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CELL PRESS—For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data, published July 14 in the journal Current Biology*, suggests that the mysterious hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that might have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

“Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool,” Su says. “It tells us quite definitively that the Red Deer Cave people were modern humans instead of an archaic species, such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, despite their unusual morphological features,” he says.

The researchers compared the genome of these fossils to that of people from around the world. They found that the bones belonged to an individual that was linked deeply to the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans. Combined with previous research data, this finding led the team to propose that some of the southern East Asia people had traveled north along the coastline of present-day eastern China through Japan and reached Siberia tens of thousands of years ago. They then crossed the Bering Strait between the continents of Asia and North America and became the first people to arrive in the New World. 

The journey to making this discovery started over three decades ago, when a group of archaeologists in China discovered a large set of bones in the Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in southern China’s Yunnan Province. Carbon dating showed that the fossils were from the Late Pleistocene about 14,000 years ago, a period of time when modern humans had migrated to many parts of the world.

From the cave, researchers recovered a hominin skull cap with characteristics of both modern humans and archaic humans. For example, the shape of the skull resembled that of Neanderthals, and its brain appeared to be smaller than that of modern humans. As a result, some anthropologists had thought the skull probably belonged to an unknown archaic human species that lived until fairly recently or to a hybrid population of archaic and modern humans.

In 2018, in collaboration with Xueping Ji, an archaeologist at Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Bing Su at Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues successfully extracted ancient DNA from the skull. Genomic sequencing shows that the hominin belonged to an extinct maternal lineage of a group of modern humans whose surviving decedents are now found in East Asia, the Indo-China peninsula, and Southeast Asia islands.

The finding also shows that during the Late Pleistocene, hominins living in southern East Asia had rich genetic and morphologic diversity, the degree of which is greater than that in northern East Asia during the same period. It suggests that early humans who first arrived in eastern Asia had initially settled in the south before some of them moved to the north, Su says.

“It’s an important piece of evidence for understanding early human migration,” he says.

Next, the team plans to sequence more ancient human DNA by using fossils from southern East Asia, especially ones that predated the Red Deer Cave people.

“Such data will not only help us paint a more complete picture of how our ancestors migrate but also contain important information about how humans change their physical appearance by adapting to local environments over time, such as the variations in skin color in response to changes in sunlight exposure,” Su says.

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The lateral view of the skull unearthed from Red Dear Cave. Xueping Ji, CC BY-SA

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The excavation site of Maludong (Red Deer Cave). Xueping Ji, CC BY-SA

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he reproduced portrait of the Red Deer Cave People or Mengziren. Xueping Ji, CC BY-SA

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Article Source: Cell Press news release.

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS, Yunnan provincial “Ten Thousand Talents Plan-Youth Top Talent” project, and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS.

*Current Biology, Zhang et al. “A Late Pleistocene human genome from Southwest China” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)00928-9

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

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA—Georgia State University anthropologist Dr. Jeffrey Glover grew up in metro Atlanta, but speaking to him, it sounds like his heart is in Quintana Roo. This part of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula has been the home base for an expansive research project spanning more than 10 years. His research there with Dr. Dominique Rissolo, a maritime archaeologist at UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute, has uncovered thousands of artifacts that help them shed new light on the ancient Maya people who lived along this stretch of coast.

Glover and Rissolo are working with an interdisciplinary and international team of researchers to uncover new insights about the dynamic interplay between social and natural processes that shaped life for these ancient Maya people over the last 3,000 years. The team has just released a new article in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology summarizing their findings to date*.

“The Proyecto Costa Escondida,” which translates into English as the ‘hidden coast’ project, has focused on the ancient Maya port sites of Vista Alegre and Conil.

“We chose the project name because, the coast is literally hidden behind mangroves. We’ve canoed the coastline and you’ve really got to snake back to get to the site,” Glover said. “But at the same time, and more importantly, this region has been hidden from scholarship—there just hadn’t been a lot of work done there until we arrived.”

To date, the work has produced a wealth of knowledge about maritime Maya civilization since 800 BCE (Before Common Era). Glover, an associate professor of Anthropology, is using an historical ecology framework to better understand the dynamic relationship between humans and the environment at the ancient Maya port sites of Vista Alegre and Conil.

“This is about how people respond to change,” said Dr. John Yellen, program director for archeology at the U.S. National Science Foundation, which helped fund the research. “Through the lens of historical ecology, this broad team of researchers has shown how Maya adapted over centuries to a wide range of environmental changes. This insight into one society’s long-term adaptation to coastal environments provides a fruitful model for studying such interactions across many cultures.”

This region lies along Yucatan’s north coast, some hours from popular tourist attractions like Cancun and well-known archaeological sites like Chichen Itza and Tulum.

“What’s remarkable about our study area is that it represents one of the least developed coastlines on the northern Yucatan Peninsula,” said Rissolo, who was recently featured in a video series about the Maritime Maya. “When trying to understand the ancient maritime cultural landscape of the so-called ‘Riviera Maya,’ for example, your perspective is obscured by all-inclusive resorts, golf courses and theme parks. The shores of the Laguna Holbox, on the other hand, are still largely wild and offer a more unobstructed view into the region’s past.”

The site of Vista Alegre is a small island surrounded by mangroves that lies along the southern shore of the Holbox Lagoon (also called Conil or Yalahau Lagoon). Glover describes Vista Alegre as what was probably once a small, bustling port. Here, they’ve discovered and recorded as many as 40 rock-filled platforms that served as the foundation for perishable pole and thatch buildings. The largest is a pyramidal structure that stands about 13 meters—or nearly 43 feet—tall. Glover believes this probably served as a temple and a lookout where the site’s inhabitants could see if anyone was approaching by sea. Conil, on the other hand, is a much more expansive site located beneath the modern town of Chiquila and was encountered by early Spanish conquistadors who described it as a town of 5,000 houses.

Researchers have identified tens of thousands of artifacts and ecofacts (animal and plant remains that speak to past diets), which have helped improve our understanding of how the landscape has changed over time, how the people lived, and how they dealt with challenges not unlike those faced by people today, such as: rising sea levels and changing political and economic systems. “We are coordinating and synthesizing all the different datasets that we have, which gives us a wider-angle picture,” Glover said.

The project, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), combines traditional archaeological techniques (think digging with a small hand trowel or shovel) with new, high-tech practices for land and sea. Glover says it is a matter of making the most out of the materials at hand.

“Archaeology requires a broad knowledge of the latest scientific techniques mixed with a strong reliance on ‘MacGyvering,’ Glover said. “We often utilize rustic equipment combined with high-tech tools. On any given day, we might find ourselves in a small dinghy borrowed from the local community out of which we are running marine geophysical survey equipment or pounding PVC tubes into the sediments with a homemade fencepost driver.”  

The complex work of marine geoarchaeology was spearheaded by Dr. Beverly Goodman-Tchernov and Dr. Roy Jaijel of the University of Haifa in Israel. The core samples include sediment from the coastline and give researchers a better idea of how the coastline has changed over time by looking at a host of different datasets. In particular, the remains of tiny creatures (foraminifera) are preserved in the cores. These creatures lived in very specific environments, so by finding certain species of foraminifera, the team can reconstruct what the coastal environment was like. Instead of being hidden as it is today, Vista Alegre was most likely once more open and purposely built on a peninsula that jutted into the lagoon making it a more obvious destination for ancient canoe-based traders.

Along with paleo-coastline reconstruction, Dr. Patricia Beddows of Northwestern University has been combing research on the modern hydrological system with oxygen isotope values from the core sediments to study how access to freshwater changed over time as a result of rising sea-levels. The team has to bring all of their drinking water with them to the site, so they are keenly aware what a limiting factor freshwater access could have been for past peoples. One idea is that there were springs near the site in the past that have been effectively drowned by rising sea level. To try to identify freshwater seeps (that are about two degrees Celsius cooler than the ocean water) the team is using a drone equipped with a thermal camera to identify areas that might represent past sources of freshwater.

The team also uncovered tens of thousands of pieces of pottery and hundreds of pieces of obsidian (volcanic glass used to make tools that can be traced to its original geologic location), which reveal these coastal peoples were involved in extensive trade. Glover says the diversity of these artifacts stands out when compared to that of nearby, inland sites. The research team believes the archaeological data reinforce the idea that these coastal peoples had much broader and more cosmopolitan connections because they were part of long-distance, canoe-based trade networks.

These trade connections are most evident about 1,000 years ago when researchers see a major realignment and expansion in international trade associated with the emergence of Chichen Itza as a powerful religious, political, and economic city.

“Strong evidence of this realignment comes from the obsidian data which reveals greater connections to parts of central Mexico, near modern day Mexico City” Glover said.

Many of these artifacts come from poring over the detritus—or garbage—left behind by this past civilization, Glover says this is often an archeologist’s goldmine. Mixed with the pottery and obsidian, the research team found items like spindle whorls, that would have been used to make cotton thread which could have been traded as bolts of cloth or used for fishing lines or nets.

When asked what is missing, Rissolo said “We would love to find an intact ancient Maya trading canoe! It’s possible that such a vessel may be preserved beneath the muddy bottom of the bays surrounding Vista Alegre. We would learn so much about these legendary watercraft.”

The team also discovered an array of natural materials, including more than 20,000 animal bones, from sharks, rays, turtles and marine gastropods (gastropods include animals like conchs and whelks which have been studied by another project leader, Dr. Derek Smith). The team is working closely with Mexican archeologists at the Autonomous University of Yucatan in Merida, Mexico to analyze the animal remains and burial sites that have been discovered.

Research came to a halt during much of the pandemic, but after months of excavations and discovery of so many artifacts, the team is still working to analyze their findings. Glover said they are also in discussions with local leaders in Mexico to create a community museum to highlight the region’s rich cultural and natural history.

Often, when people think about the ancient Maya, they may picture some sudden, cataclysmic event that upended daily life and led to the end of this past, advanced civilization. Glover notes that this could not be further from the truth. Maya peoples are alive and well today in the Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala. While the ‘collapse’ of Maya kingdoms between 800 and 900 CE often gets blown out of proportion in popular media, that does not mean that there were not changes in settlements over time.

“I think it’s a story, not of a sudden or mass exodus, but a shift over time,” Glover explained, “and to understand these shifts we must understand the complex interplay of environmental and cultural factors, which is what our research is revealing.”

The research also highlights the specific lifestyles and adaptive strategies needed to live in a dynamic coastal environment and how this fostered a shared identity amongst coastal Maya communities.

“Our research gives us some idea of the shared challenges that coastal peoples faced – rising sea-levels, diminished freshwater, changing economic and political systems – and they probably leaned from one another, Glover said. “In some ways, I think it might have been easier to hop in your canoe and paddle down the coast to seek help than it was to walk over land.”

“The past, just like the present is not static, and these people were constantly having to make decisions. Sometimes those decisions meant sticking it out, and sometimes they meant re-establishing their lives right down the coast. This new article is a great summation of what we have learned to date. But, you know, there’s always more to be done, and we certainly have plans to continue.” Glover said.

Later this year, the team will start a new project with Dr. Tim Murtha, a colleague at University of Florida, to conduct a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) survey. They will collect detailed elevation data that can reveal the distribution of ancient Maya settlements like house mounds or pyramids. While not focused on the coast, the project will help the team better understand the relationship between inland and coastal communities.

Please visit http://costaescondida.org for more information on the project. 

On this project, Glover and Rissolo teamed with Dr. Patricia Beddows (Northwestern University), Dr. Beverly Goodman (University of Haifa), Dr. Derek Smith (University of Washington), and others under the auspices of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

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Chichen Itza, located in the Yucatan Peninsula. Jarmoluk, Pixabay

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Article Source: GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY news release.

*The Proyecto Costa Escondida: Historical ecology and the study of past coastal landscapes in the Maya area, The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 9-Jun-2022. 10.1080/15564894.2022.2061652 

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Contradicting the idea that cultural transmission was necessary for early humans to make stone tools, a new study* finds that 25 human participants with no knowledge of knapping (stone tool-making) all succeeded in figuring out these techniques on their own. The finding suggests that cumulative culture, in which practical knowledge accumulates across generations, may not have first emerged when humans developed Oldowan stone tool technology 2.6 million years ago. “This finding calls for a reinterpretation of the conclusions from previous knapping studies regarding modern human knappers and regarding premodern hominin knappers, seeing as these earlier studies did not truly test for technique-naïve individual performances,” write William Snyder, Jonathan Reeves, and Claudio Tennie. Cumulative culture is believed to have been instrumental to the adaptive success of humans. But despite its significance, it has not been clear when, over the course of human evolution, cumulative culture first originated. Scientists have suggested that it may have emerged during the time of the Oldowan industry, a stone tool technology that first appeared around 2.6 million years ago. However, previous studies had not tested whether cultural transmission of information is necessary for humans to make stone tools using knapping techniques. To investigate, Snyder et al. tested 28 human participants’ ability to replicate early knapping techniques, 25 of which were later found (through a questionnaire) to have no prior knowledge of knapping techniques. The participants were given access to raw materials for toolmaking and were presented with a puzzle box containing a reward that could be accessed by severing a rope holding a door shut. Beyond this, participants did not receive any information related to stone tools or tool-making techniques. Each had 4 hours to complete the task. Snyder et al. found that all 4 early knapping techniques (passive hammer, bipolar, freehand, and projectile) were individually developed by participants who had not received any culturally transmitted knowledge.

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Image shows the percussion of a glass hemisphere against a granite anvil in what is known as passive hammer technique, one way of creating sharp tools that can be used for cutting. William D. Snyder

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Summary author: Shannon Kelleher

Article Source: AAAS news release.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, N.C.— July 5, 2022 – A team of specialists and students led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Jodi Magness recently returned to Israel’s Lower Galilee to continue unearthing nearly 1,600-year-old mosaics in an ancient Jewish synagogue at Huqoq. Discoveries made this year include the first known depiction of the biblical heroines Deborah and Jael as described in the book of Judges.

The Huqoq Excavation Project is now in its 10th season after recent seasons were paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Project director Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of religious studies in Carolina’s College of Arts & Sciences, and assistant director Dennis Mizzi of the University of Malta focused this season on the southwest part of the synagogue, which was built in the late fourth-early fifth century C.E.

This season, the project team unearthed a part of the synagogue’s floor decorated with a large mosaic panel that is divided into three horizontal strips (called registers), which depicts an episode from the book of Judges chapter 4: The victory of the Israelite forces led by the prophetess and judge Deborah and the military commander Barak over the Canaanite army led by the general Sisera. The Bible relates that after the battle, Sisera took refuge in the tent of a Kenite woman named Jael (Yael), who killed him by driving a tent stake through his temple as he slept. The uppermost register of the newly-discovered Huqoq mosaic shows Deborah under a palm tree, gazing at Barak, who is equipped with a shield. Only a small part of the middle register is preserved, which appears to show Sisera seated. The lowest register depicts Sisera lying deceased on the ground, bleeding from the head as Jael hammers a tent stake through his temple. 

“This is the first depiction of this episode and the first time we’ve seen a depiction of the biblical heroines Deborah and Jael in ancient Jewish art,” Magness said. “Looking at the book of Joshua chapter 19, we can see how the story might have had special resonance for the Jewish community at Huqoq, as it is described as taking place in the same geographical region – the territory of the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulon.”  

Also among the newly discovered mosaics is a fragmentary Hebrew dedicatory inscription inside a wreath, flanked by panels measuring 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide, which show two vases that hold sprouting vines. The vines form medallions that frame four animals eating clusters of grapes: a hare, a fox, a leopard and a wild boar.

A decade of discovery

Mosaics were first discovered at the site in 2012, and work continued each summer until the COVID-19 pandemic paused work after the dig in 2019. The mosaics exposed in the last 10 active seasons cover the synagogue’s aisles and main hall.

Discoveries along the east aisle include:

• Panels depicting Samson and the foxes (as related in Judges 15:4)
• Samson carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulders (Judges 16:3)
• A Hebrew inscription surrounded by human figures, animals and mythological creatures including putti, or cupids
• The first non-biblical story ever found decorating an ancient synagogue — perhaps the legendary meeting between Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest 

The mosaic floor in the north aisle is divided into two rows of panels containing figures and objects accompanied by Hebrew inscriptions identifying them as biblical stories, including:

• One panel depicts two of the spies sent by Moses to explore Canaan carrying a pole with a cluster of grapes, labeled “a pole between two” (from Numbers 13:23)
• Another panel showing a man leading an animal on a rope is accompanied by the inscription “a small child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6)

The mosaics panels in the nave, or main hall, include:

• A portrayal of Noah’s Ark
• The parting of the Red Sea
• A Helios-zodiac cycle
• Jonah being swallowed by three successive fish
• The building of the Tower of Babel

 In 2019, the team uncovered panels in the north aisle that frame figures of animals identified by an Aramaic inscription as the four beasts representing four kingdoms in the book of Daniel, chapter 7. A large panel in the northwest aisle depicts Elim, the spot where the Israelites camped by 12 springs and 70 date palms after departing Egypt and wandering in the wilderness without water (Exodus 15:27).

In the 14th century C.E. (the Mamluk period), the synagogue was rebuilt and expanded in size, perhaps in connection with the rise of a tradition that the Tomb of Habakkuk was located nearby, which became a focal point of late medieval Jewish pilgrimage.

“The 14th century C.E. building appears to be the first Mamluk period synagogue ever discovered in Israel, making it no less important than the earlier building,” said Magness.

Sponsors of the project are UNC-Chapel Hill, Austin College, Baylor University, Brigham Young University and the University of Toronto. Students and staff from Carolina and the consortium schools participated in the dig. Financial support for the 2022 season was also provided by the National Geographic Society, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Kenan Charitable Trust and the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

The mosaics have been removed from the site for conservation, and the excavated areas have been backfilled. Excavations are scheduled to continue in summer 2023. For additional information and updates, visit the project’s website: www.huqoq.org.

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Article Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill news release.

About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. Now in its third century, the University offers 77 bachelor’s, 112 master’s, 66 doctorate and seven professional degree programs through 14 schools, including the College of Arts & Sciences. Every day, faculty, staff and students shape their teaching, research and public service to meet North Carolina’s most pressing needs in every region and all 100 counties. Carolina’s more than 355,786 alumni live in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and 147 countries. More than 189,842 live in North Carolina.

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* finds evidence suggesting that only four to seven of 23 purported fossil Homo specimens from southern Africa belong to the genus Homo, with the others sharing traits with other hominin lineages. Identifying the origin and extent of early Homo species can help uncover the selective pressures that may have led to the speciation of Homo and the evolutionary relationships between early Homo, Australopithecus, and Paranthropus. Clément Zanolli and colleagues examined the internal structure of teeth attributed to Early Pleistocene Homo specimens from the Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Drimolen, and Kromdraai B hominin-bearing sites in southern Africa. Using microcomputed tomography and 3D geometric morphometrics, the authors analyzed taxonomically relevant tooth structures from 23 specimens, finding that only four of the specimens—three from Swartkrans and one from Sterkfontein—were unambiguously Homo specimens. Three additional Sterkfontein samples contained derived Homo features but also retained some Australopithecus-like traits, and the remaining specimens exhibited only Australopithecus or Paranthropus features. The results prompt a re-evaluation of purported Homo specimens, particularly specimens with a geochemical profile that previously suggested a diversity of diet and ecology in Homo species but that are likely properly interpreted as consistent with the profile of Australopithecus. According to the authors, correct taxonomic interpretation of hominin samples could illuminate the development and expansion of Homo species in the Early Pleistocene Epoch.

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The mandible SK 15, previously attributed to Homo erectus, and more likely representing a species of robust australopith. Clément Zanolli

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The enamel-dentine junction of the second maxillary molar of the human specimen SK 27 compared with those of early Homo, Australopithecus, and Paranthropus. Clément Zanolli

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Dental data challenge the ubiquitous presence of Homo in the Cradle of Humankind,” by Clément Zanolli et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 4-Jul-2022. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2111212119

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—An analysis of ancient and modern DNA from Micronesia – a scattering of nearly 2,000 islands in the western Pacific Ocean – has revealed unique migration and population patterns in the region unlike those in the nearby southwest Pacific. The findings indicate that Micronesia was populated by 5 successive migration streams from Southeast Asian islands. Moreover, these early settlements were matrilocal, characterized by a female household-centered social structure where men migrated to find their mates, settling with the female’s family and community. Archaeological evidence suggests that people first arrived and began settling the vast region of Micronesia roughly 3,500 years ago. However, due to sparse genomic data, where these people migrated from isn’t well understood. Despite this, Micronesia’s genetic history is often assumed to be similar to that of the southwest Pacific and Polynesia. Here, Yue-Chen Lui, David Reich and colleagues present an analysis of 164 ancient human genomes from five different archeological sites across Micronesia, representing several prehistoric periods ranging from 2,800-500 years ago, as well as 112 genomes from present-day individuals from the same area. Lui et al. discovered five separate migrations into Micronesia – three likely originating in East Asia, one from Polynesia and another from a Papuan source related to mainland New Guineans. According to the findings, people of the Mariana Archipelago may be the only population in Remote Oceania without Papuan ancestry. While the genomic ancestry of Micronesia differs from that in the southwest Pacific, the authors noted that female-inherited mitochondrial DNA was highly differentiated among Island communities, yet similar within them across many Pacific Islands. These findings indicate that many of the earliest groups to settle the region were matrilocal.

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Micronesian sunset. Pixabay

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Summary author: Walter Beckwith

Article Source: AAAS news release

PLOS—Winemaking practices in coastal Italy during the Roman period involved using native grapes for making wine in jars waterproofed with imported tar pitch, according to a study* published June 29, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Louise Chassouant of Avignon University and colleagues.

The authors examined three Roman period amphorae – wine jars – from a seabed deposit near the modern harbor of San Felice Circeo, Italy, about 90 km southeast of Rome. A combination of chemical markers, plant tissue residue, and pollen provided evidence of grape derivatives and pine within the jars. The evidence suggests the amphorae were used in both red and white winemaking processes, while the pine was used to create tar for waterproofing the jars and perhaps also flavoring the wine, as has been observed at similar archaeological sites.

The grapevine pollen matches wild species from the area, suggesting these winemakers were using local plants, although it remains unclear whether these were domesticated at the time. The pine tar, on the other hand, is non-local, and was likely imported from Calabria or Sicily based on other historical sources.

The authors emphasize the benefit of this multidisciplinary approach to characterize cultural practices from archaeological artifacts. In this case, the identification of plant remains, chemical analysis, historical and archaeological records, amphorae design, and previous findings all contributed to the conclusions of this analysis, providing an example of methodology for interpreting a history beyond the artifacts which would not be possible using a single technique.

The authors add: “If there was a message to be retained from the reading of this article, it would be related to the multidisciplinary methodology to be applied. Indeed, by using different approaches to unravel the content and nature of the coating layer of Roman amphorae, we have pushed the conclusion further in the understanding of ancient practices than it would have been with a single approach.”

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From the amphorae to understanding the content; this multi-analytical analysis relied on archaeobotany and molecular identification. Louise Chassouant, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Roman amphorae. Rob Mitchell, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Dating of a cave infill in South Africa that has yielded numerous Australopithecus fossils reveals that the fossils are older than previously thought and that the South African individuals were contemporaneous with Australopithecus afarensis in East Africa. Sterkfontein cave in South Africa is a treasure trove of Australopithecus fossils, often thought to be younger than A. afarensis, which lived in East Africa. Darryl E. Granger and colleagues calculated the ages of the Sterkfontein rocks in which the fossils are found by measuring the amounts of aluminum-26 and beryllium-10 isotopes in rocks containing quartz. The rare isotopes were formed by high-energy cosmic rays while the rocks were at the surface and decayed after they were buried in the cave with the fossils. The cosmogenic isotopes yielded an age of around 3.4-3.7 million years, older than the previously determined age of 2.1-2.6-million-years. The previous age was derived from calcite flowstones, which were intrusions into the fossil-bearing formation, leading to an underestimation of the fossils’ age. According to the authors, the revised age places South African Australopithecus as a contemporary of A. afarensis and other early Australopithecus species, expanding the diversity of hominin morphologies and habitats in the mid-Pliocene Epoch.

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Female Australopithecus Sts 71, discovered in 1947 from Member 4 at Sterkfontein, South Africa and newly dated to 3.4-3.6 million years. Jason L. Heaton, Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, Alabama

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‘Mrs. Ples’ (Sts 5), discovered at Sterkfontein, South Africa in 1947, now shown to be contemporaneous with Lucy’s species in East Africa. Jason L. Heaton, Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, Alabama

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Australopithecus at Sterkfontein, South Africa,” by Darryl E. Granger et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27-Jun-2022. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2123516119

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FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY—With some 7,000 islands and cays and a 7,000-year history of human habitation, the Caribbean Sea is practically synonymous with maritime travel. The very word “canoe” is derived from the term “kana:wa,” used by the Indigenous Arawakans of the Caribbean to describe their dugout vessels.

Without clear road signs to indicate where native islanders were traveling, however, the task of reconstructing ancient trade routes relies on subtle clues locked away in the archaeological record. Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History recently turned to pottery to tease apart the navigational history of the Caribbean, analyzing the composition of 96 fired clay fragments across 11 islands.

The study*, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, is the broadest of its kind yet conducted in the Greater Antilles and marks the first time that pottery artifacts from the Lucayan Islands — The Bahamas plus the Turks and Caicos Islands — have been analyzed to determine their elemental composition and origin.

“Our methods mark a big improvement over other studies that mostly look at a single site or single island, where you might see differences but not know what it means because you’re looking at the results in isolation,” said co-author Lindsay Bloch, a courtesy faculty member with the Florida Museum’s Ceramic Technology Lab.

People have lived on the Caribbean islands on and off for more than 7,000 years, migrating in waves from Central and South America. As early as 800 B.C., new groups arrived from Venezuela and established a trading network among islands, which they used to exchange food, tools and jewelry. But the most common artifacts that survived to the present are the pottery vessels these objects were carried in.

“Most materials don’t preserve well in the Caribbean because of the warm, humid environment, but pottery is durable, so it ends up being one of the most common things we find,” said lead author Emily Kracht, a collections assistant in the Ceramic Technology Lab.

Over the ensuing millennia, different Caribbean cultures developed unique styles and techniques for constructing their pottery. Some artifacts are simple and unadorned, while others are highly decorated, with a lattice of incised lines, punctations, raised ridges and flared rims.

Many studies have relied almost entirely on similarities in style to distinguish between different cultures and infer their movements. But, as Bloch explains, this method has often left more questions than answers and excludes material with potentially valuable information.

“The vast majority of pottery that we find anywhere in the world is going to be undecorated. It’s going to be things used for cooking or storage, which are typically plain and often get ignored because they’re seen as generic,” she said.

Rather than studying the minutiae of varying styles, the researchers focused instead on what the pottery was made of. Using a laser to etch microscopic lines into their samples, the researchers determined the exact amounts and identities of each element in the clay used to make the pottery. Their final analysis included more than seven decades’ worth of archaeological collections that span over 1,000 years of Indigenous Caribbean history.

“One of the advantages of elemental analysis is that we’re explicitly looking for differences, which allows us to see where a pot was made and compare that to where it ended up,” Bloch said.

Such detailed comparisons are possible due to the complexity of the Caribbean’s underlying geology. The largest islands in the archipelago likely got their start as an ancient underwater plateau in the Pacific Ocean. After the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea, the Caribbean plate drifted east in a flurry of volcanic eruptions that elevated the plateau above sea level before ultimately reaching its current position in the Atlantic.

Millions of years of weathering reduced these volcanic outcrops into fine-grained clays with differing concentrations of elements like copper, nickel, chromium and antimony. These differences mean that even the smallest Caribbean pottery sherd bears the elemental signature of the region it was made in.

The results of researchers’ comparative analysis aren’t what might be expected by simply looking at a map. The Lucayan Islands were initially used only temporarily for harvesting resources, and the people who traveled to them would have set sail from the larger islands to the south that supported permanent population centers.

Cuba might initially seem like it’s the perfect staging ground for these operations, being by far the largest Caribbean island and the closest to The Bahamas. While people did make the trek across open water from Cuba, the results of the study indicate the Caribbean’s cultural hub was instead centered on the northwest coast of Hispaniola, from which people imported and exported goods for hundreds of years.

“At least some of the pottery would have been used to ferry goods out to these islands, and people would potentially carry back a variety of marine resources,” Bloch said.

People eventually struck up permanent settlements in The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos, becoming collectively known as the Lucayans, or the People of the Islands. They began making their own pottery from claylike soils deposited by African dust plumes blown in from the Saharan Desert, but the results didn’t quite hold up to the pottery from Hispaniola — literally. Lucayan pottery, called Palmetto Ware, is most often thick and soft and crumbles over time due to the poor quality of the grainy Saharan soil.

Thus, up until the arrival of the Spanish, Hispaniola remained the main trading partner and exporter of pottery to the Lucayan Islands.

“We knew that the Lucayans were related to people in Hispaniola, and this study shows their enduring relationship over hundreds of years through pottery,” Kracht said.  

William Keegan of the Florida Museum of Natural History is also a co-author on the study.

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Ancient pottery holds clues to the past lives, traditions, and movements of Indigenous people from the Caribbean Islands. Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace

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Indigenous Caribbean islanders developed elaborate and ornate pottery styles that varied across time and between cultures. Photo by Lindsay Bloch

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Article Source: FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY news release.

*Production of Greater Antillean pottery and its exchange to the Lucayan Islands: A compositional study, Journal of Archaeological Science, 17-May-2022. 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103469

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION—WASHINGTON — At the time of Spanish conquest in 1521, the Aztec’s capital Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, was already one of the largest, most populous cities in the world, managing complex problems of urban development, flooding and water supply.

The city’s ongoing struggles to balance these same issues, 500 years later,  are a case study in environmental adaption with lessons for contemporary decision makers and the future of megacities, according to Beth Tellman, a human-environmental geographer at the University of Arizona.

“Can megacities adapt to climate change, are they going to collapse, or are we going to figure it out? I think looking at Mexico City is a really interesting way to answer that question because it’s a city that’s been figuring it out for 700 years and that’s had consequences. Some people have really gained from that adaptation and other people have lost out,” Tellman said.

One of the essential lessons from revisiting and synthesizing the many existing records of the city’s history, Tellman argues, is technological innovation alone can’t solve water problems that have social and political dimensions.

“If a new diversion protects a community from flood, but drowns another community in the diversion path, is it a success? Any time you build a levy, it’s going to move water faster downstream or to the other side. We need to be thinking more about: Whose adaptation is this? Do we actually have all affected people at the table?”

Tellman will speak today about her research on how urban managers mitigate — and create — vulnerability to environmental hazards in Mexico City and other cities around the world in at 5:00 pm EDT session at the Frontiers in Hydrology meeting, convening this week in San Juan, Puerto Rico and online.

The Frontiers in Hydrology meeting is a partnership between AGU and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) designed to inspire new ideas and solutions for the future of water by bringing together engineers, hydrologists, social scientists, urban planners, atmospheric scientists and affiliated communities from around the world that work on all aspects of water issues.

Free media registration is available for online and in-person attendance at the meeting.

Complex trade-offs

“As cities grow and get more complex, managing risks in a separate way is a strategy that does not work and ignoring that reality makes it worse, because instead of anticipated consequences of adaptation decisions, you have these unanticipated consequences,” Tellman said.

Tenochtitlán, and later Mexico City, like many modern cities, started out managing water supply, flooding and urban development separately. But as the city grew, the three adaptation pathways intersected in complex ways, creating complicated risk trade-offs.

The city, built on an island in saline Lake Texcoco, controlled flooding through a sophisticated network of dikes, levees and canals. Aqueducts, sluices and other infrastructure provided fresh water and kept it separated from the salty lake water. But aqueducts contributed to destructive flooding, and dikes to prevent flooding in one location channeled floodwaters into others.

After conquest destroyed much of the original city infrastructure, the Spanish chose to deal with flooding by draining the lake, which created new problems. Now a megacity of 20 million, Mexico City continues to battle flooding, while simultaneously struggling with water shortages. Groundwater pumping to supply fresh water has caused the city to sink, breaking drains, which causes more flooding. Both problems hit neighborhoods unevenly, with the greatest burden falling on low-income areas, Tellman said. Technological solutions like rainwater capture do not reach people with greatest need, because of political barriers to providing city improvements to undocumented residents.

“Vulnerability cannot be eliminated,” Tellman said. “It’s transferred over time or space or to different populations, and what that means is that we should not have the engineering hubris to say we’re going to eliminate vulnerability. What we should instead do is democratically negotiate the consequences of adaptation. It’s not just climate adaptation, but climate justice.”

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A model of ancient Tenochtitlan, which can be viewed in Mexico City. Branz, Pixabay

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Article Source: AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION news release

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AGU (www.agu.org) supports 125,000 enthusiasts to experts worldwide in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, we advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

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TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY—A joint study by researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University unraveled the earliest evidence for domestication of a fruit tree. The researchers analyzed remnants of charcoal from the Chalcolithic site of Tel Zaf in the Jordan Valley and determined that they came from olive trees. Since the olive did not grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, this means that the inhabitants planted the tree intentionally about 7,000 years ago.

The groundbreaking study was led by Dr. Dafna Langgut of the  Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology & Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University. The charcoal remnants were found in the archaeological excavation directed by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University. The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports from the publishers of Nature.

Dr. Langgut: “I am the head of the Laboratory of Archaeobotany & Ancient Environments, which specializes in microscopic identification of plant remains. Trees, even when burned down to charcoal, can be identified by their anatomic structure. Wood was the ‘plastic’of the ancient world. It was used for construction, for making tools and furniture, and as a source of energy. That’s why identifying tree remnants found at archaeological sites, such as charcoal from hearths, is a key to understanding what kinds of trees grew in the natural environment at the time, and when humans began to cultivate fruit trees.”

In her lab, Dr. Langgut identified the charcoal from Tel Zaf as belonging to olive and fig trees. “Olive trees grow in the wild in the land of Israel, but they do not grow in the Jordan Valley,” she says. “This means that someone brought them there intentionally – took the knowledge and the plant itself to a place that is outside its natural habitat. In archaeobotany, this is considered indisputable proof of domestication, which means that we have here the earliest evidence of the olive’s domestication anywhere in the world. I also identified many remnants of young fig branches. The fig tree did grow naturally in the Jordan Valley, but its branches had little value as either firewood or raw materials for tools or furniture, so people had no reason to gather large quantities and bring them to the village. Apparently, these fig branches resulted from pruning, a method still used today to increase the yield of fruit trees.”

The tree remnants examined by Dr. Langgut were collected by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University, who headed the dig at Tel Zaf. Prof. Garfinkel: “Tel Zaf was a large prehistoric village in the middle Jordan Valley south of Beit She’an, inhabited between 7,200 and 6,700 years ago. Large houses with courtyards were discovered at the site, each with several granaries for storing crops. Storage capacities were up to 20 times greater than any single family’s calorie consumption, so clearly these were caches for storing great wealth. The wealth of the village was manifested in the production of elaborate pottery, painted with remarkable skill. In addition, we found articles brought from afar: pottery of the Ubaid culture from Mesopotamia, obsidian from Anatolia, a copper awl from the Caucasus, and more.”

Dr. Langgut and Prof. Garfinkel were not surprised to discover that the inhabitants of Tel Zaf were the first in the world to intentionally grow olive and fig groves, since growing fruit trees is evidence of luxury, and this site is known to have been exceptionally wealthy.

Dr. Langgut: “The domestication of fruit trees is a process that takes many years, and therefore befits a society of plenty, rather than one that struggles to survive. Trees give fruit only 3-4 years after being planted. Since groves of fruit trees require a substantial initial investment, and then live on for a long time, they have great economic and social significance in terms of owning land and bequeathing it to future generations – procedures suggesting the beginnings of a complex society. Moreover, it’s quite possible that the residents of Tel Zaf traded in products derived from the fruit trees, such as olives, olive oil, and dried figs, which have a long shelf life. Such products may have enabled long-distance trade that led to the accumulation of material wealth, and possibly even taxation – initial steps in turning the locals into a society with a socio-economic hierarchy supported by an administrative system.”

Dr. Langgut concludes: “At the Tel Zaf archaeological site we found the first evidence in the world for the domestication of fruit trees, alongside some of the earliest stamps – suggesting the beginnings of administrative procedures. As a whole, the findings indicate wealth, and early steps toward the formation of a complex multilevel society, with the class of farmers supplemented by classes of clerks and merchants.”

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Rectangular room at Chalcolithic Tel Tsaf. Prof. Yosef Garfinkel

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7,000 years-old hearth remains at the village of Tel Tsaf. Prof. Yosef Garfinkel

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Article Source: TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY news release

*7000-year-old evidence of fruit tree cultivation in the Jordan Valley, Israel, Scientific Reports, 6-May-2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10743-6

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Archaeologists working with HS2, a major high-speed railway development project in the UK, have uncovered a significant Anglo-Saxon burial site in Wendover, Buckinghamshire. Almost three quarters of the graves contained high quality grave goods, suggesting the site was the final resting place of a wealthy Anglo-Saxon community.

The items uncovered are dated to the 5^th and 6^th century, a period in which there are gaps in the historical and archaeological record. The discoveries are expected to contribute significantly to the understanding of how people in Anglo-Saxon Britain lived their lives, and what culture and society was like at that time.

The team of around 30 field archaeologists from INFRA JV, working on behalf of HS2’s Enabling Works Contractor, Fusion JV, completed the field work in 2021, at a site which they knew was in use over a long period of time. Evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman activity was all discovered but it was the presence of the Anglo-Saxon burial ground that stood out most for the archaeologists working on the site. The site contained 138 graves, with 141 inhumation burials and 5 cremation burials – one of the largest Anglo-Saxon burial grounds ever uncovered in Britain.

Speaking about the incredible discoveries filmed for his streaming service History Hit, Dan Snow, Historian and Presenter, said:

“1500 years ago people in Britain stopped writing things down. Traditionally this period has been dismissed as a Dark Age. But archaeology has filled the gaps. By studying the things our forebears have left in the ground, their glass, jewelry, weapons and even their bodies, we can build a rich picture of a dynamic and vital period of our history. This stunning set of discoveries on the HS2 route can tell us more about how our predecessors lived, fought and ultimately died. It is one of the best and most revealing post-Roman sites in the country and it was thrilling to join the team as they uncovered their wonderful finds.“

Many of the burials were found with two brooches on their collarbone, indicating that they would have been holding up garments such as a cloak, or a peplos – a long garment worn by women with shoulder brooches. The brooches vary in style – some were disk brooches made with gilt, or coin brooches made of silver. A pair of small square-headed brooches were excavated – a miniature form of the great square-headed brooch, such as the famous Chessell Down Brooch on display at the British Museum.

Some of the items uncovered could have been imported from across Europe, such as amber beads, and various metals and raw materials used to make the artifacts. Two glass cone beakers were uncovered intact, which are similar to vessels made in Northern France, although they were also making them in England at the time. The beakers, which would have been used for drinking liquids such as wine, may suggest the people there had access to fine beverages from abroad. The vessels have decorative trails in the glass and are comparable to the “Kempston” type cone beaker, uncovered in Bedfordshire in 1891, with one currently on display in the British Museum.

One individual, a female, was discovered with a vast array of goods, the quality of which suggest that she was of high-status amongst the buried population at the site. She was buried with a complete ornate glass bowl made of pale green glass, thought to be made around the turn of the 5^th century, so it may have been an heirloom from the Roman era. Other burial items included multiple rings made of copper alloy, a silver ‘zoomorphic’ ring, brooches, discs, iron belt fittings and objects made of ivory. In total, over 2200 personal burial artifacts were discovered, including 2000 beads, 89 brooches, 40 buckles, 52 knives, 15 spearheads, and 7 shield bosses.

Talking about the excavations, Mike Court, Lead Archaeologist for HS2 Ltd, said:

“As we near the end of our archaeology field work on Phase One of HS2, we are just at the beginning of our understanding of how the discoveries will improve our historical knowledge of Britain.

“The archaeological finds made at this site in Wendover will not only be of interest to the local community but are of national importance, providing a valuable insight into life in Anglo-Saxon Britain.”

Whilst the majority of burials were inhumations, many were buried with vessels which were similar in style to cremation urns but were placed in graves as accessories. One of these had a unique style with horns protruding out, and distinctive “hot cross bun’ stamps – a fairly common Anglo-Saxon motif.

Dr Rachel Wood, Lead Archaeologist for Fusion JV, said:

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Site of the HS2 excavation of an Anglo Saxon burial ground in Wendover where 141 burials were uncovered. Courtesy HS2

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Iron and wood bucket with bits of wood that survived, fused to the metalwork. Courtesy HS2

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A tubular rimmed glass bowl found in a burial thought to be made around the turn of the 5th century and could have been an heirloom from the Roman era. Courtesy HS2

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A 6th century decorative footed pedestal bückelurn with three horns, decorated with cross stamps, found in a grave in Buckinghamshire. There is a twin item that is currently on display in Salisbury Museum that is so similar, experts believe that they may be made by the same potter. Courtesy HS2

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Decorated glass beads uncovered in an Anglo Saxon burial during HS2 archaeological excavations in Wendover. Over 2000 beads were uncovered in the excavation. Courtesy HS2

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A silver “zoomorphic” ring, date uncertain, discovered in an Anglo Saxon burial in Wendover. Courtesy HS2

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A 5th or 6th century copper alloy toiletry set, with ear wax cleaning spoon, alongside a brooch, found in an Anglo Saxon burial of a likely female between 18-24 years old. Courtesy HS2

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A skeleton uncovered in an Anglo Saxon burial ground in Wendover, in a grave containing multiple grave goods. Courtesy HS2

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Article Source: Edited from a HS2 news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—In 1347, plague first entered the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from the territories of the Golden Horde in the Black Sea. The disease then disseminated across Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa claiming up to 60 percent of the population in a large-scale outbreak known as the Black Death. This first wave further extended into a 500-year-long pandemic, the so-called Second Plague Pandemic, which lasted until the early 19th century.

The origins of the Second Plague Pandemic have long been debated. One of the most popular theories has supported its source in East Asia, specifically in China. To the contrary, the only so-far available archaeological findings come from Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan. These findings show that an epidemic devastated a local trading community in the years 1338 and 1339. Specifically, excavations that took place almost 140 years ago revealed tombstones indicating that individuals died in those years of an unknown epidemic or “pestilence”. Since their first discovery, the tombstones inscribed in Syriac language, have been a cornerstone of controversy among scholars regarding their relevance to the Black Death of Europe.

In this study*, an international team of researchers analyzed ancient DNA from human remains as well as historical and archaeological data from two sites that were found to contain “pestilence” inscriptions. The team’s first results were very encouraging, as DNA from the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, was identified in individuals with the year 1338 inscribed on their tombstones. “We could finally show that the epidemic mentioned on the tombstones was indeed caused by plague”, says Phil Slavin, one of the senior authors of the study and historian at the University of Sterling, UK.

Researchers found the Black Death’s source strain

But could this have been the origin of the Black Death? Researchers have previously associated the Black Death’s initiation with a massive diversification of plague strains, a so-called Big Bang event of plague diversity. But the exact date of this event could not be precisely estimated, and was thought to have happened sometime between the 10^th and 14^th centuries. The team now pieced together complete ancient plague genomes from the sites in Kyrgyzstan and investigated how they might relate with this Big Bang event. “We found that the ancient strains from Kyrgyzstan are positioned exactly at the node of this massive diversification event. In other words, we found the Black Death’s source strain and we even know its exact date [meaning the year 1338]”, says Maria Spyrou, lead author and researcher at the University of Tübingen.

But where did this strain come from? Did it evolve locally or did it spread in this region from elsewhere? Plague is not a disease of humans; the bacterium survives within wild rodent populations across the world, in so-called plague reservoirs. Hence, the ancient Central Asian strain that caused the 1338-1339 epidemic around Lake Issyk Kul must have come from one such reservoir. “We found that modern strains most closely related to the ancient strain are today found in plague reservoirs around the Tian Shan mountains, so very close to where the ancient strain was found. This points to an origin of Black Death’s ancestor in Central Asia”, explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The study demonstrates how investigations of well-defined archaeological contexts, and close collaborations among historians, archaeologists and geneticists can resolve big mysteries of our past, such as the infamous Black Death’s origins, with unprecedented precision.

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View of the Tian Shan mountains. Studying ancient plague genomes, researchers traced the origins of the Black Death to Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan. © Lyazzat Musralina

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Excavation of the Kara-Djigach site, in the Chu-Valley of Kyrgyzstan within the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains. This excavation was carried out between the years 1885 and 1892. © A.S. Leybin, August 1886

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Plague inscription from the Chu-Valley region in Kyrgyzstan. The inscription is translated as follows: “In the Year 1649 [= 1338 CE], and it was the Year of the tiger, in Turkic [language] “Bars”. This is the tomb of the believer Sanmaq. [He] died of pestilence”. © A.S. Leybin, August 1886

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers uncover evidence of fire at a 1-million-year-old archaeological site in Israel. Identification of fire at early hominin sites typically relies on visual assessments of physical alterations associated with fire. Filipe Natalio and colleagues combined spectroscopic techniques and machine learning to estimate the heat exposure of flint tools and faunal remains lacking visual indications of heat exposure from Evron Quarry, Israel, a Lower Paleolithic site dated to 1,000,000 to 800,000 years ago. The authors assessed the heat exposure of 26 flint tools using UV Raman spectroscopy and a deep learning model trained on modern flint materials heated to known temperatures. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy revealed the heat exposure of 87 faunal remains and associated sediments. The authors found that the flint tools were heated to a wide range of temperatures with no spatial patterning associated with temperature variability. The authors identified 13 tusk fragments that had been heated to temperatures above 600 °C. However, the sediments associated with the tusk fragments had not experienced temperatures above 400 °C. The authors suggest that hominin fire use is a possible explanation for the observed patterns of heat exposure. According to the authors, the methods could be used to identify nonvisual evidence of fire use at other Lower Paleolithic sites.

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Above and below: Stone tools from Evron Quarry, Israel. Filipe Natalio and Zane Stepka

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya),” by Zane Stepka, Ido Azuri, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Michael Chazan, and Filipe Natalio.

AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM—In a world first, a team of international scientists led by Australian Museum and University of Sydney archaeologist, Dr Amy Mosig Way have revealed that early humans across southern Africa made a particular type of stone tool – the backed artifact- in the same shape. Published in Scientific Reports the study clearly shows that the populations must have been in contact with each other.

The researchers reported that the Howiesons Poort backed artifacts, also known as the ‘stone Swiss Army knife’ of prehistory, were made to a similar template across great distances and multiple biomes. These artifacts were produced in enormous numbers across southern Africa at this time, roughly 65-60 thousand years ago.

Lead author Dr Way explained that these tools were made in many different shapes across the world and because the people across southern Africa all chose to make the tools look the same it indicates they must have been sharing information and communicating with each other, ie they were socially connected.

“People have walked out of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, and we have evidence for early Homo sapiens in Greece and the Levant from around 200 thousand years ago. But these earlier exits were overprinted by the big exit around 60-70 thousand years ago, which involved the ancestors of all modern people who live outside of Africa today,” Dr Way said.

“Why was this exodus so successful where the earlier excursions were not? The main theory is that social networks were stronger at this time.  This analysis shows for the first time that these social connections were in place in southern Africa just before the big exodus,” Dr Way added.

Senior Research Associate, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University, Dr Paloma de la Peña, who studies the cultural behavior of the early Homo sapiens, said the backed artifact has been associated with many different domestic activities such as cutting and scraping, and hunting activities (they were sometimes part of projectiles).

“While the making of the stone tool was not particularly difficult, the hafting of the stone to the handle through the use of glue and adhesives was hard, which highlights that they were sharing and communicating complex information with each other,” Dr de la Peña explained.                         

“What was also striking was that the abundance of tools made in the same shape coincided with great changes in the climatic conditions. We believe that this is a social response to the changing environment across southern Africa,” Dr de la Pena added.

Chief Scientist, Australian Museum, Professor Kristofer Helgen said that like us, ancient humans relied on cooperation and social networking, and this research provides early dated observation of this behavior.

“Examining why early human populations were successful is critical to understanding our evolutionary path. This research provides new insights into our understanding of those social networks and how they contributed to the expansion of modern humans across Eurasia,” Professor Helgen said.                                                                                    

Dr Way said another fascinating fact about this particular tool – the backed artifact – is that it was made independently by many different groups of people across the world, including here in Australia.

“I compared some of the Australian shapes from five thousand years ago with the African shapes 65 thousand years ago (as they can’t possibly be related), to show the southern African tools all cluster within a much larger range of possible shapes,” Dr Way said.

 In southern Africa, previous research by Dr de la Peña has shown that backed artifacts were used as barbs in hunting technology. In Australia, Australian Museum Senior Fellow, archaeologist, Dr Val Attenbrow has shown that in addition to forming armatures in spears, these artifacts were also used for a variety of functions and purposes, such as working bone and hide and drilling and shaping wooden objects.

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Dr Paloma de la Pena. Dr Paloma de la Pena

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Backed piece sibudu. Dr Paloma de la Pena

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Fig 1 map and objects (c) from published study. Dr Paloma de la Pena. Dr Paloma de la Pena

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Article Source: Australian Museum news release.

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PLOS—A cave in southern Spain was used by ancient humans as a canvas for artwork and as a burial place for over 50,000 years, according to a study published June 1, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by José Ramos-Muñoz of the University of Cadiz, Spain, and colleagues.

Cueva de Ardales, a cave in Málaga, Spain, is famous for containing over 1,000 paintings and engravings made by prehistoric people, as well as artifacts and human remains. However, the nature of human usage of this cave has not been well-understood. In this study, the authors present the results of the first excavations in this cave, which shed light on the history of human culture in the Iberian Peninsula.

A combination of radiometric dating and analysis of remains and artifacts within the cave provide evidence that the site’s first occupants were likely Neanderthals over 65,000 years ago. Modern humans arrived later, around 35,000 years ago, and used the cave sporadically until as recently as the beginning of the Copper Age. The oldest rock art in the cave consists of abstract signs such as dots, finger tips, and hand-stencils created with red pigment, while later artwork depicts figurative paintings such as animals. Human remains indicate the use of the cave as a burial place in the Holocene, but evidence of domestic activities is extremely poor, suggesting humans were not living in the cave.

These results confirm the importance of Cueva de Ardales as a site of high symbolic value. This site provides an incredible history of human activity in Spain, and along with similar sites – there are more than 30 other caves in the region with similar paintings – makes the Iberian Peninsula a key locality for investigating the deep history of European culture.

The authors add: “Our research presents a well-stratified series of more than 50 radiometric dates in Cueva de Ardales that confirm the antiquity of Palaeolithic art from over 58,000 years ago. It also confirms that the cave was a place of special activities linked to art, as numerous fragments of ochre were discovered in the Middle Palaeolithic levels.”

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Excavation area in Cueva de Ardales with evidence from the Middle Palaeolithic period. Ramos-Muñoz et al., CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Lithics from the Middle Paleolithic layers of zone 3. A: Quartzite core or heavy duty tool, B: Blade, C: Levallois flake, D: Sidescraper. Ramos-Muñoz et al., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Ramos-Muñoz J, Cantalejo P, Blumenröther J, Bolin V, Otto T, Rotgänger M, et al. (2022) The nature and chronology of human occupation at the Galerías Bajas, from Cueva de Ardales, Malaga, Spain. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0266788. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266788

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SCIENTIFIC REPORTS—The first successfully sequenced human genome from an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE is presented this week in a study published in Scientific Reports. Prior to this, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from Pompeiian human and animal remains had been sequenced.

Gabriele Scorrano and colleagues examined the remains of two individuals who were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii and extracted their DNA. The shape, structure, and length of the skeletons indicated that one set of remains belonged to a male who was aged between 35 and 40 years at the time of his death, while the other set of remains belonged to a female aged over 50 years old. Although the authors were able to extract and sequence ancient DNA from both individuals, they were only able to sequence the entire genome from the male’s remains due to gaps in the sequences obtained from the female’s remains.

Comparisons of the male individual’s DNA with DNA obtained from 1,030 other ancient and 471 modern western Eurasian individuals suggested that his DNA shared the most similarities with modern central Italians and other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. However, analyses of the male individual’s mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA also identified groups of genes that are commonly found in those from the island of Sardinia, but not among other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. This suggests that there may have been high levels of genetic diversity across the Italian Peninsula during this time.

Additional analyses of the male individual’s skeleton and DNA identified lesions in one of the vertebrae and DNA sequences that are commonly found in Mycobacterium, the group of bacteria that the tuberculosis-causing bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis belongs to. This suggests that the individual may have been affected by tuberculosis prior to his death.

The authors speculate that it may have been possible to successfully recover ancient DNA from the male individual’s remains as pyroclastic materials released during the eruption may have provided protection from DNA-degrading environmental factors, such as atmospheric oxygen. The findings demonstrate the possibility to retrieve ancient DNA from Pompeiian human remains and provide further insight into the genetic history and lives of this population, they add.

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Example of Pompeii victim discovered through plaster casting during excavations. Wingrid1979, Pixabay

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Article Source: Scientific Reports news release.

*Bioarchaeological and palaeogenomic portrait of two Pompeians that died during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, Scientific Reports, 26-May-2022. 

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