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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study examines factors that led to colonization of the Azores. Humans have altered much of Earth’s landscape over time. Remote islands may provide insight into how landscapes evolved in response to the impacts of early settlers. However, limited historical records have hampered understanding of how and when such landscapes were colonized. Pedro Raposeiro and colleagues analyzed and dated fecal biomarkers and coprophilous fungal spores in sediment cores collected from lakes on five islands that are part of the Azores Archipelago. The authors also accounted for climate conditions through time. Island occupation began approximately between 700 and 850 CE, around seven centuries earlier than prior research suggests. Anthropogenic pressure on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems increased gradually through activities such as logging, livestock introduction, and slash-and-burn agriculture and eventually resulted in irreversible alterations. Colonization occurred simultaneously with anomalous northeasterly winds and warming Northern Hemisphere temperatures, which may have repressed exploration from southern Europe but benefited Norse explorers from the northeast Atlantic. The findings suggest that the Azores Archipelago was not pristine when Portuguese settlers first arrived, and that the Norse may have been the first settlers to colonize the region, according to the authors.

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Landscape view of Pico (foreground) and Faial (background) Islands. Santiago Giralt.

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Article Source: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES news release.

*“Climate change facilitated the early colonization of the Azores Archipelago during medieval times,” by Pedro M. Raposeiro et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 4-Oct-2021. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108236118

J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles – The Center for Architectural Conservation at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design has received a $1.3 million grant from Getty to develop a conservation and management plan and professional training program for Wupatki National Monument in Arizona.

Wupatki National Monument and its sister Monuments, Walnut Canyon and Sunset Crater Volcano, are unique in North America for their exceptionally well-preserved archeological record, their geographical diversity, and their ancestral significance to Northern Arizona American Indian communities. All three monuments are units of the National Park Service (NPS), a longtime partner of Penn’s Center for Architectural Conservation (CAC).

“Reflective of contemporary concerns that address climate threat and cultural appropriation, this project will develop a framework for integrated site stewardship based on an understanding of sustainability as both a physical and cultural necessity,” says Frank Matero, CAC’s director and professor and chair in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at Penn. “Identifying the vulnerabilities of sites like Wupatki is perhaps the most critical challenge currently facing all cultural and natural resource managers today. Mitigation, resilience, and adaptation in the form of renewed cultural partnerships with affiliated tribal communities will move the conservation needs front and center in this model project.”

Once home to the ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, Yavapai, Havasupai, Hualapai, and several bands of Apache and Paiute, the Wupatki landscape holds a precious record of migration, trade, and other practices dating back to the 11th century. In addition, many Northern Arizona American Indian communities view the Wupatki village as continuously inhabited by their ancestors.

“Wupatki tells a long and irreplaceable story of human experience on the land through time,” says Ian Hough, archaeologist and Flagstaff Area National Monuments cultural resources program manager.

Wupatki National Monument’s cultural heart is the impressive 900-year-old Wupatki Pueblo, a traditional multi-room stone masonry complex that housed as many as 100 residents and today draws more than 200,000 visitors annually. The Pueblo has undergone various preservation campaigns and ongoing maintenance over the past century, and as such is an example of preservation attitudes and techniques in the American Southwest for over a century. However, extreme weather events from global warming have accelerated deterioration and damage to the structures and their surrounding cultural landscape. The site is also at risk from seismic instability, flooding and debris slides. Aging repairs and an incomplete understanding of the complexities of how sites like Wupatki deteriorate, especially in a changing climate, require adaptive strategies for the preservation and better management of all built heritage, especially archaeological sites.

“Getty has championed best practices in archaeological site preservation for decades” says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation, the grantmaking program of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “With climate change now impacting so many treasured sites throughout the Southwest, the project at Wupatki National Monument promises to make a major contribution to their protection, enriched by the participation of affiliated tribal communities.” 

As part of its engagement at Wupatki, the Penn team and partners will also expand professional training, cultural heritage education, and career discovery opportunities for Native youth focused on the conservation of American Indian ancestral sites, including a 12-week summer program in partnership with Conservation Legacy’s Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps. The program will incorporate fieldwork, job shadowing, and mentoring by cultural resources advisors from Northern Arizona Tribes and a 10-week summer internship program for Native degree-seeking students through Northern Arizona University.

“Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps is excited to partner with Wupatki National Monument and Vanishing Treasures, Getty and the University of Pennsylvania on this great project, protecting and preserving these ancestral sites for current and future generations to enjoy and honoring the ancestors who built them generations ago,” says Chas Robles, director of Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps. “ALCC has partnered with the National Park Service to engage Indigenous young people in meaningful conservation and national service programs that create positive impacts for our communities, the environment and our participants.  Projects such as this one are incredibly impactful for our participants, who are descendants of the original architects and builders of these places.”

The National Park Service has a long history of advancing the practice of built heritage conservation to protect and preserve natural and cultural resources for the American public. As the National Monument approaches its 100^th anniversary in 2024 within the NPS, the Wupatki project is uniquely positioned to expand the scope of the typical Conservation and Management Plan, which addresses past and current conditions of and threats to structures and landscapes, management priorities, and applied solutions for continued conservation and interpretation. An important aspect of the project will be identifying how such classic heritage stewardship can be better informed by Indigenous values and practices. If successful, the methodology could serve as a model for similar sites in the region and beyond.

“One long-term goal of the project is to continue to develop and strengthen an already active community of practice. This includes a network of local Indigenous stakeholders, NPS staff, students, faculty, and other professionals from related fields to support conserving critical heritage resources in national parks in the West,” says Lauren Meyer, program manager of the NPS Intermountain Historic Preservation Services and project co-director for the National Park Service. “This will involve working closely with site stewards and stakeholders to understand the variety of resource values, as well as the many challenges to conservation and management to develop proactive and long-lasting solutions.”

Partners from the National Park Service include Wupatki Cultural Resources Program, Vanishing Treasures Program, and the Western Center for Historic Preservation, a preservation training arm of the NPS. Also on the team is Paulo Lourenço, professor of civil engineering at the University of Minho in Portugal and an expert in historic masonry and seismic risk, whose team will study the structural performance of Wupatki’s rubble stone and earthen mortar construction systems.

In carrying out its work at Wupatki, the Penn team draws on engagements currently underway at other climate-vulnerable cultural heritage sites throughout the American Southwest, among them Fort Union National Monument and Pecos National Historic Park, New Mexico and Tumacacori National Historic Site and Tuzigoot National Monument, Arizona. As public health guidelines allow, work will begin this fall with a final report in 2024. 

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Wupatki Pueblo. NPS Image, Public Domain

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Wupatkii Pueblo at sunrise. NPS Photo, H. Rich

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Wukoki Pueblo. NPS Photo, H. Rich

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Article Source: J. Paul Getty Trust news release.

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Established at Penn in 1991, the Center for Architectural Conservation conducts a full agenda of research and teaching dedicated to documentation, recording, field survey, material analysis, condition assessment, risk analysis, and the development of new treatments and treatment evaluation of historic structures and sites. In addition to providing graduate and post graduate students with then necessary environment to participate and collaborate in applied projects at home and abroad, the CAC offers professional workshops and master classes for the public and professional community.

One of 12 schools at the University of Pennsylvania, the Weitzman School of Design prepares students to address complex sociocultural and environmental issues through thoughtful inquiry, creative expression, and innovation. As a diverse community of scholars and practitioners, Weitzman is committed to advancing the public good—locally, nationally, and globally—through art, design, planning, and preservation.

Getty is a leading global arts organization committed to the exhibition, conservation, and understanding of the world’s artistic and cultural heritage. Working collaboratively with partners around the globe, the Getty Foundation, Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute are all dedicated to the greater understanding of the relationships between the world’s many cultures. The Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs share art, knowledge, and resources online at Getty.edu and welcome the public for free at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa.

The Vanishing Treasures Program (VT) is a multi-regional effort of the U.S. National Park Service that supports the conservation of the deteriorating, yet significant heritage architecture of the American west; facilitates the perpetuation of traditional building practices through staff-, youth- and partner-focused training; and promotes connections between culturally associated communities and American Indian tribes and places of their heritage. Established in 1998, VT supports a diverse and active community of practice and works across park, regional and organizational boundaries to identify and address critical resource needs.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA BARBARA—In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times larger than Jericho.

“It’s an incredibly culturally important area,” said James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at the UC Santa Barbara. “Much of where the early cultural complexity of humans developed is in this general area.”

A favorite site for archaeologists and biblical scholars, the mound hosts evidence of culture all the way from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, all compacted into layers as the highly strategic settlement was built, destroyed, and rebuilt over millennia.

But there is a 1.5-meter interval in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some researchers, for its “highly unusual” materials. In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick, and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.

“We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius,” said Kennett, whose research group at the time happened to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that triggered major widespread burning, climatic changes and animal extinctions. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers including impact scientist Allen West and Kennett joined Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvia’s research effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.

Their results are published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Salt and Bone

“There’s evidence of a large cosmic airburst, close to this city called Tall el-Hammam,” Kennett said, of an explosion similar to the Tunguska Event, a roughly 12-megaton airburst that occurred in 1908, when a 56-60-meter meteor pierced the Earth’s atmosphere over the Eastern Siberian Taiga.

The shock of the explosion over Tall el-Hammam was enough to level the city, flattening the palace and surrounding walls and mudbrick structures, according to the paper, and the distribution of bones indicated “extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans.”

For Kennett, further proof of the airburst was found by conducting many different kinds of analyses on soil and sediments from the critical layer. Tiny iron- and silica-rich spherules turned up in their analysis, as did melted metals.

“I think one of the main discoveries is shocked quartz. These are sand grains containing cracks that form only under very high pressure” Kennett said of one of many lines of evidence that point to a large airburst near Tall el-Hammam. “We have shocked quartz from this layer, and that means there were incredible pressures involved to shock the quartz crystals— quartz is one of the hardest minerals; it’s very hard to shock.”

The airburst, according to the paper, may also explain the “anomalously high concentrations of salt” found in the destruction layer — an average of 4% in the sediment and as high as 25% in some samples.

“The salt was thrown up due to the high impact pressures,” Kennett said, of the meteor that likely fragmented upon contact with the Earth’s atmosphere. “And it may be that the impact partially hit the Dead Sea, which is rich in salt.” The local shores of the Dead Sea are also salt-rich so the impact may have redistributed those salt crystals far and wide — not just at Tall el-Hammam, but also nearby Tell es-Sultan (proposed as the biblical Jericho, which also underwent violent destruction at the same time) and Tall-Nimrin (also then destroyed).

The high-salinity soil could have been responsible for the so-called “Late Bronze Age Gap,” the researchers say, in which cities along the lower Jordan Valley were abandoned, dropping the population from tens of thousands to maybe a few hundred nomads. Nothing could grow in these formerly fertile grounds, forcing people to leave the area for centuries. Evidence for resettlement of Tall el-Hammam and nearby communities appears again in the Iron Age, roughly 600 years after the cities’ sudden devastation in the Bronze Age.

Fire and Brimstone

Tall el-Hamman has been the focus of an ongoing debate as to whether it could be the biblical city of Sodom, one of the two cities in the Old Testament Book of Genesis that were destroyed by God for how wicked they and their inhabitants had become. One denizen, Lot, is saved by two angels who instruct him not to look behind as they flee. Lot’s wife, however, lingers and is turned into a pillar of salt. Meanwhile, fire and brimstone fell from the sky; multiple cities were destroyed; thick smoke rose from the fires; city inhabitants were killed and area crops were destroyed in what sounds like an eyewitness account of a cosmic impact event. It’s a satisfying connection to make.

“All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” Kennett said, “but there’s no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament.” However, the researchers said, the disaster could have generated an oral tradition that may have served as the inspiration for the written account in the book of Genesis, as well as the biblical account of the burning of Jericho in the Old Testament Book of Joshua.

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The archaeological site of Tall el-Hammam, Jordan that overlooks the Jordan Valley. Deg777,  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA BARBARA news release.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Scientists have been excavating the ruins of Tikal, an ancient Maya city in modern-day Guatemala, since the 1950s — and thanks to those many decades spent documenting details of every structure and cataloguing each excavated item, Tikal has become one of the best understood and most thoroughly studied archaeological sites in the world. 

But a startling recent discovery by the Pacunam Lidar Initiative, a research consortium involving a Brown University anthropologist, has ancient Mesoamerican scholars across the globe wondering whether they know Tikal as well as they think.

Using light detection and ranging software, or lidar, Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, and Thomas Garrison, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered that what was long assumed to be an area of natural hills a short walk away from Tikal’s center was actually a neighborhood of ruined buildings that had been designed to look like those in Teotihuacan, the largest and most powerful city in the ancient Americas.

Houston said their lidar analysis, coupled with a subsequent excavation by a team of Guatemalan archaeologists led by Edwin Román Ramírez, has prompted new insights on, and big questions about, Teotihuacan’s influence on the Maya civilization. 

“What we had taken to be natural hills actually were shown to be modified and conformed to the shape of the citadel — the area that was possibly the imperial palace — at Teotihuacan,” Houston said. “Regardless of who built this smaller-scale replica and why, it shows without a doubt that there was a different level of interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan than previously believed.”

The results, including lidar images and a summary of excavation findings, were published on Tuesday, Sept. 28 in Antiquity.

Tikal and Teotihuacan were radically different cities, Houston said. Tikal, a Maya city, was fairly populous but relatively small in scale — “you could have walked from one end of the kingdom to the other in a day, maybe two” — while Teotihuacan had all the marks of an empire. Though little is known about the people who founded and governed Teotihuacan, it’s clear that, like the Romans, their influence extended far beyond their metropolitan center: Evidence shows they shaped and colonized countless communities hundreds of miles away.

Houston said anthropologists have known for decades that inhabitants of the two cities were in contact and often traded with one another for centuries before Teotihuacan conquered Tikal around the year 378 A.D. There’s also ample evidence suggesting that between the second and sixth centuries A.D., Maya elites and scribes lived in Teotihuacan, some bringing elements of the empire’s culture and materials — including its unique funerary rituals, slope-and-panel architectural style and green obsidian — back home to Tikal. Another Maya expert, David Stuart of U.T. Austin, has translated inscriptions that described the era when Teotihuacan generals, including one named Born from Fire, traveled to Tikal and unseated the local Maya king. 

But the research consortium’s latest lidar findings and excavations prove that the imperial power in modern-day Mexico did more than just trade with and culturally influence the smaller city of Tikal before conquering it. 

“The architectural complex we found very much appears to have been built for people from Teotihuacan or those under their control,” Houston said. “Perhaps it was something like an embassy complex, but when we combine previous research with our latest findings, it suggests something more heavy-handed, like occupation or surveillance. At the very least, it shows an attempt to implant part of a foreign city plan on Tikal.”

Houston said that excavations following the lidar work, led by Román Ramírez, confirmed that some buildings were constructed with mud plaster rather than the traditional Maya limestone. The structures were designed to be smaller replicas of the buildings that make up Teotihuacan’s citadel, down to the intricate cornices and terraces and the specific 15.5-degree east-of-north orientation of the complex’s platforms.

“It almost suggests that local builders were told to use an entirely non-local building technology while constructing this sprawling new building complex,” Houston said. “We’ve rarely seen evidence of anything but two-way interaction between the two civilizations, but here, we seem to be looking at foreigners who are moving aggressively into the area.”

At an adjacent, newly uncovered complex of residential buildings, archaeologists found projectile points crafted with flint, a material commonly used by the Maya, and green obsidian, a material used by residents of Teotihuacan — providing seeming evidence of conflict.

And near the replica citadel, archaeologists also recovered the remains of a body surrounded by carefully placed vessels, ceramic fragments, animal bones and projectile points. The site was dotted with charcoal, suggesting it had been set ablaze. Houston said the scene bears little resemblance to other burials or sacrifices at Tikal but is strikingly similar to the remains of warriors found years ago in Teotihuacan’s center.

“Excavations in the middle of the citadel at Teotihuacan have found the burials of many individuals dressed as warriors, and they appear to have been sacrificed and placed in mass graves,” Houston said. “We have possibly found a vestige of one of those burials at Tikal itself.”

Houston and his international colleagues still have much more to uncover and analyze. Andrew Scherer, an associate professor of anthropology at Brown and a bone specialist, will study the human remains to determine their origins, potentially revealing more about Teotihuacan’s relationship with Tikal. This summer, as COVID-19-related travel restrictions began to ease, Houston joined Garrison, Román Ramírez and Morgan Clark, a Brown graduate student in anthropology, in Guatemala to uncover buildings, fortifications and storage tanks in related fortresses nearby. Excavations will resume this fall at Tikal, under the leadership of Román Ramírez.

The more they find out, Houston said, the more he hopes they understand about Teotihuacan’s presence in Tikal — and, more broadly, how its imperial power changed the diverse cultural and political landscape in Mesoamerica.

“At this time, people are quite interested in the process of colonization and its aftermath, and in how our views of the world are informed or distorted by the expansion of economic and political systems around the globe,” Houston said. “Before European colonization of the Americas, there were empires and kingdoms of disproportionate influence and strength interacting with smaller civilizations in a way that left a large impact. Exploring Teotihuacan’s influence on Mesoamerica could be a way to explore the beginnings of colonialism and its oppressions and local collusions.”

The consortium’s ongoing research is authorized by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala and funded by Guatemala’s PACUNAM Foundation, in partnership with the United States-based Hitz Foundation.

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A recent lidar analysis revealed that an area once assumed to be natural hills, center, near Tikal’s Lost World complex, right, is actually an 1,800-year-old ruined citadel. Thomas Garrison/PACUNAM

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Tikal. Jancickal, Pixabay

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Teotihuacan, Mexico. jjnanni, Pixabay

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Article Source: BROWN UNIVERSITY news release.

*Houston, S., Ramírez, E., Garrison, T., Stuart, D., Ayala, H., & Rosales, P. (2021). A Teotihuacan complex at the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala. Antiquity, 1-9. doi:10.15184/aqy.2021.140

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Newly discovered fossil human footprints embedded in an ancient lakebed show that humans inhabited North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), occupying the region of what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico, United States, between 23 and 21 thousand years ago. Not only do the findings provide definitive evidence on the early antiquity of the colonization of the New World, they also indicate that humans were present in southern North America before the glacial advances of the LGM prevented human migration from Asia. Despite nearly a century of research, the details concerning the migration of the first humans into the Americas and their impact on the Pleistocene landscape remain poorly understood, and the earliest archaeological evidence for the settlement of the region is often highly controversial. Current estimates for the timing of these first occupants range from ~13,000 years ago to more than 20,000 years ago. However, in most cases, the timeline of human expansion into North America is largely constrained by the viability of the currently recognized migration routes from Asia – an inland ice-free corridor through western Canada and/or a Pacific coastal route – which would have likely been closed or difficult to traverse during the LGM. Matthew Bennett and colleagues report the discovery of a sequence of in situ human footprints on surfaces dating to between ~23,000 and 21,000 years ago and reveal nearly 2,000 years of human occupation in North America during the height of the LGM. Unlike cultural artifacts or other evidence of human activity, which can have uncertain provenance, footprints have a primary depositional context, fixed on the imprinted surface, and represent a discrete moment in time. According to Bennett et al., further analyses of the tracks suggest that most were made by teenagers and children; larger adult footprints are much less frequent.

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Footprints at the excavation site. National Park Service, USGS and Bournemouth University

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Prints at the base of the trench. National Park Service, USGS and Bournemouth University

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Timeline and site significance. National Park Service, USGS and Bournemouth University

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Schematic of excavation and surfaces. National Park Service, USGS and Bournemouth University

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Illustration of the excavation site. Karen Carr

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

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—As early Homo sapiens spread across Eurasia about 45,000 years ago, they may have experienced much colder climate conditions than previously thought, according to isotope analyses of animal remains from a Bulgarian cave, which also contains some of Europe’s earliest H. sapiens remains. The findings* contradict models that suggest warm climates were necessary for human expansion in the region, providing direct evidence that at least some dispersals occurred when air temperatures in the cave were 10°Celsius to 15°C lower than temperatures today. Current models based on age correlations between archaeological and climatic records propose that H. sapiens spread across Eurasia only during episodes of warm climate. However, these studies tend not to use direct paleoclimate evidence, instead generating models that correlate the ages of archaeological finds with climatic phases documented in ice cores or cave deposits. To provide direct evidence for the climate conditions during the time when H. sapiens first spread across Eurasia, replacing Neanderthals within a few millennia, Sarah Pederzani and colleagues analyzed strontium and oxygen isotopes from the tooth enamel in remains of equids and bison from the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) in Bulgaria’s Bacho Kiro Cave. They used a sequential method to sample the enamel layer-by-layer, enabling them to see changes in the isotopes over short intervals of time, as the tooth enamel was deposited during the animal’s development. The strontium isotopes were stable, which showed that the animals did not migrate over long distances, confirming the suitability of the remains to help reconstruct the local climate. However, the oxygen isotopes did fluctuate, enabling the researchers to estimate changes in seasonal temperature as well as annual mean temperatures. Pederzani et al. determined that the oxygen isotope levels were much lower than those expected for the modern-day Balkans climate, aligning better with current, colder conditions in Scandinavia and Russia. 

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Bacho Kiro Cave is located in a karst valley in north central Bulgaria, with small streams passing close to the cave entrance. Sarah Pederzani, MPI-EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0

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Current excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave of the 2021 season are unearthing new artifacts from the Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal occupations. The Initial Upper Palaeolithic Layer I can be seen as a dark band in the sediment profile. Excavators are wearing masks and gloves to minimize contamination of samples that are regularly taken for molecular analyses. Tsenka Tsanova, MPI-EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0

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Excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave (Bulgaria). The excavator in the foreground is recording artifacts (each marked with a colored pin) from the Initial Upper Paleolithic Layer I. Homo sapiens bones as well as artifacts from human use of the cave, such as stone tools and a large number of animal bones, were recovered from this layer. Stable isotope analyses of these animal remains were used in this study to examine the climatic conditions during the time that humans were present at the site. Željko Režek, MPI-EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0

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High crowned horse teeth – such as the one shown here, recovered from the lower layers of the Bacho Kiro Cave sequence – were analysed for the oxygen isotopic composition of tooth enamel to reconstruct seasonal temperatures during the animal’s life. Sarah Pederzani, MPI-EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0

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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—Early Maya cities featured monumental complexes, which centered on a shared form of religion but these complexes transformed radically once kingship emerged in 400 B.C. To solidify their power, rulers throughout the Maya lowlands would change these complexes, installing their mark on the landscape and reshaping how people remember it, according to a Dartmouth study* published in Ancient Mesoamerica.

“Just as political leaders today often seek to brand themselves, so too did early Maya rulers,” says Ryan H. Collins, a postdoctoral fellow in anthropology at the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth. “Maya rulers seemed to have real angst about the past world and think that it could interfere with their authority, so they would try to tweak it, or even erase it altogether. These rulers saw themselves as the embodiment of the Maya sun god and wanted to put their personal stamp on the city, so monuments and the ways people experienced the city were modified to reflect a ruler’s desires over his or her lifetime.”

Collins examined data from the Maya site, Yaxuná, located in central Yucatán, Mexico, and other pyramid plaza complexes or temples known as E groups in the Maya lowlands, including San Bartolo, Tikal, Ceibal in Guatemala, and Cahal Pech in Belize, which reflected observed astronomical alignments with the equinoxes and solstices.

In the E group, each monumental complex was built along an east-west axis and was characterized by a pyramid to the west and a long-raised platform to the east. Prior research has found that the astronomical alignments of Maya complexes were likely a reference to the sun god and maize (corn) god and the annual changes of the agricultural season.

According to archaeological data from Yaxuná and the other sites, Collins found that by 400 B.C., many Maya complexes in the E Group were either built on top of existing temples, dismantled, or abandoned altogether. In many cases, new architecture would be constructed right on top of everything that was there before, where there could five, six or even seven pyramids preserved under the latest phase of construction.

“Over time, these temples became more about the rulers and less about the ritual and religion that once brought the communities together in the first place,” says Collins. At Yaxuná, in the original city center alone, there were 11 phases of construction between 900 B.C. and 100 B.C.

While new monuments within the E Group were created over old ones, some aspects were maintained through time. For example, the original eastern structure (Str. 5E-6) at Yaxuná contained a circular stone foundation on level eight, which was preserved and emphasized by later generations through a circular incised line on the floor of level six. Precious items were also found cached on levels seven and four, including a polished magnetite fragment and a ceramic vessel with greenware beads that were likely obtained through long-distance trade. “The Maya would go back and mark spaces of social significance generations later, not centuries later, illustrating how people were really emphasizing memory and continuity with things that they thought were important,” says Collins.

Other areas of the Yaxuná site and other E Group sites however, contained evidence of termination rituals. These rituals were used to destroy the energy or soul associated with a building, especially if it was sacred, such as by spreading the ash of burned incense over an area. In the eastern structure at Yaxuná, ash was found near a grinding stone, providing evidence that a former space for rituals was used to prepare food in later years.

“In archaeology, there has been the assumption that Maya kingship represented a continuity with the past but as Maya rulers altered peoples’ experience of where they lived, these rulers were actually breaking away from Mesoamerican building traditions and redefining the Maya city,” says Collins. “The first millennium of Maya culture for the E Group marks a period for not only new monuments but for the development of massive civic architecture, as large-scale roadways were built and districts began to emerge. These changes also may have driven Maya civilization’s shift from an egalitarian society to a more hierarchical structure.”

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Maya ruins in Tikal, Guatemala 2009. chensiyuan is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

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Map of Maya lowlands in eastern Mesoamerica. Illustration by Ryan H. Collins.

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(a) Circular building present on floor eight, just west of Str. 5E-6; (b) fragment of polished magnetite found alongside other artifacts cached in a pair of intentional cuts on floor seven; (c) circular incised line present on floor six; (d) complete ceramic redware vessel cached in floor four associated with two greenstone beads. Images by Ryan H. Collins.

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release.

When the primary cultural deposit – the motherlode – of the 1622 fleet galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha was discovered by divers working for treasure hunter Mel Fisher near Key West, Florida in 1985, among its riches was a vast cargo of silver coins the likes of which had never before been seen. The discovery also delivered a bombshell surprise of evidence for historians: confirmation that hand-struck silver coins were produced in the Nuevo Reino de Granada – today’s Colombia  – as early as 1621, a fact that some had suspected, but none had proof to substantiate.

This year, from December 1 to December 5, 2021, 400 years after the conflict-ridden establishment of minting houses in both Cartagena and Santa Fe de Bogota, coin experts and history enthusiasts from all over the world – including six from Florida – will gather in Colombia’s romantic seaport city for “Cartagena MMXXI – the 3^rd International Convention of Historians and Numismatists” where they will examine and celebrate this fascinating point in time along with other key moments in numismatic history.

Open to the public, with both in-person and on-line/virtual viewing options, the convention features presentations by some of the world’s leading experts, including Florida’s Jorge Proctor of Pompano Beach, an archival research expert, numismatist and head of the convention’s academic committee; noted marine archaeologist, anthropologist, author and retired professor Dr. R. Duncan Mathewson III of Little Torch Key, who led the Atocha’s archaeological recovery process; Orlando-based professional numismatist and convention V.P. of North American relations, Augi Garcia; Orlando-based professional numismatist and author Daniel Frank Sedwick, Tampa-based professional numismatist Colin M. Blyth, and Key West and Gainesville-based shipwreck coin curation expert, author and International Conventions founding member Carol Tedesco.

Though researchers reported that coins were minted in Colombia as early as 1622, until the discovery of the Atocha, none dated earlier than 1625 were known to exist. Archival records documented that in 1620 a military engineer by the name of Don Alonso Turrillo de Yebra had been authorized by King Philip III of Spain to establish a mint in what was then known as the Nuevo Reino de Granada – the New Kingdom of Granada. Documents also revealed that the undertaking, which included a mint in Santa Fe de Bogota and an ancillary one in Cartagena, was fraught with bureaucratic complications and delays. Nonetheless, Turrillo persisted, and in a letter to the King he confirms that at some point prior to the sailing of the 1622 fleet he had indeed struck coins, of “much more perfection than that which is styled in some of the other mints,” and he lamented that some of these “were on one of the galleons which were flooded.” Yet the question remained, were coins also struck in Nuevo Reino de Granada in 1621 as some documents seemed to imply? The answer was eventually revealed among recoveries from the Atocha and another ship of the fleet.

A Cartagena MMXXI conference presentation by Turrillo authority Proctor, titled “Alonso Turrillo – hero or villain?” will address key questions as well as examine some of the shenanigans undertaken over the course of years by the wiley and resourceful “entrepreneur.” Other notable experts from Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, Puerto Rico, Spain, the U.S. and Venezuela  will offer a combination of live and virtual presentations as well as book presentations on a variety of historic numismatic themes.

Of particular interest to sunken shipwreck historians and enthusiasts will be updates and discussions on Colombia’s famous San José shipwreck which was sunk by British Naval forces in 1708, taking hundreds of people and a cargo of New World produced wealth estimated in the billions to a resting place in nearly 2000 feet/600 meters of sea water off of Cartagena. Under discussion will be prospects for recovery of the vessel, and establishment of a museum to house and display its artifacts.

For registration and other conference information, including a gala, ceremonies, social events, and a commercial numismatic component for collectors and sellers, visit cartagena2021.com. The website is in Spanish, but offers an English translation feature and English language registration guide. English/Spanish translation for all presentations will be provided. Covid-19 safety protocols will be in place for the duration of the conference; scheduling may be subject to change. Attendees are encouraged to check the website regularly for updates. For in-person guests and participants, face-masks and proof of vaccination will be required and social distancing will be observed.

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A painting by Samuel Scott (1702-1772) depicts the destruction in 1708 of the treasure galleon San José off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. Prospects for recovery of the vessel and establishment of a museum to house and display its artifacts is to be one of the topics under discussion at Cartagena MMXXI – the 3rd International Convention of Historians and Numismatists. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

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Photo of a partially dated 1621 silver coin, front and back, which went down on the galleon Atocha near Key West, Florida in 1622. Struck at the Cartagena, Colombia mint, it is one of a small group of coins that altered the known numismatic history of Colombia. A December 1-5, 2021 event in Cartagena will celebrate the 400 year anniversary of the opening of that mint. Events recognizing the 400 year anniversary of the Atocha’s sinking will take place in Key West in 2022. (Photo provided by Bill and Dr Susan Pearson)

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Article Source: Cartagena MMXXI – the 3^rd International Convention of Historians and Numismatists news release. (Press contact: Augi Garcia/media@cartagena2021.com)

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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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