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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—The ancestry of modern-day Japanese populations can be traced back to 3 ancient cultures, rather than 2, according to an analysis of 12 newly sequenced ancient Japanese genomes spanning 8,000 years and 5 previously published genomes. The findings* support that the early hunter-gatherer Jomon population were the archipelago’s sole inhabitants until about 3,000 years ago, when Yayoi migrants from mainland China and Korea moved to the south of Japan, bringing wet-rice agriculture. Later, Kofun migrants, which may have had predominately Han Chinese ancestry, arrived in Japan, marking a period of affinity with Korea and China demonstrated by imports including mirrors, coins, and raw materials for iron production. While previous ancient DNA research has suggested modern Japanese populations have dual Jomon and Yayoi origins, the demographic origins and impact of the archipelago’s agricultural transition have remained largely unknown. To investigate, Niall P. Cooke and colleagues sequenced 12 ancient Japanese genomes from both pre- and post-farming periods and analyzed 5 previously published prehistoric Japanese genomes, finding that all of the Jomon individuals belonged to mitochondrial haplogroups (a group of alleles inherited together from one parent) that are rare outside Japan today, while the Kofun individuals belonged to mitochondrial haplogroups common throughout present-day East Asia. While the spread of agriculture in other regions has often involved one population replacing another, Cooke et al. found genetic evidence of almost equal genetic contributions from indigenous Jomon individuals and new immigrants during the Yayoi period, suggesting Japan’s agricultural transition involved assimilation instead. Furthermore, the researchers found that Kofun period individuals and modern Japanese people are almost genetically indistinguishable, suggesting that the genetic makeup of Japanese populations has remained relatively stable over the past 1,400 years.

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Kamikuroiwa rock shelter – this site is located in Kumakogen, Kamiukena District, Ehime Prefecture of Shikoku, where the oldest Jomon individual sequenced in this study was found. Nakagome Lab

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Jomon pottery from the Hirajo shell midden (Late Jomon period) and a skull from which ancient DNA was extracted. Nakagome Lab

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Jomon potteries excavated from the Odake shell midden (Early Jomon). A buried skeleton in this site had a specific burial practice in which the body was placed in a flexed position with bent legs. Nakagome Lab

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

*Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations, Science Advances, 17-Sep-2021.  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abh2419

Summary author: Shannon Kelleher

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The invention of clothing, and the development of the tools needed to create it, are milestones in the story of humanity. Not only are they indicative of strides in cultural and cognitive evolution, archaeologists also believe they were essential in enabling early humans to expand their niche from Pleistocene Africa into new environments with new ecological challenges. However, as furs and other organic materials used to make clothing are unlikely to be preserved in the archaeological record, the origin of clothing is still poorly understood. The current study*, which reports on a worked bone assemblage found near the Atlantic Coast of Morocco, provides strong evidence for the manufacture of clothing as far back as 120,000 years ago.

As part of her research with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and the ‘Lise Meitner’ Pan-African Evolution research group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), Dr. Emily Hallett was studying the vertebrate remains from Contrebandiers Cave deposits dating from 120,000 to 90,000 years ago. 

“This was a critical time period and location for the early members of our species,” says Hallett, “and I was primarily interested in reconstructing the diet and habitat niche of the people who used this cave.”

Among the roughly 12,000 bone fragments, Hallett found more than 60 animal bones that had been shaped by humans for use as tools. At the same time, Hallett identified a pattern of cut marks on the carnivore bones suggesting that, rather than processing them for meat, the occupants of Contrebandiers Cave were skinning them for fur.

Hallett compared the tools she identified with others in the archaeological record and found that they had the same shapes and use marks as leather working tools described by other researchers,

“The combination of carnivore bones with skinning marks and bone tools likely used for fur processing provide highly suggestive proxy evidence for the earliest clothing in the archaeological record,” says Hallett, “but given the level of specialization in this assemblage, these tools are likely part of a larger tradition with earlier examples that haven’t yet been found.”

Also hidden amongst the bone fragments was the tip of a tooth from a whale or dolphin bearing marks consistent with use as a pressure flaker (a tool used for shaping stone tools). Given the age of the find, this represents the earliest documented use of a marine mammal tooth by humans and the only verified marine mammal remain from the Pleistocene of North Africa.

“The Contrebandiers Cave bone tools demonstrate that by roughly 120,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began to intensify the use of bone to make formal tools and use them for specific tasks, including leather and fur working,” Hallett summarizes. “This versatility appears to be at the root of our species, and not a characteristic that emerged after expansions into Eurasia.”

In the future, Hallett hopes to collaborate with other researchers to identify comparable skinning patterns in the assemblages they study and gain a better understanding of the origins and diffusion of this behavior.

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Entrance to Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco. Contrebandiers Project, 2009

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Carnivores were skinned for fur and bone tools were then used to prepare the furs into pelts. Jacopo Niccolò Cerasoni, 2021

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release.

*A worked bone assemblage from 120,000-90,000 year old deposits at Contrebandiers Cave, Atlantic Coast, Morocco, iScience, 16-Sep-2021. 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102988

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The monumental reliefs at the Camel Site in northern Arabia are unique: three rock spurs are decorated with naturalistic, life-sized carvings of camels and equids. In total, 21 reliefs have been identified. Based on similarities with artworks found in Petra, Jordan, the rock site was initially dated from the Nabataean period, 2000 years ago. Following this preliminary proposal, a new research program* lead by researchers from the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the CNRS, and King Saud University uses a variety of cutting-edge dating methods to establish a much older age for the site, pushing its initial creation back to the Neolithic.

Rock art is extremely difficult to date, particularly at the Camel Site, where erosion has damaged the three-dimensional reliefs extensively. To establish an age for the site the team used a range of scientific methods including analysis of tool marks, assessment of weathering and erosion patterns, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) to measure rock varnish density, and luminescence dating of fallen fragments. In addition, test excavations identified a homogenous lithic assemblage as well as faunal remains, which could be radiocarbon dated.

Taken together, the data indicates that the sculptures were made with stone tools during the 6th millennium BCE. At this time, the regional landscape was a savannah-like grassland scattered with lakes and trees where pastoralist groups herded cattle, sheep and goats. Wild camels and equids also roamed the area and were hunted for millennia.

“We can now link the Camel Site to a period in prehistory when the pastoral populations of northern Arabia created rock art and built large stone structures called mustatil,” the authors state. “The Camel Site is therefore part of a wider pattern of activity where groups frequently came together to establish and mark symbolic places.”

The team’s stone mason estimates that each relief would have taken 10-15 days of carving to complete, during which the stone tools used to chip out the 3D shape and to polish the surface would have had to be re-sharpened and replaced frequently. Considering that the raw chert used to make the tools was sourced from at least 15km away and that carving the reliefs would have first required the construction of a working platform or rigging, the researchers believe the site’s impressive sculptures were likely a communal effort, perhaps part of an annual gathering of a Neolithic group.

The reliefs are part of a wider rock art tradition in the region that depicted life-sized, naturalistic animals, although the skill required for the creation of high reliefs is unique to the Camel Site. The weight gain and references to the mating season in the camel reliefs suggests that they maybe be symbolically connected to the yearly cycle of wet and dry seasons to which these biological changes are linked. Reconstructions of the carving and weathering processes at the site suggest that the site was in use for an extended period, during which panels were re-engraved and re-shaped. By the late 6^th millennium BC most if not all of the reliefs had been carved, making the Camel Site reliefs the oldest surviving large-scale reliefs known in the world.

“Neolithic communities repeatedly returned to the Camel Site, meaning its symbolism and function was maintained over many generations,” says lead author Dr. Maria Guagnin. “Preservation of this site is now key, as is future research in the region to identify if other such sites may have existed. Time is running out on the preservation of the Camel Site and on the potential identification of other relief sites as damage will increase and more reliefs will be lost to erosion with each passing year.”

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Panel 12, showing the body, legs and base of the neck of an adult camel with a possible young equid to the left. M. Guagnin & G. Charloux

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The Camel site, viewed from north-west, showing the position of all large reliefs (red stars), small reliefs (white stars) and large fragments (stars with red outline). G. Charloux & M. Guagnin, R. Schwerdtner.

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Panel 1 showing the belly, thigh and upper tail of a camel. Tool marks can be seen on the lower abdomen and the upper thigh, as well as a series of deep grooves. Detail photographs are shown on the lower left and lower right. M. Guagnin & G. Charloux

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release.

*Life-sized Neolithic camel sculptures in Arabia: A scientific assessment of the craftsmanship and age of the Camel Site reliefs, Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, 15-Sep-2021. 10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103165 

If you liked this, you may like Before Stonehenge: Monument Builders of Arabia, in the summer 2021 issue of Popular Archaeology.

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CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y. – An international collaboration has identified what may be the oldest work of art, a sequence of hand and footprints discovered on the Tibetan Plateau.

Rijksmuseum van Oudheden—In 2009 a fragment of the skull of the first Neanderthal in the Netherlands was presented at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities). That Neanderthal now has a face. The Kennis brothers, world-famous palaeo-artists with numerous reconstructions of Neanderthals to their name, interpreted the characteristics of the fossil and other Neanderthal skulls to arrive at the reconstructed face of ‘Krijn’, a young man with a conspicuous lump over his right eyebrow. This lump is the result of a small tumor. Krijn was one of the inhabitants of Doggerland, the prehistoric landscape now under the sea off the Dutch coast. The fossil and the reconstruction will be on display together until 31 October in the museum’s exhibition Doggerland: Lost World in the North Sea. 

The fossilized orbital bone of the ‘first Neanderthal in the Netherlands’ is some 50,000 to 70,000 years old and was found twenty years ago in Zeeland by amateur palaeontologist Luc Anthonis. The fossil had been removed from the North Sea floor off the Dutch coast with a suction dredger. Examination by experts at Leiden University and the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig revealed that it came from the skull of a young man with a fairly sturdy build. Analysis of stable isotopes – varieties of nitrogen and carbon atoms – show that he mostly ate meat. One striking feature is the small hole just above the pronounced eyebrow. This was found to have been caused by a benign tumor under the skin, a phenomenon never before observed among Neanderthals.

The researchers gave the young Neanderthal the nickname ‘Krijn’. To scientifically reconstruct Krijn’s face , the palaeo-anthropological artists of Kennis & Kennis Reconstructions used the characteristics of the North Sea fossil identified by the researchers, digital matches with comparable Neanderthal skulls, and the latest findings about Neanderthals and their features, such as eye, hair, and skin color. The Kennis brothers have made many previous reconstructions of Neanderthals and other prehistoric hominids, including Ötzi the Iceman.

Krijn lived in the prehistoric landscape that is now under the North Sea, more than 50,000 years ago. The sea level was then 50 meters lower than it is today. Mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, horses, and Neanderthals roamed this steppe, which was cold but offered food in abundance. This region, Doggerland, and its inhabitants form the subject of the exhibition of the same name in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. The fossil and Krijn’s reconstruction will be on display there until 31 October 2021.

The exhibition tells the story of almost one million years of human habitation and of the changing landscape and climate of this rich, vast prehistoric landscape off the Dutch coast. Krijn and the other finds show that further research and protection of the North Sea floor are of great scientific importance to Dutch and international archaeology and palaeontology.

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The reconstructed face of Neanderthal Krijn (photo © Servaas Neijens). Courtesy Rijksmuseum van Oudheden

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Krijn’s fossilized orbital bone (photo © Servaas Neijens). Courtesy Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

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Article Source: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden news release.

Krijn will be on display from to 31 October in the exhibition Doggerland: Lost World in the North Sea in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden: www.rmo.nl/en/exhibitions/temporary-exhibitions/doggerland/.

The fossil is also described in the (Dutch-language) book accompanying the exhibition: L. Amkreutz & S. Van der Vaart-Verschoof, 2021. Doggerland. Verdwenen wereld in de Noordzee (Sidestone Press).

The original scientific paper describing the discovery was published in 2009 in the Journal of Human Evolution: Hublin, J.J., D. Weston, P. Gunz, M. Richards, W. Roeboreks, J. Glimmerveen & L. Anthonis, 2009. ‘Out of the North Sea: the Zeeland Ridges Neandertal’, Journal of Human Evolution 57/6, 777–785. Article available for download here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.09.001.

The exhibition Doggerland is part of a broader research and public presentation project supported by the Dhr. en Mevr. Postma-Bosch Fonds and by the Mondriaan Fund’s multiyear museum and heritage institution programme. The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden is supported by the VriendenLoterij.

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UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI—Understanding the environmental conditions under which early humans dispersed out of Africa is important for understanding the factors that affected human evolution. This is a topical question that remains debated. A recent study* prepared in collaboration with researchers from the University of Helsinki and the Universities of Granada, Tarragona, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Salamanca, Madrid and Tübingen provides new information on the environmental context of earliest human occupation in Europe during the Pleistocene.

The research is part of the Orce project (ProyectORCE) funded by the local government of Andalucía and led by the University of Granada, in which researchers from the University of Helsinki have been participating since 2017. The project is responsible for archeological/palaeontological excavations and related research in Andalucía, Spain.

The study is focussed on the Guadix-Baza Basin, Andalucía, Spain, where the researchers used dental ecometric trait distribution within fossil large mammal communities to reconstruct climatic variables and net primary production of plant communities from ca. 4.5 million years to ca. 400 000 years ago.

The Guadix-Baza basin is of particular importance for understanding early human environments outside Africa, because it includes a couple of sites that are among the earliest human occupation sites in Europe, Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 near the city of Orce, which have been dated at ca. 1.4 – 1.2 million years in age.

Based on the estimates, the climate in the Guadix-Baza Basin varied from roughly similar to present (e.g. Venta Micena, ca. 1.6 million years ago) to more humid, with higher annual primary production. The early human occupation sites in the Guadix-Baza Basin, such as Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3, tended to have higher primary production than in the region today. The vegetation was mostly similar to Mediterranean forest without significant grassy undergrowth, making it different from African grass-dominated savanna environments.

Lead author Juha Saarinen from the University of Helsinki https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/people/people-finder/juha-saarinen-9084218 said: “Tooth wear-based dietary analyses indicate that most of the large herbivorous mammals in these environments did not consume significant amounts of grass, further attesting to the scarcity of grassy vegetation. This is an important finding, as it suggests that already the earliest human occupation sites in Europe were often different from African grassy savannas in terms of vegetation and interactions between large mammal fauna and vegetation”.

The conditions under which early members of the genus Homo dispersed outside Africa were also analyzed on a broader scale, across Europe during the Early and Middle Pleistocene. The model is based on the comparison of functional trait distribution of large herbivorous mammals in sites with archaeological or fossil evidence of human presence and in sites, which lack evidence of human presence.

Based on the results, early humans occurred in a wide variety of environments, but were concentrated in sites where the distribution of functional traits suggests a relatively mild climate and diverse, at least partially wooded, environments, especially in the early phase of dispersal. Further, at a later stage, after humans had already established themselves in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene, humans were absent from some sites where mammalian characteristics suggest particularly severe (cold, dry, or both) conditions.

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Juha Saarinen working at the excavations in Orce, Andalucía. Susana Girón

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Artist’s view of the earliest people in Europe. Reconstruction image from the locality of Dmanisi, Georgia. Mauricio Antón

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Article Source: University of Helsinki news release.

*Pliocene to Middle Pleistocene climate history in the Guadix-Baza Basin, and the environmental conditions of early Homo dispersal in Europe, Quaternary Science Reviews, 15-Sep-2021. 10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107132 

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AARHUS UNIVERSITY—A new study suggests that generation intervals have fluctuated during the past 40,000 years of human evolution in contrast to what has been commonly assumed. The results indicate that human life history can change appreciably in response to external and cultural factors

The authors from Aarhus University in Denmark and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany used Neanderthal fragments scattered in non-African genomes as molecular clocks to estimate generation intervals in Eurasian and American populations.

“This new way of using genomic data enabled us to retrieve information about our human life traits buried in the past, which complements what can be learned from archaeology about our history,” says Professor Mikkel Heide Schierup, leader of the project.

The research team report in Nature Communications on 7. September, that humans in populations in Europe reproduced on average at a younger age than populations from east Eurasia and America over the past 40,000 years.

“We estimate a difference of 3 to 5 years between the mean generation interval among populations. We believe that this difference was probably more dramatic. If the change happened during the last 10,000 years for example, we are probably diluting the signal over the 40,000 years period we study,” says PhD student Moisès Coll Macià, first author of the study.

The results obtained about generation intervals are reflected in the accumulation of genetic changes in different parts of the world.

“Older parents transmit different mutations than younger ones to their children. In this study, we find that populations estimated to have older parents from their Neanderthal legacy also have mutations suggesting older parenthood” says Coll Macià.

These mutational differences also allowed the researchers to tease apart whether changes in generation interval is due to changes in the fathers’ age at reproduction, the mothers’ age at reproduction or both.

“For instance, we see that east Asian populations tended to have older fathers than mothers, while European populations had similar ages for both,” says Coll Marcià”.

So why did the lengths of generations differ historically around the world?

The authors speculate that this was probably a response to changes in the environment. Differences in climate, but also technological and cultural developments in human societies, might have made living conditions more or less favorable to reproduce and thus played an important role in deciding which was the best time to have descendants.

“In the future, we will be able to use the wealth of ancient and modern human genome sequences appearing at a fast rate to make a fine map of changes to age of human reproduction, that we can relate to environmental and cultural conditions,” professor Schierup suggests.

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Archaic sequence length decay (black bands on chromosomes) for different populations sampled at multiple time points. The length of generation intervals (GI) is represented by the color gradient on the tree (yellow : long GI; maroon : short GI). Moisès Coll Macià, Aarhus University

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WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS—The Native Americans who occupied the area known as Poverty Point in northern Louisiana more than 3,000 years ago long have been believed to be simple hunters and gatherers. But new Washington University in St. Louis archaeological findings paint a drastically different picture of America’s first civilization.

Far from the simplicity of life sometimes portrayed in anthropology books, these early Indigenous people were highly skilled engineers capable of building massive earthen structures in a matter of months — possibly even weeks — that withstood the test of times, the findings show.

“We as a research community – and population as a whole – have undervalued native people and their ability to do this work and to do it quickly in the ways they did,” said Tristram R. “T.R.” Kidder, lead author and the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

“One of the most remarkable things is that these earthworks have held together for more than 3,000 years with no failure or major erosion. By comparison, modern bridges, highways and dams fail with amazing regularity because building things out of dirt is more complicated than you would think. They really were incredible engineers with very sophisticated technical knowledge.”

The findings were published in Southeastern Archaeology on September, 1, 2021. Washington University’s Kai Su, Seth B. Grooms, along with graduates Edward R. Henry (Colorado State) and Kelly Ervin (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service) also contributed to the paper.

The Poverty Point World Heritage site consists of a massive 72-foot-tall earthen mound and concentric half circle ridges. The structures were constructed by hunter-gatherers approximately 3,400 years ago from nearly 2 million cubic yards of soil. Amazingly, this was done without the luxury of modern tools, domesticated animals or even wheeled carts.

According to Kidder, the site was likely an important religious site where Native Americans came in pilgrimage, similar to Mecca. It was abandoned abruptly between 3,000-3,200 years ago – most likely due to documented flooding in the Mississippi Valley and climate change.

The ridges at Poverty Point contain vast amounts of artifacts around the edges and within, suggesting that people lived there. Kidder and team re-excavated and re-evaluated a site on Ridge West 3 at the Poverty Point Site that was originally excavated by renowned archaeologist Jon Gibson in 1991.

Using modern research methods including radiocarbon dating, microscopic analysis of soils and magnetic measurements of soils, the research provides conclusive evidence that the earthworks were built rapidly.  Essentially, there is no evidence of boundaries or signs of weathering between the various levels, which would have occurred if there was even a brief pause in construction. Kidder believes the construction was completed in lifts, or layers of sediment deposited to increase the ridge height and linear dimensions before another layer was placed to expand the footprint vertically and horizontally.

Why does that matter? According to Kidder, the findings challenge previous beliefs about how pre-modern hunters and gatherers behaved. Building the enormous mounds and ridges at Poverty Point would have required a large labor pool that was well organized and would have required leadership to execute. Hunters and gathers were believed to shun politics.

“Between the speed of the excavation and construction, and the quantity of earth being moved, these data show us native people coming to the site and working in concert. This in and of itself is remarkable because hunter-gatherers aren’t supposed to be able to do these activities,” Kidder said.

What’s even more impressive than how quickly the people built the earthen structures is the fact that they’re still intact. Due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, this area receives immense amounts of rain that makes earthworks especially prone to erosion. Microscopic analysis of soils shows that the Native Americans mixed different types of soil — clays, silts and sand — in a calculated recipe to make the structures stronger.

“Similar to the Roman concrete or rammed earth in China, Native Americans discovered sophisticated ways of mixing different types of materials to make them virtually indestructible, despite not being compacted. There’s some magic there that our modern engineers have not been able to figure out yet,” Kidder said. 

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The illustration above shows the core features of the Poverty Point site in northern Louisiana. The green to the right is the Mississippi River flood plain. The orange is Macon Ridge, the higher ground on which the site is located. Six C-shaped ridges are visible at the site. Parts of the ridges have been damaged by historic and modern activities. The pattern south of Mound E is the result of farm activity. Many of the low areas around the site – lighter yellow – are thought to be places where soil was mined to make ridges and mounds. 1 of 3 The illustration above shows the core features of the Poverty Point site in northern Louisiana. The green to the right is the Mississippi River flood plain. The orange is Macon Ridge, the higher ground on which the site is located. Six C-shaped ridges are visible at the site. Parts of the ridges have been damaged by historic and modern activities. The pattern south of Mound E is the result of farm activity. Many of the low areas around the site – lighter yellow – are thought to be places where soil was mined to make ridges and mounds. T.R. Kidder

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An excavation before sampling. Note the color changes between layers. The darker layers have carbon-rich deposits made by humans, such as midden or garbage that was scraped up and dumped to form the ridge structure during construction. There is little organic garbage in the upper third section. T.R. Kidder

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Article Source: WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS news release

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—Recent research in Arabia – a collaboration between scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture, and many other Saudi and international researchers – has begun to document the incredibly rich prehistory of Saudi Arabia, the largest country in Southwest Asia. Previous research in the region has focused on the coastal and woodland margins, while human prehistory in the vast interior areas remained poorly understood.

The new findings, including the oldest dated evidence for humans in Arabia at 400,000 years ago, are described as a “breakthrough in Arabian archaeology” by Dr Huw Groucutt, lead author of the study* and head of the ‘Extreme Events’ Max Planck Society Research Group in Jena, Germany, based at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology.

The discovery of thousands of stone tools reveals multiple waves of human occupation and shows changing human culture over time. At the site of Khall Amayshan 4 (KAM 4), nestled in a hollow between large dunes, researchers found evidence for six phases of lake formation, five of them associated with stone tools made by early humans at around 400, 300, 200, 100, and 55 thousand years ago. Each phase of human occupation is characterized by a different kind of material culture, documenting the transition from the Lower Palaeolithic Acheulean ‘handaxe’ culture to different kinds of stone flake-based Middle Palaeolithic technologies. Excavations at the Jubbah Oasis, 150 km to the east, also recovered stone tools, dating to 200 thousand and 75 thousand years ago.

Green Arabia

The dating of the archaeological sites – achieved primarily through a technique called luminescence dating, which records the length of time since tiny grains of sediment were last exposed to sunlight – shows that each occupation dates to a time when rainfall is known to have increased in the region. In addition, all of the stone tool assemblages are associated with the distinctive sediments produced by freshwater lakes. The findings therefore show that, within a dominant pattern of aridity, occasional short phases of increased rainfall led to the formation of thousands of lakes, wetlands, and rivers that crossed most of Arabia, forming key migration routes for humans and animals such as hippos.

While today the Nefud desert is a very arid region, deep hollows between the large sand dunes created places for small lakes to form during occasional increases in rainfall. As a result, the Nefud region was periodically transformed from one of the most uninhabitable parts of Southwest Asia into a lush grassland that provided opportunities for repeated population movements.

Wider implications

Unlike bones and other organic materials, stone tools preserve very easily, and their character is largely influenced by learned cultural behaviors. As a result, they illuminate the background of their makers and show how cultures developed along their own unique trajectories in different areas. The Khall Amayshan 4 and Jubbah Oasis findings reflect short-lived pulses of occupation that represent the initial phases of migration waves.

Each phase of human occupation in northern Arabia shows a distinct kind of material culture, suggesting that populations arrived in the area from multiple directions and source areas. This diversity sheds unique light on the extent of cultural differences in Southwest Asia during this timeframe, and indicates strongly sub-divided populations. In some cases the differences in material culture are so great as to indicate the contemporary presence of different hominin species in the region, suggesting that Arabia may also have been an interface zone for different hominin groups originating in Africa and Eurasia. Animal fossils indicate a similar pattern: although the north Arabian fossil record shows a prominent African character, some species came from the north, while others represent long-time residents of Arabia.

The findings highlight the importance of filling in the gaps in the hominin map. “Arabia has long been seen as empty throughout the past,” says Dr. Groucutt. “Our work shows that we still know so little about human evolution in vast areas of the world and highlights the fact that many surprises are still out there.”

“It’s remarkable; every time it was wet, people were there,” says project leader Prof. Michael Petraglia, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “This work puts Arabia on the global map for human prehistory,” he adds.

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The site of Khall Amayshan 4 in northern Saudi Arabia, where evidence of repeated visits by early humans over the last 400,000 years was found, associated with the remains of ancient lakes. Palaeodeserts Project (photo by Michael Petraglia)

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A 400,000 year ‘handaxe’ stone tool from Khall Amayshan 4. Palaeodeserts Project (photo by Ian Cartwright)

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release

Partnerships:  The fieldwork in Saudi Arabia was jointly led by the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena, Germany). The international consortium of scientists includes members from organizations and universities in Saudi Arabia, Germany, Australia, Pakistan, Spain, and the UK.

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—Alcoholic beverages have long been known to serve an important socio-cultural function in ancient societies, including at ritual feasts. A new study finds evidence of beer drinking 9,000 years ago in southern China, which was likely part of a ritual to honor the dead. The findings are based on an analysis of ancient pots found at a burial site at Qiaotou, making the site among the oldest in the world for early beer drinking. The results are reported in PLOS ONE.

Human burial 1 (M44) is one of the archaeological features from Qiaotou platform mound. Image by Leping Jiang.

The ancient pots were discovered in a platform mound (80 m x 50 m wide, with an elevation of 3 m above ground level), which was surrounded by a human-made ditch (10-15 m wide and 1.5-2 m deep), based on ongoing excavations at Qiaotou. No residential structures were found at the site. The mound contained two human skeletons and multiple pottery pits with high-quality pottery vessels, many of which were complete vessels. The pottery was painted with white slip and some of the vessels were decorated with abstract designs. As the study reports, these artifacts are probably some of “the earliest known painted pottery in the world.” No pottery of this kind has been found at any other sites dating to this time period.

The research team analyzed different types of pottery found at Qiaotou, which were of varying sizes. Some of the pottery vessels were relatively small and similar in size to drinking vessels used today, and to those found in other parts of the world. Each of the pots could basically be held in one hand like a cup unlike storage vessels, which are much larger in size. Seven of the 20 vessels, which were part of their analysis, appeared to be long-necked Hu pots, which were used to drink alcohol in the later historical periods.

To confirm that the vessels were used for drinking alcohol, the research team analyzed microfossil residues— starch, phytolith (fossilized plant residue), and fungi, extracted from the interior surfaces of the pots. The residues were compared with control samples obtained from soil surrounding the vessels.

The team identified microbotanical (starch granules and phytoliths) and microbial (mold and yeast) residues in the pots that were consistent with residues from beer fermentation and are not found naturally in soil or in other artifacts unless they had contained alcohol.

“Through a residue analysis of pots from Qiaotou, our results revealed that the pottery vessels were used to hold beer, in its most general sense— a fermented beverage made of rice (Oryza sp.), a grain called Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), and unidentified tubers,” says co-author Jiajing Wang, an assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth. “This ancient beer though would not have been like the IPA that we have today. Instead, it was likely a slightly fermented and sweet beverage, which was probably cloudy in color.”

The results also showed that phytoliths of rice husks and other plants were also present in the residue from the pots. They may have been added to the beer as a fermentation agent.

Although the Yangtze River Valley of southern China is known today as the country’s rice heartland, the domestication of rice occurred gradually between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, so 9,000 years ago, rice was still in the early stage of domestication. At that time, most communities were hunter-gatherers who relied primarily on foraging. As the researchers explain in the study, given that rice harvesting and processing was labor intensive, the beer at Qiaotou was probably a ritually significant drink/beverage.

The residue analysis of the pots also showed traces of mold, which was used in the beermaking process. The mold found in the pots at Qiaotou was very similar to the mold present in koji, which is used to make sake and other fermented rice beverages in East Asia. The results predate earlier research, which found that mold had been used in fermentation processes 8,000 years ago in China.

Beer is technically any fermented beverage made from crops through a two-stage transformation process. In the first phase, enzymes transform starch into sugar (saccharification). In the second phase, the yeasts convert the sugar into alcohol and other states like carbon dioxide (fermentation). As the researchers explain in the study, mold acts kind of like an agent for both processes, by serving as a saccharification-fermentation starter.

“We don’t know how people made the mold 9,000 years ago, as fermentation can happen naturally,” says Wang. “If people had some leftover rice and the grains became moldy, they may have noticed that the grains became sweeter and alcoholic with age. While people may not have known the biochemistry associated with grains that became moldy, they probably observed the fermentation process and leveraged it through trial and error.”

Given that the pottery at Qiaotou was found near the burials in a non-residential area, the researchers conclude that the pots of beer were likely used in ritualistic ceremonies relating to the burial of the dead. They speculate that ritualized drinking may have been integral to forging social relationships and cooperation, which served as a precursor to complex rice farming societies that emerged 4,000 years later. 

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Map of Qiaotou. Map courtesy of PLOS ONE.

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Painted pottery vessels (from Qiaotou platform mound) for serving drinks and food. Image by Jiajing Wang.

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Centrally located along trade routes and tightly nestled around the important waterways such as the Elbe River, Bohemia attracted many different archaeological cultures, rendering it a key region in understanding the prehistory of Europe. In addition to the expansions associated with the spread of agriculture and “steppe”-related ancestry previously discovered, this new study identifies at least another three migratory events which shaped central European prehistory.

The genetic profiles of people associated with Funnelbeaker and Globular Amphora cultures show evidence of being recent migrants to the region. This finding shows that the period between arrival of agriculture and “steppe”-related ancestry, hitherto thought of as an uneventful period, was more dynamic than previously hypothesized.

Drastic changes to the genetic landscape

The large sample size of the study, particularly concentrated on the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (~6,000-3,700 years ago), also allowed novel insights into social processes to be made. Individuals associated with the Corded Ware culture expanded from Eastern Europe and then assimilated preferentially central European women into their culture, giving them the same burial ritual as members of the immigrating group. “We were finally able to fill key temporal gaps, especially in the transition period around 5,000 years ago, when we see the genetic landscape changing drastically”, says Max Planck researcher Wolfgang Haak, senior author and principal investigator of the study. “Intriguingly, in this early horizon we find individuals with high amounts of ‘steppe’ ancestry next to others with little or none, all buried according to the same customs.”

Once established, individuals of the Corded Ware culture (4,900-4,400 years ago) changed genetically through time. One important change seems to have been the sharp decline in Y-chromosome lineage diversity. Although initially carrying five different Y-lineages, later Corded Ware males carry almost exclusively only a single lineage, essentially being descended from the same man in the recent past. “This pattern may reflect the emergence of a new social structure or regulation of mating in which only a subset of men fathered the majority of offspring”, says first author Luka Papac, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

This social structure seems to have been even stricter in the following Bell Beaker society (4,500-4,200 years ago) where every single male sampled belonged to a single, newly introduced Y-lineage. Remarkably, this Bell Beaker Y-lineage is never seen before in Bohemia, implying that a new clan arrived in the region and almost immediately replaced all pre-existing Y-lineages with not a single lineage from Corded Ware or previous societies found among Bell Beaker males.

Cultural, biological, and social changes

The Early Bronze Age Unetice culture has traditionally been thought of descending from Bell Beaker individuals, with perhaps limited input from the southeast (Carpathian Basin). However, the new genetic data supports yet another genetic turnover originating from regions northeast of Bohemia. Remarkably, also 80 percent of the early Unetice Y-lineages are new to Bohemia, some of which are previously found in individuals from north-eastern Europe, providing clues to where they originated from. “This finding was very surprising to us archaeologists as we did not expect to see such clear patterns, even though the region has played a critical role, e.g. in the emerging trade of amber from the Baltic and became an important trading hub during the Bronze and Iron Ages”, adds co-author and co-PI Michal Ernée from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The results paint a highly dynamic picture of the prehistory of central Europe, with many and frequent changes in the cultural, biological, and social make-up of societies, highlighting the power and potential of high-resolution studies at regional scale. Challenges remain in understanding the socio-economic, environmental and/or political reasons and mechanisms behind these changes, which provides ample scope for future cross-disciplinary studies of Europe’s prehistory.

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Richly endowed Early Bronze Age burial from Bohemia, Czech Republic. Michal Ernée

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Exemplary grave goods of one of the earliest Corded Ware burials in Central Europe. Miroslav Dobeš

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release

*Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe, Science Advances, 25-Aug-2021, 10.1126/sciadv.abi6941 

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Diets in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum may have varied based on gender, with women eating more meat, eggs, and dairy and men eating more fish and cereals, according to an analysis of the remains of 17 adults who died in the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE. Silvia Soncin and colleagues suggest that these dietary differences reflect gender-based variations in food access, which may have stemmed from distinct occupations held by men and women, cultural prohibitions, or restrictions dictated by an uneven distribution of power. The authors note that the isotope analysis technique they used, combined with modeling, enabled them to reconstruct the citizens’ diets at unprecedented resolution and could transform research on prehistoric diets. While historical sources have implied that different demographics across ancient Roman society had access to different foods, scientists have lacked quantitative information to support this claim. To fill this research gap, Soncin et al. reconstructed the diets of 11 men and 6 women who died together at Herculaneum when Vesuvius erupted. These human remains offer a rare archaeological snapshot of an ancient population without biases, based on privilege and class, that can constrain information obtained from cemeteries. The researchers determined the stable isotope values of amino acids from bone collagen in the remains using compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA), a technique that can illuminate dietary patterns with high resolution by revealing information often obscured in bulk stable isotope data sets. Soncin et al. measured the gender gap in marine protein consumption with greater precision than previous studies that used bulk isotope data, finding that men obtained 1.6 times more dietary protein from seafood than women did. They also estimated that the population of Herculaneum ate considerably more marine protein than Mediterranean populations in the mid- and late-20^th century.

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View of skeletal remains in one of the vaulted chambers (fornici) during excavation. Luciano Fattore, Sapienza Università di Roma

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Article Source: Summary article by Shannon Kelleher, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—The international study was accomplished through close collaboration with several researchers and institutions from Indonesia. It was headed by Professor Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Science of Human History in Jena, Professor Cosimo Posth of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, and Professor Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Australia. The study has been published in the latest edition of Nature.

Almost completely preserved skeleton

The Wallacean Islands formed stepping stones in the spread of the first modern humans from Eurasia to Oceania, probably more than 50,000 years ago. Archaeological finds show that the ancestors of our species lived in Wallacea as early as 47,000 years ago. Yet few human skeletons have been found. One of the most distinctive archaeological discoveries in this region is the Toalean technology complex, dated to a much more recent period between 8,000 and 1,500 years ago. Among the objects manufactured by the people of the Toalean culture are the characteristic stone arrowheads known as Maros points. The Toalean culture has only been found in a relatively small area on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi. “We were able to assign the burial at Leang Panninge to that culture,” says Adam Brumm. “This is remarkable since it is the first largely complete and well preserved skeleton associated with the Toalean culture.”

Selina Carlhoff, doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and lead author of the study, isolated DNA from the petrous bone of the skull. “It was a major challenge, as the remains had been strongly degraded by the tropical climate,” she says. The analysis showed that the Leang Panninge individual was related to the first modern humans to spread to Oceania from Eurasia some 50,000 years ago. Like the genome of the indigenous inhabitants of New Guinea and Australia, the Leang Panninge individual’s genome contained traces of Denisovan DNA. The Denisovans are an extinct group of archaic humans known primarily from finds in Siberia and Tibet. “The fact that their genes are found in the hunter-gatherers of Leang Panninge supports our earlier hypothesis that the Denisovans occupied a far larger geographical area,” says Johannes Krause.

Another piece in the great genetic puzzle

A comparison with genomic data of hunter-gatherers who lived west of Wallacea at about the same time as the Leang Panninge individual provided further clues – that data showed no traces of Denisovan DNA. “The geographic distribution of Denisovans and modern humans may have overlapped in the Wallacea region. It may well be the key place where Denisova people and the ancestors of indigenous Australians and Papuans interbred,” says Cosimo Posth.

However, the Leang Panninge individual also carries a large proportion of its genome from an ancient Asian population. “That came as a surprise, because we do know of the spread of modern humans from eastern Asia into the Wallacea region – but that took place far later, around 3,500 years ago. That was long after this individual was alive,” Johannes Krause reports. Furthermore, the research team has found no evidence that the group Leang Panninge belonged to left descendants among today’s population in Wallacea. It remains unclear what happened to the Toalean culture and its people. “This new piece of the genetic puzzle from Leang Panninge illustrates above all just how little we know about the genetic history of modern humans in southeast Asia,” Posth says.

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The Leang Panninge cave on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Leang Panninge Research Project

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Excavations at the Leang Panninge site: The skeleton as found. Hasanuddin University, Indonesia

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Stone arrowheads, known as Maros points, are up to 8,000 years old. They are considered typical of the Toalean techno-complex developed by the people living in the south of the island of Sulawesi. Yinika L Perston

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release.

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Present-day Croatia was an important crossroads for migrating peoples along the Danubian corridor and the Adriatic coast, linking east and west. “While this region is important for understanding population and cultural transitions in Europe, limited availability of human remains means that in-depth knowledge about the genetic ancestry and social complexity of prehistoric populations here remains sparse”, says first author Suzanne Freilich, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Vienna.

To this aim, an international team of researchers set out to fill the gap. They studied* two archaeological sites in eastern Croatia – one containing predominantly Middle Neolithic burials from within the settlement site, the other a Middle Bronze Age necropolis containing cremations and inhumations – and sequenced whole genomes of 28 individuals from these two sites. The researchers’ goal was to understand both the genetic ancestry as well as social organization within each community – in particular, to study local residency patterns, kinship relations and to learn more about the varied burial rites observed.

Middle Neolithic settlement at Popova zemlja

Dated to around 4,700-4,300 BCE the Middle Neolithic settlement at Beli-Manastir Popova zemlja belongs to the Sopot culture. Many children, especially girls, were buried here, in particular along the walls of pit houses. “One question was whether individuals buried in the same buildings were biologically related to each other”, says Suzanne Freilich.

“We found that individuals with different burial rites did not differ in their genetic ancestry, which was similar to Early Neolithic people. We also found a high degree of haplotype diversity and, despite the size of the site, no very closely related individuals”, Freilich adds. This suggests that this community was part of a large, mainly exogamous population where people marry outside their kin group. Interestingly, however, the researchers also identified a few cases of endogamous mating practices, including two individuals who would have been the children of first cousins or equivalent, something rarely found in the ancient DNA record.

Middle Bronze Age necropolis at Jagodnjak-Krčevine

The second site the researchers studied was the Middle Bronze Age necropolis of Jagodnjak-Krčevine that belongs to the Transdanubian Encrusted Pottery Culture and dates to around 1,800-1,600 BCE. “This site contains burials that are broadly contemporaneous with some individuals from the Dalmatian coast, and we wanted to find out whether individuals from these different ecoregions carried similar ancestry”, says Stephan Schiffels.

The researchers found that the people from Jagodnjak actually carried very distinct ancestry due to the presence of significantly more western European hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. This ancestry profile is present in a small number of other studied genomes from further north in the Carpathian Basin. These new genetic results support archaeological evidence that suggests a shared population history for these groups as well as the presence of trade and exchange networks.

“We also found that all male individuals at the site had identical Y chromosome haplotypes”, says Freilich. “We identified two male first degree relatives, second degree and more distantly related males, while the one woman in our sample was unrelated. This points to a patrilocal social organization where women leave their own home to join their husband’s home.” Contrary to the Middle Neolithic site at Popova zemlja, biological kinship was a factor for selection to be buried at this site. In addition the authors found evidence of rich infant graves that suggests they likely inherited their status or wealth from their families.

Filling the gap in the archaeogenetic record

This study helps to fill the gap in the archaeogenetic record for this region, characterizing the diverse genetic ancestries and social organizations that were present in Neolithic and Bronze Age eastern Croatia. It highlights the heterogeneous population histories of broadly contemporaneous coastal and inland Bronze Age groups, and connections with communities further north in the Carpathian Basin. Furthermore, it sheds light on the subject of Neolithic intramural burials – burials within a settlement – that has been debated among archaeologists and anthropologists for some time. The authors show that at the site of Popova zemlja, this burial rite was not associated with biological kinship, but more likely represented age and sex selection related to Neolithic community belief systems.

So far, few archaeogenetic studies have focused on within-community patterns of genetic diversity and social organization. “While large-scale studies are invaluable in characterizing patterns of genetic diversity on a broader temporal and spatial scale, more regional and single-site studies, such as this one, are necessary to gain insights into community and social organization which vary regionally and even within a site”, says Freilich. “By looking into the past with a narrower lens, archaeogenetics can shed more light on how communities and families were organized.”

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Burials at Popova zemlja were typically along the walls of pit houses or in other pits with ceramic vessels near their heads. © Borko Rožanković

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Ceramic grave goods from Popova zemlja. © Borko Rožanković

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release.

CELL PRESS—Researchers have known from several lines of evidence that the ancient hominins known as the Denisovans interbred with modern humans in the distant past. Now researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on August 12* have discovered that the Philippine Negrito ethnic group known as the Ayta Magbukon have the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world. In fact, they carry considerably more Denisovan DNA than the Papuan Highlanders, who were previously known as the present-day population with the highest level of Denisovan ancestry.

“We made this observation despite the fact that Philippine Negritos were recently admixed with East Asian-related groups—who carry little Denisovan ancestry, and which consequently diluted their levels of Denisovan ancestry,” said Maximilian Larena (@maxlarena) of Uppsala University. “If we account for and masked away the East Asian-related ancestry in Philippine Negritos, their Denisovan ancestry can be up to 46 percent greater than that of Australians and Papuans.”

In the new study, Larena and colleagues, including Mattias Jakobsson, aimed to establish the demographic history of the Philippines. Through a partnership between Uppsala University of Sweden and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines (NCCA), aided by collaboration with indigenous cultural communities, local universities, local government units, non-governmental organizations, and/or regional offices of the National Commission for Indigenous Peoples, they analyzed about 2.3 million genotypes from 118 ethnic groups of the Philippines including diverse self-identified Negrito populations. The sample also included high-coverage genomes of AustraloPapuans and Ayta Magbukon Negritos.

The study shows that Ayta Magbukon possess the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world, consistent with an independent admixture event into Negritos from Denisovans. Together with the recent discovery of a small-bodied hominin, called Homo luzonensis, the data suggest that there were multiple archaic species that inhabited the Philippines prior to the arrival of modern humans, and that these archaic groups may have been genetically related.

Altogether, the researchers say that the findings unveil a complex intertwined history of modern and archaic humans in the Asia-Pacific region, where distinct Islander Denisovan populations differentially admixed with incoming Australasians across multiple locations and at various points in time.

“This admixture led to variable levels of Denisovan ancestry in the genomes of Philippine Negritos and Papuans,” Jakobsson said. “In Island Southeast Asia, Philippine Negritos later admixed with East Asian migrants who possess little Denisovan ancestry, which subsequently diluted their archaic ancestry. Some groups, though, such as the Ayta Magbukon, minimally admixed with the more recent incoming migrants. For this reason, the Ayta Magbukon retained most of their inherited archaic tracts and were left with the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world.”

“By sequencing more genomes in the future, we will have better resolution in addressing multiple questions, including how the inherited archaic tracts influenced our biology and how it contributed to our adaptation as a species,” Larena said.

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Map showing spread and evolution of Denisovans. John D. Croft, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: CELL PRESS news release

*Current Biology, Larena et al.: “Philippine Ayta possess the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world” https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00977-5

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

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EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY—Researchers from the University of Leiden and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands propose that the first clear example of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution occurred around 400,000 years ago. They propose this on the basis of changes in the archaeological record of fire use. The earliest evidence for possible fire use is sparse and can be difficult to distinguish from natural fire residues. By contrast, after 400,000 years ago, multiple different types of fire evidence are found in many sites with good preservation conditions. Interestingly, this occurs at a geologically similar time over major parts of the Old World, in Africa as well as in western Eurasia, and in different populations of hominins.

Wide distribution of a cultural behavior could be explained in a number of ways: by independent invention in multiple places, movement of populations, or transmission of genes associated with the behavior. Particularly given the absence of widespread environmental change, rapidity of spread, and lack of genetic or fossil evidence for movements of hominin populations in this period, the authors argue that cultural diffusion is most plausible. This interpretation is supported by the slightly later spread, over the same region and in an even more constrained time period, of a relatively complicated method for making stone tools, called the Levallois technique. This adds to current research suggesting that hominin populations were exchanging genes and that there were cultural interactions too.

Interaction with fire was key in human cultural evolution, and is a focus for research and teaching in the Human Origins Group in the Faculty of Archaeology. When Eva van Veen started her RMA with the group, it struck her that the social structures and social behaviors surrounding early fire use had not been discussed in detail. According to Eva, ‘Given how important sociality is to hominin lives, questions about the social structures surrounding early fire use are essential to understanding the full implications of widespread fire use.’ In her thesis she looked at what it takes to organize a group of people to gather the raw materials for a fire and keep it going. The discussions of her thesis stimulated Eva and a number of colleagues to think about the larger scale social tolerance and social networks involved in the spread of fire skills.

Copying of stone tool technology occurred early in human evolution, and there are indications of the smaller-scale spread of technology likely involving both diffusion and population movement, for example in the record of Acheulean handaxe technology. But around 400,000 years ago, cultural diffusion really took off. This precedes by a long time the cultural florescence associated with late Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens. Our research should stimulate debate and new studies, particularly addressing the changes in cultural mechanisms for transmission that allowed this remarkably fast diffusion of fire and stone tool technology.

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This flake was struck from the core in a much earlier stage of the “biography” of the core, when it was significantly larger. Other flakes produced between the large flake and the final core were also recovered at the site, one of the minimally 250,000 years old flint and bone scatters excavated in the 1980s by Leiden archaeologists at Maastricht-Belvédère (The Netherlands). Leiden University

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Article Source: EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY news release

*Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 14-Jul-2021, 10.1073/pnas.2101108118

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UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES—A UNSW mathematician has revealed the origins of applied geometry on a 3700-year-old clay tablet that has been hiding in plain sight in a museum in Istanbul for over a century.

The tablet – known as Si.427 – was discovered in the late 19^th century in what is now central Iraq, but its significance was unknown until the UNSW scientist’s detective work was revealed today.

Most excitingly, Si.427 is thought to be the oldest known example of applied geometry – and in the study released today in Foundations of Science, the research also reveals a compelling human story of land surveying.

“Si.427 dates from the Old Babylonian (OB) period – 1900 to 1600 BCE,” says lead researcher Dr Daniel Mansfield from UNSW Science’s School of Mathematics and Statistics.

“It’s the only known example of a cadastral document from the OB period, which is a plan used by surveyors to define land boundaries. In this case, it tells us legal and geometric details about a field that’s split after some of it was sold off.”

This is a significant object because the surveyor uses what are now known as “Pythagorean triples” to make accurate right angles.

“The discovery and analysis of the tablet have important implications for the history of mathematics,” Dr Mansfield says. “For instance, this is over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born.”

Hot on the heels of another world-first find

In 2017, Dr Mansfield conjectured that another fascinating artifact from the same period, known as Plimpton 322, was a unique kind of trigonometric table.

“It is generally accepted that trigonometry – the branch of maths that is concerned with the study of triangles – was developed by the ancient Greeks studying the night sky in the second century BCE,” says Dr Mansfield.

“But the Babylonians developed their own alternative ‘proto-trigonometry’ to solve problems related to measuring the ground, not the sky.”

The tablet revealed today is thought to have existed even before Plimpton 322 – in fact, surveying problems likely inspired Plimpton 322.

“There is a whole zoo of right triangles with different shapes. But only a very small handful can be used by Babylonian surveyors. Plimpton 322 is a systematic study of this zoo to discover the useful shapes,” says Dr Mansfield.

Tablet purpose revealed: surveying land

Back in 2017, the team speculated about the purpose of the Plimpton 322, hypothesizing that it was likely to have had some practical purpose, possibly used to construct palaces and temples, build canals or survey fields.

“With this new tablet, we can actually see for the first time why they were interested in geometry: to lay down precise land boundaries,” Dr Mansfield says.

“This is from a period where land is starting to become private – people started thinking about land in terms of ‘my land and your land’, wanting to establish a proper boundary to have positive neighborly relationships. And this is what this tablet immediately says. It’s a field being split, and new boundaries are made.”

There are even clues hidden on other tablets from that time period about the stories behind these boundaries.

“Another tablet refers to a dispute between Sin-bel-apli – a prominent individual mentioned on many tablets including Si.427 – and a wealthy female landowner,” Dr Mansfield says.

“The dispute is over valuable date palms on the border between their two properties. The local administrator agrees to send out a surveyor to resolve the dispute. It is easy to see how accuracy was important in resolving disputes between such powerful individuals.”

Dr Mansfield says the way these boundaries are made reveals real geometric understanding.

“Nobody expected that the Babylonians were using Pythagorean triples in this way,” Dr Mansfield says. “It is more akin to pure mathematics, inspired by the practical problems of the time.”

Creating right angles – easier said than done

One simple way to make an accurate right angle is to make a rectangle with sides 3 and 4, and diagonal 5. These special numbers form the 3-4-5 “Pythagorean triple” and a rectangle with these measurements has mathematically perfect right angles. This is important to ancient surveyors and still used today.

“The ancient surveyors who made Si.427 did something even better: they used a variety of different Pythagorean triples, both as rectangles and right triangles, to construct accurate right angles,” Dr Mansfield says.

However, it is difficult to work with prime numbers bigger than 5 in the base 60 Babylonian number system.

“This raises a very particular issue – their unique base 60 number system means that only some Pythagorean shapes can be used,” Dr Mansfield says.

“It seems that the author of Plimpton 322 went through all these Pythagorean shapes to find these useful ones.

“This deep and highly numerical understanding of the practical use of rectangles earns the name ‘proto-trigonometry’ but it is completely different to our modern trigonometry involving sin, cos, and tan.”

Hunting down Si.427

Dr Mansfield first learned about Si.427 when reading about it in excavation records – the tablet was dug up during the Sippar expedition of 1894, in what’s the Baghdad province in Iraq today.

“It was a real challenge to trace the tablet from these records and physically find it – the report said that the tablet had gone to the Imperial Museum of Constantinople, a place that obviously doesn’t exist anymore.

“Using that piece of information, I went on a quest to track it down, speaking to many people at Turkish government ministries and museums, until one day in mid 2018 a photo of Si.427 finally landed in my inbox.

“That’s when I learned that it was actually on display at the museum. Even after locating the object it still took months to fully understand just how significant it is, and so it’s really satisfying to finally be able to share that story.”

Next, Dr Mansfield hopes to find what other applications the Babylonians had for their proto-trigonometry.

There’s just one mystery left that Dr Mansfield hasn’t unlocked: on the back of the tablet, at the very bottom, it lists the sexagesimal number ‘25:29’ in big font – think of it as 25 minutes and 29 seconds.

“I can’t figure out what these numbers mean – it’s an absolute enigma. I’m keen to discuss any leads with historians or mathematicians who might have a hunch as to what these numbers are trying to tell us!”

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Si.427 is a hand tablet from 1900-1600 BC, created by an Old Babylonian surveyor. It’s made out of clay and the surveyor wrote on it with a stylus. UNSW Sydney

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The tablet’s significance was unknown until Dr Mansfield’s detective work was revealed. UNSW Sydney

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES news release

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CELL PRESS—Whole-genome sequencing efforts around the world have offered important insights into human diversity, historical migrations, and the relationships between people of different regions—but scientists still don’t have a complete picture because some regions and people remain understudied. A new study reported in the journal Cell on August 4 helps to fill one of these big gaps by generating more than 100 high-coverage genome sequences from eight Middle Eastern populations using linked-read sequencing.

“The Middle East is an important region to understand human history, migrations, and evolution: it is where modern humans first expanded out of Africa, where hunter-gatherers first settled and transitioned into farmers, where the first writing systems developed, and where the first major known civilizations emerged,” says Mohamed Almarri of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK. “However, despite this importance, the region has been historically understudied in genomic studies.”

In the new study*, Almarri, Marc Haber (@MarcHaber, University of Birmingham, UK), and their colleagues sequenced 137 whole genomes from eight Middle Eastern populations.

By generating the most comprehensive resource of human genetic variation in the Middle East using a new sequencing technology called linked-read sequencing, the researchers were able to reconstruct the genomic history of the region with unprecedented resolution. The researchers say that some of the events recorded in the Middle Eastern genomes could be linked with what’s known from archeology or linguistics, such as the invention of agriculture and the spread of Semitic languages. But other events can only be elucidated by studying the DNA of ancient and modern people who lived in the region.

Some of their most notable findings include the following:

• The identification of 4.8 million new gene variants that are specific to Middle Eastern populations that could now provide the basis for future research.
• Genetic variants that show evidence of selection—in other words, mutations that spread unusually quickly—potentially due to adaptation to the changing environment and lifestyle.
• In the Levant, where agriculture was first developed, populations experienced a massive growth around the transition to agriculture that wasn’t paralleled in Arabia.
• Arabian populations suffered a severe population decrease around 6,000 years ago, which coincides with the change in climate in Arabia turning it from a green, wet region into the largest sand desert in the world today.
• Middle Easterners descend from the same population that expanded out of Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
• Arabian groups have significantly lower Neanderthal ancestry than other Eurasians, potentially caused by excess basal Eurasian and African ancestry in Arabians that depletes their Neanderthal ancestry
• The movement of populations during the Bronze Age potentially spread the Semitic languages from the Levant to Arabia and East Africa.
• An increase in the frequency of variants associated with type 2 diabetes in some populations in the past 2,000 years, suggesting that variants that were beneficial in the past are today associated with diseases.

“We found 4.8 million variants that were not previously discovered in other populations,” Haber says. “Hundreds of thousands of these are common in the region, and any of them could hold medical relevance.”

“Our study fills a major gap in international genomic projects by cataloguing genetic variation in the Middle East,” says Chris Tyler-Smith of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK. “The millions of new variants we found in our study will improve future medical association studies in the region. Our results explain how the genetics of Middle Easterners formed over time, providing new insights, which complement knowledge from archeology, anthropology, and linguistics.”

The researchers say they will now follow up on variants that show evidence of selection. Through these continued studies, they hope to further understand the biological effects of those newly found variants while further refining the genetic history of the region.

Article Source: CELL PRESS news release.

*Almarri et al.: “The Genomic History of the Middle East” https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00839-4 

Cover Image, Top Left: Genome sequencing has been key to understanding much about the human past. Image Kennethr, Pixabay

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CNRS—The origin and date of appearance of prehistoric cave art are the subjects of ongoing debate. Spain’s Cueva de Ardales is one point of discussion. There a flowstone formation is stained red in places. This coloring is apparently almost 65,000 years old but until now, a part of the scientific community attributed it to a natural coating of iron oxide deposited by flowing water. However, that hypothesis has just been rejected by the findings of an international team of scientists including a CNRS researcher. The team members analyzed samples of red residues collected from the flowstone surface and compared them with iron oxide–rich deposits in the cave. They concluded that the ochre-based pigment was intentionally applied, i.e. painted—by Neanderthals, as modern humans had yet to make their appearance on the European continent—and that, importantly, it had probably been brought to the cave from an external source.

Furthermore, variations in pigment composition between samples were detected, corresponding to different dates of application, sometimes many thousands of years apart. Thus, it seems that many generations of Neanderthals visited this cave and colored the draperies of the great flowstone formation with red ochre. This behavior indicates a motivation to return to the cave and symbolically mark the site, and it bears witness to the transmission of a tradition down through the generations. The scientists’ findings have been published in PNAS on 2 August 2021.

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Flowstone formation in the Sala de las Estrellas at Cueva de Ardales (Malaga, Andalusia), with the traces of red pigment analysed and discussed in the article. © João Zilhão, ICREA. 
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Article Source: CNRS news release

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PLOS—An analysis of the blood types of one Denisovan and three Neanderthal individuals has uncovered new clues to the evolutionary history, health, and vulnerabilities of their populations. Silvana Condemi of the Centre National de la Research Scientifique (CNRS) and colleagues at Aix-Marseille University, France, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 28, 2021.

Neanderthals and Denisovans were ancient humans who lived across Eurasia, from Western Europe to Siberia, from about 300,000 to 40,000 years ago. Previous research efforts have produced full-genome DNA sequences for 15 of these ancient individuals, greatly enhancing understanding of their species. However, despite being encoded in DNA, these ancient individuals’ blood types have received little attention.

In the new study*, Condemi and colleagues investigated the previously sequenced genomes of one Denisovan and three Neanderthal individuals (ranging from 100,000 to 40,000 years ago) in order to determine their blood types and analyze the implications. While 43 different systems exist for assigning blood types, the researchers focused on seven systems that are often used in medical settings for blood transfusions.

This analysis of the four individuals’ blood types revealed new information about their species. For instance, the ancient individuals had blood type alleles—different versions of the same gene—in combinations that are consistent with the idea that Neanderthals and Denisovans originated in Africa.

In addition, a distinct genetic link between the Neanderthal blood types and the blood types of an Aboriginal Australian and an indigenous Papuan suggests the possibility of mating between Neanderthals and modern humans before modern humans migrated to Southeast Asia.

The Neanderthal individuals also had blood type alleles associated with increased vulnerability to diseases affecting fetuses and newborns, as well as reduced variability of many alleles compared to modern humans. This pattern is in line with existing evidence that links low genetic diversity and low reproductive success with the eventual demise of Neanderthals.

Overall, these findings highlight the relevance of blood types in understanding humans’ evolutionary history.

The authors add: “This work identifies the blood group systems in Neanderthals and Denisovans in order to better understand their evolutionary history and to consolidate hypotheses concerning their dispersal in Eurasia and interbreeding with early Homo sapiens.

The results of the Groups system analysis of Neanderthals and Denisovans confirm their African origin as well as the weakness in their fertility and susceptibility to virus infection leading to a high infant mortality rate.”

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Erythroid blood group distribution from Denisova and Neanderthal archaic genomes. Branching matches nuclear DNA tree topology [43]. Blue, Neanderthal lineage; red, Denisovan lineage. Made with Natural Earth. Free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com. Condemi et al, 2021, PLOS ONE (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Homo neanderthalensis adult male. Reconstruction based on Shanidar 1 by John Gurche for the Human Origins Program, NMNH. Date: 225,000 to 28,000 years. John Gurche,  CCO Universal Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Condemi S, Mazières S, Faux P, Costedoat C, Ruiz-Linares A, Bailly P, et al. (2021) Blood groups of Neandertals and Denisova decrypted. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0254175. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254175

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