter Buck Fund for Human Origins Research and Colorado State University.

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View of the hominin tibia and magnified area that shows cut marks. Scale = 4 cm. In a new study published today, June 26, in Scientific Reports, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner and her co-authors describe nine cut marks on a 1.45 million-year-old left shin bone from a relative of Homo sapiens found in northern Kenya. Analysis of 3D models of the fossil’s surface revealed that the cut marks were dead ringers for the damage inflicted by stone tools. This is the oldest instance of this behavior known with a high degree of confidence and specificity. Pobiner first encountered the fossilized tibia, or shin bone, in the collections of the National Museums of Kenya’s Nairobi National Museum while looking for clues about which prehistoric predators might have been hunting and eating humans’ ancient relatives. With a handheld magnifying lens, Pobiner pored over the tibia looking for bite marks from extinct beasts when she instead noticed what immediately looked to her like evidence of butchery. “You can make some pretty amazing discoveries by going back into museum collections and taking a second look at fossils,” Pobiner said. “Not everyone sees everything the first time around. It takes a community of scientists coming in with different questions and techniques to keep expanding our knowledge of the world.” Jennifer Clark

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Nine marks identified as cut marks (mark numbers 1–4 and 7–11) and two identified as tooth marks (mark numbers 5 and 6) based on comparison with 898 known bone surface modifications. Scale = 1 cm. None of the stone-tool cut marks overlap with the two bite marks, which makes it hard to infer anything about the order of events that took place. For instance, a big cat may have scavenged the remains after hominins removed most of the meat from the leg bone. It is equally possible that a big cat killed an unlucky hominin and then was chased off or scurried away before opportunistic hominins took over the kill. Jennifer Clark

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Close-up photos of three fossil animal specimens from the same area and time horizon as the fossil hominin tibia studied by the research team. These fossils show similar cut marks to those found on the hominin tibia studied. The photos show (a) an antelope mandible, (b) an antelope radius (lower front leg bone) and (c) a large mammal scapula (shoulder blade). By themselves, the cut marks do not prove that the human relative who inflicted them also made a meal out of the leg, but Pobiner said this seems to be the most likely scenario. She explained that the cut marks are located where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone—a good place to cut if the goal is to remove a chunk of flesh. The cut marks are also all oriented the same way, such that a hand wielding a stone tool could have made them all in succession without changing grip or adjusting the angle of attack. Briana Pobiner

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3D model of marks 7 and 8 identified as cut marks. Pobiner sent molds of the cuts—made with the same material dentists use to create impressions of teeth—to co-author Michael Pante of Colorado State University. She provided Pante with no details about what he was being sent, simply asking him to analyze the marks on the molds and tell her what made them. Pante created 3D scans of the molds and compared the shape of the marks to a database of 898 individual tooth, butchery and trample marks created through controlled experiments. The analysis positively identified nine of the 11 marks as clear matches for the type of damage inflicted by stone tools. The other two marks were likely bite marks from a big cat, with a lion being the closest match. According to Pobiner, the bite marks could have come from one of the three different types of saber-tooth cats prowling the landscape at the time the owner of this shin bone was alive. Michael Pante

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Article Source: Smithsonian news release.

*Early Pleistocene cut marked hominin fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya, Scientific Reports, 26-Jun-2023. 10.1038/s41598-023-35702-7

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Neanderthal cave engravings are oldest known – over 57,000 years old

Posted on June 21, 2023 by PLOS -

PLOS—Markings on a cave wall in France are the oldest known engravings made by Neanderthals, according to a study published June 21, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jean-Claude Marquet of the University of Tours, France and colleagues.

Research in recent decades has revealed a great deal about the cultural complexity of Neanderthals. However, relatively little is known about their symbolic or artistic expression. Only a short list of symbolic productions are attributed to Neanderthals, and the interpretation of these is often the subject of debate. In this study, Marquet and colleagues identified markings on a cave wall in France as the oldest known Neanderthal engravings.

The cave is La Roche-Cotard in the Centre-Val de Loire of France, where a series of non-figurative markings on the wall are interpreted as finger-flutings, marks made by human hands. The researchers made a plotting analysis and used photogrammetry to create 3D models of these markings, comparing them with known and experimental human markings. Based on the shape, spacing, and arrangement of these engravings, the team concluded that they are deliberate, organized and intentional shapes created by human hands.

The team also dated cave sediments with optically-stimulated luminescence dating, determining that the cave became closed off by infilling sediment around 57,000 years ago, well before Homo sapiens became established in the region. This, combined with the fact that stone tools within the cave are only Mousterian, a technology associated with Neanderthals, is strong evidence that these engravings are the work of Neanderthals.

Because these are non-figurative symbols, the intent behind them is unclear. They are, however, of a similar age with cave engravings made by Homo sapiens in other parts of the world. This adds to a growing body of evidence that the behavior and activities of Neanderthals were similarly complex and diverse as those of our own ancestors.

The authors add: “Fifteen years after the resumption of excavations at the La Roche-Cotard site, the engravings have been dated to over 57,000 years ago and, thanks to stratigraphy, probably to around 75,000 years ago, making this the oldest decorated cave in France, if not Europe!”

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Trine Freiesleben and Jean-Claude discussing the fingerprints and where to take OSL samples. Kristina Thomsen, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Examples of engravings discovered in the Roche-Cotard cave (Indre et Loire – France). On the left, the “circular panel” (ogive-shaped tracings) and on the right the “wavy panel” (two contiguous tracings forming sinuous lines). Jean-Claude Marquet, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Marquet J-C, Freiesleben TH, Thomsen KJ, Murray AS, Calligaro M, Macaire J-J, et al. (2023) The earliest unambiguous Neanderthal engravings on cave walls: La Roche-Cotard, Loire Valley, France. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0286568. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286568

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A rare glimpse of our first ancestors in mainland Southeast Asia

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Dan McLerran -

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY—What connects a fossil found in a cave in northern Laos with stone tools made in north Australia? The answer is, we do. When our early Homo sapiens ancestors first arrived in Southeast Asia on their way from Africa to Australia, they left evidence of their presence in the form of human fossils that accumulated over thousands of years deep in a cave.

The latest evidence from Tam Pà Ling cave in northern Laos, uncovered by a team of Laotian, French, American and Australian researchers and published in Nature Communications, demonstrates beyond doubt that modern humans spread from Africa through Arabia and to Asia much earlier than previously thought.

It also confirms that our ancestors didn’t just follow coastlines and islands. They travelled through forested regions, most likely along river valleys, too. Some then moved on through Southeast Asia to become Australia’s First People.

“Tam Pà Ling plays a key role in the story of modern human migration through Asia but its significance and value is only just being recognised,” says University of Copenhagen palaeoanthropologist Assistant Professor Fabrice Demeter, one of the paper’s lead authors.

Three Australian Universities contributed to the project. Macquarie University and Southern Cross University dated samples using multiple techniques. Flinders University showed that the sediment in the cave had been laid down in distinct layers over tens of thousands of years.

Since the first excavation and the discovery of a skull and mandible in 2009, the cave has been controversial. Evidence of our earliest journeys from Africa into Southeast Asia is usually dominated by island locations such as Sumatra, Philippines and Borneo.

This was before Tam Pà Ling, an upland cave site more than 300 kilometres from the sea in northern Laos, started divulging its secrets. The skull and jawbone were identified as belonging to Homo sapiens who had migrated through the region. But when?

As is usual in questions of human dispersal, the debate comes down to timing. But this evidence was hard to date.

The human fossils cannot be directly dated as the site is a World Heritage area and the fossils are protected by Laotian law. There are very few animal bones or suitable cave decorations to date, and it is too old for radiocarbon dating. This placed a heavy burden on the luminescence dating of sediments to form the backbone of the timeline.

Luminescence dating relies on a light-sensitive signal that is reset to zero when exposed to light but builds up over time when shielded from light during burial. It was originally used to constrain the burial sediments that encased the fossils.

“Without luminescence dating this vital evidence would still have no timeline and the site would be overlooked in the accepted path of dispersal through the region,” says Macquarie University geochronologist Associate Professor Kira Westaway. “Luckily the technique is versatile and can be adapted for different challenges.”

These techniques returned a minimum age of 46,000 years – a chronology in line with the expected timing of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Southeast Asia. But the discovery didn’t end here.

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From 2010 to 2023, annual excavations (delayed by three years of lockdowns) revealed increasingly more evidence that Homo sapiens had passed through en route to Australia. Seven pieces of human skeleton were found at intervals through 4.5 metres of sediment, pushing the potential timeline far back into the realms of the earliest Homo sapiens migrations to this region.

In this study*, the team overcame these issues by creatively applying strategic dating techniques where possible, such as the uranium-series dating of a stalactite tip that had been buried in sediment, and the use of uranium-series dating coupled with electron-spin-resonance dating techniques to two rare but complete bovid teeth, unearthed at 6.5 metres.

“Having direct dating of the fossil remains confirmed the age sequence obtained by luminescence, allowing us to propose a comprehensive and secure chronology for a Homo sapiens presence at Tam Pà Ling,” says Southern Cross University geochronologist Associate Professor Renaud Joannes-Boyau.

The team supported the dating evidence with a detailed analysis of the sediments to assess the origin of the fossils using micromorphology, a technique that examines sediments under a microscope to establish the integrity of the layers. This key component of the new chronology helped establish that there was a consistent accumulation of sedimentary layers over a long period.

“Far from reflecting a rapid dump of sediments, the site represents a consistent and seasonally deposited stack of sediments,” explains Flinders University geoarchaeologist Associate Professor Mike Morley, who worked with PhD students Vito Hernandez and Meghan McAllister-Hayward.

The new chronology revealed there had a been a human presence in this area for more than 56,000 years. Furthermore, the age of the lowest fossil at seven metres – a fragment of a leg bone – provides a timeline for modern human arrival in this region of between 86,000 to 68,000 years ago. This pushes back the arrival time in mainland Southeast Asia by approximately 40,000 years. Although, according to the genetics, these early migrations did not contribute significantly to our modern-day populations.

“This really is the decisive paper for the Tam Pà Ling evidence,” says Associate Professor Westaway. “Finally we have enough dating evidence to confidently say when Homo sapiens first arrived in this area, how long they were there and what route they may have taken.”

Tam Pà Ling cave is very close to the recently discovered Cobra Cave, which was frequented by Denisovans approximately 70,000 years earlier. Despite the previous lack of evidence for early arrival in mainland Southeast Asia, this area might be a previously used dispersal route among our ancestors, long before Homo sapiens.

“We have much to learn from the caves and forests of Southeast Asia,” adds Associate Professor Westaway.

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The extensive excavation pit in Tam Pà Ling reaching from the cave floor down to ~7 m. The deepest pit is found at the rear close to the cave wall. Copyright Vito Hernandez (Flinders University

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The extensive excavation pit in Tam Pà Ling reaching from the cave floor down to ~7 m. Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University

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Taking sediment samples in the excavation pit in Tam Pà Ling cave, the team is with Flinders PhD student Vito Hernandez. Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University

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Looking down into the wide steep entrance of Tam Pà Ling Cave. The excavation pit is visible on the right-hand side. Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University

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Article Source: MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY news release.

*Early presence of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia by 86–68 kyr at Tam Pà Ling, Northern Laos, Nature Communications, 13-Jun-2023. 10.1038/s41467-023-38715-y

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The first prehistoric wind instruments discovered in the Levant

Posted on June 9, 2023 by CNRS -

CNRS—Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team1 , are the subject of an article published on 9 June in Nature Scientific Reports. The discovery of these 12,000-year-old aerophones is extremely rare – in fact, they are the first to be discovered in the Near East. The “flutes”, made from the bones of a small waterfowl, produce a sound similar to certain birds of prey (Eurasian sparrowhawk and common kestrel) when air is blown into them. The choice of bones used to make these instruments was no accident – larger birds, with bigger bones that produce deeper sounds, have also been found at the site. The Natufians, the Near Eastern civilization that occupied this village between 13,000 and 9,700 BC, deliberately selected smaller bones in order to obtain the high-pitched sound needed to imitate these particular raptors. The instruments may have been used for hunting, music or to communicate with the birds themselves. Indeed, it is clear that the Natufians attributed birds with a special symbolic value, as attested by the many ornaments made of talons found at Eynan-Mallaha. The village, located on the shores of Lake Hula, was home to this civilization throughout its 3,000 years of existence. It is therefore of vital importance in revealing the practices and habits of a culture at the crossroads between mobile and sedentary lifestyles, and the transition from a predatory economy to agriculture. This work2 was supported by the Fyssen Fondation and the ministère des Affaires étrangères.

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The seven aerophones discovered at Eynan-Mallaha. © Laurent Davin

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Article Source: CNRS news release

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Notes

1- The team is co-directed by Laurent Davin (post-doctoral researcher at the Fyssen Fondation) and José-Miguel Tejero (University of Vienna, University of Barcelona) and includes scientists from the Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/ministère de la Culture), the laboratoire Technologie et ethnologie des mondes préhistoriques (CNRS/Université Panthéon-Sorbonne/Université Paris Nanterre), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Institute of Archaeology), Israel Antiquities Authority, Virginia Commonwealth University (Department of Forensic Science), École Nationale Vétérinaire (Laboratoire d’Anatomie comparée, Nantes), the laboratoire Archéologies et sciences de l’Antiquité (CNRS/ministère de la Culture/Université Panthéon-Sorbonne/Université Paris Nanterre) and the l’Institut d’ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative (CNRS/Université Aix-Marseille).
2- Excavation of the Eynan-Mallaha site is still ongoing, under the direction of CNRS researcher Fanny Bocquentin and Israel Antiquities Authority researcher Lior Weisbrod.

Bibliography

Bone aerophones from Eynan-Mallaha (Israel) indicate imitation of raptor calls by the last hunter- gatherers in the Levant. Laurent Davin, José-Miguel Tejero, Tal Simmons, Dana Shaham, Aurélia Borvon, Olivier Tourny, Anne Bridault, Rivka Rabinovich, Marion Sindel, Hamudi Khalaily and François Valla. Nature Scientific Reports, June 8 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35700-9 (This link will work when the embargo is lifted)

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The oldest hand-sewn boat in the Mediterranean is about to leave the water

Posted on June 6, 2023 by CNRS -

CNRS—The Zambratija boat in Croatia has stood the test of time, with 7 of its 12-metres still being remarkably well preserved. Dated to between the end of the 12th and the end of the 10th century BC, it is the oldest entirely hand-sewn boat in the Mediterranean. This wreck – a rare example of the ancient shipbuilding tradition of Istria and Dalmatia – will be studied in detail by a Franco-Croatian team from the Centre Camille Jullian (CNRS/AMU) and the Archaeological Museum of Istria (Pula, Croatia). From the 2nd July 2023, a team of divers will remove sections of the boat in the bay of Zambratija1 . Once the pieces have been removed and placed in a bespoke support, the scientists will reconstruct the boat in 3D and precise its construction date, will identify the fibres used for sewing and study the techniques used to shape the wood. Handling relics of this calibre is a delicate affair; therefore, every stage of the process will require the utmost care. Once the analyses have been completed, this exceptional vessel and its components will be desalted in Croatia before heading to Grenoble in 2024, where they will pass through the capable hands of the Arc-Nucléart restoration workshop. It is hoped that the fully-restored boat will one day be exhibited in a new museum dedicated to Istria’s naval maritime heritage in Pula, Croatia.

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Wreck of Zambratija, Istria. Observations on the hull. © Philippe Groscaux/Mission Adriboats/CNRS/CCJ

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Notes

1 Operation carried out as part of Ministry of Europe and foreign Affairs mission “Adriboats – Navires et navigation en Adriatique orientale dans l’Antiquité”, directed by CNRS researcher Giulia Boetto

Article Source: CNRS news release

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Early Native Americans in Alaska may have started freshwater fishing by 13,000 years ago

Posted on June 2, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Native Americans who lived in present-day central Alaska during the last ice age may have started freshwater fishing by around 13,000 years ago, suggests a new analysis* of ancient DNA and stable isotopes from fish remains. Ancestors of Alaska Natives, many of whose livelihoods still depend on freshwater fish such as salmon, may have started subsistence fishing as a response to fewer food resources during long-term climate change, Ben Potter and colleagues say. Native Americans have relied on freshwater fish for thousands of years, but the origins of fishing in North America have been uncertain. Beringia, a region comprising present-day Alaska and Russia, was largely ice-free during the last ice age and is considered a key gateway to the Americas. Researchers have previously discovered well-preserved fish remains in Beringia, but it has been unclear when and how freshwater fishing began there. To investigate, Potter et al. used a combination of DNA and isotope analyses to identify 1,110 fish specimens recovered from six human settlement sites – including in the Tanana, Kuskokwim, Susitna, and Copper River basins – in what was once eastern Beringia (central Alaska). They identified four main fish taxa – salmon, burbot, whitefish, and northern pike – whose earliest appearances dated to around 13,000 and 11,800 years ago. These findings, along with well-documented fishing records from local Native Alaskans, suggest that early Native Americans may have started fishing as a response to environmental change during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. “Our data collectively suggest that changes in climate and ultimately key mammal resources during the Younger Dryas led to human responses of widening diet breadth to incorporate multiple species of freshwater and anadromous fish, setting a pattern that would be expanded upon later in the Holocene as fish, particularly salmon, became key resources to Alaska Native lifeways,” the authors write.

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USR excavation. Ben Potter

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Mead Excavation. Ben Potter

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Mead articulated burbot vertebrae. Ben Potter

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

Article summary by Nyla Husain

*Freshwater and anadromous fishing in Ice Age Beringia, Science Advances, 2-Jun-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg6802

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The Roman Empire smelled of patchouli

Posted on May 25, 2023 by University of Córdoba -

UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA—A research team at the University of Cordoba has identified, for the first time, the composition of a Roman perfume more than 2,000 years old thanks tothe discovery of a small vessel of ointment in Carmona.

2,000 years ago, in the Roman city of Carmo, today’s Carmona, in the province of Seville, someone placed a vessel of ointment in a funerary urn. Twenty centuries later, the FQM346 research team at the University of Cordoba, led by Professor of Organic Chemistry José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, in collaboration with the City of Carmona, has been able to chemically describe the components of a perfume dating from the first century AD. The results were published in the Swiss scientific journal Heritage in an article* in which Ruiz Arrebola, the municipal archaeologist of Carmona, Juan Manuel Román; and UCO researchers Daniel Cosano and Fernando Lafont share the whole technical and scientific process enabling the world to”smell” the bygone Roman Empire.

The residue of the perfume, discovered in 2019 during an archaeological intervention in a mausoleum found during construction of a house on the Calle Sevillat, had been preserved, solidified, inside a vessel carved in quartz, which was still perfectly sealed. As Román explains, it was a collective tomb, possibly belonging to an affluent family and in which, in addition to numerous objects related to funeral rituals (offerings and trousseaus), the cinerary urns of six adult individuals – three women and three men – were found. In one of the urns, made of glass, over the cremated skeletal remains of the deceased (in this case a woman between 30 and 40 years old), a cloth bag had been placed (remains of it having been preserved) containing three amber beads and a small rock crystal (hyaline quartz) flask, carved in the shape of an amphora, containing ointment. Perfume containers used to be made of blown glass and, on very rare occasions, examples have been found made of this material which, owing to its characteristics and difficult carving, due to its hardness, made them very valuable and extremely expensive. In addition to the uniqueness of the receptacle, the truly extraordinary aspect of the find was that it was perfectly sealed, and that the solid residues of the perfume had been preserved inside, which made it possible to carry out this study.

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Ruiz Arrebola stresses that the use of dolomite, a type of carbon, as a stopper, and the bitumen used to seal it, were the key to the magnificent state of preservation of the piece and its contents.

To ascertain what the perfume was made of, different instrumental techniques were used, such as X-ray diffraction and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, among others. According to Ruiz, from the analyses it has been possible to determine that the small cylindrical stopper was made of dolomite (limestone), and that bitumen was used for its perfect fit and airtight seal. With respect to the perfume, two components have been identified: a base or binder, which allowed for the preservation of the aromas, and the essence itself, these findings according with descriptions by none other than Pliny the Elder. In this case, the base was a vegetable oil; possibly, according to some indications reflected in the analysis, olive oil, although this point could not be confirmed with certainty.

And the essence?

According to the results of chemical analyses carried out by the University of Cordoba, Rome smelled of patchouli, an essential oil obtained from a plant of Indian origin, Pogostemon cablin, widely used in modern perfumery, and whose use in Roman times was not known. The monumental characteristics of the tomb where it was found and, above all, the material of which the vessel containing it was made, suggest that it was a highly valuable product.

This study constitutes a breakthrough in the field of Roman perfumery and as regards to the use of patchouli as an essential oil. Further studies are currently being carried out on other unique materials (such as amber, fabrics, and pigments used in the wall paintings) preserved in the Carmona mausoleum. Results are expected soon.

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Place where the ointment was found. University of Córdoba

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA news release

*Archaeometric Identification of a Perfume from Roman Times, Heritage, 23-May-2023. 10.3390/heritage6060236

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New victims from Pompeii emerge from the excavation of the House of the Chaste Lovers

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Archaeological Park of Pompeii -

Archaeological Park of Pompeii—It was not just the eruption that led to the death of the inhabitants of Pompeii but also the simultaneous earthquake

Turmoil, confusion, attempted escapes and, in the meantime, an earthquake, showers of pumice, volcanic ash and hot gases. This was the inferno of the eruption of AD 79, the living hell in which the inhabitants of the ancient city of Pompeii found themselves, including the two victims whose skeletons were recently discovered during the excavation of the insula of the House of the Chaste Lovers.

They were the victims of an earthquake that accompanied the eruption, discovered beneath a wall that had collapsed between the final phase of the deposition of pumice and prior to the arrival of the pyroclastic flows that buried Pompeii for good.

They provide increasingly clear evidence that, during the eruption, it was not just the collapse of structures associated with the accumulation of pumice or the impact of pyroclastic flows that represented the only dangers to the lives of the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii, as the excavations carried out over the last decades have revealed.

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 started in the morning of an autumnal day although it was only around 1.00 pm that the so-called “Plinian” phase began during which an eruption column formed – dozens of kilometres high – from which fell a shower of pumice. This phase was followed by a series of pyroclastic flows that left deposits of ash and volcanic material when they settled. The volcanic phenomenon killed anyone still sheltering in the ancient city of Pompeii, that lies to the southeast of present-day Naples, ending the lives of at least 15-20% of the population, according to the estimates of archaeologists. The causes of death also included the collapse of buildings, due to an earthquake accompanying the eruption, which proved to be a lethal threat.

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The skeletons were discovered during work to implement safety measures, renovate the roofing and shore up the sides of the excavation of the Insula of the House of the Chaste Lovers, which also involved the excavation of several rooms.

They were found lying on one side in a utility room, probably not in use at the time due to repairs or renovation work underway in the house, where they had taken refuge in search of protection.

The data from initial on-site anthropological analyses – published in the E-journal of the Pompeii excavations – show that both individuals probably died as a result of multiple traumas caused by the collapse of parts of the building.

They were probably two males who were at least 55 years old.

During the removal of the cervical vertebrae and skull of one of the two skeletons, traces emerged of organic matter, probably a bundle of fabric. As well as five elements of glass paste which can be interpreted as the beads of a necklace, six coins were found inside the bundle. Two silver denarii: a Republican denarius, which can be dated to the mid-second century BC, and another more recent denarius which can be identified as a coin minted during the reign of Vespasian. The remaining bronze coins (two sestertii, an ass and a quadrans) also date to the age of Vespasian and were therefore recently-minted.

“The discovery of the remains of these two Pompeians in the context of the construction site in the Insula of the Chaste Lovers shows how much there is still to discover about the terrible eruption of AD 79 and confirms the necessity of continuing scientific investigation and excavations. Pompeii is an immense archaeological laboratory that has regained vigor in recent years, astonishing the world with the continuous discoveries brought to light and demonstrating Italian excellence in this sector,” states the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano.

“Modern excavation techniques help to shed light on the inferno that over two days descended on Pompeii and led to the complete destruction of the city, killing many of its inhabitants: men, women and children. Using analysis and the latest methodologies, we can gain an insight into the final moments of those who lost their lives,” emphasises Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the Park Director. “During one of the discussions on the site, while the skeletons were being recovered, one of the archaeologists, gesturing towards the victims they were excavating, uttered a phrase that remained engrained in my memory and arguably encapsulates the history of Pompeii, when he stated, ‘this is who we are’. At Pompeii, the progress in archaeological techniques always reminds us of the human dimension of the tragedy. Indeed, it reveals it even more clearly.”

Several objects came to light in the room where the bodies lay, such as a upright amphora leaning against the wall in the corner near to one of the bodies and a collection of vessels, bowls and jugs stacked against the end wall. The most striking aspect is the evidence for the damage to the two walls, probably caused by the earthquakes that accompanied the eruption. Part of the south wall of the room collapsed, crushing one of the men whose raised arm offers a tragic image of his vain attempt to protect himself from the falling masonry. The conditions of the west wall demonstrate the tremendous force of the earthquakes that took place at the same time as the eruption: the entire upper section was detached and fell into the room, crushing and burying the other individual.

The adjoining room has a stone kitchen counter, which was temporarily out of use in AD 79: a pile of powdered lime waiting to be used for building purposes was found on the surface of the counter, suggesting that repair work was being carried out nearby at the moment of the eruption. A series of Cretan amphorae, originally used for transporting wine, were found alongside the wall of the kitchen. Above the kitchen counter were traces of a domestic shrine in the form of a fresco which appears to depict the household gods (lares) and a pot partly set into the wall which may have been used as a container for religious offerings. Next to the kitchen, there is a long narrow room with a latrine, the contents of which flowed into a drain beneath the street.

The scientific details of the excavation can be explored further through the articles published in the E-Journal of Pompeii – which can be downloaded from the official Park website www.pompeiisites.org – a new digital platform aimed at the scientific community and the general public and designed to provide information and preliminary reports concerning excavation, research and restoration projects in the Park.

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Above and below: The remains of the victims and their context as excavated by archaeologists in Pompeii. Archaeological Park of Pompeii

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Article Source: Archaeological Park of Pompeii press release

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Ancient climate change solves mystery of vanished South African lakes

Posted on May 19, 2023 by University of Leicester -

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER—New evidence for the presence of ancient lakes in some of the most arid regions of South Africa suggests that Stone Age humans may have been more widespread across the continent than previously thought.

Research jointly led by the University of Leicester argues that more archaeological work in the interior regions of South Africa – a country renowned for its globally-significant archaeological record – may reveal more about our ancient ancestors and their movements. The researchers’ conclusions have been published in the journal PNAS.

South Africa’s Stone Age archaeological record, particularly for the last 150,000 years has been the subject of a great deal of investigation, not least due to the presence of several remarkable coastal caves and rock shelter records. However, the presence of humans, and the resources available to them in the vast interior regions of the country have thus far remained much more enigmatic.

New research by an international team of researchers from South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France suggests several large bodies of water were sustained in the now arid South African interior during the last Ice Age, particularly 50,000-40,000 years ago, and again 31,000 years ago. Importantly, the group were able to model how much water was required to fill these palaeo-lakes, allowing the climatic changes necessary to create lakes, and the resulting impacts on the region’s hydrology, flora and fauna, to be reconstructed.

Their findings paint a picture of a diverse and fertile region that would have been capable of supporting hunter-gatherer communities of the time.

Team member Dr Andrew Carr from the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology and the Environment said: “This is currently the best evidence for when these lakes existed. This region has been something of a gap on the map, climatically and archaeologically. We know humans were present at times during the last ice age, as archaeological materials are scattered across the landscape surface. This new work hints at when and why humans used this landscape.

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“These areas look inhospitable today, but were seemingly much less so at times in the past, and this has implications for when and how groups of people used the landscape and potentially how they were connected and exchanged ideas.

“It also tells us something about the sensitivity of ecosystems and environments to global climatic change. You can see how these desert landscapes can respond in quite significant ways to global climate changes, and understand how the human species responded and how adaptable it would have been.”

The scientists studied three lakes from the arid western interior of South Africa to as far east as Kimberley. As well as dating shorelines using radiocarbon and luminescence dating methods, they estimated the lake sizes and capacities. Computer models of regional hydrology showed that the conditions necessary to create the studied lakes would have led to widespread changes in the region’s many (presently ephemeral) rivers and lakes as the water table rose.

Dr Carr added: “The next step is to start to look for sites where we can do more direct dating of the occurrence of stone tools in this region. The work shows that at times the region offered a range of resources, and the archaeological ‘gap on the map’ is much more likely to reflect the lack of sites preserving deep archaeological deposits.

“The region is quite challenging for archaeology as most materials lie in the open on the desert surface with no stratigraphic context – hence it’s very difficult to know how long it’s been there.”

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View across a now-dry lakebed near Swartkolkvloer. During the last glacial period this and adjacent basin supported what are believed to have been perennial lakes, some up to 60 feet in depth. Brian Chase

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Andrew Carr collecting sediment samples dating to the Last Glacial Maximum from the dry lakebed at Swartkolkvloer. Brian Chase

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Brian Stewart surveying the extensive scatters of stone artifacts observed along the margin of a now-dry lakebed near Swartkolkvloer. Brian Chase

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This research received funding from the National Geographic Society and the University of the Free State.

*Paleolakes and socioecological implications of last glacial “greening” of the South African interior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15-May-2023. 10.1073/pnas.2221082120

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Humanity’s earliest recorded kiss occurred in Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago

Posted on May 18, 2023 by University of Copenhagen -

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES—Recent research has hypothesized that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1.

But according to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established practice 4,500 years ago in the Middle East. And probably much earlier, moving the earliest documentation for kissing back 1,000 years compared to what was previously acknowledged in the scientific community.

“In ancient Mesopotamia, which is the name for the early human cultures that existed between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria, people wrote in cuneiform script on clay tablets. Many thousands of these clay tablets have survived to this day, and they contain clear examples that kissing was considered a part of romantic intimacy in ancient times, just as kissing could be part of friendships and family members’ relations,” says Dr Troels Pank Arbøll, an expert on the history of medicine in Mesopotamia.

He continues:

“Therefore, kissing should not be regarded as a custom that originated exclusively in any single region and spread from there but rather appears to have been practiced in multiple ancient cultures over several millennia.”

Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen adds:

“In fact, research into bonobos and chimpanzees, the closest living relatives to humans, has shown that both species engage in kissing, which may suggest that the practice of kissing is a fundamental behavior in humans, explaining why it can be found across cultures.”

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Kissing as potential transmitter of disease

In addition to its importance for social and sexual behavior, the practice of kissing may have played an unintentional role in the transmission of microorganisms, potentially causing viruses to spread among humans.

However, the suggestion that the kiss may be regarded as a sudden biological trigger behind the spread of particular pathogens is more doubtful. The spread of the herpes simplex virus 1, which researchers have suggested could have been accelerated by the introduction of the kiss, is a case in point:

“There is a substantial corpus of medical texts from Mesopotamia, some of which mention a disease with symptoms reminiscent of the herpes simplex virus 1,” Dr Arbøll remarks.

He adds that the ancient medical texts were influenced by a variety of cultural and religious concepts, and it therefore must be emphasized that they cannot be read at face value.

“It is nevertheless interesting to note some similarities between the disease known as buʾshanu in ancient medical texts from Mesopotamia and the symptoms caused by herpes simplex infections. The bu’shanu disease was located primarily in or around the mouth and throat, and symptoms included vesicles in or around the mouth, which is one of the dominant signs of herpes infection.”

“If the practice of kissing was widespread and well-established in a range of ancient societies, the effects of kissing in terms of pathogen transmission must likely have been more or less constant”, says Dr Rasmussen.

Dr Arbøll and Dr Rasmussen conclude that future results emerging from research into ancient DNA, inevitably leading to discussions about complex historical developments and social interactions – such as kissing as a driver of early disease transmission – will benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.

Read the article “The ancient history of kissing” in Science.

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Babylonian clay model showing a nude couple on a couch engaged in sex and kissing. Date: 1800 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum

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Article Source: University of Copenhagen news release

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Oldest architectural plans detail mysterious desert mega structures

Posted on May 17, 2023 by PLOS -

PLOS—The oldest scale plans of human made mega structures are reported in the open access journal PLOS ONE on May 17, 2023. The engravings, dated to between 7,000 and 8,000 years old, depict nearby desert kites, vast structures used to trap animals. The ability to transpose large space onto a small, two dimensional surface represents a milestone in intelligent behavior, and boosts understanding of how kites were conceived and built.

Desert kites were first spotted by airplanes in the 1920s. They are sophisticated archaeological structures made up of walls up to 5km long which converge in an enclosure to trap animals bordered by pits. Such structures are visible as a whole only from the air, yet this calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.

Rémy Crassard of CNRS, Université Lyon, and colleagues, report* two engravings that represent kites in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In Jordan, the Jibal al-Khasabiyeh area has eight kites. A stone with a representation carved with stone tools measuring 80 cm long and 32 cm wide was found nearby and dated to around 7,000 years ago. Zebel az-Zilliyat in Saudi Arabia has two pairs of visible kites 3.5km apart. Here a massive to-scale engraving measuring 382 cm long, 235 cm wide was excavated and the depiction was reportedly pecked rather than carved, possibly with hand picks. This was dated to around 8,000 years ago.

Plans like these would have been needed by the constructors as the whole layout is impossible to grasp without seeing it from the air. Until now, evidence for plans of large structures has been seen in rough representations, but these designs are extremely precise.

Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. These examples are the oldest known plans to scale in human history.

The authors add: “The oldest known plans to scale in human history are reported in our study. The engravings, dated to between 8,000 and 9,000 years old, were discovered in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They depict nearby desert kites that were human-made mega structures used to trap wild animals. Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. The ability to transpose large space onto a small, two dimensional surface represents a milestone in intelligent behavior. Such structures are visible as a whole only from the air, yet this calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.”

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Landscape of Saudi Arabia where the engravings have been found. Olivier Barge, CNRS. CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Crassard R, Abu-Azizeh W, Barge O, Brochier JÉ, Preusser F, Seba H, et al. (2023) The oldest plans to scale of humanmade mega-structures. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0277927. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277927

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Popular Archaeology collaborates to create new international travel learning experiences for subscribers

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Dan McLerran -

Popular Archaeology Magazine is collaborating with professional tour companies and operators to develop and initiate new specialized international travel opportunities for premium subscribers. Designed as special educational experiences, they will generally focus on archaeology, but will also include exposure to architecture and art. Developed as public field seminars, these experiences will employ professional academic lecturers and researchers who will lead seminar participants through lectures and on-site discussions, providing travelers with in-depth perspectives that cannot be obtained through traditional tours. All field seminars, usually one to two weeks in length, will take place in countries that have exciting and engaging archaeological sites and collections, as well as other cultural treasures representing human achievement and life-ways. The first field seminar opportunity has been filled and will take place July 10 — July 26, 2023 in Africa, which will include the countries of Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa, focusing on the important sites and collections related to human origins and human evolution. The next opportunity will take place in the fall of 2024, taking travelers to northern Spain to visit the cultural and archaeological sites in Barcelona, Burgos, the Atapuerca caves, other iconic prehistoric human cave sites, and Bilbao on the northern coast. There is the possibility that other opportunities will arise for departures to other countries earlier than the fall of 2024. These experiences will feature formal lecture sessions as well as on-site lecture/discussions. Other planned opportunities will take travelers to:

— Greece and the Cycladic islands, including Crete

— Egypt

— Saudi Arabia

— Italy

— Belize and Guatemala (Ancient Maya)

— Peru

— Israel and Jordan

— Turkey

— United Kingdom

Other destinations will be added in time. If you have a special interest in any of the destinations thus far mentioned, please email populararchaeology@gmail.com and let us know your interest, and if you have a destination interest that is not listed, please feel free to suggest one or more for our consideration. As mentioned, these opportunities are open to all premium subscribers, but if you are not a premium subscriber and you wish to participate, becoming a premium subscriber is easy and will only require a nominal $9.00 annual payment.

Earth system modeling and fossil data reveal Homo adaptation to diverse environments

Posted on May 11, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Homo species – particularly Homo sapiens – were uniquely equipped to adapt to highly diverse environmental conditions and landscape mosaics, according to a new study*, which may have enabled our species and that of our closely related ancestors to survive and thrive in highly fluctuating Pleistocene environments. Homo sapiens are the only surviving hominin species today. However, whether this is because our species was uniquely successful at adapting to Pleistocene environments, because we outcompeted other contemporary Homo species through unique physiological or social adaptations, or because we simply outlived others by chance remains largely unknown. Although challenging to understand, the connection between hominins and their ecological environment, particularly how Homo species adapted to environmental change and extremes and how this affected survival and migration from Africa and into Eurasia, is central to finding these answers. Combining a transient 3-million-year Earth system-biome model simulation (BIOME4) with archaeological and fossil data for 6 different Homo species, Elke Zeller and colleagues investigated the preferred environmental conditions of the different hominin species, whether biome preferences changes in time or diversity across the Pleistocene, and how these choices affected hominin adaptation. Zeller et al.’s analysis shows that early African hominins, including H. habilis and H. ergaster, predominantly lived in open and dry grassland environments. H. erectus, upon leaving the African continent, settled in a much more broad suite of environments, including temperate forested regions. This trend continued for more recent species, like H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis, who were able to adapt to colder habitats. According to the findings, H. sapiens were able to occupy the most extreme environments, such as deserts and tundra, an ability that suggests the development of unparalleled cognitive abilities, allowing them to exploit habitat diversity and diverse food resources. Overall, the study reveals a pattern of Homo species preferentially selecting and adapting to areas with more diverse habitats over the last 3 million years.

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Homo sapiens (left) and Homo erectus (right) were the two most successful ‘globetrotters’ among the hominins. Left image: Zpanpana, Right image: Emőke Dénes. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: AAAS article by Walter Beckwith

*Human adaptation to diverse biomes over the past 3 million years, Science, 12-May-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1288

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Ancient DNA reveals population continuity in pre-Hispanic central Mexico

Posted on May 11, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Ancient DNA from pre-Hispanic northern and central Mexico reveals population continuity during a period of drastic environmental change, according to a new study*, and provides new insights into the region’s complex and rich demographic history. Before European colonization, present-day Mexico was home to various civilizations across two main cultural areas: Aridoamerica in the north, inhabited mainly by hunter-gatherers, and Mesoamerica in the central and southern regions, where large agriculture-based cultures flourished. The distinction between these two regions has generally been based on cultural characteristics, subsistence strategies, and ecological features. Archeological evidence suggests that the border between these two regions shifted southward between 900-1300 CE due to multidecadal droughts, allegedly driving populations replacement in central Mexico by Aridoamerican peoples and perhaps the abandonment of some Mesoamerican cities. The nature of these societal changes, however, is poorly understood and based solely on archaeological evidence. While studying the genetic variation of these ancient populations could help clarify uncertainties, ancient genomic data for pre-Hispanic populations in Mexico are significantly lacking. Viridiana Villa-Islas and colleagues address this knowledge gap and present shotgun genome-wide data from 12 individuals and 27 mitochondrial genomes from 8 pre-Hispanic archaeological sites across Mexico, including 2 located at the shifting border between Aridoamerica and Mesoamerica. Contrary to archaeological data, Villa-Islas et al. revealed population continuity spanning the period of megadroughts and a broad preservation of the genetic structure across present-day Mexico for the last 2300 years – one that can still be observed in modern Indigenous populations. In addition, the authors also identify a contribution to pre-Hispanic populations of northern and central Mexico from two ancient unsampled “ghost” populations, demonstrating that the demographic events that gave rise to Aridoamerican and Mesoamerican populations are more complex than previously thought. In a related Perspective, Bastien Llamas and Xavier Roca-Rada highlight the study’s ethical and sustainable approach to paleogenomics. “The study of Villa-Islas et al. is a remarkable example of this approach because it targets a Global South region and is led and conducted by (predominantly) local researchers,” they write. “This is a considerable departure from collaboration between local scholars and laboratories from the Global North, which requires the export of samples and often leads to the relocation of local students and early-career researchers to the Global North for training.”

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Above and below: Pre-Hispanic buildings at the Toluquilla Archaeological Site in Sierra Gorda, Querétaro, Mexico. Elizabeth Mejía Pérez Campos

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Article Source: AAAS news release. By Walter Beckwith

*Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico, Science, 12-May-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6142

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Humanity’s earliest recorded kiss occurred in Mesopotamia 4,500 years ago

Kissing as potential transmitter of disease

Oldest architectural plans detail mysterious desert mega structures

Popular Archaeology collaborates to create new international travel learning experiences for subscribers

Earth system modeling and fossil data reveal Homo adaptation to diverse environments

Ancient DNA reveals population continuity in pre-Hispanic central Mexico

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