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GOLDSCHMIDT CONFERENCE—Scientists have found an unexplained cache of fossilised shark teeth in an area where there should be none – in a 2900 year old site in the City of David in Jerusalem. This is at least 80 km from where these fossils would be expected to be found. There is no conclusive proof of why the cache was assembled, but it may be that the 80 million-year-old teeth were part of a collection, dating from just after the death of King Solomon*. The same team has now unearthed similar unexplained finds in other parts of ancient Judea.

Presenting the work at the Goldschmidt Conference, lead researcher, Dr. Thomas Tuetken (University of Mainz, Institute of Geosciences) said:

“These fossils are not in their original setting, so they have been moved. They were probably valuable to someone; we just don’t know why, or why similar items have been found in more than one place in Israel”.

The teeth were found buried in material used to fill in a basement before conversion to a large Iron-Age house. The house itself was situated in the City of David, one of the oldest parts of Jerusalem, found nowadays in the largely Palestinian village of Silwan. They were found together with fish bones thrown away as food waste 2900 years ago, and other infill material such as pottery. Intriguingly, they were found together with hundreds of bullae – items used to seal confidential letters and packages – implying a possible connection with the administrative or governing class at some point. Normally archaeological material is dated according to the circumstances where it is found, and so at first it was assumed that the teeth were contemporary with the rest of the find. Dr. Tuetken said:

“We had at first assumed that the shark teeth were remains of the food dumped nearly 3000 years ago, but when we submitted a paper for publication, one of the reviewers pointed out that the one of the teeth could only have come from a Late Cretaceous shark that had been extinct for at least 66 million years. That sent us back to the samples, where measuring organic matter, elemental composition, and the crystallinity of the teeth confirmed that indeed all shark teeth were fossils. Their strontium isotope composition indicates an age of about 80 million years. This confirmed that all 29 shark teeth found in the City of David were Late Cretaceous fossils – contemporary with dinosaurs. More than that, they were not simply weathered out of the bedrock beneath the site, but were probably transported from afar, possibly from the Negev, at least 80 km away, where similar fossils are found”.

Since the first finds, the team have found other shark teeth fossils elsewhere in Israel, at the Maresha and Miqne sites. These teeth are also likely to have been unearthed and moved from their original sites.

Dr. Tuetken said:

“Our working hypothesis is that the teeth were brought together by collectors, but we don’t have anything to confirm that. There are no wear marks which might show that they were used as tools, and no drill holes to indicate that they may have been jewelry. We know that there is a market for shark’s teeth even today, so it may be that there was an Iron Age trend for collecting such items. This was a period of riches in the Judean Court. However, it’s too easy to put 2 and 2 together to make 5. We’ll probably never really be sure”.

The shark teeth which have been identified come from several species, including from the extinct Late Cretaceous group Squalicorax. Squalicorax, which grew to between 2 and 5 meters long, lived only during the Late Cretaceous period (which was the same period as the late dinosaurs), so acts as a reference point in dating these fossils.

Commenting, Dr. Brooke Crowley (University of Cincinnati) said:

“This research by Dr. Tuetken and colleagues is an excellent example of why it is so important to approach a research question with as few assumptions as possible, and how sometimes we have to revisit our initial assumptions. It also highlights how beneficial it can be to apply multiple tools to answer a research question. In this case, the authors used both strontium and oxygen isotopes, as well as x-ray diffraction and trace element analysis to establish most likely age and origin of the fossil teeth. It was a monumental of work but these efforts have revealed a much more interesting story about the people who lived in this region in the past. I am very excited by this work and hope that one day, we might be able to unravel the mystery of why these fossil teeth are being recovered from cultural deposits”.

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Fossilized Squalicorax tooth Nr. #07815 from the Jerusalem site. Omri Lernau

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Article Source: GOLDSCHMIDT CONFERENCE news release

Dr. Crowley was not involved in this work. The work relating to the Jerusalem finds has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 8:570032 (https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.570032), Dr. Crowley edited this paper for the journal. 

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FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, GAINESVILLE, Fla.—Archaeologists have unearthed a rare trove of more than 80 metal objects in Mississippi thought to be from Hernando de Soto’s 16th-century expedition through the Southeast. Many of the objects were repurposed by the resident Chickasaws as household tools and ornaments, an unusual practice at a time when European goods in North America were few and often reserved for leaders.

The researchers believe Spaniards left the objects behind while fleeing a Chickasaw attack that followed frayed relations between the two groups in 1541. The victors took advantage of the windfall of spoils – axe heads, blades, nails and other items made of iron, lead and copper alloy – modifying many of them to suit local uses and tastes. Chickasaw craftspeople turned pieces of Spanish horseshoes into scrapers, barrel bands into cutting tools and bits of copper into jingling pendants.

The sheer abundance of objects from the site, an area of northeastern Mississippi known as Stark Farms, is one of the factors that makes the find unique, said Charles Cobb, the study’s lead author and Florida Museum of Natural History Lockwood Chair in Historical Archaeology.

“Typically, we might find a handful of European objects in connection with a high-status person or some other special context,” Cobb said. “But this must have been more of an open season – a pulse of goods that became widely available for a short period of time.”

If the researchers’ diagnosis is correct, Stark Farms is only the second place to yield convincing archaeological evidence of direct contact with de Soto’s expedition, after the historic site of the Apalachee capital of Anhaica in present-day Tallahassee, Cobb said.

‘Unconquered and unconquerable’

By the time de Soto arrived in Mississippi in 1540, the conquistador had trekked through the Southeast for more than a year with about 600 people, hundreds of horses and pigs and heavy equipment in tow. A shrewd man with a reputation for bloodshed, de Soto was previously a key figure in the Spanish destruction of the Inca Empire in South America and came to Florida with an eye to further increase his wealth. Finding little gold, he pressed deeper into the interior, alternately befriending and warring with the Native Americans he encountered.

The Spaniards began on a friendly, if aloof, footing with the Chickasaws, whose leader, known as Chikasha Minko, gave them a modest village in which to spend the winter. But tensions rose as the months dragged on: De Soto executed two Chickasaws and cut off the hands of another accused of stealing pigs. The Chickasaws, who farmed maize in the region’s rich prairie soil, also must have grown tired of providing food and shelter for such a large encampment of uninvited guests, Cobb said.

With spring drawing near, de Soto demanded that Chikasha Minko provide him with hundreds of Chickasaws to carry the Spaniards’ equipment to their next destination. According to Spanish accounts of the expedition, the conversation did not go well.

Shortly afterwards, the Chickasaws launched a surprise attack under the cover of night, torching the Spanish camp and killing at least a dozen men, as well as many horses and pigs. The retreating Spaniards set up another camp about a mile away, where they were assaulted a second time. Better prepared, they fought back, but soon picked up and headed north, having lost much of their livestock, clothing and goods.

Meanwhile, the Chickasaws collected from the battlefield dozens of prized metal objects, usually reserved by the Europeans for strategic trades or as gifts to smooth relationships with local leaders.

“It’s kind of like inflation,” Cobb said. “You don’t want too much stuff to get out or that gift will be devalued. That’s what makes this site unusual.”

After the Chickasaws sent the Spanish packing, the region remained largely free of European presence for nearly 150 years.

“This research shows how Chickasaws adapted to invasion by alien intruders and secured their reputation as unconquered and unconquerable,” said study co-author Brad Lieb, director of Chickasaw archaeology for the Chickasaw Nation’s Heritage Preservation Division. “The findings are remarkable in their success in addressing a baseline event in Chickasaw cultural history – the first encounter with Hernando de Soto and the Spanish invaders.”

History confirmed by metal detectors

When Cobb, Lieb and their colleagues first arrived at Stark Farms in 2015, they weren’t just looking for traces of de Soto. The Chickasaw Nation, removed from its traditional homeland to Oklahoma by the U.S. Department of War in 1837, had commissioned the team to identify and preserve ancestral sites and provide Chickasaw university students the opportunity to reconnect with their heritage through an archaeology fieldwork program.

The team focused on studying the environmental factors in the movements of Native Americans across the landscape, where radiocarbon dates showed people had lived since the 14th or 15th century. Curious about early residents’ potential interactions with outsiders, the researchers brought metal detectors, a speedy way of finding objects of European origin. The first day they deployed the detectors, the machines began pinging. Soon, the team was uncovering dozens of items, including a small cannon ball, a mouth harp and what could be a Spanish bridle bit, emblazoned with a golden cross.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Cobb said. “There was a lot of serendipity for sure.”

The style and type of objects, as well as their location, aligned with Spanish accounts of the de Soto expedition and the 1541 battle at Chikasha, the main Chickasaw town. But the researchers found no evidence of a burned village or the remains of horses and pigs. Cobb said the site was likely a village near Chikasha, whose inhabitants visited the site of the conflict and brought items back to their households. They may also have acquired some of the objects during the previous winter through under-the-table trading with Spanish soldiers.

The Chickasaws generally relied on bone, cane or stone as raw materials for their cutting and scraping tools, making the haul of metal a particular boon. While some of the objects retain their original form, the Chickasaws painstakingly reworked others into more familiar shapes. They bent metal back and forth until it broke and ground down and smoothed edges, modifying tools to mimic the design of their traditional Chickasaw counterparts.

“One of the most stunning things we’ve found is an exact iron replica of a Native American stone celt, or axe head,” Cobb said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in the Southeast before.”

Among the more sobering finds were chain links, pulled apart with sharpened edges. “The Spanish brought reams of chain with them to shackle Native Americans as captives and porters,” Cobb said. “This is evidence of some of the first examples of European enslavement of people in what is now the U.S.”

The refashioned items from Stark Farms represent a stage of Native American experimentation and improvisation with foreign items that largely faded by the late 1700s and 1800s, as they folded European materials and technology more completely into their own.

“In the 1500s, a thimble might be turned into a bangle. By the late 1700s, a thimble is a thimble,” Cobb said. “You tend to see a more regular adoption of goods over time.”

Spanish survivors did their own repurposing

De Soto failed to establish any permanent settlements in the Southeast, joining a line of ill-fated expeditions that demonstrated the precariousness of Europeans’ early attempts to dominate the region. He succumbed to a fever on the banks of the Mississippi River in 1542, and his remaining band of men made rafts and floated south to Mexico where they found passage back to Spain.

There, they undertook a repurposing effort of their own: Having failed to find fame and fortune in the Americas, they sold their stories, many of which became bestselling books, Cobb said.

“There was a thriving industry in explorer and survival tales, which is probably one of the reasons why some of these individuals provided their accounts. From that perspective, it was very modern.”

The objects will be repatriated to the Chickasaw Nation for permanent curation and exhibits.

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Florida Museum archaeologist Charles Cobb holds an axe head known as a celt, one of more than 80 metal objects likely from the de Soto expedition. To create this distinct shape, a Chickasaw craftsperson reworked Spanish iron to mimic traditional stone versions. Jeff Gage/Florida Museum of Natural History

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Europeans rarely traded or gifted military items. The presence of objects such as this palm-sized cannonball, lead shot and a ramrod tip at Stark Farms is one reason Cobb and his colleagues believe many of the items were spoils collected after the 1541 battle between the Spaniards and Chickasaws. Jeff Gage/Florida Museum of Natural History

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Chickasaws worked Spanish metal into tools and ornaments that reflected local uses and tastes, such as these brass pendants. If the researchers’ diagnosis is correct, Stark Farms, Mississippi is only the second place to yield convincing archaeological evidence of direct contact with de Soto’s expedition. Jeff Gage/Florida Museum of Natural History

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Article Source: FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY news release. Writer: Natalie van Hoose

James Legg, Steven Smith and Chester DePratter of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and Edmond Boudreaux of the University of Mississippi also co-authored the study. The Chickasaw Nation reviewed the study for consistency with its histories.

The Chickasaw Nation and its Chickasaw Explorers Program co-led and funded the research. Portions of the fieldwork were also funded by the National Geographic Society.

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean has long been considered by researchers to have been the ‘first international age,’ especially the period from 1600-1200 BC, when powerful empires from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt set up large networks of subordinate client kingdoms in the Near East. These empires fought, traded, and corresponded with one another, and ancient texts from the period reveal rich economic and social networks that enabled the movement of people and goods.

A new study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geneticists, and isotope experts, and published in PLOS ONE, investigated the movement of people in this period at a single regional center, a Bronze Age city-state called Alalakh in present-day southeastern Turkey. Their results indicate that the majority buried at Alalakh were raised locally and descended from people who lived in the region.

The team’s goal was to see if the high levels of interregional connectivity evidenced by the architecture, texts, and artifacts found at the site during 20 years of excavations, sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, could be detected among the population buried at the city.

To do so, they conducted strontium and oxygen isotope analyses on tooth enamel, which can detect whether an individual grew up locally at Alalakh or moved there only during adulthood. The genetic data on the other hand can be used to determine where a person’s recent ancestors came from.

The isotope analysis identified several non-local individuals. However, their DNA showed an ancestry that was local to Alalakh and neighboring regions. “There are two possible explanations for our findings,” said co-lead author Stefanie Eisenmann from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Either these individuals are short-distance migrants from the region or return-migrants, people whose parents or grandparents originally came from Alalakh.”

Only one sampled individual, an adult woman, was not part of the local gene pool, instead showing ancestry that most closely matched groups in Central Asia. However, her isotopic signatures suggested a local upbringing. “We expected the isotope analysis to show that this person immigrated to Alalakh, since her genetic data was so different from the rest of the population, so we were surprised to see that she was likely native to Alalakh. It could have been her parents or grandparents who made the move, instead,” explained Tara Ingman, the other lead-author of the study from Koç University.

While different types of mobility were identified, including short-distance, long-distance, and return migration, there were no complete foreigners in the dataset. Most people were born and raised at Alalakh and also their ancestors came from the region.

“There are several ways to explain this. It is possible that far less long-distance migrants were living at Alalakh than we had previously thought. Another possibility is that we haven’t found their graves, yet. Perhaps most individuals that came from far away were not buried directly at Alalakh, or in a way we cannot trace,” said Murat Akar, director of the excavations.

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Map showing location of Alalakh in Turkey. Ingman et al., 2021. PLOS ONE.

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Archaeological site of Alalakh, Tell Atchana, Hatay, Turkey. Fkitselis, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons

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The dead at Alalakh were usually buried in simple pit graves and often with ceramic vessels close to their heads. Murat Akar, Tell Atchana Excavations

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

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* suggests that the interaction of merchants, without substantial intervention by political authorities, likely explains the diffusion of Bronze Age technology for weighing goods. Knowing the weight of a commodity provides an objective measure for valuing goods in the marketplace. To determine how different units of weight emerged in different regions, Nicola Ialongo and colleagues compared weight systems in use between Western Europe and the Indus Valley from 3000 to 1000 BCE. Analysis of 2,274 balance weights from 127 sites revealed that, with the exception of those from the Indus Valley, new units of weight that differ only slightly from each other appear in a gradual spread west of Mesopotamia. To determine if the gradual formation of these systems could be due to propagation of error from a single weight system, the authors modeled the creation of 100 new units. Taking into account factors such as instrumental error, the simulation supported a single origin between Mesopotamia and Europe and also showed that the Indus Valley likely developed an independent weight system. According to the authors, if information flow in Eurasian trade supported a common weight system, it may have also been sufficient to enable reactions to local price fluctuations.

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Stone balance weights with weight marks from the Bronze Age tell settlement of Arslantepe (Malatya, Turkey). The weights were found grouped together on the floor of a private house of phase VI D1. Missione Archeologica Italiana nell’Anatolia Orientale/Roberto Ceccacci.

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Diffusion of weighing technology in Western Eurasia (c. 3000-1000 BCE). Nicola Ialongo.

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

*”Bronze Age weight systems as a measure of market integration in Western Eurasia,” by Nicola Ialongo, Raphael Hermann, and Lorenz Rahmstorf.

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CELL PRESS—A near-perfectly preserved ancient human fossil known as the Harbin cranium sits in the Geoscience Museum in Hebei GEO University. The largest of known Homo skulls, scientists now say this skull represents a newly discovered human species named Homo longi or “Dragon Man.” Their findings, appearing in three papers publishing June 25 in the journal The Innovation, suggest that the Homo longi lineage may be our closest relatives—and has the potential to reshape our understanding of human evolution.

“The Harbin fossil is one of the most complete human cranial fossils in the world,” says author Qiang Ji, a professor of paleontology of Hebei GEO University. “This fossil preserved many morphological details that are critical for understanding the evolution of the Homo genus and the origin of Homo sapiens.”

The cranium was reportedly discovered in the 1930s in Harbin City of the Heilongjiang province of China. The massive skull could hold a brain comparable in size to modern humans’ but had larger, almost square eye sockets, thick brow ridges, a wide mouth, and oversized teeth. “While it shows typical archaic human features, the Harbin cranium presents a mosaic combination of primitive and derived characters setting itself apart from all the other previously-named Homo species,” says Ji, leading to its new species designation of Homo longi.

Scientists believe the cranium came from a male individual, approximately 50 years old, living in a forested, floodplain environment as part of a small community. “Like Homo sapiens, they hunted mammals and birds, and gathered fruits and vegetables, and perhaps even caught fish,” remarks author Xijun Ni, a professor of primatology and paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University. Given that the Harbin individual was likely very large in size as well as the location where the skull was found, researchers suggest H. longi may have been adapted for harsh environments, allowing them to disperse throughout Asia.

Using a series of geochemical analyses, Ji, Ni, and their team dated the Harbin fossil to at least 146,000 years, placing it in the Middle Pleistocene, a dynamic era of human species migration. They hypothesize that H. longi and H. sapiens could have encountered each other during this era.

“We see multiple evolutionary lineages of Homo species and populations co-existing in Asia, Africa, and Europe during that time. So, if Homo sapiens indeed got to East Asia that early, they could have a chance to interact with H. longi, and since we don’t know when the Harbin group disappeared, there could have been later encounters as well,” says author Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Nature History Museum in London.

Looking farther back in time, the researchers also find that Homo longi is one of our closest hominin relatives, even more closely related to us than Neanderthals. “It is widely believed that the Neanderthal belongs to an extinct lineage that is the closest relative of our own species. However, our discovery suggests that the new lineage we identified that includes Homo longi is the actual sister group of H. sapiens,” says Ni.

Their reconstruction of the human tree of life also suggests that the common ancestor we share with Neanderthals existed even further back in time. “The divergence time between H. sapiens and the Neanderthals may be even deeper in evolutionary history than generally believed, over one million years,” says Ni. If true, we likely diverged from Neanderthals roughly 400,000 years earlier than scientists had thought.

The researchers say that findings gathered from the Harbin cranium have the potential to rewrite major elements of human evolution. Their analysis into the life history of Homo longi suggest they were strong, robust humans whose potential interactions with Homo sapiens may have shaped our history in turn. “Altogether, the Harbin cranium provides more evidence for us to understand Homo diversity and evolutionary relationships among these diverse Homo species and populations,” says Ni. “We found our long-lost sister lineage.”

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Virtual reconstruction of the Harbin cranium. Xijun Ni

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This image shows comparisons among Peking Man, Maba, Jinniushan, Dali and Harbin crania (from left to right). Kai Geng

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This image shows a reconstruction of Dragon Man in his habitat. Chuang Zhao

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Article Source: CELL PRESS news release

Related papers in Cell Press:

The Innovation, Shao et al.: “Geochemical provenancing and direct dating of the Harbin archaic human cranium” https://www.cell.com/the-innovation/S2666-6758(21)00056-4 DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100131

The Innovation, Ji et al.: “Late Middle Pleistocene Harbin cranium represents a new Homo species” https://www.cell.com/the-innovation/S2666-6758(21)00057-6 DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100132

The Innovation, Ni et al.: “Massive cranium from Harbin in northeastern China establishes a new Middle Pleistocene human lineage” https://www.cell.com/the-innovation/S2666-6758(21)00055-2 DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2021.100130

Funding information for this research is available in the respective papers.

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TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY and AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—Nesher Ramla Homo type – a prehistoric human previously unknown to science: Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have identified a new type of early human at the Nesher Ramla site, dated to 140,000 to 120,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the morphology of the Nesher Ramla humans shares features with both Neanderthals (especially the teeth and jaws) and archaic Homo (specifically the skull). At the same time, this type of Homo is very unlike modern humans – displaying a completely different skull structure, no chin, and very large teeth. Following the study’s findings, researchers believe that the Nesher Ramla Homo type is the ‘source’ population from which most humans of the Middle Pleistocene developed. In addition, they suggest that this group is the so-called ‘missing’ population that mated with Homo sapiens who arrived in the region around 200,000 years ago – about whom we know from a recent study on fossils found in the Misliya cave.

Two teams of researchers took part in the dramatic discovery, published in the prestigious Science journal: an anthropology team from Tel Aviv University headed by Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, Dr. Hila May and Dr. Rachel Sarig from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research and the Shmunis Family Anthropology Institute, situated in the Steinhardt Museum at Tel Aviv University; and an archaeological team headed by Dr. Yossi Zaidner from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Timeline: The Nesher Ramla Homo type was an ancestor of both the Neanderthals in Europe and the archaic Homo populations of Asia.

Prof.Israel Hershkovitz: “The discovery of a new type of Homo” is of great scientific importance. It enables us to make new sense of previously found human fossils, add another piece to the puzzle of human evolution, and understand the migrations of humans in the old world. Even though they lived so long ago, in the late middle Pleistocene (474,000-130,000 years ago), the Nesher Ramla people can tell us a fascinating tale, revealing a great deal about their descendants’ evolution and way of life.”

The important human fossil was found by Dr. Zaidner of the Hebrew University during salvage excavations at the Nesher Ramla prehistoric site, in the mining area of the Nesher cement plant (owned by Len Blavatnik) near the city of Ramla. Digging down about 8 meters, the excavators found large quantities of animal bones, including horses, fallow deer and aurochs, as well as stone tools and human bones. An international team led by the researchers from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem identified the morphology of the bones as belonging to a new type of Homo, previously unknown to science. This is the first type of Homo to be defined in Israel, and according to common practice, it was named after the site where it was discovered – the Nesher Ramla Homo type.

Dr. Yossi Zaidner: “This is an extraordinary discovery. We had never imagined that alongside Homo sapiens, archaic Homo roamed the area so late in human history. The archaeological finds associated with human fossils show that “Nesher Ramla Homo” possessed advanced stone-tool production technologies and most likely interacted with the local Homo sapiens“. The culture, way of life, and behavior of the Nesher Ramla Homo are discussed in a companion paper also published in Science journal today.

Prof. Hershkovitz adds that the discovery of the Nesher Ramla Homo type challenges the prevailing hypothesis that the Neanderthals originated in Europe. “Before these new findings,” he says, “most researchers believed the Neanderthals to be a ‘European story’, in which small groups of Neanderthals were forced to migrate southwards to escape the spreading glaciers, with some arriving in the Land of Israel about 70,000 years ago. The Nesher Ramla fossils make us question this theory, suggesting that the ancestors of European Neanderthals lived in the Levant as early as 400,000 years ago, repeatedly migrating westward to Europe and eastward to Asia. In fact, our findings imply that the famous Neanderthals of Western Europe are only the remnants of a much larger population that lived here in the Levant – and not the other way around.”

According to Dr. Hila May, despite the absence of DNA in these fossils, the findings from Nesher Ramla offer a solution to a great mystery in the evolution of Homo: How did genes of Homo sapiens penetrate the Neanderthal population that presumably lived in Europe long before the arrival of Homo sapiens? Geneticists who studied the DNA of European Neanderthals have previously suggested the existence of a Neanderthal-like population which they called the ‘missing population’ or the ‘X population’ that had mated with Homo sapiens more than 200,000 years ago. In the anthropological paper now published in Science, the researchers suggest that the Nesher Ramla Homo type might represent this population, heretofore missing from the record of human fossils. Moreover, the researchers propose that the humans from Nesher Ramla are not the only ones of their kind discovered in the region, and that some human fossils found previously in Israel, which have baffled anthropologists for years – like the fossils from the Tabun cave (160,000 years ago), Zuttiyeh cave (250,000), and Qesem cave (400,000) – belong to the same new human group now called the Nesher Ramla Homo type.

“People think in paradigms,” says Dr. Rachel Sarig. “That’s why efforts have been made to ascribe these fossils to known human groups like Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis or the Neanderthals. But now we say: No. This is a group in itself, with distinct features and characteristics. At a later stage small groups of the Nesher Ramla Homo type migrated to Europe – where they evolved into the ‘classic’ Neanderthals that we are familiar with, and also to Asia, where they became archaic populations with Neanderthal-like features. As a crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia, the Land of Israel served as a melting pot where different human populations mixed with one another, to later spread throughout the Old World. The discovery from the Nesher Ramla site writes a new and fascinating chapter in the story of humankind.”

The findings indicate that this archaic lineage may represent one of the last surviving populations of Middle Pleistocene Homo in southwest Asia, Africa and Europe. In a companion study, Zaidner et al. provide the archaeological context of the new fossils, reporting on the associated radiometric ages, artifact assemblages and the behavioral and environmental insights they offer. Zaidner et al. show that the Nesher Ramla Homo were well versed in technologies that were previously only known among H. sapiens and Neanderthals. Together, the findings provide archaeological support for close cultural interactions and genetic admixture between different human lineages before 120,000 years ago. This may help explain the variable expression of the dental and skeletal features of later Levantine fossils. “The interpretation of the Nesher Ramla fossils and stone tools will meet with different reactions among paleoanthropologists. Notwithstanding, the age of the Nesher Ramla material, the mismatched morphological and archaeological affinities, and the location of the site at the crossroads of Africa and Eurasia make this a major discovery,” writes Marta Lahr in an accompanying Perspective.

Prof. Gerhard Weber, an associate from Vienna University, argues that the story of Neanderthal evolution will be told differently after this discovery: “Europe was not the exclusive refugium of Neanderthals from where they occasionally diffused into West Asia. We think that there was much more lateral exchange in Eurasia, and that the Levant is geographically a crucial starting point, or at a least bridgehead, for this process.”

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Field excavation at Nesher Ramla. View of the excavation. Yossi Zaidner

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View of the deep section during excavation at Nesher Ramla. Photograph showing the deep
archaeological sequence. Yossi Zaidner

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Fossil remains of skull and jaw Tel Aviv University

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Static skull & mandible & parietal orthographic. Tel Aviv University

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A stone tool of the Nesher Ramla Homo – Levallois point. Tal Rogovski

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Research Summary of Findings and Conclusions:

• The discovery of a new Homo group in this region, which resembles Pre-Neanderthal populations in Europe, challenges the prevailing hypothesis that Neanderthals originated from Europe, suggesting that at least some of the Neanderthals’ ancestors actually came from the Levant.
• The new finding suggests that two types of Homo groups lived side by side in the Levant for more than 100,000 years (200-100,000 years ago), sharing knowledge and tool technologies: the Nesher Ramla people who lived in the region from around 400,000 years ago, and the Homo sapiens who arrived later, some 200,000 years ago.
• The new discovery also gives clues about a mystery in human evolution: How did genes of Homo sapiens penetrate the Neanderthal population that had presumably lived in Europe long before the arrival of Homo sapiens?
• The researchers claim that at least some of the later Homo fossils found previously in Israel, like those unearthed in the Skhul and Qafzeh caves, do not belong to archaic (early) Homo sapiens, but rather to groups of mixed Homo sapiens and Nesher Ramla lineage.

Article Source: TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY  and AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE news releases.

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UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY—A new study from archaeologists at University of Sydney and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, has provided important new evidence to answer the question “Who exactly were the Anglo-Saxons?”

New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe.

Professor Keith Dobney at the University of Sydney said the team’s results indicate that “the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain – full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture”.

The Anglo-Saxon (or early medieval) period in England runs from the 5th-11th centuries AD. Early Anglo-Saxon dates from around 410-660 AD – with migration occurring throughout all but the final 100 years (ie 410-560AD).

Studying ancient skulls

Published in PLOS ONE, the collaborative study by Professor Dobney at University of Sydney and Dr Kimberly Plomp and Professor Mark Collard at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, looked at the three-dimensional shape of the base of the skull.

“Previous studies by palaeoanthropologists have shown that the base of the human skull holds a shape signature that can be used to track relationships among human populations in a similar way to ancient DNA,” Dr Plomp said. “Based on this, we collected 3D data from suitably dated skeletal collections from Britain and Denmark, and then analysed the data to estimate the ancestry of the Anglo-Saxon individuals in the sample.”

The researchers found that between two-thirds and three-quarters of early Anglo-Saxon individuals were of continental European ancestry, while between a quarter and one-third were of local ancestry.

When they looked at skeletons dated to the Middle Anglo-Saxon period (several hundred years after the original migrants arrived), they found that 50 to 70 percent of the individuals were of local ancestry, while 30 to 50 percent were of continental European ancestry, which probably indicates a change in the rate of migration and/or local adoption of culture over time.

“These findings tell us that being Anglo-Saxon was more likely a matter of language and culture, not genetics,” Professor Collard said.

The debate about Anglo-Saxons

Although Anglo-Saxon origins can clearly be traced to a migration of Germanic-speaking people from mainland Europe between the 5th and 7th centuries AD, the number of individuals who settled in Britain is still contested, as is the nature of their relationship with the pre-existing inhabitants of the British Isles, most of whom were Romano-Celts.

The ongoing and unresolved argument is whether hordes of European invaders largely replaced the existing Romano-British inhabitants, or did smaller numbers of migrants settle and interact with the locals, who then rapidly adopted the new language and culture of the Anglo-Saxons?

“The reason for the ongoing confusion is the apparent contradiction between early historical texts (written sometime after the events that imply that the newcomers were both numerous and replaced the Romano-British population) and some recent biomolecular markers directly recovered from Anglo-Saxon skeletons that appears to suggest numbers of immigrants were few,” said Professor Dobney.

“Our new data sits at the interface of this debate and implies that early Anglo-Saxon society was a mix of both newcomers and immigrants and, instead of wholesale population replacement, a process of acculturation resulted in Anglo-Saxon language and culture being adopted wholesale by the local population.”

“It could be this new cultural package was attractive, filling a vacuum left at the end of the Roman occupation of Britain. Whatever the reason, it lit the fuse for the English nation we have today – still comprised of people of different origins who share the same language,” Professor Dobney said.

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The famous Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo helmet from about 625 CE, part of the British Museum collection. Elissa Blake/University of Sydney

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY news release.

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Denisova Cave is located in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia and is famous for the discovery of Denisovans, an extinct form of archaic humans that is thought to have occupied large parts of central and eastern Asia. Neanderthal remains have also been found at the site, as well as a bone from a child who had a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father, showing that both groups met in the region. However, only eight bone fragments and teeth of Neanderthals and Denisovans have been recovered so far from the deposits in Denisova Cave, which cover a time span of over 300,000 years. These are too few fossils to reconstruct the occupational history of the site in detail, or to link the different types of stone tools and other artifacts found in Denisova Cave to specific hominin groups. For example, the discovery of jewelry and pendants typical of the so-called Initial Upper Palaeolithic culture in approximately 45,000-year-old layers has prompted debates as to whether Denisovans, Neanderthals or modern humans were the creators of these artefacts.

Michael Shunkov of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who leads the excavations at Denisova Cave, assembled an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geneticists, geochronologists and other scientists to study this unique site. The team has now performed the largest analysis ever of sediment DNA from a single excavation site. “The analysis of sediment DNA provides a wonderful opportunity to combine the dates that we previously determined for the deposits in Denisova Cave with molecular evidence for the presence of people and fauna”, says Richard ‘Bert’ Roberts from the University of Wollongong in Australia. The team of geochronologists led by him and Zenobia Jacobs collected more than 700 sediment samples in a dense grid from the exposed sediment profiles in the cave. “Just collecting the samples from all three chambers in the cave, and documenting their precise locations, took us more than a week”, Jacobs says.

When the samples arrived at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Elena Zavala, the lead author of the study, spent another two years in the lab to extract and sequence small traces of ancient hominin and animal mitochondrial DNA from this huge collection of samples. “These efforts paid off and we detected the DNA of Denisovans, Neanderthals or ancient modern humans in 175 of the samples”, Zavala says.

When matching the DNA profiles with the ages of the layers, the researchers found that the earliest hominin DNA belonged to Denisovans, indicating that they produced the oldest stone tools at the site between 250,000 and 170,000 years ago. The first Neanderthals arrived towards the end of this time period, after which both Denisovans and Neanderthals frequented the site – except between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago, when no Denisovan DNA was detected in the sediments. The Denisovans who came back after this time carried a different mitochondrial DNA, suggesting that a different population arrived in the region.

Modern human mitochondrial DNA first appears in the layers containing Initial Upper Palaeolithic tools and other objects, which are much more diverse than in the older layers. “This provides not only the first evidence of ancient modern humans at the site, but also suggests that they may have brought new technology into the region with them”, says Zavala.

The scientists studied animal DNA and identified two time periods where changes occurred in both animal and hominin populations. The first, around 190,000 years ago, coincided with a shift from relatively warm (interglacial) conditions to a relatively cold (glacial) climate, when hyaena and bear populations changed and Neanderthals first appeared in the cave. The second major change occurred between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago, along with a shift in climate from relatively cold to relatively warm conditions. During this period, Denisovans were absent and animal populations changed again.

“I believe that our Russian colleagues who excavate this amazing site have set the standards for many future archaeological excavations with their careful collection of many samples from each archaeological layer for DNA analysis”, says Svante Pääbo who initiated the study with the Russian team. “Being able to generate such dense genetic data from an archaeological site is like a dream come true, and these are just the beginnings”, says Matthias Meyer, the senior author on the study. “There is so much information hidden in sediments – it will keep us and many other geneticists busy for a lifetime.”

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The entrance to Denisova Cave, the famous site in southern Siberia where remains of both Neandertals and their Asian relatives, the Denisovans, have been found. Richard G. Roberts

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Researchers Zenobia Jacobs, Bo Li and Kieran O’Gorman collecting sediment samples in the Main Chamber. Richard G. Roberts

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

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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI—The ancient Maya city of Tikal was a bustling metropolis and home to tens of thousands of people.

The city comprised roads, paved plazas, towering pyramids, temples and palaces and thousands of homes for its residents, all supported by agriculture.

Now researchers at the University of Cincinnati say Tikal’s reservoirs — critical sources of city drinking water — were lined with trees and wild vegetation that would have provided scenic natural beauty in the heart of the busy city.

UC researchers developed a novel system to analyze ancient plant DNA in the sediment of Tikal’s temple and palace reservoirs to identify more than 30 species of trees, grasses, vines and flowering plants that lived along its banks more than 1,000 years ago. Their findings paint a picture of a lush, wild oasis.

“Almost all of the city center was paved. That would get pretty hot during the dry season,” said paleoethnobotanist David Lentz, a professor of biology in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study.

“So it would make sense that they would have places that were nice and cool right along the reservoir,” he said. “It must have been beautiful to look at with the water and trees and a welcome place for the kings and their families to go.”

The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Lentz and his research team offered four hypotheses about what, if any, plants might have grown along the all-important reservoirs: Did the Maya grow crops such as maize or squash there? Or did they plant fruit trees like those found at a similar reservoir at Mexico’s Purron Dam?

Maybe they lined the reservoirs with cattails in keeping with their nickname people of the reeds? Lentz noted that water lilies often adorn ancient Maya paintings.

“Throughout Maya iconography, water lilies represent continuity between the water world and the above world,” Lentz said. “It was part of their mythology.”

But researchers found little evidence to support any of these hypotheses. Instead, they found evidence bolstering a fourth idea: that the Maya allowed the embankments to remain undisturbed forest. This would have helped to prevent erosion and provided medicinal or edible plants and fruits.

Researchers found evidence of a variety of plants living along the aquifers, including trees like cabbage bark and ramón that tower 100 feet high. Lentz said ramón is a dominant rainforest species in Guatemala.

“Why you would find ramón around the reservoir is a curiosity. The answer is they left this forest intact,” Lentz said. “Tikal has a harsh climate. It’s pretty tough to survive when you don’t get rain for five months of the year. This reservoir would have been the font of their lives. So they sometimes would protect these places by not cutting down the trees and preserving a sacred grove.”

Among dozens of plants native to the region, they found evidence of wild onion, fig, wild cherry and two types of grasses. Lentz said grass seeds might have been introduced to the reservoir by visiting waterfowl. Grass would have proliferated at the edges of the reservoirs during dry seasons and droughts.

“Tikal had a series of devastating droughts. As the water levels dropped, they saw blue green algae blooms, which produces toxic substances,” Lentz said. “The droughts were great for the grass but not so much for the forest plants that lived along the reservoir’s banks.”

Were these wild areas the equivalent of a park?

“I think they were. I don’t know how public they would have been,” Lentz said. “This was a sacred area of the city surrounded by temples and palaces. I don’t know if the commoners would have been that welcome.”

Tikal was a flourishing seat of power, religion and trade for Mesoamerica in what is now northern Guatemala, reaching its peak of influence more than 1,200 years ago. Today, the cultural and archaeological site is a scenic national park surrounded by primary rainforest.

But more than 1,000 years ago, the area would have looked dramatically different. Instead of rainforest, the city center would have been surrounded by homes and farm plots of corn, beans and squash needed to support 60,000 people or more. At its peak, Tikal was bigger in population than Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; Atlantic City, New Jersey; or Pensacola, Florida.

Given the documented and widespread deforestation that occurred around Tikal during the city’s rise and fall, the presence of an intact forest in the city would have stood out, said Nicholas Dunning, a UC geography professor and study co-author.

“It would not have been much of a park — maybe 50 meters by 50 meters,” Dunning said. “But it would have been in vivid contrast to the surrounding area of the city’s central precinct, which was essentially entirely paved with plaster with many of the buildings colored red.”

The reservoirs would have held significance beyond their value as an important source of water, he said.

“Given that the Maya were a forest culture whose cosmology included many forest elements (for example, certain sacred trees that held up the sky) having a sacred grove adjacent to the sacred spring and pool at the heart of the city was an extremely potent symbol — kind of like parts of the cosmos in miniature,” Dunning said. “On the other hand, ancient Maya cities as a whole were very green.”

Tikal put today’s urban gardens to shame.

“Away from the central precinct of Tikal, most of the land was either managed trees or crops,” Dunning said. “Just about every household complex had significant gardens. A great deal of the food consumed by the residents of Maya cities was probably grown within the city itself or its immediate hinterland. Nothing much like a modern Western city.”

Previously, researchers learned about the crops and wild plants that grew in ancient Tikal by studying ancient pollen or charcoal, Lentz said. For their study, UC turned to next-generation DNA sequencing that can identify plants and animals with even small strands of DNA.

“Typically, high-quality, high-concentration DNA is needed for next-gen work,” UC botanist and study co-author Eric Tepe said. “The Tikal samples were both poor quality and very low concentration.”

Microbiologists Alison Weiss, a professor in UC’s College of Medicine, and Trinity Hamilton, now with the University of Minnesota, took up the task of analyzing ancient microbial DNA from the reservoir’s sediment samples.

Weiss studies pathogenic E. coli and human microbiomes in her lab. Her latest work examined how chemotherapy in cancer patients impairs the protective lining of their digestive systems. But she likes all science, she said, and was eager to accept a new challenge.

“The DNA is ancient so it tends to be degraded with short little sequences,” Weiss said.

With the help of the Florida company Rapid Genomics, UC’s scientists developed a novel probe to select plant DNA in the sediment samples. And they were able to amplify small strands of DNA from chloroplasts, the plant structures where photosynthesis takes place. Then researchers could match the ancient Tikal samples with the DNA of known plant species in much the same way scientists amplify ribosomal DNA to identify species of bacteria.

“The analysis was quite challenging because we were the first to do this,” Weiss said. “Bacterial ribosomal DNA has a database. There was no database for this. We had to take sequences one by one and search the general database to find the best match.”

“This project was a bit of a shot in the dark,” Tepe said. “We half-expected to get no results at all. The fact that we were able to get an idea of the vegetation surrounding the reservoirs at Tikal is, in my opinion, a spectacular success and a proof of concept that we hope to apply to other Mayan sites.”

UC researchers can now study the ancient world in a promising new way.

“We’re delighted we had success,” Weiss said. “It took a long time to figure out how to do it and make sure it wasn’t junk data in, junk data out. Now to be able to learn more about ancient people from these sediment studies is very exciting.”

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University of Cincinnati biology professor David Lentz stands in front of a pyramid at Tikal in Guatemala. UC

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A pyramid at Tikal rises from the rainforest in Guatemala. David Lentz

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI news release

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PLOS—A recreation of three common types of Paleolithic lighting systems (torches, grease lamps, and fireplaces) illuminates how Paleolithic cave dwellers might have traveled, lived, and created in the depths of their caves, according to a study published June 16, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mª Ángeles Medina-Alcaide from the University of Cantabria, Spain, and colleagues.

Humans need light to access the deepest areas of caves–and these visits also depend on the type of light available, as light intensity and duration, area of illumination, and color temperature all determine how the cave environment can be used. In this study, Medina-Alcaide and colleagues use archaeological evidence of lighting remains found across several Paleolithic caves featuring cave art in Southwest Europe to experimentally replicate the artificial lighting systems presumably used by the original human cave dwellers, allowing immediate empirical observations.

The authors conducted their experiments at Isuntza 1 Cave in the Basque region of Spain. Their replicated lighting was based as much as possible on archaeological evidence found in similar Paleolithic caves, and included five replicated torches (made variably from ivy, juniper, oak, birch, and pine resins), two stone lamps using animal fat (bone marrow from cow and deer), and a small fireplace (oak and juniper wood).

They found that the different lighting systems all had diverse features, suggesting their likely selection and use across different contexts. Wooden torches made of multiple sticks worked best for exploring caves or crossing wide spaces, since they projected light in all directions (up to almost six meters in the experiments), were easy to transport, and didn’t dazzle the torchbearer despite having a light intensity almost five times greater than a double-wicked grease lamp. Torch light lasted for an average of 41 minutes in this study, with the shortest-lived torch burning 21 minutes, and the longest burning 61 minutes. The torches tended to function irregularly and required close supervision when burning–though they were easy to relight via oxygenation (moving the torch quickly side to side). The authors found the main torch disadvantage was the amount of smoke production. In contrast, grease lamps worked best for lighting small spaces over a long period–with a light intensity similar to a candle, they were able to light up to three meters (or more if larger or multiple wicks were added). Though grease lamps weren’t well-suited for transit due to their dazzling effect and poor floor illumination, they burned consistently and without much smoke for well over an hour, complementing the use of torches. The authors made one fireplace, a static system, which burned very smokily and was extinguished after 30 minutes. They note that the location was likely not appropriate due to air currents in the cave.

The authors note that the practical insights and observations gained from their experimental replications are invaluable for a deeper understanding of what it may have been like to access the darkest parts of inhabited caves, especially in order to create art, and emphasize that future experimental lighting studies will be useful in continuing to unravel our ancestors’ activities in their caves.

The authors add: “The artificial lighting was a crucial physical resource for expanding complex social and economic behavior in Paleolithic groups, especially for the development of the first palaeo-speleological explorations and for the origin of art in caves.”

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Set of photographs of stone lamp experiment. Medina-Alcaide et al, 2021, PLOS ONE

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Medina-Alcaide MÁ, Garate D, Intxaurbe I, Sanchidrián JL, Rivero O, Ferrier C, et al. (2021) The conquest of the dark spaces: An experimental approach to lighting systems in Paleolithic caves. PLoS ONE 16(6): e0250497. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250497

Funding: This paper has been funded by the research projects “Before art: social investment in symbolic expressions during the Upper Paleolithic in the Iberian Peninsula” (PID2019-107262 GB-I00), PI: Diego Garate, and “Learning and development of artistic abilities in Anatomically Modern Humans; a multidisciplinary approach (ApArt)” HAR2017-87739-P, PI: Olivia Rivero, both funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (Spain). Besides, the University of Cordoba (José Luis Sanchidrián, Economic Unit in Prehistory) has collaborated in the publication of this paper in open access. I.I.’s Ph.D. research is funded by a grant for the training of research personnel (PIF 2019) at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Lastly, this paper publishes a part of M.M.A.’s thesis. This PhD was financed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport of Spain (FPU fellowship 2014-2018).

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ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—A ball of 4,000-year-old hair frozen in time tangled around a whalebone comb led to the first ever reconstruction of an ancient human genome just over a decade ago.

The hair, which was preserved in arctic permafrost in Greenland, was collected in the 1980s and stored at a museum in Denmark. It wasn’t until 2010 that evolutionary biologist Professor Eske Willerslev was able to use pioneering shotgun DNA sequencing to reconstruct the genetic history of the hair.

He found it came from a man from the earliest known people to settle in Greenland known as the Saqqaq culture. It was the first time scientists had recovered an entire ancient human genome.

Now a review of the first decade of ancient genomics of the Americas published in Nature today (June 16 2021) written by Professor Willerslev, a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and director of The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen, with one of his longstanding collaborators Professor David Meltzer, an archaeologist based at Southern Methodist University, Texas, shows how the world’s first analysis of an ancient genome sparked an incredible ‘decade of discovery’.

Professor Willerslev said: “The last ten years has been full of surprises in the understanding of the peopling of the Americas – I often feel like a child at Christmas waiting to see what exciting DNA present I am about to unwrap! What has really blown my mind is how resilient and capable the early humans we have sequenced DNA from were – they occupied extremely different environments and often populated them in a short space of time.

“We were taught in school that people would stay put until the population grew to a level where the resources were exhausted. But we found people were spreading around the world just to explore, to discover, to have adventures.

“The last 10 years have shown us a lot about our history and what it means to be human. We won’t ever see that depth of human experience on this planet again – people entered new areas with absolutely no idea of what was in front of them. It tells us a lot about human adaptability and how humans behave.”

For decades, scientists relied on archaeological findings to reconstruct the past and theories weren’t always accurate. It was previously thought that there were early non-Native American people in the Americas but the ancient DNA analysis so far has shown that all of the ancient remains found are more closely related to contemporary Native Americans than to any other population anywhere else in the world.

Professor Meltzer, who worked on the review with Professor Willerslev while the former was at St John’s College as a Beaufort Visiting Scholar added: “Genomic evidence has shown connections that we didn’t know existed between different cultures and populations and the absence of connections that we thought did exist. Human population history has been far more complex than previously thought.

“A lot of what has been discovered about the peopling of the Americas could not have been predicted. We have seen how rapidly people were moving around the world. When they have a continent to themselves, there was nothing to hold them back. There was a selective advantage to seeing what was over the next hill.”

In 2013, scientists mapped the genome of a four-year-old boy who died in south-central Siberia 24,000 years ago. The burial of an Upper Palaeolithic Siberian child was discovered in the 1920s by Russian archaeologists near the village of Mal’ta, along the Belaya river. Sequencing of the Mal’ta genome was key as it showed the existence of a previously unsampled population that contributed to the ancestry of Siberian and Native American populations.

Two years later, Professor Willerslev and his team published the first ancient Native American genome, sequenced from the remains of a baby boy ceremonially buried more than 12,000 years ago in Anzick, Montana.

In 2015, their ancient genomic analysis was able to solve the mystery of Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Americas, and one of the most controversial.

The 9,000-year-old remains had been surrounded by a storm of controversy when legal jurisdiction over the skeleton became the focus of a decade of lawsuits between five Native American tribes, who claimed ownership of the man they called Ancient One, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Professor Willerslev, who has rightly learnt to be mindful of cultural sensitivities when searching for ancient DNA, has spent much of the past decade talking to tribal community members to explain his work in detail and seek their support.

This meant he was able to agree with members of the Colville Tribe, based in Washington State where the remains were found, that they would donate some of their DNA to allow Professor Willerslev and his team to establish if there was a genetic link between them and Kennewick Man.

Jackie Cook, a descendant of the Colville Tribe and the repatriation specialist for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, said: “We had spent nearly 20 years trying to have the Ancient One repatriated to us. There has been a long history of distrust between scientists and our Native American tribes but when Eske presented to us about his DNA work on the Anzick child, the hair on my arms stood up.

“We knew we shouldn’t have to agree to DNA testing, and there were concerns that we would have to do it every time to prove cultural affiliation, but our Council members discussed it with the elders and it was agreed that any tribal member who wanted to provide DNA for the study could.”

The Kennewick Man genome, like the Anzick baby, revealed the man was a direct ancestor of living Native Americans. The Ancient One was duly returned to the tribes and reburied.

Cook added: “We took a risk but it worked out. It was remarkable to work with Eske and we felt honored, relieved and humbled to be able to resolve such an important case. We had oral stories that have passed down through the generations for thousands of years that we call coyote stories – teaching stories. These stories were from our ancestors about living alongside woolly mammoths and witnessing a series of floods and volcanoes erupting. As a tribe, we have always embraced science but not all history is discovered through science.”

Work led by Professor Willerslev was also able to identify the origins of the world’s oldest natural mummy called Spirit Cave. Scientists discovered the ancient human skeleton back in 1940 but it wasn’t until 2018 that a striking discovery was made that unlocked the secrets of the Ice Age tribe in the Americas.

The revelation came as part of a study that genetically analyzed the DNA of a series of famous and controversial ancient remains across North and South America including Spirit Cave, the Lovelock skeletons, the Lagoa Santa remains, an Inca mummy, and the oldest remains in Chilean Patagonia.

Scientists sequenced 15 ancient genomes spanning from Alaska to Patagonia and were able to track the movements of the first humans as they spread across the Americas at ‘astonishing’ speed during the Ice Age and also how they interacted with each other in the following millennia.

The team of academics not only discovered that the Spirit Cave remains was a Native American but they were able to dismiss a longstanding theory that a group called Paleoamericans existed in North America before Native Americans. Spirit Cave was returned to The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, a group of Native Americans based in Nevada, for burial.

Professor Willerslev added: “Over the past decade human history has been fundamentally changed thanks to ancient genomic analysis – and the incredible findings have only just begun.”

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Professor Eske Willerslev with Donna and Joey, two members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, discussing the Spirit Cave individual. Linus Mørk/Magus Film.

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Article Source: ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE news release

If you liked this article, you may also like Spirit Cave: The World’s Oldest Natural Mummy, an in-depth premium article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE—An international research team led by Professor Dr Frank Schäbitz has published a climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years for Ethiopia. This means that high-resolution data are now available for the period when early Homo sapiens, our ancestors, made their way from Africa to Europe and Asia. Schäbitz and his colleagues determined the dates using a drill core of lake sediments deposited in southern Ethiopia’s Chew Bahir Basin, which lies near human fossil sites. Temporal resolution of the samples, reaching nearly 10 years, revealed that from 200,000 to 125,000 years before our time, the climate there was relatively wet, providing enough water and thus abundant plant and animal food resources in the lowlands of East Africa. From 125,000 to 60,000 years ago, it gradually became drier, and particularly dry between 60,000 to 14,000 years ago. The data now obtained fit well with genetic findings, according to which our direct genetic ancestors (‘African Eve’) left Africa ‘successfully’ during a wet phase about 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.

The article ‘Hydroclimate changes in eastern Africa over the past 200,000 years may have influenced early human dispersal’ has appeared in Nature Communications.

Scientists collect information about the environment from lake sediments because, in the best case, sediments are flushed into lakes relatively continuously from the catchment through erosion. In addition to mineral components, sediments include organic material and remains of organisms living in the lake. If lake sediments from suitable lakes can be drilled, these ‘proxy data’ can be used to draw conclusions about environmental conditions at the time, and thus help to reconstruct the climate.

From November to December 2014, the researchers recovered an approximately 300 meter long drill core from the Chew Bahir Basin in southern Ethiopia, which dries out during the dry season. In its entirety, the drill core dates back to about 620,000 years. ‘This enables us to chronologically cover the entire evolutionary history of Homo sapiens in Africa. The work now published on the last 200,000 years of this drill core thus provides very good evidence of the environmental and climate history during the migration of our ancestors,’ Schäbitz explained.

‘Some of our proxies allow time resolution for specific decades in large sections of the core, which has not been done before for this part of Africa. That way we can capture very short-term climate changes representing less than a human lifetime,’ he said. The drill core reveals that the climate of East Africa was largely influenced by changes in solar insolation, which led to either wet or dry climate conditions. From 200,000 to 125,000 years ago, the climate was generally relatively favorable, i.e., the lowlands provided enough water and thus abundant plant and animal food resources for our ancestors. Under such conditions, people could move relatively easily over long distances and even reach the Arabian Peninsula, as evidenced by the oldest fossil finds there (about 175,000 years ago). From 125,000 to 60,000 years ago, however, it gradually became drier, and then particularly dry between 60,000 to 14,000 years ago, with the lake drying up completely several times.

‘However, during this period in particular, quite striking, short-term moisture fluctuations can also be observed, the temporal patterns of which are reminiscent of cold-warm climate fluctuations known from Greenland ice cores. So the people who lived in East Africa at that time were exposed to extreme changes in their environments,’ Schäbitz said. ‘It is interesting that just in the period from 60,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the lowlands of East Africa were repeatedly particularly dry, numerous archaeological findings in the high altitudes of the Ethiopian mountains bear witness to the presence of our ancestors there.’ In addition, the weapons and tools of these people also evolved during this time period (transition from Middle to Late Paleolithic in Africa). ‘We suspect that the greater “environmental stress” at lower elevations forced this development,’ the scientist noted.

Furthermore, the scientists noted that the last major wet phase which we can see in the core fits well in time with the genetic findings: It shows that our direct genetic ancestors ‘successfully’ left Africa about 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. Their descendants probably reached southeastern Europe 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, where they encountered Neanderthals.

‘We hypothesize that the evidence of dry-humid climate fluctuations in East Africa found in our drill core had a significant impact on the evolution and mobility of our ancestors,’ said Schäbitz. ‘Migration out of Africa was possible several times during the last 200,000 years, during periods when the climate was wetter, and has led to the spread of our ancestors as far as Europe. During the particularly dry phases of the recent past, starting around 60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens groups repeatedly managed to survive in the high altitudes of mountainous Ethiopia.’

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Ethiopian landscape. Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE news release.

The publication with 20 international co-authors was a result of subproject A3 of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 806 ‘Our Way to Europe’ at the University of Cologne, which was granted in 2009 and cooperates closely with the UoC’s Institute for Prehistory and Early History as well as the Universities of Bonn and Aachen. The aim of the CRC is to understand the reasons for the migration history of our ancestors (Homo sapiens) from Africa to Europe. The Chew Bahir Deep Drilling Project is associated with the international ‘Hominin Site and Paleolakes Drilling Project’ (HSPDP).

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THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM—A team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) made a rare discovery when they unearthed a small clay seal impression dating back some 7000 years. The impression, with two different geometric stamps imprinted on it, was discovered in Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village located in Israel’s Beit She’an Valley up north.

The discovery was made as part of a dig that took place between 2004 and 2007 and was led by HU’s Professor Yosef Garfinkel along with two of his students, Professor David Ben Shlomo and Dr. Michael Freikman, both of whom are now researchers at Ariel University. One hundred and fifty clay sealings were originally found at the site, with one being particularly rare and of distinct, historic importance. The object was published in the journal Levant.

Sealings, also known as bulla, are made of a small piece of clay were used in historical times to seal and sign letters and to prevent others from reading their contents. The sealing found in Tel Tsaf is particularly significant because it is the first evidence of the use of seals to mark shipments or to close silos or barns. When a barn door was opened, its seal impression would break – a telltale sign that someone had been there and that the contents inside had been touched or taken. “Even today, similar types of sealing are used to prevent tampering and theft,” explained Garfinkel. “It turns out that this was already in use 7,000 years ago by land owners and local administrators to protect their property.”

Measuring less than a centimeter wide, the fragment was found in great condition due to the dry climate of the Beit She’an valley. The sealing is marked by symmetrical lines. While many sealings found in First Temple Jerusalem (ca. 2,600 years ago) include a personal name and sometimes biblical figures, the sealing from Tel Tsaf is from a prehistoric era, when writing was not yet in use. Those seals were decorated with geometric shapes instead of letters. The fact that there are two different stamps on the seal impression may indicate a form of commercial activity where the two different people were involved in the transaction.

The found fragment underwent extensive analysis before researchers could determine that it was indeed a seal impression. According to Garfinkel, this is the earliest evidence that seals were used in Israel approximately 7,000 years ago to sign deliveries and keep store rooms closed. While seals have been found in that region dating back to 8,500 years ago, seal impressions from that time have not been found.

Based on a careful scientific analysis of the sealing’s clay, the researchers found it wasn’t locally sourced but came from a location at least ten kilometers away. Other archeological finds at the site reveal evidence that the Tel Tsaf residents were in contact with populations far beyond ancient Israel. “At this very site we have evidence of contact with peoples from Mesopotamia, Turkey, Egypt and Caucasia,” Garfinkel added. “There is no prehistoric site anywhere in the Middle East that reveals evidence of such long-distance trade in exotic items as what we found at this particular site.”

The site also yielded clues that the area was home to people of considerable wealth who built up large stores of ingredients and materials, indicating considerable social development. This evidence points to Tel Tsaf as having been a key position in the region that served both local communities and people passing through. “We hope that continued excavations at Tel Tsaf and other places from the same time period will yield additional evidence to help us understand the impact of a regional authority in the southern Levant,” concluded Garfinkel.

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Rounded silos at Tel Tsaf. Boaz Garfinkel

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Tel Tsaf seal and a modern impression. Vladimir Nichen

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Article Source: THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM news release.

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American Association for the Advancement of Science—In a Perspective, Bernardo Flores and Carolina Levis discuss the positive feedback between local peoples and food availability in tropical forests. Although they were once considered to be harsh and inhospitable environments, largely devoid of large populations, a growing body of research shows that, for more than 13,000 years, humans have resided and thrived in tropical forest environments, transforming the natural landscapes into forest gardens. Even the Amazon – a region often regarded as a paragon of pristine tropical forest – is dominated by edible plant species closely associated with humans. Flores and Levis highlight the social-ecological system of these tropical forests whereby local people enriched the forest with edible plant species, and the highly productive forests increased overall food availability, allowing forest societies to expand. According to the authors, leveraging this ancient relationship by ensuring local peoples’ access to their ancestral forest lands could help efforts to conserve these sensitive environments while also boosting food security and sovereignty in tropical regions. Globally, more than a billion people rely on forest resources for food, particularly in tropical regions. Indigenous and local peoples of these regions have historically – sometimes for thousands of years – contributed to the enrichment of forests with food. Even today, their territories act as buffers against deforestation and landscape degradation. “For this ancient feedback to continue functioning, societies need to recognize indigenous and local peoples’ rights to their ancestral forest land,” write Flores and Levis.

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Forest dominated by the palm Attalea spectabilis on anthropogenic dark soils at the Tapajós River,
Brazilian Amazon. © Carolina Levis

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Domesticated forest on the former Mayan city of Coba, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. © Bernardo Flores

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Forest with domesticated species on anthropogenic dark soils at the Tapajós River, Brazilian Amazon. © Carolina Levis

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Domesticated forest dominated by the Brazil nut tree on anthropogenic dark soils at the Tefé River,
Brazilian Amazon. © Bernardo Oliveira

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This research appears in the 11 June 2021 issue of Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

Article Source: AAAS news release. 

If you liked this article, you may also like The Milpa Way In this article, a filmmaker explores how Maya forest gardeners are shedding new light on the ancient Maya collapse—a major feature article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP—Indigenous Māori people may have set eyes on Antarctic waters and perhaps the continent as early as the 7th century, new research published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand shows.

Over the last 200 years, narratives about the Antarctic have been of those carried out by predominantly European male explorers.

However, this new study uncovers the story of the deep-rooted connections of Māori (and Polynesian) people with Antarctica dating back as far as the seventh century and continuing into the present day.

“We found connections to Antarctica and its waters have been occurring since the earliest traditional voyaging, and later through participation in European-led voyaging and exploration, contemporary scientific research, fishing, and more for centuries,” explains lead author Dr Priscilla Wehi, from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research the organization which led the project, alongside researchers from Te R?nanga o Ngāi Tahu.

“Our exploration begins to construct a richer and more inclusive picture of Antarctica’s relationship with humanity and builds a platform on which much wider conversations about New Zealand relationships with Antarctica can be furthered.”

The study was compiled by a team of researchers who scanned literature and integrated this with oral histories. The outcome is a compiled record of Māori presence in, and perspectives of, Antarctic narratives and exploration, which – the team states – “plays an important role” to fill knowledge gaps about both Māori and Antarctic exploration.

And these stories start as far back as 1,320 years ago.

“We find Polynesian narratives of voyaging between the islands include voyaging into Antarctic waters by Hui Te Rangiora (also known as ?i Te Rangiora) and his crew on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea, likely in the early seventh century,” Wehi says.

“These navigational accomplishments are widely acknowledged; and Māori navigators are described as traversing the Pacific much as Western explorers might a lake.

“In some narratives, Hui Te Rangiora and his crew continued south. A long way south. In so doing, they likely set eyes on Antarctic waters and perhaps the continent.”

Other evidence gathered includes Māori carvings, which depict both voyagers and navigational and astronomical knowledge.

“As well,” Wehi says, “a ‘pou whakairo’ (translating as carved post), represents Tamarereti as protector of the southern oceans stands on the southernmost tip of the South Island of New Zealand at Bluff. Ngāi Tahu, the largest tribal group in the South Island, and other tribal groups or iwi also cherish other oral repositories of knowledge in relation to these early explorers and voyagers.”

These Māori narratives of connections with Antarctic were not limited to these early voyages either. Rather, voyaging and expedition was shown to continue to the present day; “but is rarely acknowledged or highlighted,” Wehi says.

And this research, she hopes, will begin more on the path to ensure inclusion of Māori in future relationships with Antarctica.

“Taking account of responsibilities to under-represented groups, and particularly Māori as Treaty partners, is important for both contemporary and future programs of Antarctic research, as well as for future exploration of New Zealand’s obligations within the Antarctic Treaty System.”

Concluding, she says: “Growing more Māori Antarctic scientists and incorporating Māori perspectives will add depth to New Zealand’s research programs and ultimately the protection and management of Antarctica.”

Further evidence of Māori exploration is likely to enter the public domain in future as tribal researchers partner with iwi to share these narratives, and Māori leadership in Antarctic research grows more visible, including that of the Kāhui Māori in the Antarctic Science Platform.

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The view of Te Kaiwhakatere o te Raki looking outward across the Ross Ice Shelf. © A short scan of Māori journeys to Antarctica / Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand

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Article Source: TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA—UNF archaeology researchers are uncovering the lost Indigenous NE Florida settlement of Sarabay

Jacksonville, Fla. – The University of North Florida archaeology team is now fairly confident they have located the lost Indigenous northeast Florida community of Sarabay, a settlement mentioned in both French and Spanish documents dating to the 1560s but had not been discovered until now.

The type and amounts of Indigenous pottery the team is finding combined with the type and dates for European artifacts as well as cartographic map evidence strongly supports this location as the late 16th/early 17th century Mocama settlement.

The researchers have opened large excavation blocks with many exciting new artifact finds and are currently searching for evidence of houses and public architecture. The students, led by Dr. Keith Ashley, UNF Archaeology Lab director and assistant professor, have recently recovered more than 50 pieces of early Spanish pottery as well as Indigenous pottery that dates to the late 1500s or early 1600s. They have also recovered bone, stone and shell artifacts as well as burned corn cob fragments.

Expanding upon UNF excavations conducted at the southern end of Big Talbot Island in 1998, 1999, and 2020, the UNF research team has completed what is likely the most extensive excavations at a Mocama-Timucua site in northeastern Florida history.

This dig is part of the UNF Archaeology Lab’s ongoing Mocama Archaeological Project. This study focuses on the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians who lived along the Atlantic coast of northern Florida at the time on European arrival in 1562. The Mocama were among the first indigenous populations encountered by European explorers in the 1560s.

The team hopes to ultimately confirm the discovery of Sarabay by finding evidence of houses and public architecture. They will continue to explore and learn about Sarabay’s physical layout during continuing fieldwork projects over the next three years.

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UNF Archaeology Lab at the dig site. University of North Florida

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA news release

About University of North Florida

The University of North Florida is a nationally ranked university located on a beautiful 1,381-acre campus in Jacksonville surrounded by nature. Serving more than 17,000 students, UNF features six colleges of distinction with innovative programs in high-demand fields. UNF students receive individualized attention from faculty and gain valuable real-world experience engaging with community partners. A top public university, UNF prepares students to make a difference in Florida and around the globe. Learn more at http://www.unf.edu.

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Analyzing charcoal and phytolith records of soil cores from nonflooded, nonriverine forests in northeastern Peru, researchers found* that the forests were not significantly altered by anthropogenic activity in pre-Columbian history, and material remains of ancient cultures, such as ceramics and stone tools, were also absent from soil samples; the findings suggest that over the last 5,000 years indigenous societies in northeastern Peru helped maintain regional forest integrity and biodiversity, according to the authors.

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Ancient plant microfossils called phytoliths from northeastern Peru. Dolores R. Piperno.

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”A 5,000-year vegetation and fire history for tierra firme forests in the Medio Putumayo-Algodón watersheds, northeastern Peru,” by Dolores R. Piperno et al.

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UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE—Accurate soft tissue measurements are critical when making reconstructions of human ancestors, a new study from the University of Adelaide and Arizona State University has found.

“Reconstructing extinct members of the Hominidae, or hominids, including their facial soft tissue, has become increasingly popular with many approximations of their faces presented in museum exhibitions, popular science publications and at conference presentations worldwide,” said lead author PhD student Ryan M. Campbell from the University of Adelaide.

“It is essential that accurate facial soft tissue thickness measurements are used when reconstructing the faces of hominids to reduce the variability exhibited in reconstructions of the same individuals.”

Hominids have been readily accepted to line the halls of even the most trusted institutions. They are predominantly used for disseminating scientific information to the public in museum displays and students in university courses, which will influence the way humanity is perceived and defined more generally.

“Up until now soft tissue reconstruction has been based on mean tissue depth measurements which does not take into account variation in tissue depths between individuals,” says Mr Campbell.

In this study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the authors have formulated a facial soft tissue thickness dataset for adult chimpanzees, and a set of regression equations that can be used to reconstruct the soft tissues for ancient hominids, such as those dated from 4.0 to 1.2 million years ago.

The study was co-authored by Gabriel Vinas, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Arizona State University who handles the sculpting in the lab.

“Correlations have been found and multiple regression models have been used to generate equations for improving estimations of soft tissue thickness from craniometrics in modern humans,” he said.

“We looked at tissue depths in present day chimpanzees to identify correlations in skin and bone.”

This article represents the first time that such a collection of tissue depth data has been collected and presented for chimpanzees in a systematic manner.

“The soft tissue thickness data for chimpanzees are freely available for anyone to download on Figshare.

“The equations, which resulted directly from this research, are also included and can be implemented in future practitioners’ reconstructions,” said Mr Campbell.

“This research is invaluable for future efforts reconstructing ancient hominids, as well as for comparative studies within and outside the discipline of biological/physical anthropology.”

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The soft tissue for these approximations of hominid faces was predicted using equations developed by the authors. No facial features are present in the ancient hominid (C), as the authors admit their equations say nothing about them. Ryan M. Campbell.

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Cephalometric landmarks — measurements of the skull — are critical for accurate measurements of facial soft tissue such as in these numerous landmarks positioned on the skull of a chimpanzee. Ryan M. Campbell

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE news release

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UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI—”Ornaments composed of elk teeth suspended from or sown on to clothing emit a loud rattling noise when moving,” says auditory archaeologist and Academy of Finland Research Fellow Riitta Rainio from the University of Helsinki. “Wearing such rattlers while dancing makes it easier to immerse yourself in the soundscape, eventually letting the sound and rhythm take control of your movements. It is as if the dancer is led in the dance by someone.”

Rainio is well versed in the topic, as she danced, for research purposes, for six consecutive hours, wearing elk tooth ornaments produced according to the Stone Age model. Rainio and artist Juha Valkeapää held a performance to find out what kind of wear marks are formed in the teeth when they bang against each other and move in all directions. The sound of a tooth rattler can be clear and bright or loud and pounding, depending on the number and quality of the teeth, as well as the intensity of movement.

Microanalysis demonstrates that tooth wear marks are the result of dancing

The teeth worn out by dancing were analyzed for any microscopic marks before and after the dancing. These marks were then compared to the findings made in the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov graves by Evgeny Girya, an archaeologist specialized in micro-marks at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Girya documented and analyzed the wear marks in the elk teeth found in four graves chosen for the experiment. Comparing the chips, hollows, cuts and smoothened surfaces of the teeth, he observed a clear resemblance between teeth worn out by dancing and the Stone Age teeth. However, the marks in the Stone Age teeth were deeper and more extensive. According to Girya, the results show that the marks are the result of similar activity.

“As the Stone Age teeth were worn for years or even decades, it’s no surprise that their marks are so distinctive,” Girya says.

Associate Professor of Archaeology Kristiina Mannermaa from the University of Helsinki is excited by the research findings.

“Elk tooth rattlers are fascinating, since they transport modern people to a soundscape that is thousands of years old and to its emotional rhythms that guide the body. You can close your eyes, listen to the sound of the rattlers and drift on the soundwaves to a lakeside campfire in the world of Stone Age hunter-gatherers.”

A total of 177 graves of women, men and children have been found in the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov burial site, of which more than half contain several elk tooth ornaments, some of them composed of as many as over 300 individual teeth.

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Adult male from grave 76a in Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov drawn as if he were alive during a dance session: 140 elk teeth on the chest, waist, pelvis, and thighs rattle rhythmically and loudly. Artist Tom Bjorklund

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI news release

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UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK—Stone tools have been made by humans and their ancestors for millions of years. For archaeologists these rocky remnants – lithic artifacts and flakes – are of key importance. Because of their high preservation potential they are among the most common findings in archaeological excavations. Worldwide, numerical dating of these lithic artifacts, especially when they occur as surface findings, remains a major challenge. Usually, stone tools cannot be dated directly, but only when they are embedded in sediment layers together with, for example, organic material. The age of such organic material can be constrained via the radiocarbon technique. If such datable organic remains are missing or if stone artifacts lack a stratified sedimentary context, but rather occur as scattered surface artefacts, numerical dating becomes very difficult or is simply impossible. “The earth’s surface is highly dynamic and erosion and redeposition of material, especially over long timescales, is common. A precise age determination of lithic artifacts that occur as surface finds has therefore hardly been possible so far. Many aspects of ancient human behavior have only been preserved as surface finds, hence cannot be dated precisely with currently available dating methods. By further developing the Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating technique, we can now, for the first time, carry out precise, and direct age measurements on lithic artifacts. In our current study we used stone artifacts from an archaeological surface site in south-central Tibet”, explains Michael Meyer, head of the Luminescence Laboratory at the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck and one of the main authors of the study now published in the renowned journal Science Advances. OSL dating is based on the measurement of light stored in natural minerals and is one of the most important absolute dating tools in archaeology and the earth sciences. “This dating method uses natural light signals that accumulate over time in natural dosimeters, such as quartz and feldspar grains that are important constituents of sediments, as well as rocks and lithic artifacts. These minerals can be imagined as miniaturized clocks. Each grain is a tiny clock that can be ‘read-out’ under controlled laboratory conditions. The light signal allows us to infer the age of the archaeological sediment layer or artifact. The more light, the older the sample,” says the geologist. “In this study, we have now taken a new approach and focused not on sediment grains of sand, but – for the first time – on stone artifacts themselves.”

Quarrying activities more than 5,000 years ago

Due to its extreme environmental and climatic conditions the dry highlands of Tibet are considered to be one of the last regions on earth that were occupied by humans. When exactly peopling of this remote and rather extreme environments occurred has caused a lot of scientific debate over the course of the last decade. In 2017, Michael Meyer dated the famous human foot and hand prints of Chusang in the central part of the Tibetan plateau to an age between 8,000 and 12,000 years. In the current study, Meyer and his team analyzed archaeological finds from southern Tibet in the Innsbruck OSL Laboratory: The excavation site Su-re is located immediately north of the Mount Everest-Cho Oyu massif in the so-called Tingri graben at an elevation of 4450 meters. Surface artifacts are particularly common in Tibet. To date them, the researcher used the so-called “Rock Surface Burial Dating” technique and applied it to lithic surface artifacts. This method determines the point in time when the stone artifact was discarded by humans and at least partly covered by earth. “With our luminescence method, we can look inside the stone and create a continuous age-depth profile. The inside of a rock has never been exposed to sunlight, so we have a saturated luminescence signal there and an infinite high age. However, if the rock surface is exposed to daylight for a long enough time, the signal in the top millimeters or centimeters of the rock will be erased. This happens during knapping, when the stone tool is produced, and also during the subsequent artifact use by humans. When the artifact is then discarded and at least partially buried in sediment and shielded from light, the luminescence signal in this artifact surface recharges. By measuring this depth-dependent luminescence signal in the rock surfaces, we can calculate the age of the artifact discard, taking into account the dynamics of local earth surface processes. Such an approach allows us to date stone artifacts directly, even if they occur as surface finds,” Meyer explains. The analyses on the surface artifacts from southern Tibet revealed an age between 5,200 and 5,500 years. “We assume that the artifact findings at Su-re are related to quarrying activities at this site”. Very old sites have been discovered in the central part of the Plateau, however, for southern sector of the Tibetan Plateau, Su-re is currently to oldest securely dated site.

For Michael Meyer, the analysis of these Tibetan artifacts is just the beginning: “This OSL-based method opens up new vistas in archaeological dating and holds great potential also for sites on other continents that preserve lithic artifacts in a favorable setting,” concludes the geologist.

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The excavation site Su-re is located immediately north of the Mount Everest-Cho Oyu massif (on the left) in the so-called Tingri graben at an elevation of 4,450 meters. Luke Gliganic

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Fieldwork on site on the Tibetan Plateau: sampling of surface artifacts under black lightproof cover. Michael Meyer

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK news release

*L.A. Gliganic, M.C. Meyer, J.-H. May, M.S. Aldenderfer, P. Tropper: Direct dating of lithic surface artifacts using luminescence. Sci. Adv. 7, eabb3424 (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb3424

**OSL Laboratory at the Department of Geology, University of Innsbruck, Austria: https://quaternary.uibk.ac.at/Research/Current-Research/Luminescence-geochronology.aspx

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