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CELL PRESS—The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the  people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Now, researchers reporting* in Current Biology on January 12 describe genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old that help to fill the gap and show geneflow from people moving in the opposite direction from North America to North Asia.

Their analysis reveals a previously undescribed group of early Holocene Siberian people that lived in the Neolithic Altai-Sayan region, near to where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together. The genetic data show they were descendants of both paleo-Siberian and Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) people.

“We describe a previously unknown hunter-gatherer population in the Altai as early as 7,500 years old, which is a mixture between two distinct groups that lived in Siberia during the last Ice Age,” says Cosimo Posth at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and senior author of the study. “The Altai hunter-gatherer group contributed to many contemporaneous and subsequent populations across North Asia, showing how great the mobility of those foraging communities was.”

Posth notes that the Altai region is known in the media as the location where a new archaic hominin group, the Denisovans, was discovered. But the region also has importance in human history as a crossroad for population movements between northern Siberia, Central Asia, and East Asia over millennia.

Posth and colleagues report that the unique gene pool they uncovered may represent an optimal source for the inferred ANE-related population that contributed to Bronze Age groups from North and Inner Asia, such as Lake Baikal hunter-gatherers, Okunevo-associated pastoralists, and Tarim Basin mummies. They uncovered Ancient Northeast Asian (ANA) ancestry as well—which had initially been described in Neolithic hunter-gatherers from the Russian Far East—in another Neolithic Altai-Sayan individual associated with distinct cultural features.

The findings reveal the spread of ANA ancestry about 1,500 kilometers farther to the west than previously observed. In the Russian Far East, they also identified 7,000-year-old individuals with Jomon-associated ancestry, indicating links with hunter-gatherer groups from the Japanese Archipelago.

The data also are consistent with multiple phases of gene flow from North America to northeastern Asia over the last 5,000 years, reaching the Kamchatka Peninsula and central Siberia. The researchers note that the findings highlight a largely interconnected population throughout North Asia from the early Holocene onwards.

“The finding that surprised me the most is from an individual dated to a similar period as the other Altai hunter-gatherers but with a completely different genetic profile, showing genetic affinities to populations located in the Russian Far East,” says Ke Wang at Fudan University, China, and lead author of the study. “Interestingly, the Nizhnetytkesken individual was found in a cave containing rich burial goods with a religious costume and objects interpreted as possible representation of shamanism.”

Wang says the finding implies that individuals with very different profiles and backgrounds were living in the same region around the same time.

“It is not clear if the Nizhnetytkesken individual came from far away or the population from which he derived was located close by,” she says. “However, his grave goods appear different than other local archeological contexts implying mobility of both culturally and genetically diverse individuals into the Altai region.”

The genetic data from the Altai show that North Asia harbored highly connected groups as early as 10,000 years ago, across long geographic distances. “This suggests that human migrations and admixtures were the norm and not the exception also for ancient hunter-gatherer societies,” Posth says.

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Skull Sergey V. Semenov

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Photo of grave. Nadezhda F. Stepanova

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Article Source: Cell Press news release

This work is supported by the Max Planck Society, Alon Fellowship, Russian Science Foundation, Russian Foundation for Basic Research, National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, and Altai State University.

*Current Biology, Wang et al.: “Middle Holocene Siberian genomes reveal highly connected gene pools throughout North Asia” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01892-9

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, EVANSTON, Ill. — In 1793, Capt. William Bligh docked the HMS Providence in Kingstown in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a small island nation in the Caribbean Sea, with cargo filled with several hundred sapling breadfruit trees. His goal was singular: To introduce the long-lived trees with their carbohydrate-rich fruits to cheaply feed Britain’s slaves, who labored on the islands’ sugar plantations.

Now, 230 years later, a plant biology team led by Northwestern University, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the St. Vincent Botanical Gardens has, for the first time, traced five major lineages of Caribbean breadfruit back to that single introduction from Bligh’s voyage.

Not only have the original breadfruit tree cultivars (or varieties produced by selective breeding) survived for centuries, they also are thriving, the researchers found.

The study* will be published on Jan. 5, 2023 — the 230th anniversary of Bligh’s arrival in the Caribbean — in the journal Current Biology.

“Breadfruit is an underutilized crop, and it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the major crops,” said Nyree Zerega, the study’s senior author. “However, interest in breadfruit is increasing globally, and we thought this would be a fascinating puzzle to solve.”

“Outside of Oceania, the Caribbean is one of the largest producers of breadfruit worldwide,” added Lauren Audi, the study’s first author. “And we really don’t know much about the genetic diversity of the fruit in the Caribbean. Because this is an important crop for food security — especially for island nations that are highly susceptible to climate change — we wanted to characterize the genetic diversity of breadfruit crops in order to conserve them. The first step for that is to characterize the diversity of what we already have.”

A breadfruit expert, Zerega is director of the Program in Plant Biology and Conservation, a partnership between Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Chicago Botanic Garden, and a conservation scientist with the Negaunee Institute for Plant Conservation Science and Action at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Audi was a graduate student in Zerega’s laboratory at the time of the research. Now, she is a lab manager at the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and a Ph.D. candidate at New York University.

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Breadfruit on the ‘Bounty’

Many people might be familiar with Capt. Bligh from “Mutiny on the Bounty,” a classic book series and film starring Clark Gable that fictionalized the arduous journey and mission’s ultimate failure. (The film was later remade twice — with Marlon Brando in 1962 and Anthony Hopkins in 1984.) 

Aboard a British Royal Navy vessel called the HMS Bounty, Capt. Bligh and his crew stopped in Tahiti, where they worked with locals to collect breadfruit. The goal was to introduce breadfruit as a cheap food for slave populations forced to work on British plantations in the Caribbean islands. But these plans were abruptly abandoned in April 1789 when the Bounty’s crew seized control of the ship, throwing Bligh and his 18 loyalists overboard.

Yet Bligh survived — and remained dedicated to the original goal of collecting and transporting breadfruit. Just two years later, he set sail again — this time on the HMS Providence with an accompanying vessel, the HMS Assistant. Although Bligh recorded names of eight types of breadfruit in his log for the Bounty, the Providence’s logs are curiously missing these crucial details.

“When you look at the logs from the Bounty, Bligh carefully documented what was collected,” Zerega said. “But on his second voyage, the time spent in Tahiti was shorter, and there weren’t any notes about the names of the breadfruit cultivars they actually collected. He did indicate that five kinds of seedless breadfruit were collected, but subsequent historical texts have suggested different numbers. Wanting to know this is partly curiosity, but it’s also useful because it links cross-cultural knowledge about the plants.”

Genetic challenges

The lack of historical records from the Providence is not the only reason why characterizing breadfruit genetic diversity in the Caribbean has been challenging. There are several genetic challenges. First, seedless breadfruit trees are triploid. In other words, they have three copies of chromosomes, instead of two (diploid), which is more common. There are not as many genetic tools designed to analyze triploids, compared to diploids. 

Triploid breadfruit trees also are unable to reproduce sexually and can only survive if humans clonally propagate them. This is done with many cultivated fruit trees — even those that can sexually reproduce — to ensure quality control.

“When you bite into a Honey Crisp apple, you expect a different taste and texture than a McIntosh,” Zerega explained. “Clonal propagation ensures that you get what you expect. When plants develop seeds through sexual reproduction, they give rise to variation in offspring — just like the variation among human siblings.”

Over thousands of years of clonal propagation, however, variation can still arise due to somatic mutations, which are mutations in the tree’s non-reproductive cells. Somatic mutations can occur spontaneously, due to stress or errors in DNA repair. In search of the best fruits, humans sometimes select the part of the plant where the somatic mutation occurred and propagate it. So, if the mutation gives rise to a desirable new leaf or fruit type, people can cut the branch where the mutation occurred, propagate it and essentially clone that new mutation to grow a tree with the desirable fruit again.

Whatever mutation gave rise to the change can be extremely tiny and difficult to pinpoint genetically. Detecting DNA differences across different clonal lines (that is, lineages that arose from different historical “mother” trees) is much easier than detecting differences due to mutations within the same clonal line. Nonetheless, all seedless breadfruit cultivars are quite similar, making it challenging to genetically characterize different cultivars.

Finally, both within and across island groups in the Pacific and the Caribbean, people use many different names for what sometimes appear to be the same cultivars. This adds to the confusion when characterizing diversity.

Connecting the pieces

To overcome these challenges, the researchers employed a variety of tools. They integrated local knowledge with historical documents and specimens, morphological data (observations about the fruits’ size, shape and texture) and targeted genome sequencing.

Partnering with the St. Vincent Botanical Gardens, the St. Vincent Ministry of Tourism and the St. Vincent National Parks, Rivers and Beaches Authority, members of the research team traveled throughout St. Vincent. They collected leaves and took measurements, such as leaf size, fruit size and shape. Then, they supplemented these samples with historical dried, pressed specimens stored in herbaria in museums and botanic gardens around the world — including a specimen collected in 1769 from the HMS Endeavor Voyage led by Captain James Cook.

Back in the lab at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the researchers analyzed more than 200 individual breadfruit specimens, focusing predominantly on seedless breadfruit from St. Vincent and Tahiti as well as samples from around the world. The process involved extracting and sequencing DNA from leaf samples. Among these samples, the researchers ultimately identified eight major global breadfruit lineages — five of which are found in the Caribbean and likely represent the original 1793 introduction by the HMS Providence.

“This is an exciting project,” said Diane Ragone, director emeritus of the Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii, study co-author and Zerega’s former adviser. “Through laboratory, herbarium and library research and fieldwork in Tahiti and the Caribbean and by studying breadfruit trees conserved at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii, three generations of women scientists were able to provide answers to a centuries-old mystery: ‘Which varieties of breadfruit did Captain Bligh introduce into the Caribbean?’”

Based on previous work by Zerega and others, there are many more global breadfruit lineages when the great diversity of seeded cultivars from Oceania are included. The current study focused mostly on seedless breadfruit.

“We identified five genetic lineages in the Caribbean, which matches what we found in some historical texts,” Audi said. “It was exciting to tease apart this history and characterize breadfruit’s diversity in the Caribbean genomically for the first time.”

“Still, there may be more types of breadfruit in St. Vincent than our genetic methods could identify because they are so closely related,” Zerega said. “Even if we don’t find genetic differences among plants that people assign different names to, those names still have significance and value.”

Breadfruit’s importance

Although breadfruit began with a dark history in the Caribbean as slave food, the nutritious fruit eventually became an important part of island diet and culture. Despite having “fruit” in its name, breadfruit is starchy and seedless, playing a culinary role more like a potato. Closely related to jackfruit, the nutrient-rich food is high in fiber, vitamins and minerals. In its native Oceania where breadfruit was domesticated, people have been eating breadfruit for thousands of years — whether steamed, roasted, fried or fermented. Breadfruit also can be turned into flour, in order to lengthen its shelf life.

Once established, a single breadfruit tree can live for decades, producing a large number of fruits each year. And, because it’s a perennial crop, it also requires less energy input (water and fertilizer) than annual crops that must be replanted each year. Like other trees, it also sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“Food security and food sovereignty for the next millennium lies in the endless untapped possibility of breadfruit,” said Gordon J.P. Shallow, study co-author, who was curator of the St. Vincent Botanical Garden at the time of the research.

Earlier this year, Zerega and Northwestern climate scientists authored another study (published in PLOS Climate), which found that breadfruit is particularly resilient in the face of human-caused climate change. Although other staple crops struggle in hot conditions, the researchers predict that changing conditions will have less effect on breadfruit. That means it could play an important role in fighting climate-driven hunger.

The study, “Linking breadfruit cultivar names across the globe connects histories after 230 years of separation,” was supported by the Garden Club of America, Botanical Society of America, the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern Resnick Social Impact Fund and the Northwestern University Alumnae Research Award.

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Breadfruit. Breadfruit tree in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Nyree Zerega/Northwestern University/Chicago Botanic Garden

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Article Source: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY news release

*Linking breadfruit cultivar names across the globe connects histories after 230 years of separation, Current Biology, 5-Jan-2023. 10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.001 

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Durham University—A new study claims to have conclusively decoded the meaning of markings seen in Ice Age drawings and found evidence of early writing dating back at least 14,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The study reveals that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were using markings combined with drawings of their animal prey to store and communicate sophisticated information about the behavior of those animals crucial to their survival, such as wild horses, deer, cattle, and mammoths, at least 20,000 years ago.

As the marks, found in over 600 Ice Age images on cave walls and portable objects across Europe, record information numerically and reference a calendar rather than recording speech, they cannot be called ‘writing’ in the sense of the pictographic and cuneiform systems of early writing that emerged in Sumer from 3,400 BC onwards.

Instead, the team refers to them as a proto-writing system, pre-dating other token-based systems that are thought to have emerged during the Near Eastern Neolithic by at least 10,000 years.

The study, published today [Thursday 5 January 2022] in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, was led by independent researcher, Ben Bacon and involved a small team including two senior academics from Durham University, and one from University College London, both in the UK.

Until now archaeologists have known that these sequences of lines, dots, and other marks – found on cave walls and portable objects from the last Ice Age were storing some kind of information but did not know their specific meaning.

Mr Bacon was keen to decode these, and in particular the inclusion of a ‘Y’ sign – formed by adding a diverging line to another.

By using the birth cycles of equivalent animals today as a reference point, the team was able to work out that the number of marks associated with Ice Age animals were a record, by lunar month, of when they were mating.

Mr Bacon had hypothesized that the ‘Y’ sign stood for ‘giving birth’ and the work of the wider team including Professors Paul Pettitt (Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology) and Robert Kentridge (Professor of Visual Psychology) at Durham University enabled this to be confirmed.

Their work demonstrated that these sequences record mating and birthing seasons and found a statistically significant correlation between the numbers of marks the position of the ‘Y’ sign and the months in which modern animals’ mate and birth respectively.

Speaking about the discovery, Ben Bacon said: “The meaning of the markings within these drawings has always intrigued me so I set about trying to decode them, using a similar approach that others took to understanding an early form of Greek text.

“Using information and imagery of cave art available via the British Library and on the internet, I amassed as much data as possible and began looking for repeating patterns.

“As the study progressed, I reached out to friends and senior university academics, whose expertise were critical to proving my theory.

“It was surreal to sit in the British Library and slowly work out what people 20,000 years ago were saying but the hours of hard work were certainly worth it!”

Professors Paul Pettitt and Robert Kentridge, both of Durham University, have worked together developing the field of visual palaeopsychology, the scientific investigation of the psychology that underpins the earliest development of human visual culture.

Speaking about the discovery, Professor Pettitt, of the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, said: “To say that when Ben contacted us about his discovery was exciting is an understatement. I am glad I took it seriously.

“This is a fascinating study that has brought together independent and professional researchers with expertise in archaeology and visual psychology, to decode information first recorded thousands of years ago.

“The results show that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systematic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar.

“In turn we’re able to show that these people – who left a legacy of spectacular art in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira – also left a record of early timekeeping that would eventually become commonplace among our species.”

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Robert Kentridge, Professor of the Psychology of Vision, Durham University, said: “The implications are that Ice Age hunter-gatherers didn’t simply live in their present, but recorded memories of the time when past events had occurred and used these to anticipate when similar events would occur in the future, an ability that memory researchers call mental time-travel.”

Also, part of the research team was Tony Freeth, Honorary Professor at University College London, who led research that enabled the function of the ancient Greek astronomical clock Antikithera mechanism to be deciphered.

Professor Freeth said; “I was stunned when Ben came to me with his underlying idea that the numbers of spots or lines on the animals represented the lunar month of key events in the animals’ life cycles.

“Lunar calendars are difficult because there are just under twelve and a half lunar months in a year, so they do not fit neatly into a year. As a result, our own modern calendar has all but lost any link to actual lunar months.

“In the Antikythera Mechanism, they used a sophisticated 19-year mathematical calendar to resolve the incompatibility of the year and the lunar month—impossible for Palaeolithic peoples. Their calendar had to be much simpler. It also had to be a ‘meteorological calendar’, tied to changes in temperature, not astronomical events such as the equinoxes.

“With these principles in mind, Ben and I slowly devised a calendar which helped to explain why the system that Ben had uncovered was so universal across wide geography and extraordinary time-scales.”

The team, which also included independent researchers Dr Azadeh Khatiri, a work-place and personal coach, ex-science journalist and scientist, and Clive James Palmer, a retired school teacher specializing in History, hope this is just the beginning of the story.

The team have demonstrated that despite the difficulties, researchers can crack the meaning of at least some of these symbols.  

Mr Bacon said: “That’s encouraged us to continue our work and to attempt to understand more of the symbols, and their cognitive bases.

“What we are hoping, and the initial work is promising, is that unlocking more parts of the proto-writing system will allow us to gain an understanding of what information our ancestors valued.”

“As we probe deeper into their world what we are discovering is that these ancient ancestors are a lot more like us than we had previously thought—these people, separated from us by many millennia, are suddenly a lot closer.”

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Lascaux cave wall painting. Prof Saxx, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons

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Altamira cave wall painting.José-Manuel Benito, Locutus Borg, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Durham University news release

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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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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Radiocarbon dating indicates that 13 projectile point stone tools found at the Cooper’s Ferry site in present-day western Idaho are 2,300 years older than others previously unearthed at the site, expanding the time frame for tool use in this community. The work also refines the inhabitancy time frame for Paleoamericans in an archaeological settlement in the Columbia River basin. “This discovery significantly expands both the radiocarbon chronology of human occupation in the Americas and our knowledge of the technological traditions employed by its early inhabitants,” Loren Davis and colleagues write. Before the Clovis people – who are famed for using specialized stone tools with fluted points – there were other Paleoamericans who also used stemmed point technology. Past work by members of the same research group established the presence of one such community at Cooper’s Ferry that consistently inhabited the settlement beginning sometime between 16,560 and 15,280 B.P. Now, Davis et al.* has used radiocarbon dating on 13 stemmed points gathered from an excavation site called Area B within Cooper’s Ferry to glean new insights about this community, their tool use, and their possible origins. In addition to confirming the period during which Cooper’s Ferry was inhabited, an examination of artifacts from Area B also revealed novel stemmed point tools dated to be 2,300 years older than those found in an excavation site in the settlement known as Area A. The identification of older projectile point tools shows that these techniques were in use at Cooper’s Ferry before there was an ice-free corridor in the Americas. The absence of a land route through which this technology could have spread suggested to the authors that such knowledge may have come from across the Pacific. Hence, the team compared Cooper’s Ferry stemmed point technology with that found in paleo-communities in Japan. “These bifacial stemmed point technologies occur well before the appearance of different lithic and ceramic technologies associated with incipient Jomon occupations in Hokkaido,” the authors write, noting that the Jomon settlement emerged around 14,700 B.P.  “We hypothesize this shared similarity in pre-Jomon stemmed point technology may point to the general location along the northwest Pacific Rim from which some of the earliest peoples in the Americas may have originated between ~22,000-16,000 years ago.”

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Cooper’s Ferry Site 2013 Area A looking east. Loren Davis, Oregon State University

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release. The text of the news release summary author was written by Abigail Eisenstadt.

 

*Dating of a Large Tool Assemblage at the Cooper’s Ferry Site (Idaho, USA) Dated ~15,785 cal yr B.P. Extends Age of Stemmed Points in the Americas, Science Advances, 23-Dec-2022. 10.1126/sciadv.ade1248 

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Hungary has just experienced its driest summer since meteorological measurements began, devastating the country’s usually productive farmland. Archaeologists now suggest that similar conditions in the 5^th century may have encouraged animal herders to become raiders, with devastating consequences for the Roman empire.

The study*, published today in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, argues that extreme drought spells from the 430s – 450s CE disrupted ways of life in the Danube frontier provinces of the eastern Roman empire, forcing Hunnic peoples to adopt new strategies to ‘buffer against severe economic challenges’.

[The research paper can be accessed here]

The authors, Associate Professor Susanne Hakenbeck from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Professor Ulf Büntgen from the University’s Department of Geography, came to their conclusions after assessing a new tree ring-based hydroclimate reconstruction, as well as archaeological and historical evidence.

The Hunnic incursions into eastern and central Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE have long been viewed as the initial crisis that triggered the so-called ‘Great Migrations’ of ‘Barbarian Tribes’, leading to the fall of the Roman empire. But where the Huns came from and what their impact on the late Roman provinces actually was has been unclear.

New climate data reconstructed from tree rings by Prof Büntgen and colleagues provides information about yearly changes in climate over the last 2000 years. It shows that Hungary experienced episodes of unusually dry summers in the 4th and 5th centuries. Hakenbeck and Büntgen point out that climatic fluctuations, in particular drought spells from 420 to 450 CE, would have reduced crop yields and pasture for animals beyond the floodplains of the Danube and Tisza.

Büntgen said: “Tree ring data gives us an amazing opportunity to link climatic conditions to human activity on a year-by-year basis. We found that periods of drought recorded in biochemical signals in tree-rings coincided with an intensification of raiding activity in the region.”

Recent isotopic analysis of skeletons from the region, including by Dr Hakenbeck, suggests that Hunnic peoples responded to climate stress by migrating and by mixing agricultural and pastoral diets.

Hakenbeck said: “If resource scarcity became too extreme, settled populations may have been forced to move, diversify their subsistence practices and switch between farming and mobile animal herding. These could have been important insurance strategies during a climatic downturn.”

But the study also argues that some Hunnic peoples dramatically changed their social and political organization to become violent raiders.

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From herders to raiders

Hunnic attacks on the Roman frontier intensified after Attila came to power in the late 430s. The Huns increasingly demanded gold payments and eventually a strip of Roman territory along the Danube. In 451 CE, the Huns invaded Gaul and a year later they invaded northern Italy.

Traditionally, the Huns have been cast as violent barbarians driven by an “infinite thirst for gold”. But, as this study points out, the historical sources documenting these events were primarily written by elite Romans who had little direct experience of the peoples and events they described.

“Historical sources tell us that Roman and Hun diplomacy was extremely complex,” Dr Hakenbeck said. “Initially it involved mutually beneficial arrangements, resulting in Hun elites gaining access to vast amounts of gold. This system of collaboration broke down in the 440s, leading to regular raids of Roman lands and increasing demands for gold.”

The study argues that if current dating of events is correct, the most devastating Hunnic incursions of 447, 451 and 452 CE coincided with extremely dry summers in the Carpathian Basin.

Hakenbeck said: “Climate-induced economic disruption may have required Attila and others of high rank to extract gold from the Roman provinces to keep war bands and maintain inter-elite loyalties. Former horse-riding animal herders appear to have become raiders.”

Historical sources describe the Huns at this time as a highly stratified group with a military organization that was difficult to counter, even for the Roman armies.

The study suggests that one reason why the Huns attacked the provinces of Thrace and Illyricum in 422, 442, and 447 CE was to acquire food and livestock, rather than gold, but accepts that concrete evidence is needed to confirm this. The authors also suggest that Attila demanded a strip of land ‘five days’ journey wide’ along the Danube because this could have offered better grazing in a time of drought.

Hakenbeck said: “Climate alters what environments can provide and this can lead people to make decisions that affect their economy, and their social and political organization. Such decisions are not straightforwardly rational, nor are their consequences necessarily successful in the long term.”

“This example from history shows that people respond to climate stress in complex and unpredictable ways, and that short-term solutions can have negative consequences in the long term.”

By the 450s CE, just a few decades of their appearance in central Europe, the Huns had disappeared. Attila himself died in 453 CE.

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Huns went from herders to raiders before the raids on ancient Roman northern Italy. Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE news release

*S.E. Hakenbeck & U. Büntgen, ‘The role of drought during the Hunnic incursions into central-east Europe in the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE’, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S1047759422000332 

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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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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON—Human bipedalism – walking upright on two legs – may have evolved in trees, and not on the ground as previously thought, according to a new study involving UCL researchers.

In the study, published today in the journal Science Advances, researchers from UCL, the University of Kent, and Duke University, USA, explored the behaviors of wild chimpanzees – our closest living relative – living in the Issa Valley of western Tanzania, within the region of the East African Rift Valley. Known as ‘savanna-mosaic’ – a mix of dry open land with few trees and patches of dense forest – the chimpanzees’ habitat is very similar to that of our earliest human ancestors and was chosen to enable the scientists to explore whether the openness of this type of landscape could have encouraged bipedalism in hominins.

The study is the first of its kind to explore if savanna-mosaic habitats would account for increased time spent on the ground by the Issa chimpanzees, and compares their behavior to other studies on their solely forest-dwelling cousins in other parts of Africa.

Overall, the study found that the Issa chimpanzees spent as much time in the trees as other chimpanzees living in dense forests, despite their more open habitat, and were not more terrestrial (land-based) as expected.

Furthermore, although the researchers expected the Issa chimpanzees to walk upright more in open savanna vegetation, where they cannot easily travel via the tree canopy, more than 85% of occurrences of bipedalism took place in the trees.

The authors say that their findings contradict widely accepted theories that suggest that it was an open, dry savanna environment that encouraged our prehistoric human relatives to walk upright – and instead suggests that they may have evolved to walk on two feet to move around the trees.

Study co-author Dr Alex Piel (UCL Anthropology) said: “We naturally assumed that because Issa has fewer trees than typical tropical forests, where most chimpanzees live, we would see individuals more often on the ground than in the trees. Moreover, because so many of the traditional drivers of bipedalism (such as carrying objects or seeing over tall grass, for example) are associated with being on the ground, we thought we’d naturally see more bipedalism here as well. However, this is not what we found.

“Our study suggests that the retreat of forests in the late Miocene-Pliocene era around five million years ago and the more open savanna habitats were in fact not a catalyst for the evolution of bipedalism. Instead, trees probably remained essential to its evolution – with the search for food-producing trees a likely driver of this trait.”

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To establish their findings, the researchers recorded more than 13,700 instantaneous observations of positional behavior from 13 chimpanzee adults (six females and seven males), including almost 2,850 observations of individual locomotor events (e.g., climbing, walking, hanging, etc.), over the course of the 15-month study. They then used the relationship between tree/land-based behavior and vegetation (forest vs woodland) to investigate patterns of association. Similarly, they noted each instance of bipedalism and whether it was associated with being on the ground or in the trees.

The authors note that walking on two feet is a defining feature of humans when compared to other great apes, who “knuckle walk”. Yet, despite their study, researchers say why humans alone amongst the apes first began to walk on two feet still remains a mystery.

Study co-author Dr Fiona Stewart (UCL Anthropology) said: “To date, the numerous hypotheses for the evolution of bipedalism share the idea that hominins (human ancestors) came down from the trees and walked upright on the ground, especially in more arid, open habitats that lacked tree cover. Our data do not support that at all.

“Unfortunately, the traditional idea of fewer trees equals more terrestriality (land dwelling) just isn’t borne out with the Issa data. What we need to focus on now is how and why these chimpanzees spend so much time in the trees – and that is what we’ll focus on next on our way to piecing together this complex evolutionary puzzle.”

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An adult male chimpanzee walks upright to navigate flexible branches in the open canopy, characteristic of the Issa Valley savanna-mosaic habitat.Despite their open and dry habitat, chimpanzees at Issa remained highly arboreal and did not walk on the ground more than chimpanzees living in tropical forest, findings which support upright walking evolving in the trees, not on the ground in our early ancestors Rhiana Drummond-Clarke

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Article Source: University College London news releas

*Wild chimpanzee behavior suggests that a savanna-mosaic habitat did not support the emergence of hominin terrestrial bipedalism, Science Advances, 14-Dec-2022. 10.1126/sciadv.add9752 

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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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Tuesday, December 13—Recent excavations in the Ophel area south of the Temple Mount uncovered the remains of a monumental public building from the Second Temple period, which was destroyed in 70 CE.

In the destruction layer, dozens of Jewish coins were found from the period of the Great Revolt (66–70 CE), most of them of bronze. This assemblage also included a particularly rare and unusual find – a silver coin in a half-shekel denomination originating from 69/70 CE.

The dig was carried out by a team from the Hebrew University, led by Prof. Uzi Leibner of the Institute of Archaeology, in partnership with the Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmond, Oklahoma, and with the support of the East Jerusalem Development Company, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The rare coin was cleaned at the conservation laboratory of the Institute of Archaeology and identified by Dr. Yoav Farhi, the team’s numismatic expert and curator of the Kadman Numismatic Pavilion at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.

“This is the third coin of this type found in excavations in Jerusalem, and one of the few ever found in archeological excavations,” said the researchers.

During the Great Revolt against Rome, the Jews in Jerusalem minted bronze and silver coins. Most of the silver coins featured a goblet on one side, with ancient Hebrew script above it noting the year of the Revolt. Depending on its denomination, the coins also included an inscription around the border noting either, “Israel Shekel,” “Half-Shekel,” or “Quarter-Shekel.” The other side of these coins showcased a branch with three pomegranates, surrounded by an inscription in ancient Hebrew script, “Holy Jerusalem.”

Throughout the Roman era the authority to produce silver coins was reserved solely for the emperor. During the Revolt, the minting of coins, especially those made of silver, was a political statement and an expression of national liberation from Roman rule by the Jewish rebels. Indeed, throughout the Roman period leading up to the Great Revolt, no silver coins were minted by Jews, not even during the rule of King Herod the Great.

According to the researchers, half-shekel coins (which had an average weight of 7 grams) were also used to pay the “half-shekel” tax to the Temple, contributed annually by every Jewish adult male to help cover the costs of worship.

Dr. Farhi explained, “Until the revolt, it was customary to pay the half-shekel tax using good-quality silver coins minted in Tyre in Lebanon, known as ‘Tyrean shekels’ or ‘Tyrean half-shekels.’ These coins held the image of Herakles-Melqart, the principal deity of Tyre, and on the reverse they featured an eagle surrounded by a Greek inscription, ‘Tyre the holy and city of refuge.’ Thus, the silver coins produced by the rebels were intended to also serve as a replacement for the Tyrean coins, by using more appropriate inscriptions and replacing images (forbidden by the Second Commandment) with symbols. The silver coins from the Great Revolt were the first and the last in ancient times to bear the title ‘shekel.’ The next time this name was used was in 1980, on Israeli Shekel coins produced by the Bank of Israel.”

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Half-shekel coin from the third year of the Great Revolt (Photo: Tal Rogovski)

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Article Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem news release.

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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—A new Dartmouth-led study analyzing stone tools from southern China provides the earliest evidence of rice harvesting, dating to as early as 10,000 years ago. The researchers identified two methods of harvesting rice, which helped initiate rice domestication. The results are published in PLOS ONE.

Wild rice is different from domesticated rice in that wild rice naturally sheds ripe seeds, shattering them to the ground when they mature, while cultivated rice seeds stay on the plants when they mature.

To harvest rice, some sort of tools would have been needed. In harvesting rice with tools, early rice cultivators were selecting the seeds that stay on the plants, so gradually the proportion of seeds that remain increased, resulting in domestication.

“For quite a long time, one of the puzzles has been that harvesting tools have not been found in southern China from the early Neolithic period or New Stone Age (10,000 – 7,000 Before Present) — the time period when we know rice began to be domesticated,” says lead author Jiajing Wang, an assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth. “However, when archaeologists were working at several early Neolithic sites in the Lower Yangtze River Valley, they found a lot of small pieces of stone, which had sharp edges that could have been used for harvesting plants.”

“Our hypothesis was that maybe some of those small stone pieces were rice harvesting tools, which is what our results show.”

In the Lower Yangtze River Valley, the two earliest Neolithic culture groups were the Shangshan and Kuahuqiao.

The researchers examined 52 flaked stone tools from the Shangshan and Hehuashan sites, the latter of which was occupied by Shangshan and Kuahuqiao cultures.

The stone flakes are rough in appearance and are not finely made but have sharp edges. On average, the flaked tools are small enough to be held by one hand and measured approximately 1.7 inches in width and length.

To determine if the stone flakes were used for harvesting rice, the team conducted use-wear and phytolith residue analyses.

For the use-wear analysis, micro-scratches on the tools’ surfaces were examined under a microscope to determine how the stones were used. The results showed that 30 flakes have use-wear patterns similar to those produced by harvesting siliceous (silica-rich) plants, likely including rice.

Fine striations, high polish, and rounded edges distinguished the tools that were used for cutting plants from those that were used for processing hard materials, cutting animal tissues, and scraping wood.

Through the phytolith residue analysis, the researchers analyzed the microscopic residue left on the stone flakes known as “phytoliths” or silica skeleton of plants. They found that 28 of the tools contained rice phytoliths.

“What’s interesting about rice phytoliths is that rice husk and leaves produce different kinds of phytolith, which enabled us to determine how the rice was harvested,” says Wang.

The findings from the use-wear and phytolith analyses illustrated that two types of rice harvesting methods were used — “finger-knife” and “sickle” techniques. Both methods are still used in Asia today.

The stone flakes from the early phase (10,000 – 8,200 BP) showed that rice was largely harvested using the finger-knife method in which the panicles at the top of the rice plant are reaped. The results showed that the tools used for finger-knife harvesting had striations that were mainly perpendicular or diagonal to the edge of the stone flake, which suggests a cutting or scraping motion, and contained phytoliths from seeds or rice husk phytoliths, indicating that the rice was harvested from the top of the plant.

“A rice plant contains numerous panicles that mature at different times, so the finger-knife harvesting technique is especially useful when rice domestication was in the early stage,” says Wang.

The stone flakes however, from the later phase (8,000 – 7,000 BP) had more evidence of sickle harvesting in which the lower part of the plant was harvested. These tools had striations that were predominantly parallel to the tool’s edge, reflecting that a slicing motion had likely been used.

“Sickle harvesting was more widely used when rice became more domesticated, and more ripe seeds stayed on the plant,” says Wang. “Since you are harvesting the entire plant at the same time, the rice leaves and stems could also be used for fuel, building materials, and other purposes, making this a much more effective harvesting method.”

Wang says, “Both harvesting methods would have reduced seed shattering. That’s why we think rice domestication was driven by human unconscious selection.”

Wang is available for comment at: Jiajing.Wang@dartmouth.edu. Jiangping Zhu at Pujiang Museum, Dongrong Lei at Longyou Museum, and Leping Jiang at Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the University of Science and Technology of China, also served as co-authors of the study.

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A selection of stone flake tools from the Shangshan ((a)-(h)) and Kuahuqiao ((i)–(l)) cultures. Red dots delineate working edge of tools. Image by Jiajing Wang.

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Phytolith recovered from stone flakes from Shanghsan and Hehuashan flakes: rice husk phytolith (on left) and rice leaf phytolith. Image by Jiajing Wang

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release.

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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.

BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – For over a century, one of the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Spain has been long considered a Neanderthal. However, new analysis from an international research team, including scientists at Binghamton University, State University of New York, dismantles this century-long interpretation, demonstrating that this fossil is not a Neanderthal; rather, it may actually represent the earliest presence of Homo sapiens ever documented in Europe.

In 1887, a fossil mandible was discovered during quarrying activities in the town of Banyoles, Spain, and has been studied by different researchers over the past century. The Banyoles fossil likely dates to between approximately 45,000-65,000 years ago, at a time when Europe was occupied by Neanderthals, and most researchers have generally linked it to this species.

“The mandible has been studied throughout the past century and was long considered to be a Neanderthal based on its age and location, and the fact that it lacks one of the diagnostic features of Homo sapiens: a chin,” said Binghamton University graduate student Brian Keeling. 

The new study* relied on virtual techniques, including CT scanning of the original fossil. This was used to virtually reconstruct missing parts of the fossil, and then to generate a 3D model to be analyzed on the computer. 

The authors studied the expressions of distinct features on the mandible from Banyoles that are different between our own species, Homo sapiens, and the Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary cousins.

The authors applied a methodology known as “three-dimensional geometric morphometrics” that analyzes the geometric properties of the bone’s shape. This makes it possible to directly compare the overall shape of Banyoles to Neanderthals and H. sapiens.

“Our results found something quite surprising — Banyoles shared no distinct Neanderthal traits and did not overlap with Neandertals in its overall shape,” said Keeling.

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While Banyoles seemed to fit better with Homo sapiens in both the expression of its individual features and its overall shape, many of these features are also shared with earlier human species, complicating an immediate assignment to Homo sapiens. In addition, Banyoles lacks a chin, one of the most characteristic features of Homo sapiens mandibles.

“We were confronted with results that were telling us Banyoles is not a Neanderthal, but the fact that it does not have a chin made us think twice about assigning it to Homo sapiens,” said Rolf Quam, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. “The presence of a chin has long been considered a hallmark of our own species.”

Given this, reaching a scientific consensus on what species Banyoles represents is a challenge. The authors also compared Banyoles with an early Homo sapiens mandible from a site called Peştera cu Oase in Romania. Unlike Banyoles, this mandible shows a full chin along with some Neandertal features, and an ancient DNA analysis has revealed this individual had a Neandertal ancestor four to six generations ago. Since the Banyoles mandible shared no distinct features with Neanderthals, the researchers ruled out the possibility of mixture between Neanderthals and H. sapiens to explain its anatomy.

The authors point out that some of the earliest Homo sapiens fossils from Africa, predating Banyoles by more than 100,000 years, do show less pronounced chins than in living populations. 

Thus, these scientists developed two possibilities for what the Banyoles mandible may represent: a member of a previously unknown population of Homo sapiens that coexisted with the Neanderthals; or a hybrid between a member of this Homo sapiens group and a non-Neandertal unidentified human species. However, at the time of Banyoles, the only fossils recovered from Europe are Neanderthals, making this latter hypothesis less likely.

“If Banyoles is really a member of our species, this prehistoric human would represent the earliest H. sapiens ever documented in Europe,” said Keeling.

Whichever species this mandible belongs to, Banyoles is clearly not a Neanderthal at a time when Neanderthals were believed to be the sole occupants of Europe. 

The authors conclude that “the present situation makes Banyoles a prime candidate for ancient DNA or proteomic analyses, which may shed additional light on its taxonomic affinities.” 

The authors plan to make the CT scan and the 3D model of Banyoles available for other researchers to freely access and include in future comparative studies, promoting open access to fossil specimens and reproducibility of scientific studies.

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Map of the Iberian Peninsula indicating the location where the Banyoles mandible (yellow star) was found, along with Late Pleistocene Neanderthal (orange triangles) and Homo sapiens (white squares) sites. Brian Keeling

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Comparison of the Banyoles mandible (center), with H. sapiens (left), and a Neanderthal (right). Brian Keeling

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Reconstruction of the 3D model of the Banyoles mandible. Highlighted piece in blue indicates a mirrored element. Left: lateral view of the Banyoles mandible during the alignment process. Center: lateral view of the Banyoles mandible after joining the two pieces together. Right: superior view of the mandible after reconstruction. Brian Keeling

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Article Source: BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY news release.

The paper, “Reassessment of the human mandible from Banyoles (Girona, Spain),” was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

*Reassessment of the human mandible from Banyoles (Girona, Spain), Journal of Human Evolution, 6-Dec-2022. 10.1016/j.jhevol.2022.103291

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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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WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS—More than 3,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun — in present-day Turkey —  carrying tons of rare metal. Since its discovery in 1982, scientists have been studying the contents of the Uluburun shipwreck to gain a better understanding of the people and political organizations that dominated the time period known as the Late

Now, a team of scientists, including Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have uncovered a surprising finding: small communities of highland pastoralists living in present-day Uzbekistan in Central Asia produced and supplied roughly one-third of the tin found aboard the ship — tin that was en route to markets around the Mediterranean to be made into coveted bronze metal.

The research, published on November 30 in Science Advances, was made possible by advances in geochemical analyses that enabled researchers to determine with high-level certainty that some of the tin originated from a prehistoric mine in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles from Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo.

But how could that be? During this period, the mining regions of Central Asia were occupied by small communities of highlander pastoralists — far from a major industrial center or empire. And the terrain between the two locations — which passes through Iran and Mesopotamia — was rugged, which would have made it extremely difficult to pass tons of heavy metal.

Frachetti and other archaeologists and historians were enlisted to help put the puzzle pieces together. Their findings unveiled a shockingly complex supply chain that involved multiple steps to get the tin from the small mining community to the Mediterranean marketplace.

“It appears these local miners had access to vast international networks and — through overland trade and other forms of connectivity — were able to pass this all-important commodity all the way to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.

“It’s quite amazing to learn that a culturally diverse, multiregional and multivector system of trade underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age.”

Adding to the mystique is the fact that the mining industry appears to have been run by small-scale local communities or free laborers who negotiated this marketplace outside of the control of kings, emperors or other political organizations, Frachetti said.

“To put it into perspective, this would be the trade equivalent of the entire United States sourcing its energy needs from small backyard oil rigs in central Kansas,” he said.

About the research

The idea of using tin isotopes to determine where metal in archaeological artifacts originates dates to the mid-1990s, according to Wayne Powell, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Brooklyn College and a lead author on the study. However, the technologies and methods for analysis were not precise enough to provide clear answers. Only in the last few years have scientists begun using tin isotopes to directly correlate mining sites to assemblages of metal artifacts, he said.

“Over the past couple of decades, scientists have collected information about the isotopic composition of tin ore deposits around the world, their ranges and overlaps, and the natural mechanisms by which isotopic compositions were imparted to cassiterite when it formed,” Powell said. “We remain in the early stages of such study. I expect that in future years, this ore deposit database will become quite robust, like that of Pb isotopes today, and the method will be used routinely.”

Aslihan K. Yener, a research affiliate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and a professor emerita of archaeology at the University of Chicago, was one of the early researchers who conducted lead isotope analyses. In the 1990s, Yener was part of a research team that conducted the first lead isotope analysis of the Uluburun tin. That analysis suggested that the Uluburun tin may have come from two sources — the Kestel Mine in Turkey’s Taurus Mountains and some unspecified location in central Asia.

“But this was shrugged off since the analysis was measuring trace lead and not targeting the origin of the tin,” said Yener, who is a co-author of the present study.

Yener also was the first to discover tin in Turkey in the 1980s. At the time, she said the entire scholarly community was surprised that it existed there, right under their noses, where the earliest tin bronzes occurred.

Some 30 years later, researchers finally have a more definitive answer thanks to the advanced tin isotope analysis techniques: One-third of the tin aboard the Uluburun shipwreck was sourced from the Mušiston mine in Uzbekistan. The remaining two-thirds of the tin derived from the Kestel mine in ancient Anatolia, which is in present-day Turkey.

Findings offer glimpse into life 3,000 years ago

By 1500 B.C., bronze was the “high technology” of Eurasia, used for everything from weaponry to luxury items, tools and utensils. Bronze is primarily made from copper and tin. While copper is fairly common and can be found throughout Eurasia, tin is much rarer and only found in specific kinds of geological deposits, Frachetti said.

“Finding tin was a big problem for prehistoric states. And thus, the big question was how these major Bronze Age empires were fueling their vast demand for bronze given the lengths and pains to acquire tin as such a rare commodity. Researchers have tried to explain this for decades,” Frachetti said.

The Uluburun ship yielded the world’s largest Bronze Age collection of raw metals ever found — enough copper and tin to produce 11 metric tons of bronze of the highest quality. Had it not been lost to sea, that metal would have been enough to outfit a force of almost 5,000 Bronze Age soldiers with swords, “not to mention a lot of wine jugs,” Frachetti said.

“The current findings illustrate a sophisticated international trade operation that included regional operatives and socially diverse participants who produced and traded essential hard-earth commodities throughout the late Bronze Age political economy from Central Asia to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.

Unlike the mines in Uzbekistan, which were set within a network of small-scale villages and mobile pastoralists, the mines in ancient Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age were under the control of the Hittites, an imperial global power of great threat to Ramses the Great of Egypt, Yener explained.

The findings also show that life 2,000-plus years ago was not that different from what it is today.

“With the disruptions due to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, we have become aware of how we are reliant on complex supply chains to maintain our economy, military and standard of living,” Powell said. “This is true in prehistory as well. Kingdoms rose and fell, climatic conditions shifted and new peoples migrated across Eurasia, potentially disrupting or redistributing access to tin, which was essential for both weapons and agricultural tools.

“Using tin isotopes, we can look across each of these archaeologically evident disruptions in society and see connections were severed, maintained or redefined. We already have DNA analysis to show relational connections. Pottery, funerary practices, etc., illustrate the transmission and connectivity of ideas. Now with tin isotopes, we can document the connectivity of long-distance trade networks and their sustainability.”

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More clues to explore

The current research findings settle decades-old debates about the origins of the metal on the Uluburun shipwreck and Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. But there are still more clues to explore.

After they were mined, the metals were processed for shipping and ultimately melted into standardized shapes — known as ingots — for transporting. The distinct shapes of the ingots served as calling cards for traders to know from where they originated, Frachetti said.

Many of the ingots aboard the Uluburun ship were in the “oxhide” shape, which was previously believed to have originated in Cyprus. However, the current findings suggest the oxhide shape could have originated farther east. Frachetti said he and other researchers plan to continue studying the unique shapes of the ingots and how they were used in trade.

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Tin from the Mušiston mine in Central Asia’s Uzbekistan traveled more than 2,000 miles to Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo before crashing off the eastern shores of Uluburun in present-day Turkey. Map provided by Michael Frachetti/Washington University in St. Louis

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Above and below: Uluburun excavation. Cemal Pulak/Texas A&M University

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Article Source: WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS news release.

In addition to Frachetti, Powell and Yener, the following researchers contributed to the present study: Cemal Pulakat at Texas A&M University, H. Arthur Bankoff at Brooklyn College, Gojko Barjamovic at Harvard University, Michael Johnson at Stell Environmental Enterprises, Ryan Mathur at Juniata College, Vincent C. Pigott at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Michael Price at the Santa Fe Institute.

The study was funded in part by a Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Award, in addition to a research grant from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory.

*Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia, Science Advances, 30-Nov-2022.  10.1126/sciadv.abq3766 

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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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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON—A gold coin long dismissed as a forgery appears to be authentic and depicts a long-lost Roman emperor named Sponsian, according to a new UCL-led study.

The coin, housed at The Hunterian collection at the University of Glasgow, was among a handful of coins of the same design unearthed in Transylvania, in present-day Romania, in 1713. They have been regarded as fakes since the mid-19^th-century, due to their crude, strange design features and jumbled inscriptions.

In the new study*, published in PLOS ONE, researchers compared the Sponsion coin with other Roman coins kept at The Hunterian, including two that are known to be genuine.

They found minerals on the coin’s surface that were consistent with it being buried in soil over a long period of time, and then exposed to air. These minerals were cemented in place by silica – cementing that would naturally occur over a long time in soil. The team also found a pattern of wear and tear that suggested the coin had been in active circulation.

Lead author Professor Paul N. Pearson (UCL Earth Sciences) said: “Scientific analysis of these ultra-rare coins rescues the emperor Sponsian from obscurity. Our evidence suggests he ruled Roman Dacia, an isolated gold mining outpost, at a time when the empire was beset by civil wars and the borderlands were overrun by plundering invaders.”

The Roman province of Dacia, a territory overlapping with modern-day Romania, was a region prized for its gold mines. Archaeological studies have established that the area was cut off from the rest of the Roman empire in around 260 CE. Surrounded by enemies, Sponsian may have been a local army officer forced to assume supreme command during a period of chaos and civil war, protecting the military and civilian population of Dacia until order was restored, and the province evacuated between 271 and 275 CE.

Coinage has always been an important symbol of power and authority. Recognizing this and unable to receive official issues from the mint in Rome, Sponsian seems to have authorized the creation of locally produced coins, some featuring an image of his face, to support a functioning economy in his isolated frontier territory.

When the coins were discovered in the early 18th century, they were thought to be genuine and classed alongside other imitations of Roman coins made beyond the fringes of the empire. However, from the mid-19th century, attitudes changed. Coins from the hoard were dismissed as fakes because of the way they looked. This has been the accepted view until now.

The new study is the first time scientific analysis has been undertaken on any of the Sponsian coins. The research team used powerful microscopes in visible and ultraviolet light, as well as scanning electron microscopy and spectroscopy – studying how light at different wavelengths is absorbed or reflected – to study the coins’ surface.

Only four coins featuring Sponsian are known to have survived to the present day, all apparently originally from the 1713 hoard. Another is in Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania. High magnification microscopic analysis performed there, following the research on the coin at The Hunterian, has revealed similar evidence of authenticity.

Curator of Numismatics at The Hunterian, Jesper Ericsson, said: “This has been a really exciting project for The Hunterian and we’re delighted that our findings have inspired collaborative research with museum colleagues in Romania. Not only do we hope that this encourages further debate about Sponsian as a historical figure, but also the investigation of coins relating to him held in other museums across Europe.”

The interim manager of the Brukenthal National Museum, Alexandru Constantin Chituță, said: “For the history of Transylvania and Romania in particular, but also for the history of Europe in general, if these results are accepted by the scientific community they will mean the addition of another important historical figure in our history.

“It is a wonderful thing for the Brukenthal National Museum, because the museum in Sibiu, Romania, is the holder of the only known coin belonging to Sponsian from the territory of Romania. I would like to express my gratitude to the colleagues from the Brukenthal Național Museum – History Museum Altemberger House and especially to the leader of the scientific team, Professor Paul N. Pearson from UCL, for their commitment, hard work and their impressive result.”

Four gold coins analyzed by researchers, including the Sponsian coin and other Roman coins previously dismissed as forgeries, are on display in The Hunterian at the University of Glasgow, while the Sponsian coin in the Brukenthal National Museum is also on public display.

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Sponsian gold coin, c.260-c.270 CE (obverse). The Hunterian, University of Glasgow.

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON news release.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The complete skeletal remains of a spider monkey — seen as an exotic curiosity in pre-Hispanic Mexico — grants researchers new evidence regarding social-political ties between two ancient powerhouses: Teotihuacán and Maya Indigenous rulers. 

The discovery was made by Nawa Sugiyama, a UC Riverside anthropological archaeologist, and a team of archaeologists and anthropologists who since 2015 have been excavating at Plaza of Columns Complex, in Teotihuacán, Mexico. The remains of other animals were also discovered, as well as thousands of Maya-style mural fragments and over 14,000 ceramic sherds from a grand feast. These pieces are more than 1,700 years old.

The spider monkey is the earliest evidence of primate captivity, translocation, and gift diplomacy between Teotihuacán and the Maya. Details of the discovery* will be published in the journal PNAS. This finding allows researchers to piece evidence of high diplomacy interactions and debunks previous beliefs that Maya presence in Teotihuacán was restricted to migrant communities, said Sugiyama, who led the research. 

“Teotihuacán attracted people from all over, it was a place where people came to exchange goods, property, and ideas. It was a place of innovation,” said Sugiyama, who is collaborating with other researchers, including Professor Saburo Sugiyama, co-director of the project and a professor at Arizona State University, and Courtney A. Hofman, a molecular anthropologist with the University of Oklahoma. “Finding the spider monkey has allowed us to discover reassigned connections between Teotihuacán and Maya leaders. The spider monkey brought to life this dynamic space, depicted in the mural art. It’s exciting to reconstruct this live history.”

Researchers applied a multimethod archaeometric (zooarchaeology, isotopes, ancient DNA, paleobotany, and radiocarbon dating) approach to detail the life of this female spider monkey. The animal was likely between 5 and 8 years old at the time of death.

Its skeletal remains were found alongside a golden eagle and several rattlesnakes, surrounded by unique artifacts, such as fine greenstone figurines made of jade from the Motagua Valley in Guatemala, copious shell/snail artifacts, and lavish obsidian goods such as blades and projectiles points. This is consistent with evidence of live sacrifice of symbolically potent animals participating in state rituals observed in Moon and Sun Pyramid dedicatory caches, researchers stated in the paper.

Results from the examination of two teeth, the upper and lower canines, indicate the spider monkey in Teotihuacán ate maize and chili peppers, among other food items. The bone chemistry, which offers insight to the diet and environmental information, indicates at least two years of captivity. Prior to arriving in Teotihuacán, it lived in a humid environment, eating primarily plants and roots.

The research is primarily funded by grants awarded to Sugiyama from the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. Teotihuacán is a pre-Hispanic city recognized as an UNESCO World Heritage site and receives more than three million visitors annually. 

In addition to studying ancient rituals and uncovering pieces of history, the finding allows for a reconstruction of greater narratives, of understanding how these powerful, advanced societies dealt with social and political stressors that very much reflect today’s world, Sugiyama said. 

“This helps us understand principles of diplomacy, to understand how urbanism developed … and how it failed,” Sugiyama said. “Teotihuacán was a successful system for over 500 years, understanding past resilience, its strengths and weaknesses are relevant in today’s society. There are many similarities then and now. Lessons can be seen and modeled from past societies; they provide us with cues as we go forward.” 

Article Source: University of California, Riverside news release.

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Complete skeletal remains of a 1,700 year-old female spider monkey found in Teotihuacán, Mexico. Nawa Sugiyama, UC Riverside.

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The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California’s diverse culture, UCR’s enrollment is more than 26,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual impact of more than $2.7 billion on the U.S. economy. To learn more, visit www.ucr.edu.

UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA—Researchers of the University of Malaga (UMA) and the University of Jaen (UJA) have discovered Egypt’s oldest tomb oriented to the winter solstice. Located in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan), it is precisely oriented to the sunrise of the winter solstice, in such a way that the sun’s rays bathed with its light the place that was intended to house the statue of a governor of the city of Elephantine, who lived at the end of the XII Dynasty, around 1830 b. C.

This way, the tomb perfectly registered the whole solar cycle, related to the idea of rebirth. While the winter solstice meant the beginning of the sunlight victory over darkness, the summer solstice generally coincided with the beginning of the annual flooding of the Nile, hence both events had an important symbolism linked to the resurrection of the deceased governor.

Perfection in the orientation

In this paper, recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, the researchers explain that, in order to achieve perfection in the orientation, the Egyptian architect simply used a two-cubit pole, around one meter long, a square and some robes, with which he was able to perfectly calculate the orientation of the funerary chapel and the location of the statue of the governor.

Moreover, they explain that the Egyptian architect not only achieved the perfect orientation, but also designed its volume with great precision, as determined in a previous paper published by the UJA in 2020 and signed by, among others, Professor Antonio Mozas –also author of this article–, which revealed that the volume of the tomb was perfectly calculated to avoid being coincident with any previous tomb.

The tomb of this governor, catalogued with No. 33, and possibly built by Governor Heqaib-ankh, was excavated by the UJA between 2008 and 2018. From that time on, it has been architecturally studied by different specialists, among them, the Professor of Architecture at the UMA Lola Joyanes, who has been participating in this project since 2015, working on her own line of research since 2019.

The work this researcher of the UMA has performed in the necropolis involves everything related to architecture and landscape, particularly, their study through drawing and photogrammetry.

A specific software to reproduce the position of the sun

The Andalusian scientists reached these conclusions thanks to the identification of the period where the tomb was built, which allowed them to use a specific software (Dialux Evo) that reproduces the position of the sun with respect to the horizon in ancient times.

“This study demonstrates that Egyptians were capable of calculating the position of the sun and the orientation of its rays to design their monuments. Although the tomb No. 33 of Qubbet el-Hawa is the oldest example ever found, certainly it is not the only one”, say the scientists.

This research has been financed by the Government of Andalusia within its projects “A way to immortality: beyond the preparation for death during Middle Kingdom at Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan, Egypt)” of the University of Jaen and “Archaeology, Architecture and Landscape: typological evolution and state of conservation of tombs in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan, Egypt). Intervention criteria”.

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Located in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan), it is precisely oriented to the sunrise of the winter solstice, in such a way that the sun’s rays bathed with its light the place that was intended to house the statue of a governor of the city of Elephantine, who lived at the end of the XII Dynasty, around 1830 B. C. University of Jaen and Malaga

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA news release.

DESERT RESEARCH—The wide expanse of an ancient lakebed in New Mexico holds the preserved footprints of life that roamed millennia ago. Giant sloths and mammoths left their mark, and alongside them, signs of our human ancestors. Research* published in September 2021 claimed that these footprints are “definitive evidence of human occupation of North America” during the last ice age, dating back to between 23 and 21 thousand years ago. Now, a new study disputes the evidence of such an early age.

Scientists from DRI, Kansas State University, the University of Nevada, Reno, and Oregon State University caution in Quaternary Research that the dating evidence is insufficient for claims that would so radically alter our understanding of when, and how, humans first arrived in North America. Using the same dating method and materials, the new study shows that the footprints could have been left thousands of years later than originally claimed.

“I read the original Science article on the human footprints at White Sands and was initially struck not only by how tremendous the footprints were on their own, but how important accurate dating would be,” says Charles Oviatt, emeritus professor of geology at Kansas State University and one of the new study’s authors. “I saw potential problems with the scientific tests of the dates reported in the Science paper.”

“It really does throw a lot of what we think we know into question,” says David Rhode, Ph.D., a paleoecologist at DRI and co-author of the new study. “That’s why it’s important to really nail down this age, and why we’re suggesting that we need better evidence.”

Archaeologists and historians use a number of methods to determine the timing of historic events. Based on these methods, scientists tend to agree that the earliest known dates of humanity’s colonization of North America lie between 14 and 16 thousand years ago, after the last ice age. If the original claims are correct, current chronological models in fields as varied as paleogenetics and regional geochronology would need to be reevaluated.

“23 to 21 thousand years ago is in a timeframe where you need to really pay attention to how people got into North America,” says Rhode. “At that time, there was a huge, mile-high mountain range of ice covering Canada to the north, and the pathway down the Pacific Coast wasn’t very accommodating either – so it may have been that people had to come here much earlier than that.”  

By studying ancient DNA from human fossils and using rates of genetic change (a sort of molecular clock using DNA), paleogeneticists surmise that the American Southwest was first occupied no earlier than 20 thousand years ago. If the footprints are older, it throws into question the use and integrity of these genetic models. It’s possible that the ages from one study at a single site in a New Mexico lake basin are valid, and that age estimates from a variety of other fields are invalid, the authors write, but more robust evidence is needed to confirm the claims.

At the center of the debate are the tiny seeds of an aquatic plant used to age the footprints. The timeframe for the seeds was identified using radiocarbon dating methods, in which researchers examine a type of carbon known as Carbon-14. Carbon-14 originates in the atmosphere and is absorbed by plants through photosynthesis. These carbon isotopes decay at a constant rate over time, and comparing the amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere to the amount present in fossilized plant material allows scientists to determine their approximate age. But the plant species used, Ruppia cirrhosa, grows underwater and therefore obtains much of its carbon for photosynthesis not directly from the atmosphere as terrestrial plants do, but from dissolved carbon atoms in the water.

“While the researchers recognize the problem, they underestimate the basic biology of the plant,” says Rhode. “For the most part, it’s using the carbon it finds in the lake waters. And in most cases, that means it’s taking in carbon from sources other than the contemporary atmosphere – sources which are usually pretty old.”

This method is likely to give radiocarbon-based age estimates of the plant that are much older than the plants themselves. Ancient carbon enters the groundwater of the Lake Otero basin from eroded bedrock of the Tularosa Valley and the surrounding mountains, and occurs in extensive calcium carbonate deposits throughout the basin.

The authors demonstrated this effect by examining Ruppia plant material with a known age from the same region. Botanists collected living Ruppia plants from a nearby spring-fed pond in 1947 and archived them at the University of New Mexico herbarium. Using the same radiocarbon dating method, the plants that were alive in 1947 returned a radiocarbon date suggesting they were about 7400 years old, an offset resulting from the use of ancient groundwater by the plant. The authors note that if the ages of the Ruppia seeds dated from the human footprints were also offset by roughly 7400 years, their real age would be between 15 and 13 thousand years old – a date which aligns with ages of several other known early North American archaeological sites.

The dating of the footprints can be resolved through other methods, including radiocarbon dating of terrestrial plants (which use atmospheric carbon and not carbon from groundwater) and optically stimulated luminescence dating of quartz found in the sediment, the authors write.

“These trackways really are a great resource for understanding the past, there’s no doubt about that,” says Rhode. “I’d love to see them myself. I’m just cautious about the ages that the researchers put to them.”

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White sands fossil footprints – clockwise from top left. Top left: USGS research geologists Kathleen Springer and Jeff Pigati collecting seeds embedded in an ancient human footprint for radiocarbon dating. Top right: Multiple human trackways from Track Horizon 1 (white arrows), Track Horizon 3 (red arrows), and Track Horizon 4 (black arrows). Bottom left, right: Closeup photographs of excavated human trackways from Track Horizon 4. United States Geological Survey, Public Domain

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Article Source: Desert Research Institute news release.

*A critical assessment of claims that human footprints in the Lake Otero basin, New Mexico date to the Last Glacial Maximum, is available from Quaternary Research: https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2022.38

About DRI

The Desert Research Institute (DRI) is a recognized world leader in basic and applied environmental research. Committed to scientific excellence and integrity, DRI faculty, students who work alongside them, and staff have developed scientific knowledge and innovative technologies in research projects around the globe. Since 1959, DRI’s research has advanced scientific knowledge on topics ranging from humans’ impact on the environment to the environment’s impact on humans. DRI’s impactful science and inspiring solutions support Nevada’s diverse economy, provide science-based educational opportunities, and inform policymakers, business leaders, and community members. With campuses in Las Vegas and Reno, DRI serves as the non-profit research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu.

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AlUla, Saudi Arabia: The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) has officially entered the world of the Metaverse for the very first time with a to-scale and completely immersive 3D model of Hegra’s Tomb of Lihyan, Son of Kuza, UNESCO World Heritage site.

Created in the vast and rapidly expanding digital landscape, Decentraland, the world-famous AlUla monument will be accessible to virtual tourists, who will be able to explore its unique features from anywhere in the world.

Marking AlUla’s very first-ever venture into the innovative digital realm, and the first UNESCO World Heritage site in the Metaverse, a trip to Hegra will be just as impressive, inspiring, and mesmerizing as in real life.

Visitors will be able to take a 360 tour of the Hegra’s most famous and imposing tomb, set amongst a realistic rendering of AlUla’s desert landscape and its wild surroundings. 

A focal point for the online exploration of AlUla, Decentraland ‘tourists’ will be able to immerse themselves in Hegra’s history by entering the tomb and activating information points to reveal its story in vivid, interactive detail.

Although inaccessible in the real world, virtual visitors will be able to step through the tomb’s imposing doorway, presented in realistic dimensions.

As RCU’s Metaverse presence evolves and grows, the digital Hegra will also play host to a calendar of virtual events and more that can be fully explored by visitors’ avatars.

An extension of the popular AlUla Moments season, the exciting activations will digitally introduce people to the wonders of AlUla through the fascinating, high-tech lens of the Metaverse, making the rich culture, heritage, and traditions of north-west Arabia more accessible to more people than ever before.

Information portals will direct visitors to different areas of AlUla’s heritage, expanding awareness of its 200,000 years of human history while radically reimagining its rich tradition of sharing knowledge for the 21^st Century and beyond as part of KSA’s Vision 2030 National Transformation Programme to empower technological transformation and innovation.

A decentralized, online repository of wisdom, landmarks, and experiences, the Metaverse is the ultimate destination for Hegra as part of RCU’s development of AlUla into the world’s largest living museum, in both the real and digital world.

Eng Amr AlMadani CEO of RCU, said: “RCU’s entry into the Metaverse is a groundbreaking development in innovation and virtual reality tourism that connects the whole world with the wonders of AlUla.

“As the custodians of a unique culture, fascinating heritage, and ancient traditions, the adoption of the latest technologies represents the next exciting step for RCU’s commitment to empower AlUla’s regeneration – moving from the physical to the digital realm and accessible to everyone, everywhere.

“A new frontier for innovation and collaboration, our debut, which also sees the first UNESCO World Heritage site enter the Metaverse, represents an exciting evolution of AlUla’s unique heritage, acting as an open invitation to travelers, academics, and digital explorers to log in and witness AlUla like never before.”

UNESCO designated Hegra as the KSA’s first World Heritage Site in 2008. Located 20km north of AlUla town, the site covers a total of 52 hectares and features 110 tombs amid countless rock formations, with the Tomb of Lihyan, Son of Kuza the largest at 22 metres tall.

Referred to as the ‘lonely castle’ in English because of its distance from other monuments, it is the largest preserved site of the ancient Nabataean civilization south of Petra in Jordan.

Global creative consultancy frog, part of Capgemini Group, was appointed to develop and facilitate Hegra’s Metaverse debut and support the Royal Commission for AlUla’s strategy to propel innovation and technological advances across the county.

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Madain Salih archaeological site, Hegra. Prof. Mortel, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Royal Commission for ALULa news release.

About the Royal Commission for AlUla

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

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UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE—The discovery in June 2020 of hominin footprints more than 106,000 years old next to El Asperillo (Matalascañas, Huelva) was a revolution for the scientific world, so much so that it was considered one of the most important discoveries of that year. But now, the publication of this new paper has confirmed what some experts suspected at the time: those footprints were much older and are in fact 200,000 years older than previously thought. While it was previously placed in the Upper Pleistocene, the evidence now points clearly to the Middle Pleistocene, and to its being 295,800 years old, making it a unique record in Europe, since there is no better site in the world in terms of number, age and area than that of the El Asperillo beach for hominin fossil footprints.

After collecting samples from the various levels, and another two later to compare the first results, the age of the fossil remains was established and points to the Middle Pleistocene, a crucial moment between different climatic stages, between a warm period, MIS 9 (360,000-300,000 years ago), in transition to MIS 8 (300,000-240,000 years ago), in which a major glaciation took place.

The age is thus specified at 295,800 years, with a margin of error of 17,800 years, according to the data collected from the four samples of sedimentary levels in the cliffs of El Asperillo where the site was found, initially 87 footprints, which now has a record of more than 300 footprints, of which 10% are considered well-preserved. With the exception of those from Matalascañas, it is noted that no other hominin footprints are known between the climatic stages MIS9 and MIS 8 of the Middle Pleistocene. That is why it is questioned whether they belong to Neanderthals.

But are they Neanderthals?

At first they were thought to be Neanderthals, but that is now in doubt. The main hypothesis among the scientists is that they are individuals of the Neanderthal lineage, among which Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis have been associated. The hypothesis that they are pre-neanderthal hominins is feasible. Precisely for this reason, the Matalascañas footprints are now more valuable due to their contribution to the fossil records of hominins in the Middle Pleistocene, which is very poor in Europe because of the scarcity of deposits with footprints. Until now, according to the Nature paper, footprints this period have only been found at Terra Amata and Roccamonfina (Italy), which were dated to between 380,000 and 345,000 years ago, with records of Homo heidelbergensis. They are the only ones older than that at Huelva in this era. After these, Biache-Vaast (France) and Theopetra (Greece) sites, from 236,000 to 130,000 years ago, are attributed to Homo neanderthalensis. In this context, the length range of all the footprints found at Matalascañas, from 14 to 29 centimetres, is similar to that found at European sites, such as Theopetra (14-15 centimetres), Roccamonfina (24-27 cm) and Terra Amata (24 cm).

In any case, the experts highlight the singularity of the Matalascañas discovery, whose new dating has questioned the existing paradigms and has required a deep analysis before accepting its conclusions. 

The new chronology now establishes a change in the scenario that then prevailed on the coast of the Gulf of Cádiz, with human settlements in a more temperate and humid climate than in the rest of Europe, with high water tables and abundant vegetation.

In that same period the sea level would have been about 60 metres below its current level. This implies that the coast would be more than 20 kilometres from where it is today, which is how there would have been a great coastal plain, with large flood-prone areas, in which the footprints discovered in mid-2020 would have been made.

The site’s new dating also affects the vertebrate animals found, since the hominin traces there also included footprints of large mammals such as straight-tusked elephants, gigantic bulls (aurochs) and boars. It was the fauna that inhabited Doñana 300,000 years ago and not 100,000 years ago, as other investigations stated.

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Playa del Asperillo. José Luis Filpo Cabana. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: University of Seville news release.

International team

The paper, New dating of the Matalascañas footprints provides new evidence of the Middle Pleistocene (MIS 9-8) hominin paleoecology in southern Europe, is the result of the work of an international team of scientists led by the Professor of Paleontology at the University of Huelva, Eduardo Mayoral,alongside the lecturer Antonio Rodríguezand Professor of Stratigraphy Juan Antonio Morales, all of the Department of Earth Sciences of the Faculty of Experimental Sciences, who are also members of the Centre for Scientific and Technological Research (CCTH) at UHU, as well as Jérémy Duvau, a researcher at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (France); Ana Santos, from the University of Oviedo; Ricardo Díez-Delgado, from the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station; Jorge Rivera, from the University of Seville; Asier Gómez-Olivencia, from the University of the Basque Country; and Ignacio Díaz, from the University of Río Negro (Argentina).

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM—The alphabet was invented around 1800 BCE and was used by the Canaanites and later by most other languages in the world.  Until recently, no meaningful Canaanite inscriptions had been discovered in the Land of Israel, save only two or three words here and there. Now an amazing discovery presents an entire sentence in Canaanite, dating to about 1700 BCE. It is engraved on a small ivory comb and includes a spell against lice.

The comb was unearthed at Tel Lachish in Israel by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) and Southern Adventist University in the United States, under the direction of Professors Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel and Martin Klingbeil.  The inscription was deciphered by semitic epigraphist Dr. Daniel Vainstub at Ben Gurion University (BGU). The ivory was tested by HU Prof. Rivka Rabinovich and BGU Prof. Yuval Goren and was found to originate from an elephant tusk.  Their findings were published in Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology*.

The letters of the inscription were engraved in a very shallow manner. It was excavated in 2017 but the letters were noticed only in subsequent post-processing in 2022 by Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu. It was cleaned and preserved by Miriam Lavi.

The ivory comb is small, measuring roughly 3.5 by 2.5 cm.  The comb has teeth on both sides. Although their bases are still visible, the comb teeth themselves were broken in antiquity. The central part of the comb is somewhat eroded, possibly by the pressure of fingers holding the comb during haircare or removal of lice from the head or beard. The side of the comb with six thick teeth was used to untangle knots in the hair, while the other side, with 14 fine teeth, was used to remove lice and their eggs, much like the current-day two-sided lice combs sold in stores.

There are 17 Canaanite letters on the comb. They are archaic in form—from the first stage of the invention of the alphabet script. They form seven words in Canaanite, reading: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”

“This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel. There are Canaanites in Ugarit in Syria, but they write in a different script, not the alphabet that is used till today. The Canaanite cities are mentioned in Egyptian documents, the Amarna letters that were written in Akkadian, and in the Hebrew Bible. The comb inscription is direct evidence for the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3700 years ago. This is a landmark in the history of the human ability to write,” shared Garfinkel.

Ancient combs were made from wood, bone, or ivory. Ivory was a very expensive material and likely an imported luxury object.  As there were no elephants in Canaan during that time period, the comb likely came from nearby Egypt—factors indicating that even people of high social status suffered from lice.

The research team analyzed the comb itself for the presence of lice under a microscope and photographs were taken of both sides. Remains of head lice, 0.5–0.6 mm in size, were found on the second tooth. The climatic conditions of Lachish, however, did not allow preservation of whole head lice but only those of the outer chitin membrane of the nymph stage head louse.

Despite its small size, the inscription on the comb from Lachish has very special features, some of which are unique and fill in gaps and lacunas in our knowledge of many aspects of the culture of Canaan in the Bronze Age.  For the first time, we have an entire verbal sentence written in the dialect spoken by the Canaanite inhabitants of Lachish, enabling us to compare this language in all its aspects with the other sources for it. Second, the inscription on the comb sheds light on some hitherto poorly attested aspects of the everyday life of the time, haircare and dealing with lice.

Third, this is the first discovery in the region of an inscription referring to the purpose of the object on which it was written, as opposed to dedicatory or ownership inscriptions on objects. Further, the engraver’s skill in successfully executing such tiny letters (1–3 mm wide) is a fact that from now on should be taken into account in any attempt to summarize and draw conclusions on literacy in Canaan in the Bronze Age.

Lachish was a major Canaanite city state in the second millennium BCE and the second most important city in the Biblical Kingdom of Judah. To date, 10 Canaanite inscriptions have been found in Lachish, more than at any other site in Israel. The city was the major center for the use and preservation of the alphabet during some 600 years, from 1800-1150 BCE. The site of Tel Lachish is under the protection of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

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The ivory comb (Credit: Dafna Gazit, Israel Antiquities Authority). 

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Aerial view of Tel Lachish (Credit: Emil Aladjem).

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Article Source: THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM news release. 

*A Canaanite’s Wish to Eradicate Lice on an Inscribed Ivory Comb from Lachish, 20-Oct-2022. 10.52486/01.00002.4 

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—A new analysis of Neolithic-era people from Çayönü Tepesi in the Upper Tigris portion of Mesopotamia adds genomic data that clarifies archaeological findings, defining how ancestral immigration helped the ancient settlement become a hub for cultural interaction. “The question has remained as to whether this cultural dynamism was driven by large-scale population circulation at the site, especially through connections with distant regions of the Fertile Crescent, or whether it purely reflected the local community’s ingenuity,” said N. Ezgi Altınışık, first author of the study. “Our 13 ancient genomes, the largest sample produced yet from this region, allowed us to finally address this.” From roughly 8600 to 6800 BCE, Çayönü was a community that produced countless innovations in agriculture, animal husbandry, architecture, and technology. But there had not been a genetic analysis of the site’s inhabitants until now. Here, Altınışık and colleagues share new findings on the Çayönü people’s ancestral history and familial ties. To do so, they extracted ancient DNA from 14 people, including 2 suspected to be identical twins, discovered in a burial site. This gave them 13 distinct genomes spanning 8500-7500 BCE. Analyses revealed the community’s ancestors included a blend of demographics from both the East and West Fertile Crescent, indicating waves of migrations. Yet, results showed these large waves had stopped by the time that the people studied were alive. The team also examined 76 pairs of people who were buried together and established degrees of relatedness. This provided genetic evidence for an existing hypothesis that family ties influenced co-burial practices in Çayönü. During this work, the authors noted intentional head-shaping and cauterization on a toddler’s cranium, which are some of the earliest examples of this treatment in the region. The toddler was likely a migrant, implying that Çayönü was a community open to outsiders. “Her maternal lineage is probably from the east, while her paternal lineage was likely local, and she was buried in the same house as an individual we estimate to be her paternal great-aunt,” Altınışık said. “Hence, we find people moving and integrating, and these small-scale movements could be among the factors shaping cultural dynamism in Çayönü.”

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Cranial features of the cay008 toddler. Altınışık et al., Sci. Adv. 8, eabo3609 (2022)

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

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI—The exceptional excavation of a Stone Age burial site was carried out in Majoonsuo, situated in the municipality of Outokumpu in Eastern Finland. The excavation produced microscopically small fragments of bird feathers, canine and small mammalian hairs, and plant fibres. The findings gained through soil analysis are unique, as organic matter is poorly preserved in Finland’s acidic soil. The study*, led by Archaeologist Tuija Kirkinen, was aimed at investigating how these highly degraded plant- and animal-based materials could be traced through soil analysis.

During the Stone Age in Finland, the deceased were interred mainly in pits in the ground. Little of the organic matter from human-made objects have been preserved in Stone Age graves in Finland, but it is known, on the basis of burial sites in the surrounding regions, that objects made of bones, teeth and horns as well as furs and feathers were placed in the graves.

Teeth and arrowheads found in the red ochre grave

The Trial Excavation Team of the Finnish Heritage Agency examined the site in 2018, as it was considered to be at risk of destruction. The burial place was located under a gravelly sand road in a forest, with the top of the grave partially exposed. The site was originally given away by the intense colour of its red ochre. Red ochre, or iron-rich clay soil, has been used not only in burials but also in rock art around the world.

In the archaeological dig at the burial site, only a few teeth were found of the deceased, on the basis of which they are known to have been a child between 3 and 10 years of age. In addition, two transverse arrowheads made of quartz and two other possible quartz objects were found in the grave. Based on the shape of the arrowheads and shore-level dating, the burial can be estimated to have taken place in the Mesolithic period of the Stone Age, roughly 6,000 years before the Common Era.

What made the excavation exceptional was the near-complete preservation of the soil originating in the grave. A total of 65 soil sample bags weighing between 0.6 and 3.4 kilograms were collected, also comparison samples were taken from outside the grave. The soil was analyzed in the archaeology laboratory of the University of Helsinki. Organic matter was separated from the samples using water. This way, the exposed fibres and hairs were identified with the help of transmitted-light and electron microscopy.

Oldest feather fragments found in Finland

From the soil samples, a total of 24 microscopic (0.2–1.4 mm) fragments of bird feathers were identified, most of which originated in down. Seven feather fragments were identified as coming from the down of a waterfowl (Anseriformes). These are the oldest feather fragments ever found in Finland. Although the origin of the down is impossible to state with certainty, it may come from clothing made of waterfowl skins, such as a parka or an anorak. It is also possible that the child was laid on a down bed.

In addition to the waterfowl down, one falcon (Falconidae) feather fragment was identified. It may have originally been part of the fletching of the arrows attached to the arrowheads, or, for example, from feathers used to decorate the garment.

Dog or wolf hairs?

Besides the feathers, 24 fragments of mammalian hair were identified, ranging from 0.5 to 9.5 mm in length. Most of the hairs were badly degraded, making identification no longer possible. The finest discoveries were the three hairs of a canine, possibly a predator, found at the bottom of the grave. The hairs may also originate, for example, in footwear made of wolf or dog skin. It is also possible a dog was laid at the child’s feet.

“Dogs buried with the deceased have been found in, for example, Skateholm, a famous burial site in southern Sweden dating back some 7,000 years,” says Professor Kristiina Mannermaa, University of Helsinki.

“The discovery in Majoonsuo is sensational, even though there is nothing but hairs left of the animal or animals – not even teeth. We don’t even know whether it’s a dog or a wolf,” she says, adding: “The method used, demonstrates that traces of fur and feathers can be found even in graves several thousands of years old, including in Finland.”

“This all gives us a very valuable insight about burial habits in the Stone Age, indicating how people had prepared the child for the journey after death”, says Kirkinen.

The soil is full of information

Also found were three fragments of plant fibres, which are preserved particularly poorly in the acidic Finnish soil. The fibres were what are known as bast fibres, meaning that they come from, for example, willows or nettles. At the time, the object they were part of may have been a net used for fishing, a cord used to attach clothes, or a bundle of strings. For the time being, only one other bast fibre discovery dating back to the Mesolithic Stone Age is known in Finland: the famed Antrea Net on display in the National Museum of Finland, laced with willow bast fibres.

A fibre separation technique was developed in the study*, and is already being applied in subsequent studies. The project has demonstrated the great information value of soil extracted from archaeological sites.

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An artist’s impression of the child buried in Majoonsuo during their life. Tom Bjorklund

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Location of Majoonsuo. Johanna Roiha

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The red-ochre burial site of the child in Majoonsuo. Kristiina Mannermaa

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI news release.

*Preservation of microscopic fur, feather, and bast fibers in the Mesolithic ochre grave of Majoonsuo, Eastern Finland, PLoS ONE, 27-Sep-2022. 10.1371/journal.pone.0274849 

The study is part of the ERC-funded project entitled Animals Make Identities (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/animals-make-identities) headed by Kristiina Mannermaa.

The study was published in the PlosONE series. In addition to Kirkinen and Mannermaa, contributing to the study were Olalla López-Costas and Antonio Martínez Cortizas from the EcoPast research group at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Sanna P. Sihvo, Hanna Ruhanen and Reijo Käkelä from the Helsinki University Lipidomics Unit (HiLIPID), Marja Ahola and Johanna Roiha from the discipline of archaeology at the University of Helsinki, Jan-Erik Nyman, Esa Mikkola and Janne Rantanen from the Archaeological Field Services unit of the Finnish Heritage Agency and Esa Hertell from the museums of the City of Lappeenranta.

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In the jungles of Central America, one can spot the otherwise inconspicuous Theobroma cacao, or cacao tree, by its small, somewhat bulbous, yellow-orange watermelon-shaped fruit hanging away from its body. Like most other plants that constitute the complex mix of the tropical mosaic, it assumes its own oblivion amidst the forest ecology.

But mention the name to local residents of these forest zones, and to scientists and scholars who explore and study the culture and history of this region, and you will learn that this tree plant is imbued with a special significance. Its prime produce, the cacao (or cocoa) bean, was historically, at least among the ancient Maya, used as a valuable currency of commerce, and cacao, the bean’s best known derivative, is today an important export for the production of chocolate. For decades, archaeologists and other scholars have also uncovered evidence of its use through detection of the biomarkers of its residue on highly decorative ceramic objects in ancient Maya elite ceremonial contexts, suggesting its use as an important ceremonial drink among the Maya elite. 

A recent study*, however, is showing that the drink was not the exclusive domain of the ancient Maya privileged classes. Recently, researchers examined 54 ceramic sherds sampled from a cross-section of archaeological contexts in the area of El Pilar, a major Maya center that straddles both sides of the border between Guatemala and Belize. The artifacts were found in both Late Classic (600 to 900 CE) residential and civic contexts, although much of the tested sample represented wares belonging to residential spaces of the general population surrounding and associated with the center. All artifacts were tested for the presence of theophylline, a distinct drug/chemical marker for cacao in this region. 

According to the study results, positive traces for cacao were detected for all forms of ceramic material, not only drinking vessels. The chemical traces were thus also found in mixing bowls, storage jars and serving plates, and the distribution of the evidence was spread across a variety of archaeological contexts, including both elite/public spaces and domestic residential sites. “We conclude that cacao biomarkers are common in many Late Classic contexts, and can be recognized in all basic domestic vessel forms, across every landform in the El Pilar area, in residential units of every status and, of course, in civic centers,” report the study authors in the paper, published September 26, 2022 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.* “……..We interpret the identification of cacao in vessels belonging to people of all walks of life as confirmation that cacao’s prestige was consumed by all in Maya society………Formal celebrations recognized in regal formats were cultural features that must have included everyone.”*  

About El Pilar

Divided along the imaginary line between western Belize and northeastern Guatemala, El Pilar is considered the largest site in the Belize River region, boasting over 25 known plazas and hundreds of other structures, covering an area of about 120 acres. Monumental construction at El Pilar began in the Middle Preclassic period, around 800 BCE, and at its height centuries later it supported more than 20,000 people. For decades, archaeologist Anabel Ford, the lead study author of the PNAS-published report, has been exploring and studying this ancient Maya site. She is the Director of the Mesoamerican Research Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Unlike most archaeologists, however, she has taken a unique, highly selective conservation approach to investigating the site. With the exception of a fully exposed Maya house structure, most of the structures at El Pilar have remained completely conserved by design, still covered in their tropical shroud. She calls this ‘archaeology under the canopy’, where the natural environment enveloping the ancient monuments is maintained to protect the fragile structures from the elements. “Living biofilms attack the limestone where exposed, which rapidly deteriorates the vulnerable limestone facades,” she says. “It is tree cover that reduces exposure to sunshine and rain and maintains an even temperature that will preserve the monuments.”

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The Maya house site Tzunu’un at the ancient Maya city center El Pilar. Congobongo1041, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

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More detailed information about the study can be obtained in the published report.

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*Ford, Anabel, et. al., New light on the use of Theobroma cacao by Late Classic Maya, September 26, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121821119.

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