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Deep Time Spaniards

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Echo from the Past: How Göbekli Tepe is Reshaping Our Understanding of the Neolithic

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The Lords of the Fifth Sun

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Georges Fery -

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

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

It was dark, for there was no Sun when the gods met. They said, “who will bring the Sun?” After the fall of the Fourth Sun, “all was darkness, there was no Sun” (Leyenda de los Soles, 1558). There have been five suns or ages, each unique and unrepeatable. The first was the Age of the Earth, followed by the Age of Great Winds, the Age of Fire, the Age of Floods, and the present age of Earthquakes. The first four conform with the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. To each age one of the five cardinal directions was assigned, locking the Otomi and later Aztec spiritual structure of space into that of time (Brundage, 1979:27). The first four suns were imperfect and ended in collapse, the fifth is the present one and there will be no more. In the Nahuatl language, the name of the Fifth Sun, and the beginning of the current era is called 13-Reed, equivalent to the year 1479 in the modern calendar. Taken together the cycles of the suns make up the complete history of time, of gods, of man, and the epic of creation. All of this is finely carved on the twenty-five-ton Sun Stone now in Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology and History. The Sun Stone is not a calendar but a calendrical reference to the cyclical concepts of time in relation to cosmic conflicts in Aztec ideology (Kelin, Cecelia F., 1972) .

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Nam Ollin, the Sun Stone @georgefery.com

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Let us focus here on the symbols carved at the center of the monolith, which depict Tonatiuh’s face, the Fifth Sun deity, whose tongue takes the form of the sacrificial knife, the tecpatl. On each side of the face are two clawed hands holding a human heart, synonymous with both life and the sun god’s rule over it. The four small circles above and below each of the clawed hands are Ollin symbols denoting the movement of the Fifth Sun (Nam Ollin). Each of the four squares that surround the center are glyphs of the previous four suns or eras. At the top right is “Four Jaguar” (Nahui Ōcēlotl), when the first era ended. The top left is “Four Wind” (Nahui Ehēcatl), when the hurricane winds destroyed the earth. Bottom left is “Four Rain” (Nahui Quiyahuitl), when earth was destroyed by continuous fires. At the bottom right is “Four Water” (Nahui Atl), an era that ended when the world was flooded. Furthermore, the glyph 4-ollin is symbolic of hule, a natural elastic substance from tropical plants that was used to make balls for games. It suggests that, without constant impulse by players, a ball will slow and eventually stop—like the fourth sun did. Of note to those unfamiliar with ancient cultures, there is no barrier between myths and reality. They are one and the same.

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The Sun Stone’s Core @georgefery.com

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Two cities loom large in Aztec mythology: Teotihuacán and Tula in central Mexico.The first overwhelmed the ancient Toltecs, upon whom they imposed their social and religious culture, while Tula cast its spell over the ogled-eyed Chichimecs. The legends relate that once at sunrise, in the Chihuahua desert of northern Mexico, seven Chichimec groups came out of Aztlan, their legendary seven caves at Chicomoztoc. This mythic world was the birthplace of the Aztecs, also called Mexicas, together with the Tepanecs, Acolhuas and four other nahuatl-speaking groups who migrated toward central Mexico in the eleventh-to-twelfth century. On their way south, while camping on a stream, arguments arose among group leaders as to the way to a better life. At the height of the argument, under a blue sky, a bolt of lightning struck a large tree under which they had gathered, splitting it in half. This event was understood as a command from the gods that prompted the dissidents to head out their separate ways.

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Chicomoztoc Seven Caves @arqueologiamexicana.mx

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They all spoke the nahuatl language. Scholars point out that it was the Toltecs who enriched the mythology and added to the Chichimec stock of gods the all important figures of the four Tezcatlipocas, each of which presided over one of the four cardinal directions and their attendant deities. The gods’ precondition for their benevolence, however, required sacrifices and the shedding of blood. But why? Self-inflicted or collective spilling of blood was common in Mixtec, Aztec, Maya, and other Mesoamerican religions. Miller and Taube underline that since gods gave their blood to create humans it was understood that human blood was the utmost gift to the gods, thus asserting a mutual dependence. Blood, therefore, spilled through self-inflicted wounds, shed on the sacred stone (techcatl), collectively in war or for religious events, was believed to feed the gods’ demands to renew the original bond with humans and their divine food. (1997:46).

There are many legends and myths about Huitzilopochtli’s birth, among which is the one that tells the story of his mother Coatlicue, (the Earth), who was impregnated by receiving a ball of humming-bird feathers on her chest, which she put in her apron while attending duties on Mount Coatepec or Serpent Hill, near Tula. Among her children were the four hundred Centzon Huitznahua related to countless stars in Aztec mythology. Their sister Coyolxauhqui (the Moon) furiously demanded that her mother reveal the father’s name. The mother refused, so, angered by her perceived deceit and with her brothers, Coyolxauhqui decided to kill her. The mother was frightened but Huitzilopotchli (the Sun in her womb) told her not to fear. When the brothers, the stars, and their sister the Moon launched their attack, the Sun burst forth from his mother’s womb fully grown wearing his magic battle gear. He fiercely counter-attacked, beheading his brothers and sister, whom he cut into pieces. He then cast the body parts down from Coatepec’s hilltop, drenching the Serpent Hill with blood. Coyolxauhqui is shown, hacked to pieces by her brother, on the carved round massive stone that bears her name found in 1790 at the bottom of the steps of the god’s great temple.

In this mythic worldview the Sun is perpetually battling the Moon and the stars underlining the Aztec’s unquenchable need for human blood to foster the Sun’s sustenance. Huitzilopochtli was said to be in a constant struggle with the darkness and required nourishment in the form of sacrifices to ensure the sun would survive the cycle of fifty-two-years, which was the basis of many Mesoamerican myths.

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Coyolxauhqui’s Stone @georgefery.com

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Urged by Huitzilopotchli, for over two hundred years, the Chichimecs battled their way from Chicomoztoc to the central plateau of Mexico by way of Tula. Famine and wars between 1070 and 1077 led to the social breakdown of the Toltec culture and their migrations from Tula to other parts of Mesoamerica in the twelfth century. Much of Tula’s history was lost when the Aztec Tlatoani Itzcoatl (1427-1440), burned the Toltec codices. Prompted by Huitzilopotchli on their long trek, the Aztecs overcame adversity and the tenacious hostility of many people, whose lands they crossed or dwelled for a time, and kept heading south over ancient trade routes. In spite of hardships and setbacks, time-and-again they were prodded by their god to move further south, with the promise of a great future. Their persistence paid off, for they ultimately settled on muddy islets on Lake Texcoco’s shores on the central plateau of Mexico, a place they would call their own.

The Crónica Mexicayotl (1610) tells us that the eagle on a prickly pear cactus (nopal) holding a tuna in its claws is allegorically the image of the sun feeding from the hearts of sacrificial victims, which proclaimed Aztec power through human sacrifice (Duverger, 2007, 554-555). There are many versions of the eagle holding a bird or a snake. In this last case, Huitzilopotchli told the Mexica searching for a home, to look for an eagle on a prickly pear cactus devouring a snake, a depiction now shown on the coat of arms of the Republic of Mexico.

As Huitzilopotchli promised, the grand priest Tenoch drew the footprint of the Aztec capital in 1325. Within a few years and hard work of landfilling the shallows of the muddy islets and lake shores with rocks and earth, they gained firm ground. Despite their neighbor’s repeated attempts at defeating them, such as those of Tacuba, Culhuacán and others on the lake shores, in little less than a century the city master plan, drawn by the high priest Tenoch, grew to cover six square miles and would become the most important in Mesoamerica. It housed over 150,000 inhabitants in four large districts (calpullis), which were socio-cultural units that shared the nahuatl language, beliefs, and customs. Five dikes were built to link other towns on the shores of the lake, along with a large aqueduct that channeled fresh water from a source on Chapultepec Hill. According to Franciscan friar Bernadino de Sahagún (1499-1590), seventy-eight large buildings were erected in the city’s ceremonial center. Among them was the Great Temple (Templo Mayor), a depiction of the sacred mountain of Aztec mythology with the twin temples of the gods Huitzilopotchli and Tlaloc at its top.

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Tenochtitlan, 15th Century @georgefery.com

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Of note is that in the cultures of the Americas there were gods for everything; they were everywhere, visible or invisible. The gods of nature – from mountains to lakes and oceans, the weather, and the animal world – were beyond numbers. Nighttime gods were attached to myriads of stars. In war, victors would adopt the gods of the vanquished, and vice versa, and it was common to temporarily loan or borrow a god from neighbors. Of course, gods never died. The Aztecs adopted many gods from past cultures, particularly those commanding the alternance of day and night, from which arose the legend of the Fifth Sun (Nahm Ollin), incorporating parts of Toltec creation myths while introducing new ideas to support the Fifth Sun allegory.

The legends of the Suns tell us that the Fifth Sun arose over Teotihuacán, the “City of the Gods” thirty miles from Tenochtitlan (Mexico City today). It recounts that Tecuciztecatl, the son of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, was called by the assembled gods to rekindle the Sun. The world was then in an unending darkness, so the gods cried, “Who will carry the burden of rekindling the Sun and bring dawn through sacrifice?” For lives were required by ancient gods as payment for having created humans. Tecuciztecatl volunteered to be the first sacrificial victim; the assembled gods then called the humble deity Nanahualitzli as second, and he agreed to their demand. On a large platform facing the monumental Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, the gods prepared an enormous sacrificial pyre that burned for over four days while the rituals and penances of the two volunteers took place. At midnight of the fourth day while the pyre burned fiercely, the gods called Tecuciztecatl to jump into the fire to burn and rise as the Sun; Nanahualitzli would then follow and rise as the Moon. Four times Tecuciztecatl ran to the pyre but was held back by the fierceness and heat of the flames. The gods then called Nanahualitzli who, without hesitation, calmly walked and jumped into the fire. Slowly as he burned, dawn lightened the sky. Tecuciztecatl, seeing the heroic death of Nanahualitzli, followed into the pyre, was consumed by the fire, and rose as the Moon. Re-energized, Tonatiuh the fiery Sun god, became the warrior sun harboring, from rise to zenith, the souls of those who died in battle and from zenith to sunset, the souls of women who died in their first childbirth.

This creation story reinforced the belief that the Fifth Sun demanded repeated shedding of human blood on the sacrificial stones of Tenochtitlan temples.

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Teotihuacán, Pyramid of the Sun @ Mario Roberto Duran in wikipedia.org CC BY-SA 4.0

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The Mexica or Aztec empire was governed by two prominent figures, the Tlatoani and the Cihuacoatl. The Tlatoani was an autocrat whose absolute civil and spiritual powers ruled the male domain and the sky deities, among which was Tezcatlipoca. Second to the Tlatoani, the Cihuacoatl, who was spiritually associated with the namesake goddess of childbirth, was the “esteemed advisor” to the Tlatoani and ruled Tenochtitlan.

The reference to Cihuacoatl in his title underlines the nature of duality shared between both leaders that pervaded Aztec worldview and spiritual life. It was Tlacaelel who reformed the Aztec religion and put Huitzilopochtli at the same level as Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, and Tezcatlipoca, making him a solar god. Huitzilopochtli then replaced Nanahualitzli, from the Nahua legend. In 1428 the Cihuacóatl was Tlacaelel, a well-born noble with a sharp mind. Together with Netzahualcoyotl (the Tlatoani of Texcoco) and Totoquihuatzin (lord of Tlacopan), he was the architect of the Triple Alliance (1428-1521), which began a round of conquest that, in less than a century, would encompass a vast territory with over four hundred cities and towns. The Triple Alliance greatly expanded Aztec political, economic, and military dominion over central Mexico, south to the isthmus of Tehuantepec and beyond to today’s Guatemala.

Many city-states (atlepetl) within the alliance were fiercely independent, with their own customs and languages. The two-fold Aztec objective was political domination and control of resources for economic growth and expansion of the state. An allied city-state supplied manpower and resources to Tenochtitlan while in return the central government gave local governments military protection and articles or products that would otherwise be unattainable. War also provided slave labor for state building projects and sacrifices for religious ceremonies, for temple priests wanted to be paid with sacrificial lives for their support. The Aztecs’ efficient military structure and power projection in the region grew rapidly, which allowed for daily supply of goods and services carried to the power center from allied and conquered cities.

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1487 Tenochtitlan Great Temple @discoverymagazine.com

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Every Aztec male twelve to fifteen years old received basic education and military training in their schools (telpochcalli). The army was a major opportunity for upward social mobility through success on the battlefield, particularly for commoners (macehualtin). For this reason, the expectations of nobles (pipiltin) and commoners alike, revolved around war, which became the driving force of their society and its policies. Shortly after taking office, a Tlatoani had to show his ability as a warrior. His first campaign would make it clear to subject polities that his rule would be as tough on any rebellious conduct as that of his predecessor. Should his first military campaign be a failure, it would be seen as a very bad omen for his rule and could lead to rebellions of city-states (atlepetl).

The troops were made up of common men who were not paid for their service which was regarded as tribute labor to the state. The local civil representative (tlatocayotl) from each district led the troops. Officers were trained in the university (calmecac) and came from the nobility. Their weapons were clubs lined with sharp obsidian stone blades (macahuitl), deadly dart throwers (atlatl), bows, clubs, and knives. Nobles had benefits attached to their social status, among which was their protection on the battlefield by battle hardened Eagle and Jaguar warriors. The political and economic contributions to the state were important. However, they were not always the primary goal for war. Besides its purpose for defense and maintaining socio-political and economic order, war was foremost the purveyor of victims for sacrifices to the god of war Huitzilopochtli and to the god of rain, Tlaloc and a swarm of other deities.

The Aztecs incorporated parts of other Mesoamerican myths while they introduced new ideas to support the Fifth Sun allegory. To understand from where these demanding gods came, we need to briefly visit the dawn of humanity. The anthropological record tells us that then men were tasked to hunt and protect the group. Women’s roles, beyond that of caring for children and older family members, were to attend to the sick and the maimed. Older men and women were then tasked to search for edible plants and select those that would help in curing illnesses and wounds. Through time, trial and error, mind-bending substances derived from plants were singled out for medicinal purposes. In the Americas, Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi), Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) and cannabinoids (Cannabis indica), among many, were used to alleviate pain, and later to attain visions that opened the mind to a singular world of uncommon human and animal-like shapes. The reflections from altered consciousness, however, were associated with reality for the figures of those singular beings carried the same familiar traits as those of the living, such as deceit, anger, duplicity, and desire. As Allegro notes “…for such a glimpse of heaven men died…while great religions were born, shone as a beacon to men struggling still in the unequal battle with nature, and then they too died, stifled by their own attempts to perpetuate, and codify the mystic visions” (1970).

Sacrifices to the beings of this “other world,” shamans said, were the requisites to make sense of a hidden and unpredictable nature. Foremost, however, human sacrifice was grounded in the belief of a debt that must be paid back to the gods for creating humans and everything on earth necessary for their daily sustenance (Graulich, 2003:17). Each aspect of life, in the Aztecs mind, revolved around this debt that must be paid to gods and deities with gifts from the fruits of the land and sacrifices of wild and later, domesticated animals. This commitment to paying the debt of life had many ritual and theological dimensions. Eventually, the welfare of the living required them to feed these insatiable man-made gods with human lives. In smaller towns with no monumental architecture, gods received sacrifices through their earthly depictions made of wood, paper, or stone called ixiptla. Upon sacrifice, a victim’s blood was collected in a ceramic or stone bowl in which soft paper was soaked and used to swipe the eyes, mouth, and face of a select deity’s likeness (ixiptla), while at the same time, pleading for its help or mercy.

To answer their gods’ demands, the Aztecs slayed people on a massive scale. At least seven types of human sacrifices took place, among which were heart extraction, shooting with arrows, gladiatorial combat, beheading and offering children to the gods. We will limit our inquiry to three of them. Ancient texts relate the birth of human sacrifice at Teotihuacán, a ritual borrowed by the Toltecs at Tula, and named the god Tezcatlipoca as its generator. In Tula’s last days (1150), Tezcatlipoca taught people to sacrifice those captured in war. The historical record show that the Aztecs acquired the cult of human sacrifice from the Toltecs, which would explain why it was adopted as a dogma, for the gods had originated it and the venerated Toltecs passed it on. As inheritors of such long held beliefs the Aztecs could not conceive of gods and their welfare without human sacrifice for only then could men be beholden to the supernatural order (Brundage, 1977:32). Most of the ceremonies involving such sacrifices were associated with the 365-day solar calendar and the 260-day sacred calendar. The solar celebrations were especially important, for they recreated various ritual aspects of the Mesoamerican cosmogony such as the rise of the Sun and its rekindling via human sacrifice. These agrarian celebrations took place monthly and were related to the eighteen month calendars such as, planting, harvesting, equinoxes, and solstices, among others. Natural events were understood to be governed by an unpredictable nature in the hands of gods, among which were Chicomecoatl, goddess of agriculture, and Xilomen deity of the main food staple, maize.

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Seven Souls @PierreFritel artworks in commons.wikimedia.org

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Foremost among sacrificial donations was the human heart (tona), seat of the teyolia that moderns call the soul. It was believed to be a fragment of the sun’s fire (istli), the invisible seed of life that never dies. The instrument of sacrifice, the nahui tecpatl, was a knife divinized as a god, the implement of the Fifth Sun, used for heart extraction. It was a short six-to-eight-inch-long flint or obsidian double-edge blade with, for important ceremonies, a mosaic crouched figure of a god on the handle. The carved image shows circular plugs in its ears and a bow ornament made of feathers associated with Tonatiuh the Sun god; the figure’s hands appear to hold the knife’s blade. After a sacrifice, the water from cleaning the blood-encrusted blade and handle, was believed to produce a magical drink mixed with peyote (Lophophora williamsi), a psychoactive drug that was believed to make one contemptuous of death. Such a mixture was given to Eagle and Jaguar warriors going off to battle, and to noble captives led to the techcatl, the sacrificial stone. Standing about three to four feet high, and two feet or so wide with a sloped top upon which a captive was firmly held on his back. It stood about a foot from the front edge of the upper terrace of a pyramid so that the lifeless body could easily be tipped off to tumble down to the pyramid threshold, the apetlatl. “Heart extraction was a common form of sacrifice and was one of the most dramatic and grisly skills ever created by the imagination of man. The subject is unpleasant but, without at least a cursory knowledge of this practice, one can never know the Aztecs” (Brundage, 1979:215).

The sacrificial victim was forcefully brought up the pyramid’s steps by strong temple guards. On the Great Temple upper terrace, facing Huitzilopoltchli, the victim was met by the high priest and the priest-executioner. He was then forcefully stretched and held spreadeagled on his back on the techcatl by temple attendants (calmecacs). For religious sacrifices six souls were tasked to help release the seventh through the pain of deliverance. They were the five temple attendants, who each held the victim’s arms, legs, and head, the executioner was the sixth, and the sacrificed, the seventh soul. This symbolic order answered to the four Tezcatlipocas, lords of the four cardinal directions, together with those of the zenith and the nadir, with the victim on the techcatl at their intersection. Prayers and singsong incantations to the gods were attended with a low drumbeat.

Upon completion of invocations, the priest-executioner holding the sacrificial knife (nahui tecpatl), cut a deep eight-to-ten-inch lateral gash below the ribs on the left side of the rib cage. The screams of fear and pain coming from the victim were believed to please the deity. The priest then forcibly put his hand in the gash and, seizing the beating heart, ripped it out of the chest. The blood from the severed aorta and arteries gushed forcefully over the priest and his attendants. The high priest then lifted the heart above his head and sung praises to the god to whom the sacrifice was dedicated, attended by now louder drumbeats and conch shell trumpets. The heart, offered to the Sun was then thrown in a carved stone bowl (cuauhxicalli), shaped on the belly of the reclining stone statue of a man leaning on its elbows (chac mool); “later the heart was cooked and eaten by the priests” (Brundage, 1979:217). Once the heart was removed, the body was shoved from the blood-drenched sacrificial stone down the pyramid steep stairway of the pyramid and allowed to tumble to the bottom. There, it was seized by temple guards. The head was cut and taken to join others on the large skull rack (huey tzompantli), a tall rectangular structure erected on the plaza facing the Great Temple. The body was then cut to pieces and select parts were shared in a ritual cannibalistic feast by the captor (tlamanih), his family, and friends; a femur was given to the captor who hung it in his house as proof of his valor.

The skull rack facing the Great Temple was 115 long by 40 feet wide. On its top was erected a forty-plus foot high scaffold of wood poles connected by a series of smaller horizontal section of wooden crossbeams. The skulls had the skin and hair removed, except for those of nobles and army officers. They were then displayed on the tzompantli by punching holes through skull temples where the crossbeam pole was inserted. Display of skulls of war captives and other victims was meant to impress citizens and visitors alike. When the tzompantli ran out of room, old skulls were simply discarded. Why display only skulls and no other body parts? In ancient cultures the head, skull and brain were one and the same. It was perceived as the seat of physiological and emotional vitality, the locus of identity and social status.

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Chac Mool, Tlaloc Temple @georgefery.com

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The head was then believed to be the portal to the sacred and to life cycles. The central plateau of Mexico ancient records drawn by local people, point to thousands of sacrifices taking place each year in mid to large urban areas. In Cholula with its unusual number of temples, hundreds were sacrificed annually (Torquemada.II,120 – Acosta, 1962,). The great skull rack structure (tzompantli) in Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple precinct, was flanked by two tall towers in which were embedded hundreds of skulls. Between the towers the enormous lattice work of wood beams held thousands of skulls.

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Skull Rack, “Tzompantli” @arqueologiamexicana.mx

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Taking war captives (yaoyotl) was very important to Aztec warriors. For common soldiers, social aspirations were tied to attaining emblematic status of “butterfly” (papalotl) by capturing four enemies for sacrifice, which would result in a promotion to officer rank. All the actors on a battle ground were aware that their foremost aim was to capture rather than kill the opponent. Enemies seriously wounded were dispatched on the spot, while others were taken behind the front line, by dedicated teams. Their hands were tied behind their backs and a wood collar (cuauhcozcatl), was fastened around their neck, and linked to a long rope tied on which other captives (maltin) were also tied. At the end of the battle, every enemy captured was brutally driven to the city limits where he was recorded and credited to his captor. Once inside the city, however, the captives were treated kindly and with deference, because, from this moment on, they were no longer captives or slaves but recognized as full-fledged Aztecs citizens, not foreigners. All their needs were met, and they were offered sumptuous garments, fine food, drink, and women, since as citizens, they were now the god’s properties preordained for sacrifice. For months they paraded in the streets, attended popular events, sang, danced, and were housed in nobles’ quarters. Civil servants, merchants (pochteca) and other notable people bought slaves they donated to their temple for sacrifice to their select deities. The Aztecs could not conceive of gods and their welfare without sacrificing their own, not foreigners, for these gods were their gods, not the gods of others. As noted by Garcia Icazbalceta, “no slaves were taken in the wars of these natives, for they kept them all for sacrifice, and such formed the majority of those sacrificed in the land. Few except those taken in war were sacrificed, for which reason wars were continual” (1824-1894).

Sacrifices increased with time, and Flower Wars (xochiyaoyotl) were dedicated to capture victims in time of peace. These so-called wars did not aim to gain political, military, or economic benefits, but to secure offerings for the gods. The parties fought under a set of agreed upon rules, among which was the presence of an equal number of well-trained fighters on each side. According to Ixtlilxochitl (1500-1550), a lord from Texcoco, the rationale for the Flower Wars arose in response to another enduring crop failure and consecutive famine due to a severe drought (1450-1454). According to Ixtlilxochitl, the high priests of the Triple Alliance, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tacuba said that the flayed one Xipe Totec, the god of nature, was angry, and to placate his ire it was necessary for the affected communities to supply victims. Those, such as in Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, Tlaxcala, Cholula and Huijotzingo, among other cities, were mandated to obtain human sacrifices to appease the gods with lives and especially for the war god Huitzilopotchli, patron of the state. In his old age, Tlacaelel referred to the Flower Wars as a military “fair” or “market,” arguing just as merchants went to distant places to purchase luxuries, the god accompanied the army to the Flower War to purchase the food and drink he coveted. Sacrificed knights were understood to be the god’s food and blood, or the currency with which to purchase food for the deity (Assig, 1988).

The important site of the rain god Tlaloc, beside its sanctuary atop the Great Temple next to Huitzilopotchli’s at Tenochtitlan, was on the Tlaloc Peak (Tlalocatépetl) a 3,500-feet-high mountain on the eastern rim of the Valley of Mexico situated at the end of a forty-four miles road connecting the two places of worship. The Tlaloc Peak is located directly east of the Great Temple, in-line with classic Aztec architecture with sunrise, for the Mexica designed everything to cosmological directions. To appease the gods and deities of the water world and rain destructive forces, babies, and children up to eight years old were sacrificed there during dry periods until rains started. Young children were joyfully carried on open litter to the sanctuary atop the peak. At dawn for the Huey tozoztli celebrations, little boys and girls were decapitated to honor the gods Cinteotl, Chicomecoatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Tlaloc. Sacrifices also included starvation of the little ones when they were left in a small, sealed cave in which they slowly died. (Berrelleza, Torre Blanco – arqueomex. 1998:31). In 1980, in Mexico City’s Great Temple, at the northeast corner of Tlaloc’s temple, “Offering.#8” was uncovered where were found the decapitated remains of thirty-eight children of both genders aged two to seven years, sacrificed at the time of the 1450-1454 famine. Together with the remains were found turquoise disks, a Tlaloc effigy, jade necklaces, and other semi-precious jewels (Duverger, 2007:618). At the time, the depth of beliefs was so deep-seated in people’s mind and heart that it overcame elemental compassion for one’s own. In Mesoamerican cultures, in time of collective crisis, such as persistent droughts and repeated food shortage, a community would sacrifice its best and most cherished, not the sickly or the maimed. Sacrificial victims had to be able, in their prime, and the younger the better, for the gods would not accept anything less.

In other Mesoamerican cultures there were also numerous secular and religious holy days that required human sacrifices believed to pacify the deities of the cosmic order. But they never reached the extent found with the Aztecs. The constant emotional turmoil of endless wars drove common folks to suicide as found in codices, that show people strangling themselves. Were the people moved by deep religious convictions which required them to create public and private elaborate forms of individual spiritual cleansing and penance? A cursory reading of ancient texts in the nahuatl language, as Brundage points out, reveals the terrible anguish and fear of individuals because of offenses against religious or moral laws (1979:186). For this reason, perhaps, collective cleansing events took place at dedicated times.

Prominent in the Aztec spiritual universe was the end of the fifty-two-year calendar round associated with the 260-day sacred calendar (Tonalpohualli), and the 365-day agricultural calendar (Xiupohualli). The two-time cycles together created the 52-year Aztec “century” associated with the putting out and rekindling of fires throughout the empire. At that time, fires on temples and homes were extinguished. Ritual cleansing together with self-bloodletting by parents and children took place in each household. Ceramic bowls and plates, stone jars and cooking utensils were broken, for they were believed to carry the essence of the old cycle. Huehueteotl (aka Xiuhtecuhtlil) the lord of fire, was celebrated throughout the year but especially at the end of the fifty-two year cycles. For Huitzilopochtli was said to be in a constant struggle with darkness and required nourishment in the form of sacrifices to ensure the sun would survive the cycle of fifty-two years, which was the basis of many Mesoamerican myths. At that time, it was believed that the new fire ceremony would forestall the end of the Fifth Sun for it represented the shift from one time cycle to the following. Then, priests marched in solemn procession up the extinct Huixachtlan volcano to wait for Orion’s belt, called “the fire drill”, to rise over the mountain; then a man was sacrificed. The victim’s heart was ripped from his body and a ceremonial hearth was lit in the cavity of the chest using the hand drill method to generate the sacred flame. A large wood pyre was then lit from that flame and torches were carried on pine sticks by runners to light the fires on temples in Tenochtitlan and beyond. The fires were also lit in homes and all family members drew blood anew from their nose or ears, and threw the blood-stained rags into the new fire, the smoke carrying their pleas and hopes to the gods. At dawn, the entire populace of a city or town would go to nearby bodies of water to wash and cleanse themselves of past anguish and despair.

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Huehueteotl, God of Fire @georgefery.com

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It was during the reign of the eighth Tlatoani, Ahuitzol (1486-1502), that sacrifices knew no bounds. Ahuitzol inherited the throne after the short and weak rule of Tizok (1481-1486), who left serious problems unsettled with allies and foes alike, that required swift and forceful resolutions. Reasserting Aztec power was a major concern of the nobles for they depended on the income from Tenochtitlan’s tributaries, and it must have been a matter of significant concern for Ahuitzol as well. Tenochtitlan could ill afford another weak leader, and the fate of any such leader would probably be swifter than Tizoc’s but equally final (Assig, 1988:204). Upon his crowning, Ahuitzol marched first into the Huastec region, which had rebelled against Tenochtitlan but quickly came to its senses to avoid extermination. Then the army marched and conquered Cuextecs, Xolotan, Xiuhcoac, Tochpan, Tetzapotitlan, Nauhtlan and other city states (atlepetl), whose defenders were no match for the Aztec army. Many captives were slain on the field of battle, while thousands were captured and carried away to be sacrificed for the dedication of the sixth remodeling of the Great Temple in 1487. Ahuitzol’s coronation ceremony was treated with disdain by enemy states after Tizok’s tenure. The Tlatoani brutal military campaign, however, led rulers of allied and enemy cities alike to hurriedly flock to the temple dedication ceremony. To eradicate Tizoc weakness with friends and foes alike, Ahuitzol put on a frightening display of military power unprecedented in size with hundreds of captives reported sacrificed each day for weeks. The main beneficiary of the sacrifices was the god of war Huitzilopochtli, while other deities were provided with sacrificial victims on other temples.

The killing of so many did not allow time for a swift cut by the priests to retrieve the heart. Gone was society’s amity toward the prisoners that had prevailed when they were received at the city’s gates. The cries of pain and screams of terror arising from many temples kept residents shaken long after the killings stopped at nightfall. By midday, the temple guards had a hard time bringing the screaming and fighting victims up the temple’s steep slippery stairs, drenched as they were with blood. Because of the large number of victims, these were lined up in the streets leading to the temples to wait for execution, their hands tied behind their back and linked together by a rope passing through their nose septum (Assig, 1988:205). With the Aztecs’ reputation greatly restored through fear, Ahuitzol eased his control over internal matters.

Many cities received their newly appointed rulers in 1486, but others were not permitted home rule until 1488, while still others were deferred until 1493. On August 13, 1521, with the Aztec defeat at the hands of men from another world, the Sun set on the last Tlatoani, Moctezuma.II Xocoyotzin (1502-1520) and the ancient gods. Then another sun rose for the Mexica people.

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2024, Mexico City Great Temple @georgefery.com

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Cover Image, Top Left: Aztec Calendar Detail. Pixabay, PublicDomainImages

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References – Further Reading:

Arqueología Mexicana:

Los Tlatoanis Mexicas – EE.40

Aztecas, Cultura y Vida Cotidiana – EE.75

Los Ejes de Vida y Muerte en el Templo Mayor y en el

Los Dioses de Mesoamérica – Vol.IV-20

Investigaciones Recientes en el Templo Mayor – Vol.VI-31

Plantas Medicinales Prehispanicas – Vol.VII-39

La Muerte en el Mexico Prehispanico – Vol.VII-40

El Sacrificio Humano – Vol.XI-63

La Guerra en Mesoamérica – Vol.XIV-84

Coyolxauhqui, Diosa de la Luna – Vol.XVII-102

Los Tzompantlis en Mesoamérica – Vol.XXV-148

Alfonso Caso, 1953 – El Pueblo del Sol

Padre Andrés de Olmos, 1530 – Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas

Nigel Davies, 1987 – The Aztec Empire

Ross Hassig, 1988 – Aztec Warfare, Imperial Expansion and Political Control

Rebekah C. Bellum, 2015 – Narrative of Violence and Tales of Power

J. Broda, D. Carrasco, E. Matos Moctezuma, 1987 – The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan

Christian Duverger, 2007 – El Primer Mestizaje

John M. Allegro, 1970 – The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross

Anthony Aveni et al., 2023 – Aztec Myths and Legends

Nigel Davies, 1977 – The Toltecs, Until the Fall of Tula

Fray Diego Duran, 1569-1582 – Historia de las Indias de Nueva-Espana e Islas de Tierra Firme.

K. Berrin, E. Pasztory, 1993 – Teotihuacan

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EXPLORE THE ANCIENT ETRUSCANS IN PERSON!
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The Gates of Rome

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Frank Korn -

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

“All our efforts will be for naught unless we Punic soldiers burst through the gates of Rome and I, Hannibal, plant my standard in the heart of the City.”

…..Juvenal (Satire 10)

“The Gates of Rome!” In that poetic phrase there is more history and drama and lore than is to be found in a library of novels and social studies textbooks. And – wondrous to say – the gates still stand, in defiance of the ravages of time and the elements.

They constitute yet one more facet that renders Rome the gem of all the great cities on earth. For Rome alone requires entrance through one of the openings in its ancient walls. One does not hear of “The Gates of Paris,” or “The Gates of Madrid,” or of London, or Tokyo, or Vienna, or Boston.

Baked by the sun of more than 600,000 days, Rome’s gates are especially suggestive in the light of the moon. It is at this hour, when the nightingales are in song, that there come trooping out of the darkness, hosts of memories, ghosts of Imperial Rome: conquering, plume-helmeted legions bearing their spoils of war; foreign merchants vending exotic wares; the apostle Peter – foot weary from having walked up the Appian Road all the way from the Naples area; the barbaric hordes of the Middle Ages, Napoleon and his vaunted armies, General Kappler at the head of his goose stepping Nazis, General Mark Clark at the front of a convoy of his liberating Fifth Army following their bloody victory at nearby Anzio. All passed through … “The Gates of Rome.”

Through these vast portals have walked – or ridden – the likes of Dante, Goethe, Keats, Shelly, Byron, Hawthorne, and Twain; of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giotto, Raffaele, Monet, Manet, and Picasso; of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, of Mastroianni and Loren; of Taylor and Burton. Browning used to say: “Sooner or later, everyone comes ‘round to Rome.” And anyone who “comes ‘round to Rome” must, perforce, use its gates, which to the ancient Romans were often rendezvous points: “Let’s meet at the Appian Gate.”

“Nos ad Portam Appiam occurramus”

But before going on about the gates, we must pause here to talk about the lofty, thick walls which they pierced.

The walls of Rome rank high among archaeologists’ favorite antiquities there, transporting the viewer back through time and space to the late empire and beyond. With a little imagination, one can see the defenders of the city hurling fire and missiles down from the heights and through the slots; envision the storming of the gates, and the battering rams; observe the barbaric hordes spilling through and scaling over the fortifications to lay waste to the aged capital.

When he founded Rome in 753 B.C., Romulus’ first public work was to enclose his domain with protective walls built at right angles to form a perfect square around the primitive village on the Palatine Hill and create what was known as Roma Quadrata i.e. “Square Rome.” The Eternal City has ever since been walled in – next by the Servian Walls; finally by the Aurelian Walls.

Romulus’ Quadrata was consecrated to the gods in solicitation of their divine blessing and protection. (Walled-in villages were already commonplace throughout Italy, the Etruscans having imported the practice a century earlier.) One night, Remus, drunk with resentment over his brother’s selection as monarch, defiled the consecrated walls, thereby committing sacrilege and meeting death at the hands of his twin.

The historian Tacitus has this to say: “The walls were erected according to Etruscan rites, marked out by a furrow created with a plough, drawn by a cow and a bull, leaving places necessary for three gates.” From the writer Varro we even learn the names of two of these portals. On the east was the Porta Mugonia, so named for the “mooing” of the cattle which were led out to pasture through it. On the west was the Porta Romulana, named for the founder-king.

From Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VIII, we come upon the name of the third gate:

Vix ea dicta, dehinc, progressus monstrat et aram et Carmentalem Romani nomine portam quam memorant, nymphae priscum Carmentis honorem.

“Then (Evander) having spoken, resumed walking (with Aeneas). They came upon an altar and the Carmenta Gate named in honor of the nymph who prophesied the great fortune of the Romans.”

Remains of Romulus’ immured hamlet, though scanty, are well worthy of a visit to the Palatine, For here truly is the cradle of Western Civilization. Along the vast foundation of Tiberius’ Palace can be seen fragments of those primitive walls’ tufa boulders.

In the reign of the sixth king Servius Tullius (578-535 B.C.), who governed well, the Servian Walls rose in protection of what had become by now the Urbs Septimontium (city of the Seven Hills: The Palatine, Aventine, Capitoline, Esquiline, Quirinal, Viminal, and Caelian.)

Built of immense blocks of volcanic tufa, these fortifications were improved and enlarged on orders of the Senate in the fourth century B.C. They were 35 feet in height, 12 feet thick, and nearly 7 miles long, enclosing an area of more than six hundred acres, and made more formidable by a deep ditch on the outside, and a dirt rampart on the city side.

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Remains of the Servian Wall in front of Termini Station, Rome, Italy. Roundtheworld at wts wikivoyage, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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The Servian Wall encircled the seven hills of Rome. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Renata3, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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There were fourteen gates, two of which survive fragmentarily: the Porta Esquilina, and the Porta Capena which opened on to the Appian Way. Stretches of the wall still stand guard in various sections of Rome. One sizable portion remains extending out of the twentieth century railroad terminal, near the Baths of Diocletian. On Viale Aventino we pass through two more great portions where a bronze plaque gives an informative account of the walls’ story. The historians Livy, Strabo, and Dionysisus all mention the Servian Walls.

Many times restored and strengthened, the Servian Walls were abandoned in the Imperial age and therefore many stretches were demolished or utilized for other public works and ultimately replaced by the still wonderfully preserved red-brick Aurelian Walls, which lend such sublime distinction to the city we visit in our time.

With the Pax Romana by then but a memory, the Emperor Aurelian, from A.D. 271 to 275 employed tens of thousands of military troops in the task of walling-in the Imperial Capital in the vain hope of walling-out Rome’s growing list of powerful enemy nations and barbarian tribes.

Anything of consequential size that stood in their path was incorporated right into the ramparts, such as the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius. This monument dates from the first century B.C. and the inscription tells us it was erected in less than a year as a sepulcher for the ashes of Cestius, a high public official who on a junket to Egypt had been so duly impressed with the tombs of the pharaohs. For the statistics devotee we offer the following numbers: The walls ambled around the hills for thirteen or so miles, enclosing approximately 3,500 acres. Soaring to a height of slightly over fifty feet, they had 383 towers, 7,020 battlements, 2,000 windows, more than 5,000 loopholes, and more than a hundred rooms serving as guards’ quarters and latrines.

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The Aurelian walls between Porta San Sebastiano and Porta Ardeatina (Viale Ardeatina). Lalupa, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Map showing the Aurelian Wall (in red). Joris at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons

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From several elevated vantage points about a mile or so out on the old Appian Way – especially from the summit of the driveway leading to the Catacomb of San Callisto – the walls and one of the massive gates come into view, bringing to the romantic mind “the many-towered Camelot.”

There were eighteen main gates and several smaller openings. Fourteen of the major portals pierce the ramparts at the points where the great consular highways depart from the city. Each such gate was usually called for the road which it launched, e.g. the Porta Appia for the Via Appia, the Porta Ostiense for the Via Ostiense, and so on. The Porta Nomentana, the Porta Latina, the Porta Praenestina, the Porta Tiburtina and numerous others were thus given their names.

At one point the wall is referred to as the Muro Torto (Twisted Wall) near the Piazzale Flaminio. Peculiarly irregular and looking about to fall, it nevertheless slouches on with no help from restoration efforts. An old legend has it that St. Peter himself is pledged to watch over and save this particular stretch.

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And where there are walls there are bound to be gates. What follows is an anecdotal litany of some of the best known Aurelian portals:

Porta Flaminia, so called because it opened onto the consular road by the same name, i.e. the Via Flaminia, which is one of the most ancient routes of the famous Roman highway system. Dating to 220 B.C. and over 200 miles long, Via Flaminia went from the capital up and over the daunting Apennines to Ariminium (Rimini) high up on the Adriatic (near Venice). In 452 the intrepid Pope Leo I went out from this exit to intercept and turn back – by the sheer power of his words – the dreaded Attila and his rampaging Huns. Today the gate goes by the name of Porta del Popolo. It was reworked by Bernini, on commission of Pope Alexander VII, into a baroque masterpiece for the arrival of Queen Christina of Sweden in 1655. The inscription bids her majesty a happy entrance to the Eternal City.

After Constantine granted them the freedom to practice their faith, the Christians bestowed saints’ names on several of the openings.

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Porta del Popolo in Rome, Italy. Krzysztof Golik , CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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From the Aurelian Gate (now Porta San Pancrazio), one can still head northwest along the Via Aurelia. Built in the twilight of the Roman Republic, the road follows the Tyrrhenian coast through the port cities of Civitavecchia and Pisa, thence along the Ligurian coast all the way into Provincia Romana (Provence) in Gaul (France).

At the opposite end of Rome is the Porta San Sebastiano (nee Porta Appia) from which the Regina Viarum – the Appian Way – commences its journey south to Capua. Opened in 312 B.C. the road was named for the censor who proposed it, Appius Claudius. The well paved highway met with such popularity that it was later extended southeast to the port of Brundisium (Brindisi) in the heel of the Italian boot. This twin-turreted gate is the best preserved and most suggestive in the Aurelian circuit.

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Porta San Sebastiano. Ardeatino, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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After the Saint Sebastian gate, perhaps the next finest entrance is the Gate of Saint Paul (originally Porta Ostiense because from here departs the old heavily trafficked road to Ostia). This gate also features twin lofty round towers and is totally intact as well. Abutting it and rising 120 feet into the air is the Pyramid of Cestius. While Paul did not see the gate named for him, since the Aurelian Walls were still two centuries into the future, the apostle undoubtedly cast his eyes on Cestius’ elaborate final resting place as he was being led out of the city to his martyrdom along the Via Ostiense one dark day in A.D. 67.

This is the gate that devout pilgrims have been taking, across the ages, to visit the venerable Basilica San Paolo Fuori le Mura (St. Paul’s Outside the Walls) about two miles down the road. Members of the Commission of Sacred Archeology, under the auspices of the Vatican, maintain that Paul’s remains lie in the crypt below the main altar. It was here at the Porta San Paolo, on 10 September 1943, that the Italian army troops aided by great numbers of civilians, partisans of the Resistenza, waged a fierce battle to block the Germans from entering the city, but in vain. Hitler’s forces prevailed and penetrated the walls, occupying and terrifying Rome until the Allied liberation on June 2, 1944.

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Porta San Paolo. Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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The Aurelian Walls added a rather simple opening as recently as 1574, the Gate of St. John, just a stone’s throw from the Basilica di San Giovanni, opening onto the Via Appia Nuova (the New Appian Way) which leads to the summer retreat of the popes in the tranquil town of Castel Gandolfo. The gate is rather plain. The inscription over the arch gives a brief biography of the gate:

GREGORIUS XIII PONT MAX

PUBLICAE VTILITATI ET

URBIS ORNAMENTO VIAM

CAPANAM CONSTRAVIT PORTAM

EXSTRUXIT MDLXXIIII PONT.III

“Gregory XIII Pontiff built this gate for the convenience of the public and as an ornament for the city, as well as the Country Road in 1574, the third year of his pontificate.”

The two side arches were opened in the early 1900’s to facilitate the flow of ever increasing traffic to and from the Castelli Romani (the dozen or so ancient hilltowns so popular with the Romans for weekend excursions).

Then there’s yet another gate favored by the pilgrims, the Porta San Lorenzo that takes them to the fourth century Basilica of Saint Laurence Outside the Walls, along the consular highway to Tibur (today’s Tivoli), the Via Tiburtina, the same name by which the gate was originally known. The great church was severely damaged accidentally by a stray Allied bomb on July 19,1943 when the Italian Army was still on the side of the Germans. The bomb was intended for the central rail yards nearby to cripple the enemy supply lines.

After the war, funds poured in from all over the world, especially from the U.S., to help with the massive restoration efforts. The magnet here for pilgrimages is the grave of the Deacon Laurence, martyred in the savage persecution under Emperor Valerian (253-259).

In A.D. 52 the Emperor Claudius had erected a majestic monumental arch to allow the aqueduct bearing his name to span two busy thoroughfares: Via Prenestina and Via Labicana. The arch was still standing in A.D. 271 but in the path that Emperor Aurelian had planned for his walls. So, as he did with the Pyramid of Cestius, he incorporated it into the fabric of his fortifications. The arch now served as an attractive gate which was given the name Porta Esquilina. In the late fourth century, the Romans took to calling it Porta Maggiore because of its proximity to the then recently built basilica named Santa Maria Maggiore, perched on the summit of the Esquiline.

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Porta Maggiore. Livioandronico2013, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Perhaps it’s worth noting at this point that the old Roman highways were customarily named for the officials who sponsored them, e.g. Via Appia for Appius Claudius; or for the towns that they led to. For example, the Via Ardeatina led to, and still leads to, the town of Ardea; the Via Nomentana to Nomentum; the Via Praenestina to Praeneste (now Palestrina) and, of course, the Via Ostiense to Ostia.

At the foot of the Caelian Hill we come upon the Porta Latina, a single arched gate accessing the Via Latina which runs through the various cities of old Latium (in our time, the region of Lazio). Just inside the portal are two noteworthy ecclesiastical structures: the small octagonal chapel of San Giovanni in Oleo, marking the spot where Domitian (81-96) had John the Evangelist boiled in oil. The second is the charming fourth century Romanesque church with the lilting name of San Giovanni alla Porta Latina, St. John at the Latin Gate.

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Porta Latina in Rome, Italy. Gustavo La Pizza, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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The Porta Salaria, marked the starting point of Via Salaria, the old “salt road”, heading east 150 miles, all the way to the Adriatic coast where there were myriad salt-producing sites, causing heavy traffic to and from. This gateway had quite a checkered existence. On August 24 in the year 410, Alaric and his marauding Visigoths stormed through Porta Salaria on their way to plunder Rome. Left in rubble, it was later completely restored and strengthened. Many historians believe that this incursion signaled the beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire.

On September 20 in 1870, the gate suffered heavy bombardment by troops of Il Risorgimento, the Italian Revolution which brought an end to the Papal States. The gifted architect Virgiliio Vespignani was called upon to design a new entrance. This replacement survived barely a half-century when it was purposely torn down to allow a smoother flow of modern traffic out of and into the city.

Another one of the original gates, the Porta Ardeatina, from which the Ardeatine Road diverged, was walled up and a new, up-to-date replacement installed a few hundred meters further along the wall, but given the name of the original. The new Ardeatine Gate features four high and wide and graceful archways, providing easy access to the twentieth century speedway, Via Cristoforo Colombo that connects old Rome to the Mussolini era suburb of EUR.

The Aurelian Walls eventually were extended on the opposite bank of the river to defend the Trans Tiberim district (Trastevere). There was a gate just a few hundred yards beyond called the Porta Portuensis which opened onto the road by the same name, for it led to Trajan’s port at Fiumicino. The gate later underwent a name change in Italian to Porta Portese and is these days known for the large and lively Sunday flea market just outside of it.

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Porta Portese. Gustavo La Pizza, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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For avid wall and gate watchers there is also the Muro Gianicolense (the Janiculum Wall) of Pope Urban VIII, dating from 1642, up on the hill named for Janus, god of beginnings and endings. This was the site of Garibaldi’s fierce confrontation in 1849 with Marshal Quindinot’s French forces who were helping Pope Pius IX to hold on to Rome, but they were unsuccessful.

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Lastly, let us tell of a most remarkable situation in Rome. Within this walled-in city lies a walled-in country … the Vatican. (Though merely 108 acres in size, Il Vaticano surely qualifies as a country – with its own borders, its own army, the Swiss Guards, its own population – about 1,000 – its own flag and anthem, its own postal system, its diplomatic relations with more than a hundred other nations including the United States, and its own head of state, the Pope, who is sufficiently regarded as such as to be from time to time invited to address the U.N. General Assembly.) In the ninth century this lilliputian city-state was girded with a mighty, clay-colored wall by order of Pope Leo IV, hence its name the Muro Leonina. There were originally five entrances but only two survived into the twentieth century: the Porta della Campana and the Porta Sant Anna, through which cardinals, bishops, and priests daily come and go, along with the permanent residents. In February of the Jubilee Year A.D. 2000, Pope John Paul II dedicated a new gate on the Viale Vaticano to accommodate the ever increasing multitudes of visitors to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. In November of 2023 another gate was installed to afford more convenient access to the famous archeological site of the ancient Necropolis along the Via Triumphalis.

Ah, the gates of Rome. They – more than any of the myriad other monuments of Rome Eternal – have seen it all; from the Caesars to the Fascists, from the Vestal Virgins to the Popes, from the gladiators to the pilgrims, from the Model T to the Lamborghini. From a solitary small vineyard keeper driving his horse and wagon in from the campagna to sell his wines, to mighty armies rumbling through in trucks, jeeps, and tanks. From two lovers on a motor scooter to multitudes of tourists sardined into glass buses.

The Kingdom, the Republic, the Empire … all are gone. The Emperor Aurelian crossed the River Styx seventeen hundred years ago. But his walls and .. their gates … still survive.

As Browning noted: “Sooner or later everyone comes ‘round to Rome.”

He might well have added: “and through her gates!”

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Cover Image, Top Left: The Aurelian Walls at Porta Asinaria, Rome. MrPanyGoff, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Socrates: A Few Words

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Richard Marranca -

Richard Marranca (RM): Let me start with a cup that was found. A while back, I recall a news story about a cup found that has some connection to Socrates. Was it his – what’s the story on this?

Paul Cartledge (PC): To my knowledge no such inscribed cup has been found, but there is one, made of course of fired and painted clay, not precious metal, which possibly brings us within one degree of separation. A contemporary of Socrates called Simon had a cobbler’s workshop in the Agora: a cup inscribed with that name incised in the genitive case (meaning ‘belonging to Simon’) has been found in the SW corner. Later sources tell us that a Simon conversed with Socrates and may even have written philosophical dialogues, but whether he’s the same Simon is unfortunately not certain. It’s a shame too that neither of our two main contemporary sources on Socrates, Plato and Xenophon, found occasion to mention the philosophical Simon.

RM: Before we delve into some of the influences on Socrates, can you mention what Socrates would be up to on any given day?

PC: Socrates is found mooching in the center of Athens, often in the Agora area, looking for a suitable conversationalist and conversation topic to engage in dialectics with, asking ‘Socratic’ questions (unanswerable definitively) and using the ‘Socratic’ Q&A method. Socrates – or at any rate Plato’s ‘Socrates’ – apparently was primarily interested in two things: epistemology (theory of knowledge) and moral philosophy, how to live the best life (Plato may actually have coined the word ‘philosophia’).

RM: Who were the most important earlier philosophers and teachers who influenced Socrates?

PC: Socrates seems to us to have fallen from the sky, as it were, to emerge as a philosopher fully-fledged in mature adult years, but that’s due to the nature of our evidence as well as to the fact that in his youth Athens didn’t have a regular first- or second-level educational curriculum. There was a Greek tradition of intellectual enquiry going back at least as far as Thales of Miletus,who flourished around 600 BCE. These ‘Presocratics’ are sometimes called ‘natural philosophers’, since what they were chiefly interested in was non-human nature (phusis), what the universe was made of, etc. Some of them, for example Xenophanes of Colophon and Democritus of Abdera, anticipated Socrates’s interest in human morality, but it seems that it was indeed Socrates whose thinking was transformative in changing the focus of intellectual debate from heaven to earth, as it were.

Two other potential influences are worth mentioning: tragic drama and the philosophy of Parmenides of Elea. But probably the most important feature of Socrates’s day and of democratic Athens as the ‘City Hall of Wisdom’ (Plato) was that there emerged a group, not large but noisy, of itinerant intellectuals prepared to sell their brand of wisdom and knowledge to anyone willing or able to pay, and who found Athens a congenial place to expound and sell their wares. To Plato, however, what they were selling was neither wisdom nor knowledge but merely purveyors of fake news, and it was he who forever after gave the Greek word sophistēs, literally a ‘wise’ person or intellectual, its bad name – hence our ‘sophistical’, ‘sophistry’. In the dialogues, Plato spends a lot of time and effort trying to distinguish his Socrates, who accepted no pay, from the ‘sophists’, but the popular view of Socrates, as represented caricaturally in Aristophanes’s Clouds, was that he was every bit as much of a ‘sophist’ – and dangerous ‘free thinker’ – as they.

RM: In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates said he learned about love from Diotima. What did he learn?

PC: That all depends what’s meant by ‘love’! The ancient Greeks had some five words that could be translated by that one English word. They more than ‘had a word for it’! The specific kind that’s under discussion and dispute in the Platonic dialogue known as ‘The Symposium’ is erōs: erotic love, sexual passion, to be blunt about it. Diotima may or may not have been a real person. As presented by Plato, she’s a wise woman, possibly a priestess, from Arcadia in southern Greek Peloponnese, not a region noted for its intellectuals. There are scholars today who even think she may be a literary surrogate for a real ancient Greek woman, Aspasia from Miletus in what’s today Aegean Turkey. If so, she’s a surrogate for the woman with whom Pericles lived for about a quarter of a century. [see further next Answer.] But of course, it’s not who Diotima really was – another of the dialogists was the comic playwright Aristophanes who’s credited with spinning a myth of origin that accounts for why there are what we call heterosexuals and homosexuals – but what Diotima and the others are given to say that counts.

RM: And would Socrates have enjoyed wine and food and a comfortable lounge chair during these symposia?

PC: Two things go to the heart of the dialogue, which takes its name from its setting: a dinner/drinking party in a private house held to celebrate the victory of another playwright, tragic poet Agathon, during which the diner/drinkers would not slouch in lounge chairs but recline on couches, two to a couch. First thing, what IS erōs? Really, essentially, existentially, Aporia… Second: what good is it, what’s it good for? We happen to know that Plato himself never married – unlike Socrates, who married twice and possibly bigamously.

We also happen to know that in his last dialogue, The Laws, written in extreme old age, he, as it were, came out vigorously, almost viciously against homosexual erōs on the grounds that it was unnatural, i.e. could not lead to the production of offspring. But in The Symposium, Socrates was far more tolerant, far less gender-critical (as some of us now say): erōs was fine, on condition that it was not an end in itself, but a means towards the realization of finer things on the higher plane of the spiritual soul (psychē). For example, and here one suspects not a little autobiography, erōs was an especially potent and beneficial force pedagogically speaking – conducing as it did to two minds (he has in mind an adult and an adolescent male) being in intellectual harmony.

RM: You mentioned Aspasia, the partner of Athens’ incredible first citizen, Pericles. How might Aspasia have influenced Socrates?

PC: There’s a question! Plato was born very soon after the death of Pericles in 429, so he could have ‘known’ of the great man only by repute. Aspasia was still alive when Plato was very young, but again he would have had to rely on hearsay or written report to glean anything much for sure about her and Pericles’s relationship and private life. One thing he would have discovered at once was how outrageously unconventional it had been. Pericles, a wealthy aristocrat, did the ‘normal’ and conventional thing and married an upper-class Athenian woman – so upper-class we don’t know her name. With her he had two sons.

That would have been roughly between 465 and 455, but at around the latter date he divorced his wife – again that wasn’t uncommon among the social elite. But what followed was. Instead of remarrying, he remained single … until he somehow met and fell for Aspasia, a citizen of another (allied) Greek city. For a man of his class and station it would not have been uncommon for him to have both a wife AND a concubine, a bit on the side, as it were. But Pericles was an either/or man: for him, either a wife or a concubine. After some time of enjoying (?) his single status, Pericles made Aspasia his concubine, a sort of ‘common law’ wife, and lived with her for the remaining 25 or so years of his life. One irony of their partnership was that after 451 he would have been expressly forbidden by law to take a non-Athenian woman as his lawfully wedded wife – by a law that he himself had promoted! So, the son they had together – unimaginatively named ‘Pericles’ – was by definition illegitimate in law.

RM: Aspasia was amazing and quite famous – so much so that men wrote about her. Can you delve?

PC: The evidence for Aspasia is almost all scurrilously negative: for Pericles to be so besotted with her, she must have had special sexual powers, etc. But one piece of evidence stands out from that crowd, and it’s Plato’s dialogue the Menexenus. According to this, Aspasia was so smart she was able to give Socrates lessons in rhetoric, showing him how to compose a Funeral Oration. In the real Athens, even Athenian citizen women were second-class citizens, in that – apart from priestesshoods – they were denied any public political offices or functions in the democracy. In Athenian reality it was her partner Pericles who was chosen at least twice to deliver the public Funeral Oration over Athenian war-dead. I therefore think this is yet another way in which Plato, who vehemently disliked and disapproved of the Athenian democracy, was trying to expose that regime’s faulty, even immoral bases. This subtle variation on the ‘woman-behind-the-throne’ motif, whatever else it was, was fundamentally anti-democratic.

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About Paul Cartledge

Paul Cartledge is a British historian and scholar. From 2008 to 2014 he was the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, and previously held a personal chair in Greek History at Cambridge. (Text CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia Commons)

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Image Top Left: Socrates at work. Maklay62, Pixabay

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Penn Museum Expands Access to Archaeology and Anthropology with New Mobile Apps

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Penn Museum -

PHILADELPHIA, October 8, 2024—The Penn Museum has launched its first-ever mobile guide via the free Bloomberg Connects app and expanded access to its collections through the Google Arts & Culture platform. Free for all to use, both digital resources amplify the Museum’s ability to deepen engagement with its regional, national, and international visitors—both in person and virtually, from anywhere.

With nearly four million users, Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture app, provides an easy-to-navigate guide, placing the Penn Museum’s world-renowned collections and stories in the palm of one’s hand—on a mobile device.

Joining nearly 600 cultural institutions worldwide on Bloomberg Connects, the Penn Museum’s digital guide offers video highlights of its history and commitment to cultural heritage; audio tours showcasing fascinating stories behind objects on display; and dynamic wayfinding maps with pinch-and-zoom capability for an enhanced on-site experience. It is accessible in 42 languages and provides centralized resources for users interested in exploring the 10,000 years of history and living cultural traditions represented throughout the Penn Museum.

The Bloomberg Connects app is available for free download here.

“It is a vital part of the Museum’s mission to make the collections in our care accessible to the widest possible audience,” explains Dr. Christopher Woods, Williams Director at the Penn Museum and Avalon Professor for the Humanities in the Penn School of Arts and Sciences. “These free digital resources will expand access for online visitors around the world and ensure that those who do visit us in person deepen their connection to the stories our galleries tell.”

To mark its first weekend, visitors who present their Bloomberg Connects app at the Museum Café will receive 20% off their purchase from Friday, October 11 through Sunday October 13.

In addition, more than 280 objects from the Penn Museum’s collections are now available through the web- and mobile-based platform Google Arts & Culture—sharing art, culture, and histories from more than 3,000 cultural institutions in 85 countries. With features such as zoom views of high-resolution images and intuitive search functions to navigate related content, every object connects to similar collections, creating a rich, accessible global resource of cultural heritage. For its online exhibit, the Penn Museum’s “Collections from Across the Globe,” offers virtual visitors an avenue to examine the stunning jewelry of a Mesopotamian queen, a statue of a wrathful deity from Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, and other objects that tell the stories of diverse peoples and cultures.

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ABOUT BLOOMBERG PHILANTHROPIES

Bloomberg Philanthropies invests in 700 cities and 150 countries around the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organization focuses on creating lasting change in five key areas: the Arts, Education, Environment, Government Innovation, and Public Health. Bloomberg Philanthropies encompasses all of Michael R. Bloomberg’s giving, including his foundation, corporate, and personal philanthropy, as well as Bloomberg Associates, a philanthropic consultancy that advises cities around the world. In 2023, Bloomberg Philanthropies distributed $3 billion. For more information, please visit bloomberg.org, sign up for its newsletter, or follow on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, Facebook, and X.

ABOUT GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE

Google Arts & Culture puts the collections of more than 2,000 museums at your fingertips. It’s an immersive way to explore art, history, and the wonders of the world, from Van Gogh’s bedroom paintings to the women’s rights movement and the Taj Mahal. The Google Arts & Culture app is free and available online for iOS and Android. Its team has been an innovation partner for cultural institutions since 2011. They develop technologies that help preserve and share culture and allow curators to create engaging exhibitions online and offline, inside museums.

ABOUT THE PENN MUSEUM

The Penn Museum’s mission is to be a center for inquiry and the ongoing exploration of humanity for our University of Pennsylvania, regional, national, and global communities, following ethical standards and practices.

Through conducting research, stewarding collections, creating learning opportunities, sharing stories, and creating experiences that expand access to archaeology and anthropology, the Museum builds empathy and connections across diverse cultures.

The Penn Museum is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm. On first Wednesdays of the month, it is open until 8:00 pm. The Café is open Tuesday–Thursday, 9:00 am–3:00 pm and Friday and Saturday, 10:00 am–2:00 pm. On Sundays, the Café is open 10:30 am–2:30 pm. For information, visit www.penn.museum, call 215.898.4000, or follow @PennMuseum on social media.

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Article Source: Penn Museum news release.

Cover Image, Top Left: The Bloomberg Connects app helps guide on-site guests during their exploration of the Penn Museum. Credit: Bloomberg Connects for the Penn Museum.

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Early human species benefited from food diversity in steep mountainous terrain

Posted on October 9, 2024 by Institute for Basic Science -

Institute for Basic Science—A new study* published in the journal Science Advances by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the patchwork of different ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in the evolution of humans.

A notable feature of the archeological sites of early humans, members of the genus Homo known as hominins, is that they are often found in and near mountain regions. Using an extensive dataset of hominin fossils and artifacts, along with high-resolution landscape data and a 3-million-year-long simulation of Earth’s climate, the team of scientists from ICCP have provided a clearer picture of how and why early humans adapted to such rugged landscapes. In other words, they have helped explain why so many of our evolutionary relatives preferred being “steeplanders” as opposed to “flatlanders.”

Mountainous regions have enhanced biodiversity because the changes in elevation result in shifts of the climate, providing a range of environmental conditions under which different plant and animal species can thrive. The authors showed that steep regions usually exhibit a larger variety and density of ecosystems and vegetation types, known as biomes. Such biome diversity was a draw for early humans, as it provided increased food resources and resilience to climate change, an idea known as the Diversity Selection Hypothesis.

“When we analyzed the environmental factors that controlled where human species lived, we were surprised to see that terrain steepness was standing out as the dominant one, even more than local climate factors, such as temperature and precipitation.“ said Elke Zeller, PhD student from the IBS Center for Climate Physics and lead author of the study.

On the other hand, steep regions are more difficult to navigate than flatter terrain and require more energy to traverse. Hominins needed to gradually adapt to the challenges of rougher terrain in order to take advantage of the increased resources. The ICCP researchers examined how, over time, human adaptations changed the cost-benefit balance of living in rugged environments.

The adaptation towards steeper environments is visible for the earliest human species Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, and Homo erectus until about 1 million years ago, after which the topographic signal disappears for about 300,000 years. It reemerges again around 700,000 years ago with the advent of better adapted and more culturally advanced species such as Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis. These groups, which were able to control fire, also exhibited a much higher tolerance for colder and wetter climates.

“The decrease in topographic adaptation around 1 million years ago roughly coincides with large-scale reorganizations in our climate system, known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. It also lines up with evolutionary events such as a recently discovered ancestral genetic bottleneck, which drastically reduced human diversity, and the timing of the chromosome 2 merger in hominins. Whether this is all a coincidence, or whether the intensifying glacial climate shifts contributed to the genetic transitions in early humans, remains an open question,” said Axel Timmermann, Director of the IBS Center of Climate Physics and co-author of the study.

How humans have evolved over the past 3 million years and adapted to emerging environmental challenges is a hotly-debated research topic. The results of the South Korean research team provide a new piece in the puzzle of human evolution. Averaged over hundreds of thousands of years, across different species and continents, the data clearly show that our ancestors were “steeplanders.”

“Our results clearly show that over time hominins adapted to steep terrain and that this trend was likely driven by the regionally increased biodiversity. Our analysis suggests that it was beneficial for early human groups to populate mountainous regions, despite the increased energy consumption needed to scale these environments,” said Elke Zeller in summary.

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Map of Africa and Eurasia showing sites with evidence of human occupation. The inset shows a magnified view of Europe. Credit: Institute for Basic Science

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Top: Scatter plot showing time and latitude of sites with evidence of human occupation, middle: biome diversity associated with hominin sites, calculated using a moving average of 15 sites. Bottom: area roughness associated with hominin sites, calculated using a moving average of 15 sites. Gray shading shows the approximate timing of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT). Credit: Institute for Basic Science

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Article Source: Institute for Basic Science news release.

*The evolving 3-dimensional landscape of human adaptation, Elke Zeller, Axel Timmermann, Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adq3613, (2024).

**Human adaptation to diverse biomes over the past 3 million years, Elke Zeller, Axel Timmermann, Kyung-Sook Yun, Pasquale Raia, Karl Stein and Jiaoyang Ruan, Science, vol. 380, 6645, pp. 604-608, doi: 10.1126/science.abq1288 (2023)

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Underwater caves yield new clues about Sicily’s first residents

Posted on October 9, 2024 by Washington University in St. Louis -

Washington University in St. Louis—Archaeological surveys led by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis suggest that coastal and underwater cave sites in southern Sicily contain important new clues about the path and fate of early human migrants to the island.

A new study* in PLOS ONE reports and assesses the contents of 25 caves and rock shelters, most of them first identified between 1870 and the 1990s but essentially lost to science over time. Study authors also conducted new land and underwater surveys in previously unexplored coastal areas and uncovered three new sites that contain potentially important archaeological sediments.

“What we are looking for is not just the first person who arrived, but the first community,” said Ilaria Patania, an assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences. “Understanding the timing of the initial colonization of Sicily provides key data for the pattern and mode of the early expansion of Homo sapiens into the Mediterranean.”

Sicily is considered by many scholars to be the earliest island in the region to be permanently occupied by human ancestors, but when and how the early migrants accomplished this feat remains unknown. Sicily is less than two miles from mainland Italy, but the water crossing would have been extremely difficult for early humans.

Other studies have primarily focused on possible entry points on the island’s northern side.

“This research shows that new ways of thinking and looking can reveal patterns that weren’t visible before,” said T.R. Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at WashU, a co-author of the new study.

“Previous scholars assumed that sites on the southern coast of Sicily would be eroded or too damaged to yield useful information,” Kidder said. “But finding underwater sites opens up a whole new terrain to study. It allows us to reconsider routes of migration of these earliest modern human ancestors.”

Dangerous water crossing

Sicily, the largest Mediterranean island, is located just off the “toe” of Italy’s boot.

In the ancient Greek poem the “Odyssey,” Homer describes how Odysseus sailed his ship past the mythical sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis as he crossed the Sicily strait. The strait was well known to sailors of the past; they attributed the deadly forces of its waves and whirlpools to powerful monsters.

In modern times, thousands of migrants from North Africa attempt to cross the strait each year. Many don’t make it, some capsizing just a few hundred meters from landing.

Patania, a native of the island of Sicily, has a deep respect for the power of the sea. Her grandfather was a fisherman who worked on the same shores she now studies.

“Very early on, I was taught that the sea can be a great resource,” she said. “At the same time, you never turn your back on the sea. The sea can be very dangerous.”

This idea plays out in her research. “I’m very interested in how humans occupy marginal environments,” Patania said. “These are environments where if everything goes well, we are in perfect harmony with nature. But if something changes — and this could be something like global climate change, or something smaller, like the arrival of a new animal — it could be a catastrophe.”

Scholars of the region agree that humans had made it to Sicily by 16,000 years after the last glacial maximum. But that established date is puzzlingly late, given that humans are known to have dispersed by land into Siberia about 30,000 years earlier. The discrepancy has led some to wonder if humans actually arrived on Sicily much before the currently accepted dates.

Also, no one yet knows whether humans arrived on Sicily by seafaring, or by foot over a land bridge — or even what direction they came from.

“A challenge for understanding the spread of early modern human ancestors is that we don’t fully understand how they spread and colonized the world at a very early stage,” Kidder said. “As Ilaria says, this is a very marginal environment. Did folks come down from Italy and cross the Straits of Messina, or did they come from the south along the African coast? Or, is it possible that they were island hopping across the Mediterranean? Locating sites on the south coast helps us consider pathways and thus modes of behavior.”

Eyes on the sea

Patania leads a long-term research project focused on the early occupation of Sicily. “In southeast Sicily, very few Upper Paleolithic sites have been excavated and analyzed using scientific methods,” she said.

“Our project is still in its early stages, but already we have identified and assessed over 40 sites of interest, of which about 17 are sites that have been relocated with greater precision based on older identifications,” Patania said.

She and her team prepared for their recent cave explorations by poring through the archives of local town libraries in Sicily, reading historical bulletins and news articles as far back as the 19th century.

The researchers identified potential sites and reviewed records and photographs of materials recovered by local avocational archaeologists. When possible, they interviewed workers that had been involved in earlier excavations, and they also talked with local recreational divers and fishermen.

For example, one of the co-authors on the new study is a retired tugboat captain. He has no formal scientific training, but he spent decades working on the decks of boats in and around the Port of Augusta.

“The moment I said that I was looking for paleosols, and that paleosols look like clay dirt that could be red or gray underwater, he said, ‘I know exactly what you are looking for,’” Patania said.

Patania also partnered with the superintendent of cultural and natural heritage of Siracusa and Ragusa (two provinces of Sicily) and the superintendent of the sea of Sicily to locate and recruit other local experts and stakeholders.

As the research has progressed, Patania also has spoken with officers in the Italian navy about training members of their specialized dive team to help identify underwater archaeological features. These divers spend a lot of time in local waters completing their regular tasks related to clearing ordnance and other debris from World War II.

“We’ve started with the area close to the coast, and we’re slowly going to move further out in the years to come,” Patania said.

Excavations continue

Two of the new sites in the PLOS ONE study may contain Upper Paleolithic human occupation traces, including fossil fauna, study authors said.

Corruggi is located at the southernmost tip of Sicily. The site was originally identified by other researchers in the 1940s.

“This site is where a second land bridge would have connected this island with the island of Malta,” Patania said.

“When we inspected this site, we found teeth from a European wild ass and stone tools,” she said. “Analyzing the remains from this site might give us insight on the very last leg of the human journey south into the southernmost coast of Sicily and off toward Malta.”

During summer 2024, project team members worked on excavating the second site, a cave called Campolato.

“Here we have discovered evidence for sea-level changes caused by the last glaciation and a localized earthquake that we are still investigating,” Patania said.

“We hope to reconstruct not only the timing of human occupation, but also the environment these people lived in and how they negotiated with natural events like earthquakes, climatic and environmental changes and maybe even volcanic eruptions,” she said.

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WashU archaeologists are investigating coastal and underwater caves in southeastern Sicily, tracing early human dispersal onto the island. (Photo: Ilaria Patania). Credit: Ilaria Patania

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Coastal and underwater cave sites in southern Sicily contain important new clues about the path and fate of early human migrants to the island, according to a new study in PLOS ONE.
Some of the sites are above ground, while others are submerged caves and hidden grottos accessible only by sea. Credi: Ilaria Patania

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WashU archaeologists have recovered and analyzed stone tools and other items of interest from underwater caves and other coastal sites in southern Sicily. Credit: Ilaria Patania

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release.

*PLoS ONE, 9-Oct-2024. 10.1371/journal.pone.0299118

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AI helps uncover hidden trove of Nazca geoglyphs

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—An AI-assisted analysis nearly doubles the number of known Nazca geoglyphs, revealing the forms, locations, and potential uses of the geoglyphs, according to a study. Nazca geoglyphs are figures on the ground created by moving stones or gravel. Field surveys that began in the 1940s have identified 430 figurative geoglyphs of motifs such as animals and humans. Masato Sakai, Marcus Freitag, and colleagues applied AI image analysis to high-resolution images of the entire Nazca region of Peru to accelerate the rate of geoglyph discovery. The authors identified an additional 303 geoglyphs within six months of field survey. The AI-based system was skillful in identifying relief-type geoglyphs, which are smaller and more difficult to identify than large, line-type geoglyphs. Next, the authors analyzed the geoglyphs’ form, location, and probable use. Among relief-type geoglyphs, 81.6% depicted domestic animals or humans, whereas 64% of line-type geoglyphs depicted wild animals. Relief-type geoglyphs were built within viewing distance—on average 43 meters—from foot trails. Line-type geoglyphs were built an average of 34 meters from a linear network of geoglyphs. According to the authors, relief-type geoglyphs may have been used to convey cultural concepts, including those related to domesticated animals or human sacrifice, to individuals or small groups walking along trails, whereas line-type geoglyphs may have been part of community-level ritual activities.

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A 22-meter-long relief-type geoglyph depicting a killer whale holding a knife. Masato Sakai

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A 18-meter-long relief-type geoglyph depicting a human. Masato Sakai

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose,” by Masato Sakai et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 23-Sep-2024. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407652121

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Review: Deepening the debate about early horseback riding in Bronze age societies

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Abigail Eisenstadt -

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—A new Review contextualizes findings from a 2023 Science Advances study that presented what was possibly the earliest documented evidence of horseback riding by humans. The study described signs of “horsemanship syndrome” – or physical skeletal deformities in the lower body associated with biomechanical stress from prolonged horseback riding – in remains from Yamnaya pastoralists in Western Eurasia dating back to the early Bronze Age 4,500 to 5,000 years ago. Now, Lauren Hosek and colleagues question these results. They argue that horseback riding syndrome should be defined more holistically, looking for asymmetries and traces of inflammation-induced scarring across the whole skeleton instead of defining specific injuries as “smoking guns.” They note that no archaeozoological signs of riding in Yamnaya horse skeletal remains. Moreover, recent genomic analyses show little-to-no connection between Yamnaya horses and ancestors of modern domestic horses. For all investigations into early horse domestication, Hosek et al. underscore the importance of comparative datasets that help differentiate whether skeletal deformities come from horseback riding, chariot use, or other stressors.

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The posture and position of a human rider. Body areas of interest from Table 1 are highlighted in red for (A) horseback riding without stirrups, (B) horseback riding with saddle and stirrups; (C) horse, donkey, or hemione-driven chariot; and (D) cattle-drawn wagon (figure drawings produced by D. Chechushkova). Hosek et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eado9774 (2024)

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Article Source: AAAS news release.

*Tracing horseback riding and transport in the human skeleton, Science Advances, 20-Sep-2024. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado9774

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The City Under the Museum: A Pictorial

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Dan McLerran -

It rises as the most massive, modern edifice near the great Acropolis of Athens. Located only 280 meters from the Parthenon itself, near the southeastern slope of the iconic rock, it strikes an imposing and contrasting contemporary presence among surrounding structures that represent an earlier time in Athen’s history. Opened to the public in 2009, the Acropolis Museum houses more than 4,250 artifacts and other objects, many of which are exhibited across an internal area of 14,000 square meters. Entering and walking throughout this magnificent space, what profoundly strikes most visitors is the statuary, removed from their original Acropolis locations through time as archaeologists, conservationists and others have worked at the famous summit and the associated ancient remains that still grace much of its slope.

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The Acropolis Museum as seen from the top of the Acropolis hill. Louis Dalibard, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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The Acropolis as seen from the Acropolis Museum.

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As exhibited in the Acropolis Museum: Original caryatids from the Acropolis hill.

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Above and below: Original statuary from the frieze that once graced the front of the Parthenon, as exhibited in the Acropolis Museum.

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But there is a ‘secret’ to this museum that most visitors don’t know or think about until they actually step upon the museum floors. It lies below the surface. Like viewing through a looking glass, you can see it by peering down through filmy, transparent rectangular sections embedded into the floor, interspersed throughout the museum’s ground floor space. Here you see the remains of ancient structures unearthed through a series of excavations in the area at a site designated by archaeologists as the “Makrygiannis plot”, an urban neighborhood that flourished for centuries in the shadow of the Acropolis.

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The archaeological remains as seen through the floor of the Acropolis Museum.

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A Slice of Urban Life in Antiquity

From the 4th century BC to the 12th century AD, people carried out their daily lives in this place. They constructed streets, residences, baths, workshops and tombs. Today, visitors can see only a small part of the entire settlement, the segment that has been exposed intact beneath the new Acropolis Museum construction and the Acropolis Metro Station. The rest has been covered with earth during investigations and excavations, preserved and protected for the future.

What the observer sees today are mostly the better-preserved remains dating from Late Antiquity. Prominent among them are the remains of a luxurious residential mansion complex that included colonnaded courtyards, mosaic floors, a private bath system and latrines. Archaeologists and historians suggest that the residence belonged to a wealthy high-ranking official or local patron with ties to Rome’s imperial court. Other elements of the excavated area include public latrines and private baths, such as the West Bath, of other wealthy citizens.

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Remains of the ancient community beneath the museum can today be freely viewed with admission to the Acropolis Museum.

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Map of the ancient community. As exhibited at the Acropolis Museum.

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Above and below: The remains of a magnificent residence of a wealthy individual, as shown among the remains of the excavated community.

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Above and below (drawing), the remains of a private bath house as part of a wealthy residence. Both photos are details of exhibits displayed at the Acropolis Museum.

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Below: Remains of one of the oldest elite houses of the excavation. This residence was founded in the late 5th century B.C., and was in use until the 6th century A.D. Seen here (below) are mostly the remains of the 5th and 3rd centuries B.C., as well as some remains representing the 6th century A.D.
Notable are remains from the 3rd century B.C., showing a house courtyard where later a workshop was constructed. It features three cisterns, with a terracotta cylindrical pipeline providing fresh water and another pipeline diverting water to the street’s sewer. It is hypothesized that the workshop was a fullonica, where dirty clothes were washed and processed/whitened before being colored. The above illustration detail of artist’s rendition of the house is shown as exhibited at the Acropolis Museum.

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Not the least in terms of significance, the excavations have yielded numerous artifacts, including sculptures, various types of vessels, and coins, among other finds. These artifacts have helped to shed great light on our knowledge of the life-ways of the inhabitants over centuries of occupation.

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For interested readers, this site and many more are best visited in person. See the website to get your journey started.

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Research reveals reality of Ice Age teen puberty

Posted on September 12, 2024 by University of Victoria -

University of Victoria—Landmark new research shows Ice Age teens from 25,000 years ago went through similar puberty stages as modern-day adolescents. In a study* published today in the Journal of Human Evolution of the timing of puberty in Pleistocene teens, researchers are addressing a knowledge gap about how early humans grew up.

Found in the bones of 13 ancient humans between 10 and 20 years old is evidence of puberty stages. Co-led by University of Victoria (UVic) paleoanthropologist April Nowell, researchers found specific markers in the bones that allowed them to assess the progress of adolescence.

“By analyzing specific areas of the skeleton, we inferred things like menstruation and someone’s voice breaking,” says Nowell.

The technique was developed by lead author Mary Lewis from the University of Reading. Lewis’s technique evaluates the mineralization of the canines and maturation of the bones of the hand, elbow, wrist, neck and pelvis to identify the stage of puberty reached by the individual at their time of death.

“This is the first time my puberty stage estimation method has been applied to Paleolithic fossils and it is also the oldest application of another method—peptide analysis—for biological sex estimation,” says Lewis.

Life during prehistory was believed to be as Thomas Hobbes described: “nasty, brutish and short.” However, this new study shows these teens were actually quite healthy. Most individuals in the study sample entered puberty by 13.5, reaching full adulthood between 17 and 22 years old. This indicates these Ice Age adolescents started puberty at a similar time to teens in modern, wealthy countries.

“It can sometimes be difficult for us to connect with the remote past, but we all went through puberty even if we experienced it differently,” says Nowell. “Our research helps to humanize these teens in a way that simply studying stone tools cannot.”

One of the 13 skeletons examined was “Romito 2,” an adolescent estimated to be male and the earliest known individual with a form of dwarfism. This new research on puberty assessment provides further information about Romito 2’s likely physical appearance and his social role.

Since he was mid-way through puberty, his voice would be deeper much like an adult male and he would have been able to father children; however, he may still have appeared quite youthful with fine facial hair. Due to his short height, his appearance would have been closer to that of a child, which may have had implications for how he was perceived by his community.

“The specific information about the physical appearance and developmental stage of these Ice Age adolescents derived from our puberty study provides a new lens through which to interpret their burials and treatment in death,” says archaeologist Jennifer French of the University of Liverpool, one of the co-authors of the study.

Researchers from six institutions collaborated internationally to develop this body of knowledge: UVic (Canada), University of Reading and University of Liverpool (UK), Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology of Monaco (Monaco), University of Cagliari (Italy) and University of Siena (Italy). The collaboration continues with research into the lives of Ice Age teenagers and their social roles.

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, in addition to Nowell’s Lansdowne Fellowship Award.

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Dr. Mary Lewis from the University of Reading (UK) inspects the skeletal remains of Romito 2 found in southern Italy. University of Reading

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Reconstruction of Romito 2, a 16-year-old teenager with a form of dwarfism who lived 11,000 years ago in southern Italy. Illustration: Olivier Graveleau

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Article Source: University of Victoria news release.

*An assessment of puberty status in adolescents from the European Upper Paleolithic, Journal of Human Evolution, 12-Sep-2024. 10.1016/j.jhevol.2024.103577

An ancient Neanderthal lineage remained isolated from other populations for over 50,000 years—up until the species extinction

Posted on September 11, 2024 by Cell Press -

Cell Press—A fossilized Neanderthal discovered in a cave system in the Rhône Valley, France, represents an ancient and previously undescribed lineage that diverged from other currently known Neanderthals around 100,000 years ago and remained genetically isolated for more than 50,000 years. Genomic analysis indicates that the Neanderthal, nicknamed “Thorin” in reference to the Tolkien character, lived between 42,000–50,000 years ago in a small, isolated community. The discovery, publishing September 11 in the Cell Press journal Cell Genomics, could shed light on the still-enigmatic reasons for the species’ extinction and suggests that late Neanderthals had more population structure than previously thought.

“Until now, the story has been that at the time of the extinction there was just one Neanderthal population that was genetically homogeneous, but now we know that there were at least two populations present at that time,” says first author and population geneticist Tharsika Vimala (@tharsikavimala) of the University of Copenhagen.

“The Thorin population spent 50,000 years without exchanging genes with other Neanderthal populations,” says co-first author and discoverer of Thorin, Ludovic Slimak, CNRS researcher of Université Toulouse Paul Sabatier. “We thus have 50 millennia during which two Neanderthal populations, living about ten days’ walk from each other, coexisted while completely ignoring each other. This would be unimaginable for a Sapiens and reveals that Neanderthals must have biologically conceived our world very differently from us Sapiens.”

Thorin’s fossilized remains were first discovered in 2015 in Grotte Mandrin—a well-studied cave system that also housed early Homo sapiens, though not at the same time—and he is still being slowly excavated.

Based on Thorin’s location within the cave’s sediment, the team’s archeologists suspected that he lived around 40–45,000 years ago, making him a “late Neanderthal.” To determine his age and relationships with other Neanderthals, the team extracted DNA from his teeth and jaw and compared his full genome sequence to previously sequenced Neanderthal genomes.

Surprisingly, the initial genomic analysis suggested that Thorin was much older than the archeological age estimate because his genome was very distinct from other late Neanderthals and much more closely resembled the genomes of Neanderthals who lived more than 100,000 years ago.

“We worked for seven years to find out who was wrong—archeologists or genomicists,” says Slimak.

To solve this riddle, the researchers analyzed isotopes from Thorin’s bones and teeth to gain insight into what type of climate he lived in—late Neanderthals lived during the Ice Age, while early Neanderthals enjoyed a much warmer climate. The isotopic analysis showed that Thorin lived in a very cold climate, making him a late Neanderthal.

“This genome is a remnant of some of the earliest Neanderthal populations in Europe,” says population geneticist and senior author Martin Sikora of the University of Copenhagen. “The lineage leading to Thorin would have separated from the lineage leading to the other late Neanderthals around 105,000 years ago.”

Compared to previously sequenced Neanderthal genomes, Thorin’s genome most closely resembled an individual excavated in Gibraltar, and Slimak speculates that Thorin’s population migrated to France from Gibraltar.

“This means there was an unknown mediterranean population of Neanderthals whose population spanned from the most western tip of Europe all the way to the Rhône Valley in France,” says Slimak.

Knowing that Neanderthal communities were small and insular could be key to understanding their extinction because isolation is generally considered to be a disadvantage for population fitness.

“It’s always a good thing for a population to be in contact with other populations,” says Vimala. “When you are isolated for a long time, you limit the genetic variation that you have, which means you have less ability to adapt to changing climates and pathogens, and it also limits you socially because you’re not sharing knowledge or evolving as a population.”

However, to really understand how Neanderthal populations were structured and why they went extinct, the researchers say that more Neanderthal genomes need to be sequenced.

“I would guess that if we had more genomes from other regions during this similar time period, we would probably find other deeply structured populations,” says Sikora.

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Fossilized Neanderthal Thorin. Ludovik Slimak

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This research was supported by the Service Regional de l’Archeologie Auvergne Rhone-Alpes, the French CNRS, the city of Malataverne, the Lundbeck Foundation and the Danish National Research Foundation, the European Research Council, and the Australian Research Council.

Cell Genomics, Slimak, Vimala, and Seguin-Orlando et al., “Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction” https://cell.com/cell-genomics/fulltext/S2666-979X(24)00177-0

Cell Genomics (@CellGenomics) is a new gold open access journal from Cell Press publishing multidisciplinary research at the forefront of genetics and genomics. The journal aims to bring together diverse communities to advance genomics and its impact on biomedical science, precision medicine, and global and ecological health. Visit https://www.cell.com/cell-genomics/home. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

Article Source: Cell Press news release

*Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction, Cell Genomics, 11-Sep-2024. 10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100593

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Ancient DNA from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) refutes best-selling population collapse theory

Posted on September 11, 2024 by University of Copenhagen -

University of Copenhagen – The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences—Rapa Nui or Te Pito o Te Henua (the navel of the world), also known as Easter Island, is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the world. Located in the Pacific, it lies over 1,900 km east of the closest inhabited Polynesian island and 3,700 km west of South America. Although the island, its inhabitants and their rich culture have been extensively studied by archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists, two key elements of Rapanui history remain very controversial to this day. One of these is the theory of population collapse through “ecocide” or “ecological suicide” in the 1600s, thought to be the result of overpopulation and resource mismanagement. The other major contention is whether the Polynesian ancestors of the Rapanui interacted with Indigenous Americans before contact with Europeans in 1722.

This week’s issue of Nature features a genetic study that sheds light on these two debates related to Rapanui history by examining the genomes of 15 Rapanui individuals who lived between 1670 and 1950. The remains of these 15 individuals are currently hosted at the Musée de l’Homme, in Paris. The new study was carried out by an international team of scientists and was spearheaded by Assistant Professor Víctor Moreno-Mayar from the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and PhD student Bárbara Sousa da Mota and Associate Prof. Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas from the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), in close collaboration with colleagues in Rapa Nui as well as in Austria, France, Chile, Australia and U.S.A.

The collapse that never happened

The story of the Rapanui has often been presented as a warning tale against humanity’s over-exploitation of resources. After Polynesians from the west peopled the island by 1250, the landscape on Rapa Nui changed drastically. Towering stone statues—the moai—were carved and placed in all corners of the island, while its original forest of millions of palm trees dwindled and, by the 1600s, was all but gone. According to the “ecocide” theory, a population of over 15,000 Rapanui individuals triggered these changes that led to a period of resource scarcity, famine, warfare and even cannibalism culminating in a catastrophic population collapse.

“While it is well established that the environment of Rapa Nui was affected by anthropogenic activity, such as deforestation, we did not know if or how these changes led to a population collapse,” comments Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Assoc. Professor at the University of Lausanne and group leader at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland, last author of the study.

The researchers looked into the genomes of the Ancient Rapanui individuals expecting to find a genetic signature of a population collapse such as a sudden drop in genetic diversity. But surprisingly, the data did not contain any evidence of a population collapse in the 1600s.

“Our genetic analysis shows a stably growing population from the 13th century through to European contact in the 18th century. This stability is critical because it directly contradicts the idea of a dramatic pre-contact population collapse,” says Bárbara Sousa da Mota, a researcher at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at University of Lausanne and first author of the study.

Through their genetic analysis, Moreno-Mayar, Sousa da Mota, Malaspinas and their colleagues have not only provided evidence against the collapse theory, but also stress the resilience of the Rapanui population facing environmental challenges over several centuries until the colonial disruptions that European contact brought after 1722.

Did Polynesians reach the Americas?

Another debate that has tantalized researchers for decades is whether Polynesians ever reached the Americas. Although long-distance maritime navigation using wooden watercraft likely halted after the Rapa Nui forest disappeared, archaeological and genetic evidence from contemporary individuals hints that voyages to the Americas did occur. However, previous studies looking at small amounts of DNA from ancient Polynesians had rejected the hypothesis that transpacific voyages took place. Thus, these findings have put into question whether Polynesians reached the Americas and have suggested that the inferred contact based on present-day genetic data was mediated by European colonial activity after 1722.

By generating high-quality ancient genomes from the 15 Rapanui individuals, the team substantially increased the amount of genomic data from the island and found that about ten percent of the Rapanui gene pool has an Indigenous American origin. But more importantly, they were able to infer both populations met before Europeans arrived in the island and in the Americas.

“We looked into how the Indigenous American DNA was distributed across the Polynesian genetic background of the Rapanui. This distribution is consistent with a contact occurring between the 13th and the 15th centuries, ” says first author Víctor Moreno-Mayar, Asst. Professor at the Globe Institute’s Section for Geogenetics, University of Copenhagen.

“While our study cannot tell us where this contact occurred, this might mean that the Rapanui ancestors reached the Americas before Christopher Columbus,” says Malaspinas.

Altogether, the results from the new study help settle longstanding debates that have led to years of speculation surrounding Rapanui history.

“Personally, I believe the idea of the ecocide is put together as part of a colonial narrative. That is this idea that these supposedly primitive people could not manage their culture or resources, and that almost destroyed them. But the genetic evidence shows the opposite. Although we have to acknowledge that the arrival of humans dramatically changed the ecosystem, there is no evidence of a population collapse before the Europeans arrived on the island. So we can put those ideas to rest now,” says Moreno-Mayar.

“Many thought that present-day Rapanui carry Indigenous American genetic ancestry due to European colonial activity. But instead, the data strongly suggests that Rapanui and Indigenous Americans met and admixed centuries before Europeans made it to Rapa Nui or the Americas. We believe this means that Rapanui were capable of even more formidable voyages across the Pacific than previously established, ” adds Sousa da Mota.

Future repatriation efforts

Importantly, the scientists held face-to-face discussions with members of the Rapanui community and the “Comisión Asesora de Monumentos Nacionales” in Rapa Nui (CAMN). These discussions allowed to steer the research and to define a set of research questions that were equally of high interest to the scientists and the community. For instance, the team was able to show that the populations closest to the ancient Rapanui are indeed those currently living on the island.

“We have seen that museum archives contain mistakes and mislabels. Now that we have established that these 15 individuals were in fact Rapanui we know that they belong back in the island,” says Moana Gorman Edmunds, an archaeologist in Rapa Nui and co-author of the study.

Furthermore, when ongoing results were presented to representatives of the Rapanui community, the need to repatriate their ancestors was discussed as a central goal for immediate future efforts.

“We now have a strong fact-based argument to start an important discussion about how and when these remains should be returned to the island. Furthermore, through the CAMN, the Rapanui community will stay in control of who gets the genetic data of our ancestors and what they use it for,” adds Gorman Edmunds.

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Article Source: University of Copenhagen – The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences news release.

*Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas, Nature, 11-Sep-2024. 10.1038/s41586-024-07881-4

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The Surprising Ways Inventions and Ideas Spread in Ancient Prehistory

Posted on September 10, 2024 by Brenna R. Hassett -

Brenna R. Hassett, PhD, is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire and a scientific associate at the Natural History Museum, London. In addition to researching the effects of changing human lifestyles on the human skeleton and teeth in the past, she writes for a more general audience about evolution and archaeology, including the Times (UK) top 10 science book of 2016 Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, and her most recent book, Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood. She is also a co-founder of TrowelBlazers, an activist archive celebrating the achievements of women in the “digging” sciences.

The human capacity for invention is unparalleled. We have developed technologies that have allowed us to survive and thrive far beyond the ecological niches that constrained our ancestors. While our innovation has allowed us to break loose from the constraints of our home continent, Africa, and even our home planet, the actual way in which our species adopts new technologies remains a subject of huge debate among those scientists who study the past. Does one hominid ancestor start to shuffle upright, and the rest follow? Does the first human to loop a piece of string through a shell bead inspire the rest of the species to create the world’s first jewelry? Or do different animals take up the same new adaptation at different times, because it solves a problem that appears in many places?

We know that in some of our closest living relatives, the primates, new technical skills are passed on through direct learning. Macaques, in particular, are responsible for innovative behaviors that have been transmitted through their societies by individuals who have seen and observed them and then adopted them as their own. This is true of behaviors as varied as “hot tubbing” by the macaques of Japan’s northern Hokkaido island and the habit of dipping sweet potatoes in the sea to “salt” them developed by macaques on Koshima island further south.

Many of the technological innovations that have had the greatest impact on our species were first seen about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in a region that archaeologists refer to as the “Fertile Crescent.” The region encompasses a swathe of land crossing the countries between the easternmost Mediterranean Sea and the Sinai, Arab, and Syrian deserts and up into the Zagros Mountains of what is now Iran. It is a region of famous firsts in terms of radical changes to our species lifestyle: settling down, cultivating plants, and taming the animals we eat are all first attested in this strip of relatively abundant land.

It was along the shores of the Sea of Galilee where we have the first evidence of the wild ancestors of today’s wheat being exploited more than 20,000 years ago, at the site of Ohalo II, reconstructed from the microscopic remains of shattered seeds still clinging to a grinding stone after millennia. From 15,000 years ago, in a corridor stretching up and down the eastern Mediterranean we call the Levant, there comes the first signs of a new way of life for humans; one that involves staying in the same groups and homes all year round, rather than following food around the landscape as we had done for the 300,000 years prior. Those seeds from Ohalo II have grown into entirely new shapes by the time they are uncovered in these new inventions, called villages, and by around 9,000 years ago this new human-friendly type of wheat was well on its way to becoming our first domesticate (domesticate that wasn’t a dog—those we have had for probably 30,000 years). Meanwhile, over the last 10,000 years or so, goats, sheep, pigs, and eventually cattle were all brought into these new human habitations, and bred into the shapes that suit us rather than them: better to eat or easier to manage.

What is even more remarkable about these radical changes in a species that had been living as foragers for hundreds of thousands of years was how fast these new innovations “spread.” Archaeologists in the 20th century dedicated huge amounts of time to tracking the movements of new technologies through the evidence of ancient houses, pots, and bones to work out how people from the Near East had “invaded” Europe with their culture of domestication, and even when the idea of a mass invasion was put to rest, some still claimed that people themselves carried the new ideas of domesticated life. The way we saw human inventions was as hot-tubbing macaques at a larger scale: one clever inventor and her friends and family following behind.

This has large implications for human knowledge. Did it take people literally passing on new skills to spread farming, domestic animals, and year-round lifestyles to all corners of the globe? Is this the only way our species learns something this life-changing?

We are not, as it turns out, macaques. Good scientific evidence has given us dates for a farming and animal revolution in China that happened just a thousand or so years later, but for a totally different crop: rice. The invention of cultivated plants occurred independently, as did other similar innovations like domesticating animals. In fact, around the world, there was an endless series of radical revolutions, some earlier, some later, but all bringing plant and animal life under human management: from the potato and the alpaca in South America to pearl millet and cattle in West Africa.

This phenomenon is called “independent invention,” and it is our strongest evidence yet that every innovation our species has made has been a response to a place and time; that some technologies travel far and wide but, where they don’t, we are perfectly capable of inventing them again.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: Wheat, Bru-nO, Pixabay

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Keys to Building Human Bridges to the Past

Posted on September 10, 2024 by Deborah Barsky -

Deborah Barsky is a writing fellow for the Human Bridges, a researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, and an associate professor at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, with the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She is the author of Human Prehistory: Exploring the Past to Understand the Future (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Scientific breakthroughs about human origins have captured the curiosity of audiences eager to learn more about the past. We are entering a new phase, thanks to the accumulation of evidence and new research technologies, in which experts and audiences are increasingly asking bigger questions about who we are and where we came from—and are teasing out some valuable answers.

This development has come at a time when there is a growing sense that linking the past with the present can support the attempt to build a more sustainable future.

Groundbreaking technologies are being applied to archeology. Modern archeologists are taking advantage of digital tools to share knowledge about human origins on a widening spectrum of platforms, including museum exhibits, virtual settings, and on-site experiences.

There is, however, a choke point in this process. The academic findings are described in a highly technical language that requires familiarity with the jargon of many research disciplines and testing methods, making the wider public adoption of research from human evolutionary science and archeology difficult. And most experts from these fields are not sufficiently trained to translate their findings to the array of audiences that can use them. But a growing number of initiatives are providing new ways to bridge the gap separating academia from global public awareness, emerging often from leading research institutions in Australia, East Africa, Western Europe, and the U.S. These centers and the educational efforts emerging from them nurture the evolutionary consciousness people need to appreciate what it means to be human.

Fostering knowledge about chains of events that affected the human evolutionary pathway thousands and even millions of years ago allows us to fit them into a coherent, multilevel chronological, and cultural framework. We can train our minds to reflect over long periods and find useful ways to compare chapters of human history. This fundamental viewpoint will permit the kind of planning necessary for solving long-term human challenges, from social to environmental.

A fuller spatial and temporal sense of human history produces logic that chimes with the best of our humanitarian impulses—by applying what we have learned, human history can be understood as a single global dataset—providing an authentic framework of connection to a universal evolutionary lineage.

We know that territorialism in other mammals and primates is a standard behavior, but there is a unique human overlay underwriting the inequalities of today.

I have pointed out that inventing and nurturing symbolic differences is an adaptive strategy that emerged hundreds of thousands of years ago, during the Acheulian cultural period, and that evolved intoas a cultural mechanism to create and maintain unequal access to rights and resources.

Conventional descriptions associated with archeology often evoke portrayals of adventurous treasure hunters seeking fame and fortune in faraway countries. In the collective mindset, “archeology” conjures idealized visions of the great civilizations of classical antiquity and the first urbanized societies that flourished only a few thousand years ago. However great they were, the rise and fall of these cultural entities marks the commencement of a perpetual war-faring sequence that continues to be the hallmark of modern civilization.

But the human story extends much further back in time and no matter how prodigious they were, these societies were consolidated by modern humans who had already fully integrated the keystones of contemporary civilization.

Thanks to a new impulse launched by the digital revolution that our civilization is undergoing, prehistory invites us to gaze further back in time: deep into the Paleolithic—to discover and understand the foundations upon which organized urban societies were constructed. Compared with classical archeology, ancient Paleolithic records rely on a relatively sparse repertory, consisting mainly of fossilized bones and stone tools shaped by humans who were physically and cognitively very different from us.

While at first glance such objects may appear unremarkable, understanding their significance is essential to complete the picture of the human evolutionary trajectory. In fact, by limiting our inquiry to the sub-modern civilizations that emerged only over the last 5,000 years or so, we are ignoring 98 percent of human evolution that began in Africa at least 2.8 million years ago, when our genus joined other hominins already thriving in Africa to systematically create the first complex technologies made from stone.

The emergence and evolution of these early techno-systems would alter the course of human evolution so significantly that we are still speculating where they will lead us in the future.

In that sense, these early stages of the hominization process that led our genus to adapt culturally, rather than biologically, by creating extrasomatic solutions to evolutionary challenges, are arguably the most important influences that shaped human origins. These solutions were initially made by transforming available materials into tools using specific sets of acquired skills that were systematized into culture.

Through this cumulative process, our ancestors increased the assortment of objects that were to become essential to their survival. OverThrough time, the know-how required to obtain the skills to manufacture these tools also increased exponentially, eventually requiring composite modes of communication to transmit the knowledge from generation to generation.

By incorporating an ever-increasing array of disciplines, both classical and new, archeologists continue to learn more about the different phases of the fascinating journey that led our species to unprecedented techno-dependence. The unfolding of humanity can only be ascertained by unearthing and interpreting the fragmentary remnants left behind in the archeological record by the thousands of generations preceding the 8 billion souls presently living on Earth.

Today, the keys to understanding human origins are becoming more accessible thanks to technologies used to share the exciting discoveries that form the totality of human prehistory and offer scientifically viable reconstructions to inspire even the most reticent of audiences.

Applying advanced scientific methodologies enables specialists to progressively build theories and attitudes that develop into sensibilities based on current states of knowledge. As a first step, it is important to understand that science is in a constant state of flux and premises must be constantly adjusted to keep pace with the latest discoveries. Meanwhile, the development of modern technologies continues to open doors to new ways to source information.

Modern technologies are not only creating new strategies to study the past but they are also transforming the methodologies traditionally used in prehistoric archeology. Some of the techniques are co-opted from other fields of science, like medicine, chemistry, ecology, and biotechnology, thus building up a mesh of collaboration among researchers working in vastly different fields of knowledge. This strategy further contributes to the exponential intellectual revolution underway in research on human origins.

Traditional disciplines, like paleontology and paleoanthropology, for example, are being reshaped by advances in genetic research that are filling in the gaps in the archeological record by shedding new light on interrelationships between different species through time at a lightning pace. Digital 3D reproductions of all kinds of archeological finds and even of the sites themselves provide astoundingly accurate imagery that can be analyzed and shared instantaneously. Non-invasive geoarchaeological methods are being used to locate and study all kinds of settings and the artifacts they yield, and drones equipped with digital cameras allow surveys of hard-to-access areas to locate new archeological sites. High-powered microscopes linked to image processing software serve to determine how stone tools were used for archeobotany, sedimentary analysis, and more. Meanwhile, radiometric and other dating methods are improving our capacity to obtain increasingly precise age evaluations for the archeological sites under study.

Progress is being achieved in sharing data from prehistory at a quickening pace in many high-income countries in Eurasia and North America, where broad-minded insights and international collaborations are stimulating public interest to take advantage of communication technologies to discover and explore universal patrimony relating to all periods of the Paleolithic.

In academia, scientific journals now often require scientists to share their data in online repositories with access to digital platforms that can be built upon by contemporaries and new generations who are encouraged to apply alternative technologies to glean new kinds of information from the same datasets. Online platforms sharing archeological information are easily available to those who wish to consult them. However, much remains to be done for many lower-income countries that still do not have access to the same technologies for exploiting their Paleolithic records on an equal footing, because they lack basic infrastructure and educational facilities, or they are struggling due to poverty, political turmoil, or even lengthy periods of warfare.

Today, the digital revolution has transformed how archeological data from all stages of human evolution can be transmitted to the public. Prehistorians have entered the arena of public awareness on all levels of social interplay, demonstrating the importance of applying long-term insights to tackle such pressing issues as ecological collapse, human migration, war, and gender inequality. By creating evolutionary awareness, Paleolithic archeology is helping society recognize the value of studying the distant past to overcome the myopia of our own historical moment.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: IAEA Imagebank. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Wikimedia Commons

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The Roman siege of Masada lasted just a few weeks, not several years

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Tel Aviv University -

Tel-Aviv University—Researchers from the Sonia & Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University used a range of modern technologies, including drones, remote sensing, and 3D digital modeling, to generate the first objective, quantified analysis of the Roman siege system at Masada. Findings indicate that contrary to the widespread myth, the Roman army’s siege of Masada in 73 CE lasted no more than a few weeks.

The study* was conducted by the Neustadter expedition from TAU’s Sonia & Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, headed by Dr. Guy Stiebel, together with Dr. Hai Ashkenazi (today Head of Geoinformatics at the Israel Antiquities Authority), and PhD candidates Boaz Gross (from Tel Aviv University and the Israeli Institute of Archaeology) and Omer Ze’evi-Berger (today at the University of Bonn). The study is part of the expedition’s extensive mission, implementing advanced tools and posing fresh questions, to attempt a new understanding of what really happened at Masada. The paper was published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

Dr. Stiebel: “In 2017 my expedition renewed, on behalf of TAU’s Sonia & Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, excavations at Masada – a world-famous site explored extensively since the early 19^th century and throughout the 20^th century. Our expedition sets forward several new questions and implements many novel research tools that were not available to previous generations of archaeologists. In this way we intend to obtain fresh insights into what actually happened there before, during, and after the Great Jewish Revolt. As part of this extensive project we devote much scholarly attention to the site’s surroundings. We use drones, remote sensing, and aerial photography to collect accurate high-resolution data from Masada and its environs, with special emphasis on three aspects: the water systems, the trails leading to and from the palatial fortress, and the Roman siege system. The collected information is used to build 3D digital models that provide us with a clear and precise image of the relevant terrains. In the current study we focused on the siege system, which, thanks to the remote location and desert climate, is the best-preserved Roman siege system in the world.”

Dr. Stiebel adds: “For many years, the prevailing theory that became a modern myth asserted that the Roman siege of Masada was a grueling three-year affair. In recent decades researchers have begun to challenge this notion, for various reasons. In this first-of-its kind study we examined the issue with modern technologies enabling precise objective measurements.”

The researchers used drones carrying remote sensors that provided precise, high-resolution measurements of the height, width, and length of all features of the siege system. This data was used to build an accurate 3D digital model, enabling exact calculation of the structures’ volume and how long it took to build them.

Dr. Ashkenazi: “Reliable estimates are available of the quantity of earth and stones a Roman soldier was able to move in one day. We also know that approximately 6,000-8,000 soldiers participated in the siege of Masada. Thus, we were able to objectively calculate how long it took them to build the entire siege system – eight camps and a stone wall surrounding most of the site. We found that construction took merely about two weeks. Based on the ancient historical testimony it is clear that once the assault ramp was completed, the Romans launched a brutal attack, ultimately capturing the fortress within a few weeks at the most. This leads us to the conclusion that the entire siege of Masada lasted no more than several weeks.”

Dr. Stiebel: “The narrative of Masada, the Great Jewish Revolt, the siege, and the tragic end as related by Flavius Josephus, have all become part of Israeli DNA and the Zionist ethos, and are well known around the world. The duration of the siege is a major element in this narrative, suggesting that the glorious Roman army found it very difficult to take the fortress and crush its defenders. For many years it was assumed that the siege took three long years, but in recent decades researchers have begun to challenge this unfounded belief. In our first-of-its-kind study we used objective measurements and advanced technologies to clarify this issue with the first data-driven scientific answer. Based on our findings we argue that the Roman siege of Masada took a few weeks at the most. As empires throughout history have done, the Romans came, saw, and conquered, quickly and brutally quelling the uprising in this remote location. Our conclusion, however, detracts nothing from the importance of this historical event, and many baffling questions remain to be investigated. For example: Why did the Romans put so much effort into seizing this remote and seemingly unimportant fortress? To answer this and many other intriguing questions we have initiated a vast, innovative project in and around Masada – collecting data and analyzing it thoroughly in the labs of TAU’s Sonia & Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, in collaboration with other researchers, to ultimately shed new light on the old enigma: What really happened at Masada?”

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3D model of Tower 7 and the circular feature to its left (view to the west). The Neustadter Masada Expedition (Taken from the Journal of Roman Archaeology

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3D model of the ramp/staircase (view to the southwest). The Neustadter Masada Expedition (Taken from the Journal of Roman Archaeology)

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Tower 10 and the wall abutting it. The Neustadter Masada Expedition (Taken from the Journal of Roman Archaeology

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Masada National Park. Omer Ze’evi-Berger.

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Article Source: Tel-Aviv University news release.

Link to the research Video
Caption: A view from a drone of the excavation site at the center of the mountain platform of Masada.

Credit: The Neustadter Masada Expedition

Link to the article:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-roman-archaeology/article/roman-siege-system-of-masada-a-3d-computerized-analysis-of-a-conflict-landscape/32C59BE59ACD3E9A91C95F947DFD271E

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New population model identifies phases of human dispersal across Europe

Posted on September 4, 2024 by University of Cologne -

University of Cologne—An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Cologne’s Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology and the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology has developed a new model*, the “Our Way Model”. They modelled the movements and population densities over time and space during the Aurignacian (approximately 43,000 to 32,000 years ago) to better understand how the first anatomically modern humans populated Europe. The model reveals four phases of the process. The first phase saw a slow expansion of human settlement from the Levant to the Balkans, followed by the second phase of rapid expansion into western Europe. The subsequent third phase was characterized by a decline in human population, and the fourth phase brought regional increases in population density and further advances into previously unsettled areas of Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. The results have been published under the title ‘Reconstruction of human dispersal during Aurignacian on pan-European scale’ in Nature Communications.

The interdisciplinary collaboration between climate scientists and archaeologists enabled the team to examine how climate change influenced human dispersal quantitatively. Early anatomically modern humans survived as hunter-gatherers for extremely long periods. When they started spreading across Europe, global climatic conditions were different from today: The prevailing cooler and drier climate of the late Last Glacial Period was repeatedly interrupted by warmer interglacial periods, with some changes occurring abruptly and others gradually.

Reasons for human dispersal to Europe were likely diverse, including human exploratory spirit, evolution in social structure and progress in technology. The newly developed model, however, allowed the research team to clearly demonstrate how climate change impacted human dispersal. Previous numeric models of long-term dispersals of human populations on continental scales commonly relied on so called diffusion-reaction equations, i.e., a combination of slow, continuous dispersal in all directions driven by the constant reproducing and growing population. Agent-based models focusing on individual or group motivations of humans to migrate, in turn, are more popular on smaller scales. Recent new models feature data from paleoclimate models in their calculations, but focus on Net Primary Production, an indicator for the amount of stored CO₂ in plants and animals, as a proxy for food availability and human mobility. The disadvantage of this approach is that it does not consider the accessibility and availability of these food sources, as only a fraction of them were usable by humans.

The research team assumes that early habitation in Europe involved highly complex processes of advance, retreat, abandonment and resettlement, driven by climatic changes as well as humans’ ability to adapt. The “Our Way Model” simulates human dispersal in two main steps: first, combining climate and archaeological data to model the Human Existence Potential (HEP), and second, modelling the human population dynamics constrained by the HEP. HEP defines the likelihood of human existence under climate and environmental conditions for a given culture. This vital quantity is estimated using an HEP model that takes into account paleoclimatic data for known archaeological sites. This machine learning approach constructs the climatic constraints for the Aurignacian culture, estimating which climate conditions humans of that culture preferred to live in. The trained model is then applied to estimate the spatial and temporal HEP patterns using data simulated by the so-called Global Climate Model as well as oxygen isotope data from Greenland ice cores.

The results showed that a first phase of relatively slow westward expansion from the Levant to the Balkans (approximately 45.000 to 43.000 years ago) was followed by a second phase of rapid expansion into western Europe (approximately 43.250 to 41.000 years ago). Although interrupted by brief setbacks, Homo sapiens populations now rapidly reached an estimated number of 60.000 people across Europe, spread across all the known archaeological sites during this period. The subsequent third phase was characterized by a decline in the human population, both in terms of its size and density as well as the area occupied by the population (41.000 to 39.000 years ago). This development resulted from a prolonged severe cold period which lasted almost 3.000 years, known as the GS9/HE4 period. However, according to the model, humans survived in the climate shadows of large topography (e.g., the Alpes), which they had just occupied in the previous phase. In the fourth phase, when HEP conditions improved again, the population quickly recovered and grew further, starting at around 38.000 years ago. Regional increases in population density and further advances into previously unsettled areas of Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula, which the model showed, are broadly in line with the archaeological evidence.

The HEP maps indicate that at the end of this process, parts of the human population were better adapted to cold climatic conditions than others, allowing them to push the boundaries of previously settled environments. “Regional studies can hardly capture all factors at play when trying to reconstruct human dispersal, including how they work together at different scales and contribute to overall long-term trends. This is a major advantage of the new modelling approach”, said Dr Isabell Schmidt at the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology.

In further research, the team will test the underlying assumptions made in the model, focusing on the role of cultural evolution in the human dispersal process. The project Human and Earth System Coupled Research (HESCOR) at the University of Cologne will integrate further aspects of Human-Earth system interactions into the model.

Article Source: University of Cologne news release. Image, Top Left: Pixabay

*Reconstruction of human dispersal during Aurignacian on pan-European scale, Nature Communications, 28-Aug-2024. 10.1038/s41467-024-51349-y

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Political Collapse: Lessons From Fallen Empires

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, and Lane F. Fargher-Navarro -

Richard E. Blanton is professor emeritus of anthropology at Purdue University.

Gary M. Feinman is a MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois.

Stephen A. Kowalewski is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Georgia.

Lane F. Fargher-Navarro is the director of research at the Past Foundation, Ohio State University.

Our investigation of the disastrous society-wide collapses of four premodern polities, China’s Ming Dynasty, the South Asian Mughal Empire, the High Roman Empire, and Renaissance Venice led to the discovery of an unexpected historical pattern. This revelation was not evident before these sudden collapses as all four polities had demonstrated forms of governance that persisted for centuries, had been among the wealthiest and best-governed polities of their eras, and had embraced policies fostering inclusiveness and egalitarianism that engendered strong support from the majority of their citizens.

We could not identify any exogenous causal factors for the collapses—such as drought, epidemic, or conquest by a more powerful foe (three of the four eventually were conquered, but only after their governments were considerably weakened)—adding to our confusion about what led to these major political transformations.

To understand the reasons for the political breakdowns, we decided to revisit an earlier article in which we had posited an answer to this question when it became increasingly clear to us that the conflictive political culture of the contemporary U.S. presents striking parallels with what we had discovered. We aim to reexamine our article to bring a comparative perspective on historically well-known episodes of collapse, their causes, and negative outcomes, and to alert U.S. citizens of the potential dangers we face, so we can highlight the need to take urgent corrective actions. We begin by referring to recent works by political scientists and anthropologists that provided theoretical context for our arguments.

Collective Action Theory Expands Our Understanding of Governance

In all four instances, collapse followed quickly after the leaders of these polities inexplicably and suddenly abandoned principles and practices that had successfully underpinned state-building and social stability. Their actions initiated a cascading series of events that brought a rapid decline in many aspects of society, which extended beyond the government. But why would the actions of just a few people have such severe consequences for otherwise endurable and well-organized polities?

We identified a plausible answer to this question when we considered collapse from the vantage of recently developed theories of human cooperation developed by political economists Margaret Levi and Elinor Ostrom, along with several others. The cooperation ideas intrigued us because they potentially laid down a pathway to evaluate traditional claims that state-building did not result from cooperation in premodern times, but from the actions of the autocratic elite who coercively gained dominion over subservient and easily mystified subaltern subjects. A reliance on coercion was foundational for the traditional Western understanding that the rise of democracy in Classical Athens 2,600 years ago was an exceptional event that set Western (“Occidental”) political history on a separate and democratic track, sharply different from the “Oriental” autocracies. But is this entrenched presumption correct?

Humans as ‘Contingent Cooperators’

The most salient feature of collective action theory separating it from the Orientalist tradition is that it does not presume mystified subaltern subjects nor coercive leadership. The theory hypothesizes that both ruling authorities and subjects are thoughtful social actors (“contingent cooperators”) who will agree to limit their selfish actions when they perceive that the actions of others are consistent with mutual benefit (“contingent mutuality”).

Our recent work in this regard has supported the hypothesis as applied to state formation. What we have found is that subjects are more likely to gain confidence in governing authorities and the policies and practices of a government based on the degree to which the leadership willingly provides elements of what is called “good government” (or “good governance”).

Good governance includes the degree to which leadership will accept limits on its power, is willing to develop the governing capacity to identify and punish official corruption, is willing to provide citizens access to an impartial judiciary, and is prepared to implement equitable taxation, to open up access to positions of governing authority without favoritism, and to provide public goods beneficial to all households.

A key aspect of good governance is that if its benefits foster citizen confidence and compliance with obligations, its practices and principles must be judiciously adhered to, and good governance benefits must be made available across the realm without favoritism. We discovered that in instances where mutual benefit and good governance are key, state-builders and citizens recognized that impartiality was threatened when a leader’s power, or the state itself, was religiously sacralized. The same threat was felt when the state gained legitimacy and fiscal benefit by associating or controlling a particular religious institution (analogous to the contemporary concept of separation of church and state).

The population of Renaissance Venice, for example, was largely Catholic, yet featured considerable cultural diversity while also depending on trade relations with merchants who belonged to diverse cultures and religions. Correspondingly, strict rules prohibited affiliations of the leadership and their immediate family members with any religious institution. In South Asia, the Mughal Emperor Akbar instituted a strong program for governing in a diverse region that mandated religious neutrality of the state and encouraged reasoned dialogues between religious and political leaders. The Roman and Ming leaderships certified their legitimacy to govern, not as religiously sanctified beings, but as leaders whose actions were expected to benefit society. The policy of the Ming Dynasty also emphasized the need for neutrality in its dealings with the three main religions of its time.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Premodern States

We coded the good governance attributes across a worldwide sample of 30 premodern polities, and subsequent archaeological work by us and others has provided additional pertinent data. We also considered other variables that we hypothesized might enrich our understanding of the causes and consequences of mutual benefit and good governance; for example, we coded for demographic trends, which are population growth/loss, material standard of living of households, and the frequency of political struggles and organized opposition to state policies and practices. We also coded the relative severity of social, demographic, and agricultural changes after the collapse of the four polities.

Was Western Political History Really Unique?

Armed with a new theory, good governance measures to evaluate it, and a vast array of descriptive studies available from ethnographic, historical, and archaeological sources, we dwelled on the question: Was Western political history really unique? We know that coercive and autocratic states did exist in the past, as they still do today, but were there also experiments in state-building, outside of Western history, which were based on contingent mutual benefit and good governance, and were they similar to democracy? The coding of good governance variables yielded a surprising answer to this question as we were able to identify such experiments.

Although there is considerable variation in the details of governance across these cases, we identified forms of governing outside of Western history in which the central force guiding political change was contingent on the bond of obligation between governing authorities and subjects rather than on coercion. Further, in such cases, we also found that mutual benefit and good governance brought numerous advantageous downstream consequences for their respective populations.

For example, compared with the more autocratic and coercive states, the collectively organized polities were more politically stable, in part because public safety was greatly enhanced, there were far fewer episodes of anti-state movements (although disgruntled elites often would militate against the more egalitarian and inclusive policies), and there was a reduction in the frequency of internal conflicts between ethnic groups or religious groups.

As a result of these outcomes, resulting in part from the fact that states organized based on mutual benefit and good governance, citizens were provided with opportunities to engage in cooperative social interactions and alignments that could bridge social, cultural, and economic cleavages. Good governance, for one, was a fertile ground for commercial growth in the form of marketplace economies that provided new opportunities and increased living standards for buyers and sellers irrespective of wealth, patrimony, or rural-urban setting. Marketplace economies grew alongside other institutional outcomes, including open recruitment to positions of governing authority, which provided entirely new pathways to social mobility for the public. Well-organized and more livable cities, which were easy to navigate, also enhanced possibilities for commingling, cooperative interactions, and bridged social alignments weakening the likelihood of antagonism between different groups.

The collective action theory is an action-oriented framework that focuses on the idea that diverse webs of cooperative action in society are engendered by the palpable social actions of persons who want to realize collective benefits. In relation to leadership, this requires a display of commitment to carrying out the necessary and often challenging work of good governance.

Patterns of Stability and Collapse: Three Counterintuitive Discoveries

To confirm that premodern governments could, in some respects, display features that we associate with contemporary democracy was itself a surprise, but we discovered other unanticipated aspects of premodern governance:

Endurability: Despite the obvious advantages in cases where we see a focus on mutual benefit and good governance, their focal periods (the period when a particular set of policies and principles remained stable) were only slightly longer, at 166 years on average, compared to the more autocratic polities with focal periods of 152 years, a difference that is not statistically significant. In addition, polities built more strongly around mutual benefit occurred relatively infrequently (only 27 percent of our sample had consistently high scores for good governance). This shows that despite the advantages of mutual benefit and good governance, they have been difficult to build and sustain in the long run.

Collapse Patterns: Further, while providing many more benefits to their citizens compared to autocratic polities, states that organized to achieve good governance also had more of a collapse pattern than polities that scored lower on good governance. That pattern includes the emergence of damaging factional struggles for power, the loss of fiscal viability of the state, and even food shortages and demographic decline.

Collapse in the case of autocracies brought less serious consequences because, lacking much in the way of governance, groups such as neighborhoods, ethnic groups, and rural communities were already organized at the local level to respond to hazards. Yet, this fragmented form of adaptation was itself problematic, precluding coordinated responses to, for example, urban fires, lawlessness, or the actions of wealthy entrepreneurs who, lacking any opposition from a well-organized authority, were in a position to distort fair marketplace pricing.

Initiating Collapse: Earlier we mentioned the separation of religion and state because, although violating its premise was not the only misstep exhibited by the respective leaderships, it was among the most damaging. In Ming China, collapse followed the actions of leaders of the mid-16th century, including the Chia-ching Emperor, who became so obsessed with Daoist ceremonies and alchemy that he neglected his duties; his successor, the Wanli Emperor, turned his attention to gaining personal wealth, a violation of long-standing prohibitions. In the case of the Mughals, the fourth emperor, convinced by Muslim leaders, abandoned religious neutrality, even taxing Hindus more than Muslims and permitting the destruction of new temples. The Roman Emperor Commodus lacked interest in governing and became an avid performer as a gladiator. He identified himself with the god Hercules. Following his failed reign, the empire devolved into a chaotic and corrupt system in which, as the historian Ramsay MacMullen concluded, “relationships involving anything other than the wish for material possession had no chance to develop.”

The case of Venice is particularly troubling in light of what has transpired in recent years in the U.S. Although the Venetian government possessed the institutional capacity to impeach leaders, when Doge Giovanni Cornaro and his family broke the religious neutrality and other rules, for example, as a result of his son accepting the position of Bishop of Bergamo, the governing council refused to impeach him. This action, regarded by many inside and outside of the government as a violation of long-standing rules, was not corrected, and the governing council’s response to criticism was to double down on its authority. These moves, according to the historian John Norwich made the council ever more unpopular both with the citizens and other organs of government and precipitated a rapid unwinding of the societal threads that had, for centuries, underpinned inclusive forms of cooperation and devotion to a governing system that aimed to realize the common good.

It is important to note that these polities had developed the governing capacity to productively address various expressions of social malfeasance, including administrative corruption and shirking and free riding among citizens that could challenge the confidence of people in each other and the government. Yet, when it was the leadership that turned away from meeting expectations—including diligence in sustaining a system of governance and maintaining its religious neutrality—all the governments in question illustrated a key vulnerability: they lacked the institutional capacity to punish leadership displaying self-serving acts contrary to the pursuit of societal benefit.

Moral Collapse and Its Relevance to Contemporary U.S. Politics

Like the societies we have discussed, the original charters of the U.S. government featured mutual moral obligations between governing authorities and citizens at their core and specified key governing precepts, including the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, inclusion, checks and balances on the concentration of power, and the separation of church and state. Over more than two centuries, these principles, although sometimes opposed, have largely been followed. But now they face serious challenges from the presumptive leadership of the Republican Party and influential governing bodies including the Supreme Court.

These challengers reject the notions of inclusiveness and lawfulness embedded in the original charters in a way that does not align with what the majority of American citizens believe and would like to preserve. In particular, challengers deviate from broad sensibilities both when they show strong support for the idea that white nationalist ideologies and religious fundamentalism should serve as the religious foundation for our governing practices and principles, and when they assert their belief that violence is an acceptable means to achieve political goals in the face of opposition.

We hope that our discussion of historical cases is a reminder that mutual benefit and good governance succeed or fail based on the choices of contingently cooperative citizens. Contingency implies that, as in Venice and the other cases we pointed out, the loss of citizen confidence in the leadership can trigger an unexpected unwinding of the societal threads that underpin inclusive forms of cooperation and devotion to a governing system designed to realize common good.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter of the ancient Roman Empire. djedj, Pixabay

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

What a submerged ancient bridge discovered in a Spanish cave reveals about early human settlement

Posted on August 30, 2024 by University of South Florida -

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA—TAMPA, Fla. (Aug. 27, 2024) – A new study led by the University of South Florida has shed light on the human colonization of the western Mediterranean, revealing that humans settled there much earlier than previously believed. This research, detailed in a recent issue of the journal, Communications Earth & Environment, challenges long-held assumptions and narrows the gap between the settlement timelines of islands throughout the Mediterranean region.

Reconstructing early human colonization on Mediterranean islands is challenging due to limited archaeological evidence. By studying a 25-foot submerged bridge, an interdisciplinary research team – led by USF geology Professor Bogdan Onac – was able to provide compelling evidence of earlier human activity inside Genovesa Cave, located in the Spanish island of Mallorca.

“The presence of this submerged bridge and other artifacts indicates a sophisticated level of activity, implying that early settlers recognized the cave’s water resources and strategically built infrastructure to navigate it,” Onac said.

The cave, located near Mallorca’s coast, has passages now flooded due to rising sea levels, with distinct calcite encrustations forming during periods of high sea level. These formations, along with a light-colored band on the submerged bridge, serve as proxies for precisely tracking historical sea-level changes and dating the bridge’s construction.

Mallorca, despite being the sixth largest island in the Mediterranean, was among the last to be colonized. Previous research suggested human presence as far back as 9,000 years, but inconsistencies and poor preservation of the radiocarbon dated material, such as nearby bones and pottery, led to doubts about these findings. Newer studies have used charcoal, ash and bones found on the island to create a timeline of human settlement about 4,400 years ago. This aligns the timeline of human presence with significant environmental events, such as the extinction of the goat-antelope genus Myotragus balearicus.

By analyzing overgrowths of minerals on the bridge and the elevation of a coloration band on the bridge, Onac and the team discovered the bridge was constructed nearly 6,000 years ago, more than two-thousand years older than the previous estimation – narrowing the timeline gap between eastern and western Mediterranean settlements.

“This research underscores the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in uncovering historical truths and advancing our understanding of human history,” Onac said.

This study was supported by several National Science Foundation grants and involved extensive fieldwork, including underwater exploration and precise dating techniques. Onac will continue exploring cave systems, some of which have deposits that formed millions of years ago, so he can identify preindustrial sea levels and examine the impact of modern greenhouse warming on sea-level rise.

This research was done in collaboration with Harvard University, the University of New Mexico and the University of Balearic Islands.

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About the University of South Florida

The University of South Florida, a high-impact research university dedicated to student success and committed to community engagement, generates an annual economic impact of more than $6 billion. With campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee, USF serves approximately 50,000 students who represent nearly 150 different countries. U.S. News & World Report has ranked USF as one of the nation’s top 50 public universities for five consecutive years, and this year USF earned its highest ranking ever among all universities public or private. In 2023, USF became the first public university in Florida in nearly 40 years to be invited to join the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of the leading universities in the United States and Canada. Through hundreds of millions of dollars in research activity each year and as one of the top universities in the world for securing new patents, USF is a leader in solving global problems and improving lives. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu.

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View of the submerged stone bridge from Genovesa Cave, Mallorca, Spain. R. Landreth

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Close-up view of the submerged stone bridge from Genovesa Cave, Mallorca, Spain. R. Landreth

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Phreatic overgrowths on speleothems grow exactly at sea level, pictured above the diver in the Galeria de les Delícies in Drac Cave, Mallorca, Spain, offering a more accurate reconstruction of past sea level history. Note the submerged stalagmites that grew when sea level was much lower. M.À. Perelló

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Stone path connecting the entrance in Genovesa Cave, Mallorca, Spain, and its subterranean lake across which the bridge was constructed. B. Onac

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Article Source: University of South Florida news release.

*Submerged bridge constructed at least 5600 years ago indicates early human arrival in Mallorca, Spain, Communications Earth & Environment, 30-Aug-2024.

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