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American Association for the Advancement of Science—Modern human-like brains evolved comparatively late in the genus Homo and long after the earliest humans first dispersed from Africa, according to a new study. By analyzing the impressions left behind by the ancient brains that once sat inside now fossilized skulls, the authors discovered that the brains of the earliest Homo retained a primitive, great ape-like organization of the frontal lobe. The findings challenge the long-standing assumption that human-like brain organization is a hallmark of early Homo and suggest that the evolutionary history of the human brain is more complex than previously thought. Our modern brains are larger and structurally different than those of our closest living relatives, the great apes, particularly in frontal lobe areas involved with complex cognitive tasks like toolmaking and language. However, when these key differences arose during human evolution remains poorly understood. One of the major challenges in tracking brain evolution in early hominid species is that brain tissues rarely fossilize. As a result, much of what is known is derived from shape and structures on the surface of the brain cases of rare, fossilized skulls. Representations of these surfaces – or endocasts – can reveal patterned imprints representing the folds and indentations of the brain and its surrounding vasculature. Using a collection of well-preserved fossil Homo crania from the Dmanisi site in the modern-day nation of Georgia and a comparative sample of others from Africa and Southeast Asia, Marcia Ponce De León and colleagues tracked key changes in brain organization of early Homo from roughly 1.8 million years ago (Ma). They found that the structural innovations in the cerebral regions thought to allow for many of humans’ unique behaviors and abilities emerged later in the evolution of Homo. According to Ponce De León et al., the findings suggest that modern human-like brain reorganization – which was probably in place by 1.7-1.5 Ma – was neither a requisite trait for genus Homo, nor a prerequisite for early Homo’s dispersals into Europe and Asia. In a related Perspective, Amélie Beaudet discusses the study in greater detail.

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Skull of early Homo from Dmanisi (specimen D4500) showing internal structure of the brain
case, and inferred brain morphology. M. Ponce de León and Ch. Zollikofer, University of Zurich

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Skulls of early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia (specimen D4500, left) and Sangiran, Indonesia
(specimen S17, right). Virtual fillings of their braincases permit inferences on brain organization
(blue). Brains of Homo evolved from ape-like (D4500) to human-like (S17) in the time between
1.7 – 1.5 million years ago. M. Ponce de León and Ch. Zollikofer, University of Zurich

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Article Source: AAAS news release

This research appears in the 9 April 2021 issue of Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—Ancient DNA from Neanderthals and early modern humans has recently shown that the groups likely interbred somewhere in the Near East after modern humans left Africa some 50,000 years ago. As a result, all people outside Africa carry around 2% to 3% Neanderthal DNA. In modern human genomes, those Neanderthal DNA segments became increasingly shorter over time and their length can be used to estimate when an individual lived. Archaeological data published last year furthermore suggests that modern humans were already present in southeastern Europe 47-43,000 years ago, but due to a scarcity of fairly complete human fossils and the lack of genomic DNA, there is little understanding of who these early human colonists were – or of their relationships to ancient and present-day human groups.

In a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international team of researchers reports what is likely the oldest reconstructed modern human genome to date. First discovered in Czechia, the woman known to researchers as Zlatý k (golden horse in Czech) displayed longer stretches of Neanderthal DNA than the 45,000-year-old Ust’-Ishim individual from Siberia, the so-far oldest modern human genome. Analysis suggests that she was part of a population that formed before the populations that gave rise to present-day Europeans and Asians split apart.

A recent anthropological study based on the shape of Zlatý’s skull showed similarities with people who lived in Europe before the Last Glacial Maximum – at least 30,000 years ago – but radiocarbon dating produced sporadic results, some as recent as 15,000 years ago. It wasn’t until Jaroslav Brek from the Faculty of Science, Prague and Petr Velemínský of Prague’s National Museum collaborated with the genetics laboratories of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History that a clearer picture came into view.

“We found evidence of cow DNA contamination in the analyzed bone, which suggests that a bovine-based glue used in the past to consolidate the skull was returning radiocarbon dates younger than the fossil’s true age,” says Cosimo Posth, co-lead author of the study. Posth was formerly a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and is currently Professor of Archaeo- and Palaeogenetics at the University of Tübingen.

However, it was the Neanderthal DNA that led the team to their major conclusions about the age of the fossil. Zlatý k carried about the same amount Neanderthal DNA in her genome, as Ust Ishim or other modern humans outside Africa, but the segments with Neanderthal ancestry were on average much longer.

“The results of our DNA analysis show that Zlatý k lived closer in time to the admixture event with Neanderthals,” says Kay Prüfer, co-lead author of the study.

The scientists were able to estimate that Zlatý k lived approximately 2,000 years after the last admixture. Based on these findings, the team argues that Zlatý k represents the oldest human genome to date, roughly the same age as – if not a few hundred years older than – Ust’-Ishim.

“It is quite intriguing that the earliest modern humans in Europe ultimately didn’t succeed! Just as with Ust’-Ishim and the so far oldest European skull from Oase 1, Zlatý k shows no genetic continuity with modern humans that lived in Europe after 40,000 years ago,” says Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

One possible explanation for the discontinuity is the Campanian Ignimbrite volcanic eruption roughly 39,000 years ago, which severely affected climate in the northern hemisphere and may have reduced the survival chances of Neanderthals and early modern humans in large parts of Ice Age Europe.

As advances in ancient DNA reveal more about the story of our species, future genetic studies of other early European individuals will help to reconstruct the history and decline of the first modern humans to expand out of Africa and into Eurasia before the formation of modern-day non-African populations.

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Initial attempts to date Zlatý based on the shape of her skull suggested she was at least 30,000 years old. Researchers now believe she lived more than 45,000 years ago. Martin Frouz

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Lateral view of the mostly-complete skull of Zlatý k. Martin Frouz

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Micro-sampling the petrous bone of Zlatý from the base of the skull in the clean room at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena. Cosimo Posth

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

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TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY—Researchers at Tel Aviv University were able to reconstruct the nutrition of stone age humans. In a paper published in the Yearbook of the American Physical Anthropology Association, Dr. Miki Ben-Dor and Prof. Ran Barkai of the Jacob M. Alkov Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, together with Raphael Sirtoli of Portugal, show that humans were an apex predator for about two million years. Only the extinction of larger animals (megafauna) in various parts of the world, and the decline of animal food sources toward the end of the stone age, led humans to gradually increase the vegetable element in their nutrition, until finally they had no choice but to domesticate both plants and animals – and became farmers.

“So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of stone-age humans were mostly based on comparisons to 20th century hunter-gatherer societies,” explains Dr. Ben-Dor. “This comparison is futile, however, because two million years ago hunter-gatherer societies could hunt and consume elephants and other large animals – while today’s hunter gatherers do not have access to such bounty. The entire ecosystem has changed, and conditions cannot be compared. We decided to use other methods to reconstruct the diet of stone-age humans: to examine the memory preserved in our own bodies, our metabolism, genetics and physical build. Human behavior changes rapidly, but evolution is slow. The body remembers.”

In a process unprecedented in its extent, Dr. Ben-Dor and his colleagues collected about 25 lines of evidence from about 400 scientific papers from different scientific disciplines, dealing with the focal question: Were stone-age humans specialized carnivores or were they generalist omnivores? Most evidence was found in research on current biology, namely genetics, metabolism, physiology and morphology.

“One prominent example is the acidity of the human stomach,” says Dr. Ben-Dor. “The acidity in our stomach is high when compared to omnivores and even to other predators. Producing and maintaining strong acidity require large amounts of energy, and its existence is evidence for consuming animal products. Strong acidity provides protection from harmful bacteria found in meat, and prehistoric humans, hunting large animals whose meat sufficed for days or even weeks, often consumed old meat containing large quantities of bacteria, and thus needed to maintain a high level of acidity. Another indication of being predators is the structure of the fat cells in our bodies. In the bodies of omnivores, fat is stored in a relatively small number of large fat cells, while in predators, including humans, it’s the other way around: we have a much larger number of smaller fat cells. Significant evidence for the evolution of humans as predators has also been found in our genome. For example, geneticists have concluded that “areas of the human genome were closed off to enable a fat-rich diet, while in chimpanzees, areas of the genome were opened to enable a sugar-rich diet.”

Evidence from human biology was supplemented by archaeological evidence. For instance, research on stable isotopes in the bones of prehistoric humans, as well as hunting practices unique to humans, show that humans specialized in hunting large and medium-sized animals with high fat content. Comparing humans to large social predators of today, all of whom hunt large animals and obtain more than 70% of their energy from animal sources, reinforced the conclusion that humans specialized in hunting large animals and were in fact hypercarnivores.

“Hunting large animals is not an afternoon hobby,” says Dr. Ben-Dor. “It requires a great deal of knowledge, and lions and hyenas attain these abilities after long years of learning. Clearly, the remains of large animals found in countless archaeological sites are the result of humans’ high expertise as hunters of large animals. Many researchers who study the extinction of the large animals agree that hunting by humans played a major role in this extinction – and there is no better proof of humans’ specialization in hunting large animals. Most probably, like in current-day predators, hunting itself was a focal human activity throughout most of human evolution. Other archaeological evidence – like the fact that specialized tools for obtaining and processing vegetable foods only appeared in the later stages of human evolution – also supports the centrality of large animals in the human diet, throughout most of human history.”

The multidisciplinary reconstruction conducted by TAU researchers for almost a decade proposes a complete change of paradigm in the understanding of human evolution. Contrary to the widespread hypothesis that humans owe their evolution and survival to their dietary flexibility, which allowed them to combine the hunting of animals with vegetable foods, the picture emerging here is of humans evolving mostly as predators of large animals.

“Archaeological evidence does not overlook the fact that stone-age humans also consumed plants,” adds Dr. Ben-Dor. “But according to the findings of this study plants only became a major component of the human diet toward the end of the era.”

Evidence of genetic changes and the appearance of unique stone tools for processing plants led the researchers to conclude that, starting about 85,000 years ago in Africa, and about 40,000 years ago in Europe and Asia, a gradual rise occurred in the consumption of plant foods as well as dietary diversity – in accordance with varying ecological conditions. This rise was accompanied by an increase in the local uniqueness of the stone tool culture, which is similar to the diversity of material cultures in 20th-century hunter-gatherer societies. In contrast, during the two million years when, according to the researchers, humans were apex predators, long periods of similarity and continuity were observed in stone tools, regardless of local ecological conditions.

“Our study addresses a very great current controversy – both scientific and non-scientific,” says Prof. Barkai. “For many people today, the Paleolithic diet is a critical issue, not only with regard to the past, but also concerning the present and future. It is hard to convince a devout vegetarian that his/her ancestors were not vegetarians, and people tend to confuse personal beliefs with scientific reality. Our study is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. We propose a picture that is unprecedented in its inclusiveness and breadth, which clearly shows that humans were initially apex predators, who specialized in hunting large animals. As Darwin discovered, the adaptation of species to obtaining and digesting their food is the main source of evolutionary changes, and thus the claim that humans were apex predators throughout most of their development may provide a broad basis for fundamental insights on the biological and cultural evolution of humans.”

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Human Brain. Dr. Miki Ben Dor

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The evolution of the HTL during the Pleistocene as we interpret it, based on the totality of the evidence. Dr. Miki Ben Dor

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Article Source: TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK—”Our findings from this rockshelter show that overly simplified models for the origins of our species are no longer acceptable. Evidence suggests many regions across the African continent were involved, the Kalahari being just one,” Dr Wilkins said.

“Archaeological evidence for early Homo sapiens has been largely discovered at coastal sites in South Africa, supporting the idea that our origins were linked to coastal environments. There have been very few well-preserved, datable archaeological sites in the interior of southern Africa that can tell us about Homo sapiens’ origins away from the coast.

“A rockshelter on Ga-Mohana Hill that stands above an expansive savannah in the Kalahari is one such site.”

Used as a place of spiritual activities today by some of the local community, archaeological research in the rockshelter has revealed a long history as a place of spiritual significance.

The researchers excavated 22 white calcite crystals and fragments of ostrich eggshell, thought to be used as water containers, from deposits dated to 105,000 years ago at Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter when the environment was much wetter than today. The researchers were delighted to discover that the assemblage of human-collected crystals and ostrich eggshell fragments at Ga-Mohana Hill were significantly older than that reported in interior environments elsewhere.

“Our analysis indicates that the crystals were not introduced into the deposits via natural processes, but were deliberately collected objects likely linked to spiritual beliefs and ritual,” Dr Wilkins said.

“The crystals point towards spiritual or cultural use of the shelter 105,000 years ago,” said Dr Sechaba Maape from the University of the Witwatersrand. “This is remarkable considering that site continues to be used to practice ritual activities today.”

The age of the archaeological layers was constrained via Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating in the OSL laboratory at the Department of Geology at the University Innsbruck, Austria.

“This technique measures natural light signals that accumulate over time in sedimentary quartz and feldspar grains,” said Dr Michael Meyer, head of the OSL Laboratory. “You can think about each grain as a miniaturized clock, from which we can read out this natural light or luminescence signal, giving us the age of the archaeological sediment layers.”

The name Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning ‘great thirst’. And today the climate at Ga-Mohana is semi-arid, with little, very seasonal rainfall. However, ancient proof of abundant water on the landscape is evident from the abundant tufa formations around the shelter. These were aged using the uranium-thorium dating method to between 110,000 and 100,000 years ago – exactly the same time period as the people who were living there.

“This is a story of water in what we know now as a dry landscape, and of adaptable people who exploited the landscape to not only survive but to thrive,” says Dr Robyn Pickering, who is director of the Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at the University of Cape Town.

Due to the ongoing spiritual significance of Ga-Mohana Hill, the researchers are conscious to minimize their impact on the local communities’ use of the rockshelter after each season.

“Leaving no visible trace and working with the local community is critical for the sustainability of the project,” Dr Wilkins said. “So that Ga-Mohana Hill can continue to provide new insights about the origins and evolution of Homo sapiens in the Kalahari.”

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The archaeological site at a rock shelter in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert: More than 100,000 years ago, people used the so-called Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter for spiritual activities. Jayne Wilkins

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The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending for 900,000 square kilometres (350,000 sq mi), covering much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—Because of their interactions and conflicts with the major contemporaneous civilizations of Eurasia, the Scythians enjoy a legendary status in historiography and popular culture. The Scythians had major influences on the cultures of their powerful neighbors, spreading new technologies such as saddles and other improvements for horse riding. The ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Chinese empires all left a multitude of sources describing, from their perspectives, the customs and practices of the feared horse warriors that came from the interior lands of Eurasia.

Still, despite evidence from external sources, little is known about Scythian history. Without a written language or direct sources, the language or languages they spoke, where they came from and the extent to which the various cultures spread across such a huge area were in fact related to one another, remain unclear.

The Iron Age transition and the formation of the genetic profile of the Scythians

A new study published in Science Advances by an international team of geneticists, anthropologists and archaeologists lead by scientists from the Archaeogenetics Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, helps illuminate the history of the Scythians with 111 ancient genomes from key Scythian and non-Scythian archaeological cultures of the Central Asian steppe. The results of this study reveal that substantial genetic turnovers were associated with the decline of the long-lasting Bronze Age sedentary groups and the rise of Scythian nomad cultures in the Iron Age. Their findings show that, following the relatively homogenous ancestry of the late Bronze Age herders, at the turn of the first millennium BCE, influxes from the east, west and south into the steppe formed new admixed gene pools.

The diverse peoples of the Central Asian Steppe

The study goes even further, identifying at least two main sources of origin for the nomadic Iron Age groups. An eastern source likely originated from populations in the Altai Mountains that, during the course of the Iron Age, spread west and south, admixing as they moved. These genetic results match with the timing and locations found in the archaeological record and suggest an expansion of populations from the Altai area, where the earliest Scythian burials are found, connecting different renowned cultures such as the Saka, the Tasmola and the Pazyryk found in southern, central and eastern Kazakhstan respectively. Surprisingly, the groups located in the western Ural Mountains descend from a second separate, but simultaneous source. Contrary to the eastern case, this western gene pool, characteristic of the early Sauromatian-Sarmatian cultures, remained largely consistent through the westward spread of the Sarmatian cultures from the Urals into the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

The decline of the Scythian cultures associated with new genetic turnovers

The study also covers the transition period after the Iron Age, revealing new genetic turnovers and admixture events. These events intensified at the turn of the first millennium CE, concurrent with the decline and then disappearance of the Scythian cultures in the Central Steppe. In this case, the new far eastern Eurasian influx is plausibly associated with the spread of the nomad empires of the Eastern steppe in the first centuries CE, such as the Xiongnu and Xianbei confederations, as well as minor influxes from Iranian sources likely linked to the expansion of Persian-related civilization from the south.

Although many of the open questions on the history of the Scythians cannot be solved by ancient DNA alone, this study demonstrates how much the populations of Eurasia have changed and intermixed through time. Future studies should continue to explore the dynamics of these trans-Eurasian connections by covering different periods and geographic regions, revealing the history of connections between west, central and east Eurasia in the remote past and their genetic legacy in present day Eurasian populations.

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Mound 4 of the Eleke Sazy necropolis in eastern Kazakhstan. Zainolla Samashev

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The burial of a social elite known as ‘Golden Man’ from the Eleke Sazy necropolis. Zainolla Samashev

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An aerial view of Hun-Xianbi culture burials. Both horses and warriors can be identified. Zainolla Samashev

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

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UNIVERSITY OF KENT—A new study from the University of Kent’s School of Anthropology and Conservation has found that Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies are likely to be tens of thousands of years older than current evidence suggests.

They are currently the two oldest, well-documented stone tool technologies known to archaeologists.

These findings, published by the Journal of Human Evolution, provide a new chronological foundation from which to understand the production of stone tool technologies by our early ancestors. They also widen the time frame within which to discuss the evolution of human technological capabilities and associated dietary and behavioral shifts.

For the study, a team led by Kent’s Dr Alastair Key and Dr David Roberts, alongside Dr Ivan Jaric from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, used statistical modeling techniques only recently introduced to archaeological science. The models estimated that Oldowan stone tools originated 2.617-2.644 million years ago, 36,000 to 63,000 years earlier than current evidence. The Acheulean’s origin was pushed back further by at least 55,000 years to 1.815-1.823 million years ago.

Early stone tool technologies, such as the Oldowan and Acheulean, allowed early human ancestors to access new food types, and increased the ease of producing wooden tools or processing animal carcasses.

Dr Key, a Palaeolithic Archaeologist and the lead author of the study, said: ‘Our research provides the best possible estimates for understanding when hominins first produced these stone tool types. This is important for multiple reasons, but for me at least, it is most exciting because it highlights that there are likely to be substantial portions of the artifact record waiting to be discovered.’

Dr Roberts, a conservation scientist and co-author of the study, said: ‘The optimal linear estimation (OLE) modeling technique was originally developed by myself and a colleague to date extinctions. It has proved to be a reliable method of inferring the timing of species extinction and is based on the timings of last sightings, and so to apply it to the first sightings of archaeological artifacts was another exciting breakthrough. It is our hope that the technique will be used more widely within archaeology.’

Although it is widely assumed that older stone tool sites do exist and are waiting to be discovered, this study provides the first quantitative data predicting just how old these yet-to-be-discovered sites may be.

The research paper ‘Statistical inference of earlier origins for the first flaked stone technologies’ is published by the Journal of Human Evolution. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.102976

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Oldowan chopper tool. Didier Descouens, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF KENT news release

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FIELD MUSEUM—Every society has some degree of wealth inequality–over history, across continents, there always seem to be some people who have more than others. But the amount of inequality differs–in some civilizations, a few powerful people have nearly all the wealth, whereas in others, it’s more spread out. In a new study in PLOS ONE, archaeologists examined the remains of houses in ancient Maya cities and compared them with other Mesoamerican societies; they found that the societies with the most wealth inequality were also the ones that had governments that concentrated power with a smaller number of people.

“Differences in house size are a reflection of wealth inequality,” says Amy Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum and corresponding author of the PLOS ONE study. “By looking at how house size varies within different neighborhoods within ancient cities, we can learn about wealth inequality in Classic Maya cities.”

There are millions of Maya people alive today, but the period that archaeologists refer to as the Classic Maya civilization dates to 250-900 CE. Classic Maya society stretched across what’s now eastern Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, and western El Salvador and Honduras, and it was composed of a network of independent cities. “Rather than being like the United States today where we have one central government overseeing all the states, Classic Maya civilization was a series of cities that each had its own independent ruler,” says Thompson.

Across Mesoamerica, these political systems varied–some shared power more collectively, while others were more autocratic and concentrated power in a smaller group of individuals. Archaeologists use a variety of clues to infer how autocratic a state was. “We look at the way they represented their leadership. In burials, are certain individuals treated completely differently from everyone else, or are the differences more muted?” says Keith Prufer, an author of the study from the University of New Mexico. “Another key is to look at palaces. When you have very centralized palace buildings or funerary temples dedicated to a ruling lineage , the government tends to be more autocratic. In societies that were less autocratic, it’s harder to determine where rulers lived or even who they were.”

In this study, the researchers wanted to know how the governmental structure affected the distribution of wealth among the people. They note that in more autocratic societies wealth inequality is pronounced between different social groups, and also between people living in the same neighborhoods who were previously assumed by archaeologists to be economic equals. Much of this inequality is linked to access to market goods or trade networks. To learn about how wealth was dispersed across the community, they analyzed the remains of ancient houses.

Factors like house size don’t give an absolute picture of wealth–for instance, a one-bedroom apartment off Central Park might be worth more than a two-bedroom in Queens, or a whole house in rural Kansas. “Everything is looked at in a relative sense,” says Gary Feinman, the Field Museum’s MacArthur curator of anthropology and a co-author of the paper. “We’re comparing houses within a neighborhood to each other, and it still reveals a pattern. It would be like if you compared all the houses in Kansas, some might be bigger than the houses in Manhattan, but that relative pattern of wealth distribution in Kansas, as compared to Manhattan, would still tell you something about wealth differentials in both areas.”

To study Maya houses, the researchers looked at a number of variables beyond just size. “Using household archaeology, we can get at the interactions and relationships between the people,” says Thompson. “We document where these houses are on the landscape, how big they are, where they’re located in relationship to each other, and which resources–like water and good agricultural land–are nearby.” For further clues about the distribution of wealth, the researchers also excavated houses to learn about the types of ceramics and stone tools that the people used.

The researchers found that patterns of wealth inequality were fairly consistent in different neighborhoods within two Classic Maya cities in southern Belize–even if one neighborhood was richer overall than another. Nevertheless, at both sites distinctions in wealth were most magnified in neighborhoods with access to exchange routes. “People have known for decades, if not centuries, that the Classic Maya were unequal,” says Prufer. “But the real thing we can add is that this inequality trickled down, even to neighborhoods. That hasn’t really been well documented before.”

The link between wealth inequality and autocracy isn’t exclusive to the Classic Maya, the researchers note. “We’re really trying to get at some of these very real issues of how inequality forms, how it’s perpetuated, and how it manifests in early cities,” says Prufer. “One of the larger goals within archaeology is to try to show that modern societies and ancient societies are, in their fundamental elements, not that much different from each other. There’s a lot of similarities that reflect human behavior and human ingenuity and also manifestations of human inequality and cruelty on different levels. This comes through from these types of studies, and we feel really good to be able to contribute our work to these broader discussions of social inequality, which are so, so important today.”

And while inequality has plagued humanity for millennia, Feinman says that we’re not doomed as a species. “There’s a tight interconnection between how power is funded and how power is wielded and monopolized,” he says. “People can and do establish institutions that try to check power, but it takes work, and it takes interpersonal interdependence and the recognition that we cooperate with communities of people beyond just one’s self and one’s family.”

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Local community members sharing archaeological finds during excavations at a Classic Maya house mound at Uxbenká. KM Prufer

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Uxbenká Archaeological Project member and lead author AE Thompson photographing an excavation of a Classic Maya house mound. KM Prufer

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Article Source: FIELD MUSEUM news release

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UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE—An international group of researchers led by the University of Adelaide has conducted a comprehensive genetic analysis and found no evidence of interbreeding between modern humans and the ancient humans known from fossil records in Island Southeast Asia. They did find further DNA evidence of our mysterious ancient cousins, the Denisovans, which could mean there are major discoveries to come in the region.

In the study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, the researchers examined the genomes of more than 400 modern humans to investigate the interbreeding events between ancient humans and modern human populations who arrived at Island Southeast Asia 50,000-60,000 years ago.

In particular, they focused on detecting signatures that suggest interbreeding from deeply divergent species known from the fossil record of the area.

The region contains one of the richest fossil records (from at least 1.6 million years) documenting human evolution in the world. Currently there are three distinct ancient humans recognized from the fossil record in the area: Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (known as Flores Island hobbits) and Homo luzonensis.

These species are known to have survived until approximately 50,000-60,000 years ago in the cases of Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis, and approximately 108,000 years for Homo erectus, which means they may have overlapped with the arrival of modern human populations.

The results of the study showed no evidence of interbreeding. Nevertheless, the team were able to confirm previous results showing high levels of Denisovan ancestry in the region.

Lead author and ARC Research Associate from the University of Adelaide Dr João Teixeira, said: “In contrast to our other cousins the Neanderthals, which have an extensive fossil record in Europe, the Denisovans are known almost solely from the DNA record. The only physical evidence of Denisovan existence has been a finger bone and some other fragments found in a cave in Siberia and, more recently, a piece of jaw found in the Tibetan Plateau.”

“We know from our own genetic records that the Denisovans mixed with modern humans who came out of Africa 50,000-60,000 years ago both in Asia, and as the modern humans moved through Island Southeast Asia on their way to Australia.

“The levels of Denisovan DNA in contemporary populations indicates that significant interbreeding happened in Island Southeast Asia.

“The mystery then remains, why haven’t we found their fossils alongside the other ancient humans in the region? Do we need to re-examine the existing fossil record to consider other possibilities?”

Co-author Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London added:

“While the known fossils of Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensis might seem to be in the right place and time to represent the mysterious ‘southern Denisovans’, their ancestors were likely to have been in Island Southeast Asia at least 700,000 years ago. Meaning their lineages are too ancient to represent the Denisovans who, from their DNA, were more closely related to the Neanderthals and modern humans.”

Co-author Prof Kris Helgen, Chief Scientist and Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute, said: “These analyses provide an important window into human evolution in a fascinating region, and demonstrate the need for more archaeological research in the region between mainland Asia and Australia.”

Helgen added: “This research also illuminates a pattern of ‘megafaunal’ survival which coincides with known areas of pre-modern human occupation in this part of the world. Large animals that survive today in the region include the Komodo Dragon, the Babirusa (a pig with remarkable upturned tusks), and the Tamaraw and Anoas (small wild buffalos).

“This hints that long-term exposure to hunting pressure by ancient humans might have facilitated the survival of the megafaunal species in subsequent contacts with modern humans. Areas without documented pre-modern human occurrence, like Australia and New Guinea, saw complete extinction of land animals larger than humans over the past 50,000 years.”

Dr Teixeira said: “The research corroborates previous studies that the Denisovans were in Island Southeast Asia, and that modern humans did not interbreed with more divergent human groups in the region. This opens two equally exciting possibilities: either a major discovery is on the way, or we need to re-evaluate the current fossil record of Island Southeast Asia.”

“Whichever way you choose to look at it, exciting times lie ahead in palaeoanthropology.”

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Replica of the Sangiran 17 Homo erectus cranium from Java. Photo supplied by the Trustees of the Natural History Museum.

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE news release

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FLINDERS UNIVERSITY—The excavation of shell middens off two sites in the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Europe dating back to when the seabed was dry land thousands of years ago, reveal how they can offer new ground-breaking insights into the hidden history of submerged landscapes.

An international team of archaeologists from Moesgaard Museum (Denmark), the University of Georgia (USA), the University of York (UK) Flinders University and James Cook University partnered to excavate two sites containing shell middens in the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Jutland in Denmark in 2018, showing that middens can be clearly differentiated from natural shells on the seabed to reveal a coastline’s inhabitation past.

The research, published in two companion papers in Quaternary Science Reviews, shows they are culturally significant underwater sites which challenge the current understanding of coastal life in the Gulf of Mexico and Northern Europe, by pushing back the inhabitation timeframe by hundreds of years.

The shell middens also represent deep connections with the underwater environments and seascapes to many First Nations people, and the new evidence will support policy changes towards the adequate management and cultural heritage of their ancestral land.

“Shell middens are a classic, world-wide marker for the intensive use of marine resources, but archaeologist have always assumed that these sites would have been destroyed by sea-level rise”, says Professor Geoff Bailey of the University of York and Visiting Professor at Flinders University.

In Denmark, the discovery of these shell middens, which are rare in the south, hints that this type of site was more common than previously thought, shifting understandings of how intensive coastal use was 5000-7300 years ago.

“Importantly, both studies show that as more of these sites are found, our histories of past coastal use may have to be rewritten. The underwater archaeological aspect to shell midden studies is extremely important moving forward,” says Dr Peter Moe Astrup, Lead Author and Curator of the Maritime Archaeology division at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark.

“The team of archaeologists used cutting-edge techniques, including microscopy, geological and geophysical techniques, 3D reconstructions, and biological and ecological studies to tease out evidence that offers new insights into midden sites, particularly on how to locate other sites in watery depths around the globe.”

“For a large portion of humanity’s existence, sea levels have been significantly lower, up to 130 meters than what they are today, exposing millions of square kilometers of land. And the archaeological record clearly demonstrates that people in the past lived on these coastal plains before they were drowned by past sea-level rise” says Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin who is the Director of the Deep History of Sea Country Project and Maritime Archaeology Program Coordinator at Flinders University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

“Within archaeological shell middens, we can find old food remains, discarded tools and ornaments, old living surfaces, and in some cultures, human burials,” says Dr Katherine Woo at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University in Australia.

“These in turn provide us with fundamental information about past food choices, tool technology, and trade practices. More importantly, these different types of information allow us to understand how people adapted their cultures over time, and how they interacted with their surrounding environments including during times of sea level rise and climate change.”

The excavation of these sites emphasizes the need for stronger recognition and rights to protect and manage the cultural heritage of underwater ancestral lands around the globe, which hold significant insights into human history and deep connections to marine environments.

“The discovery of these underwater sites, and the promise of more to be found, means that industry, developers, archaeologists, and government bodies must reassess how we classify and handle Indigenous heritage on the continental shelf,” says Dr Jessica Cook Hale from the University of Georgia. “This is especially critical because offshore development is accelerating; here in North America the big push for offshore windfarms is underway, but Indigenous voices must remain foremost. These new findings support ongoing work to ensure that Indigenous and First Nations have a critical seat at the table, so to speak, in managing the offshore cultural heritage of their ancestral lands by documenting these relationships into the deep past.”

“They are real, they are important, and we must all engage with them in a rigorous and serious fashion.”

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Excavation of shell middens off submerged landscape in Jutland in Denmark in 2018, showing that middens can reveal a coastline’s hidden past. Deep History Of Sea Country project.

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Article Source: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – RIVERSIDE—An important Maya man buried nearly 1,300 years ago led a privileged yet difficult life. The man, a diplomat named Ajpach’ Waal, suffered malnutrition or illness as a child, but as an adult he helped negotiate an alliance between two powerful dynasties that ultimately failed. The ensuing political instability left him in reduced economic circumstances, and he probably died in relative obscurity.

During excavations at El Palmar, a small plaza compound in Mexico near the borders of Belize and Guatemala, archaeologists led by Kenichiro Tsukamoto, an assistant professor of anthropology at UC Riverside, discovered a hieroglyph-adorned stairway leading up to a ceremonial platform. When deciphered, the hieroglyphs revealed that in June, 726 CE, Ajpach’ Waal traveled and met the king of Copán, 350 miles away in Honduras, to forge an alliance with the king of Calakmul, near El Palmar.

The findings, published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, shed light on the role communities peripheral to major centers played in cementing connections between royal families during the Late Classic period (600-800 CE), and the ways they might suffer when something shattered those alliances.

The inscriptions identified Ajpach’ Waal as a “lakam,” or standard-bearer, an ambassador that carried a banner as they walked on diplomatic missions between cities. He inherited this lofty position through his father’s lineage, and his mother also came from an elite family. Ajpach’ Waal must have considered this his crowning achievement because the hieroglyphs indicate he was not given the platform by El Palmar’s ruler, but had it built for himself a few months after the mission in September, 726 CE. The platform served as a sort of theatrical stage where spectacular rituals were performed for an audience, with only influential people able to build their own.

Beneath the floor of a temple next to the platform, Tsukamoto discovered the undisturbed burial of a male skeleton in a small chamber. Though interred in a location that suggested ownership of the platform and temple, unlike other elite Maya burials, only two colorfully decorated clay pots — no jewelry or other grave goods — had accompanied this individual into the underworld.

In the new paper, Tsukamoto and Jessica I. Cerezo-Roman, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, study the bones of the person buried in this puzzling tomb to tell his story.

“His life is not like we expected based on the hieroglyphics,” Tsukamoto said. “Many people say that the elite enjoyed their lives, but the story is usually more complex.”

The man was between 35 and 50 years old when he died. Several dating methods, including radiocarbon, stratigraphy, and ceramic typology, suggest the burial occurred around 726, when the stairway was constructed. The high status of the individual combined with proximity to the stairway lead the authors to believe that this was probably Ajpach’ Waal himself, or possibly his father.

All his upper front teeth, from right canine to left, had been drilled to hold decorative implants of pyrite and jade, which was valuable and highly regulated. Maya living in geographic areas associated with ruling elites underwent this painful procedure during puberty as a rite of passage to mark their inclusion within a high office or social group. Ajpach’ Waal might have received such implants when he inherited his father’s title.

The skull had been mildly flattened in back from prolonged contact with something flat during infancy, which the Maya believed made a person more attractive. Because the front of the cranium was not preserved, the archaeologists could not tell if the forehead had been similarly flattened, a beautification practice limited to royalty.

Other aspects of the bones belied the privilege displayed by the dental and cranial modifications. Some of his arm bones had healed periostitis, caused by bacterial infections, trauma, scurvy, or rickets, which would have made his arm ache until the condition improved. Both sides of the skull had slightly porous, spongy areas known as porotic hyperostosis, caused by childhood nutritional deficiencies or illnesses. The condition is relatively common in burials throughout the Maya world, suggesting Ajpach’ Waal’s high status couldn’t shield him from malnutrition and disease.

A healed fracture on his right tibia, or shinbone, resembles fractures seen in modern athletes who play contact sports such as football, rugby, or soccer. This could indicate he played some of the ballgames depicted on the stairway, strengthening the case that this was Ajpach’ Waal.

Long before he died, the individual had lost many teeth on the left side of his lower jaw due to gum disease and might have had a painful abscess on his lower right premolar, all of which would have restricted his diet to soft foods. One inlaid tooth had thickened near the root in response to the injury of drilling and could have ached.

He also developed arthritis in his hands, right elbow, left knee, left ankle, and feet as he aged, which would have caused stiffness and pain, especially in the morning. Tsukamoto and Cerezo-Roman suggest that his arthritis might have been caused by carrying a banner on a pole for long distances over rugged terrain and walking and up and down stairways. He would have also been required to kneel on the platforms of Maya rulers.

As if these maladies weren’t enough, fate conspired to change Ajpach’ Waal’s fortunes.

“The ruler of a subordinate dynasty decapitated Copán’s king 10 years after his alliance with Calakmul, which was also defeated by a rival dynasty around the same time,” Tsukamoto said. “We see the political and economic instability that followed both these events in the sparse burial and in one of the inlaid teeth.”

The archaeologists determined that the inlay in Ajpach’ Waal’s right canine tooth had fallen out and was not replaced before his death because dental plaque had hardened into calculus in the cavity. The hole, easily visible when the man smiled or spoke, would have been an embarrassing, public admission of hardship or El Palmar’s reduced significance. This also would have made him a less useful emissary if he still occupied the role.

Though people continued living at El Palmar for some time after Ajpach’ Waal’s death, it was eventually abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle.

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Teeth with dental inlays from a nonroyal elite Maya tomb. Kenichiro Tsukamoto

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – RIVERSIDE news release

The paper, “The Life Course of a Standard-Bearer: A Nonroyal Elite Burial at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico,” is available here.

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON—Researchers at UCL have solved a major piece of the puzzle that makes up the ancient Greek astronomical calculator known as the Antikythera Mechanism, a hand-powered mechanical device that was used to predict astronomical events.

Known to many as the world’s first analogue computer, the Antikythera Mechanism is the most complex piece of engineering to have survived from the ancient world. The 2,000-year-old device was used to predict the positions of the Sun, Moon and the planets as well as lunar and solar eclipses.

Published in Scientific Reports, the paper from the multidisciplinary UCL Antikythera Research Team reveals a new display of the ancient Greek order of the Universe (Cosmos), within a complex gearing system at the front of the Mechanism.

Lead author Professor Tony Freeth (UCL Mechanical Engineering) explained: “Ours is the first model that conforms to all the physical evidence and matches the descriptions in the scientific inscriptions engraved on the Mechanism itself.

“The Sun, Moon and planets are displayed in an impressive tour de force of ancient Greek brilliance.”

The Antikythera Mechanism has generated both fascination and intense controversy since its discovery in a Roman-era shipwreck in 1901 by Greek sponge divers near the small Mediterranean island of Antikythera.

The astronomical calculator is a bronze device that consists of a complex combination of 30 surviving bronze gears used to predict astronomical events, including eclipses, phases of the moon, positions of the planets and even dates of the Olympics.

Whilst great progress has been made over the last century to understand how it worked, studies in 2005 using 3D X-rays and surface imaging enabled researchers to show how the Mechanism predicted eclipses and calculated the variable motion of the Moon.

However, until now, a full understanding of the gearing system at the front of the device has eluded the best efforts of researchers. Only about a third of the Mechanism has survived, and is split into 82 fragments – creating a daunting challenge for the UCL team.

The biggest surviving fragment, known as Fragment A, displays features of bearings, pillars and a block. Another, known as Fragment D, features an unexplained disk, 63-tooth gear and plate.

Previous research had used X-ray data from 2005 to reveal thousands of text characters hidden inside the fragments, unread for nearly 2,000 years. Inscriptions on the back cover include a description of the cosmos display, with the planets moving on rings and indicated by marker beads. It was this display that the team worked to reconstruct.

Two critical numbers in the X-rays of the front cover, of 462 years and 442 years, accurately represent cycles of Venus and Saturn respectively. When observed from Earth, the planets’ cycles sometimes reverse their motions against the stars. Experts must track these variable cycles over long time-periods in order to predict their positions.

“The classic astronomy of the first millennium BC originated in Babylon, but nothing in this astronomy suggested how the ancient Greeks found the highly accurate 462-year cycle for Venus and 442-year cycle for Saturn,” explained PhD candidate and UCL Antikythera Research Team member Aris Dacanalis.

Using an ancient Greek mathematical method described by the philosopher Parmenides, the UCL team not only explained how the cycles for Venus and Saturn were derived but also managed to recover the cycles of all the other planets, where the evidence was missing.

PhD candidate and team member David Higgon explained: “After considerable struggle, we managed to match the evidence in Fragments A and D to a mechanism for Venus, which exactly models its 462-year planetary period relation, with the 63-tooth gear playing a crucial role.”

Professor Freeth added: “The team then created innovative mechanisms for all of the planets that would calculate the new advanced astronomical cycles and minimize the number of gears in the whole system, so that they would fit into the tight spaces available.”

“This is a key theoretical advance on how the Cosmos was constructed in the Mechanism,” added co-author, Dr Adam Wojcik (UCL Mechanical Engineering). “Now we must prove its feasibility by making it with ancient techniques. A particular challenge will be the system of nested tubes that carried the astronomical outputs.”

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Main fragment of the Antikythera machine. Marsyas, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON news release.

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The discovery brings the research team a step closer to understanding the full capabilities of the Antikythera Mechanism and how accurately it was able to predict astronomical events. The device is kept at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

The UCL Antikythera Research Team is supported by the A.G. Leventis Foundation, Charles Frodsham & Co. and the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.

The team is led by Dr Adam Wojcik and made up of Professor Tony Freeth, Professor Lindsay MacDonald (UCL CEGE), Dr Myrto Georgakopoulou (UCL Qatar) and PhD candidates David Higgon and Aris Dacanalis (both UCL Mechanical Engineering).

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UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA—Women of the ruling class may have played an important role in the governance of El Argar, a society which flourished in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula between 2200 and 1550 BCE, and which in the last two centuries of its existence, developed into the first state organization of the western Mediterranean.

These are the conclusions reached by researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) who led a study analyzing the contents of a princely tomb (Grave 38), containing two individuals and a large amount of valuable items. The tomb was discovered in 2014 at the archaeological site of La Almoloya in Pliego, Murcia, beneath what was later identified to be the governing hall of a palatial building.

“La Almoloya and the princely grave 38 belong to these exceptional archaeological finds, which from time to time provide a glimpse into the ruling subjects and the emblematic objects of the first state societies emerging in Europe during the Bronze Age”, states Vicente Lull, one of the study’s coordinators. Published in Antiquity, this research has given archaeologists an insight into the political and economic power of the ruling class in El Argar.

The burial, located in a large ceramic jar, featured two individuals: a man aged 35 to 40, and a woman aged 25 to 30. Next to them was a range of some 30 valuable and prestigious objects, many of which were made or embellished with silver and almost all belonging to the female. There was a very complete repertoire of jewels and personal objects: bracelets, earlobe plugs, necklaces, spirals and containers with animal offerings. The most outstanding item was a silver diadem found on the head of the female.

A detailed study* of the diadem found in La Almoloya and its comparison to four others found in the 19th century in the tombs of rich women at the site of El Argar, which gives name to the Argaric society and culture, points to the fact that all of them, despite being remarkably uniform, were highly exclusive pieces. They were created in a silversmith workshop such as the one recently discovered in Tira del Lienzo, another Argaric site excavated by the same UAB team a few years ago.

“The singularity of these diadems is extraordinary. They were symbolic objects made for these women, thus transforming them into emblematic subjects of the dominant ruling class”, explains Cristina Rihuete, who also took part in the study. “Each piece is unique, comparable to funerary objects pertaining to the ruling class of other regions, such as Brittany, Wessex and Unetice, or in the eastern Mediterranean of the 17th century BCE, contemporary to our Grave 38”.

According to researchers, the opulence of the funerary goods found in the tombs of the elite women of El Argar, in which the diadems are of particular importance, is an indication of the distinguished role played by these women in the governance of some of these settlements. This is the case in La Almoloya, birthplace of the Argar society and center of the most relevant political and economic power within the region.

Were the women rulers, or were the emblems of power worn by them merely of symbolic value? This is the question the research team is interested in. And their answer is that most probably they were the rulers: “In the Argaric society, women of the dominant classes were buried with diadems, while the men were buried with a sword and dagger. The funerary goods buried with these men were of lesser quantity and quality. As swords represent the most effective instrument for reinforcing political decisions, El Argar dominant men might have played an executive role, even though the ideological legitimation as well as, perhaps, the government, had lain in some women’s hands”, they argue.

Biologically unrelated, but with shared offspring

According to the genetic analyses conducted at the Max Planck Institute, the individuals buried in Grave 38 were contemporaneous, and died simultaneously or close together in the mid-17th century BCE. They were unrelated, but did have a daughter, who was found buried near them. The woman had several congenital abnormalities, along with markings on the ribs that could indicate she had a pulmonary infection at the time of death. Meanwhile, the male also had wear and tear on his bones indicative of extensive physical activity, possibly horse riding.

A value of 900 daily wages

The metal objects of Grave 38 also stand out in quantitative terms. The total weight of the silver is approximately 230 gr, which is equivalent to 27.5 shekels, a currency used during the time of Hammurabi, the ruler of Babylon, in the first half of the 18th century BCE (contemporaneous with El Argar), and adapted by other Near Eastern and Aegean economies. Hence, the silver found in La Almoloya would be enough to pay around 938 daily wages or buy 3350 kg of barley.

Notably, the mean weight of the three medium-sized silver spirals worn by both individuals is 8.44 g, which matches the weight of the Mesopotamian shekel (8.33 g). Furthermore, the weights of other silver spirals found in Grave 38 are practically fractions or multiplications of that figure. “This may be a random distribution or it may indicate a standardized system of weights and measures mirroring contemporaneous Eastern examples. Further research is required to determine this, but the possibility of detecting a metric system behind the silver spirals is a further indication of the extent of the economic control exercised by the dominant class in El Argar”, Roberto Risch, co-author of the study, points out.

Political unity among Argaric regions

Contrary to the tombs found in El Argar, where there is no knowledge of the space in which they were placed, the funerary goods in Grave 38 and the diadem did offer the possibility of interpreting their location within an architectural setting. “The presence of emblematic objects buried in such an important place as is the “parliament” of La Almoloya could represent political unity among the Argaric regions during the last period of this society, in the 17th century BCE. The building was destroyed in a fire shortly after the burials took place”, explains Rafael Micó, also co-director of the project.

The El Argar society and the importance of La Almoloya

The El Argar society flourished from 2200 to 1550 BCE in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (Murcia and Almería), and represents an early Bronze Age society with urban centers and monumental constructions, a developed division of labor, intramural burials with marked asymmetries in funerary expenditure between individuals, political boundaries and institutionalized violence in the context of a class-based state society. The most important settlements are El Argar, La Bastida and La Almoloya.

The discovery of Grave 38 in La Almoloya, excavated in 2014 by researchers from the ASOME (Arqueoecologia Social Mediterrània) research group, affiliated to the UAB Department of Prehistory, pointed out the unique archaeological wealth of the site—a privileged, strategic location which helped this society thrive for over six centuries. The discoveries made, including a building with political functions and Grave 38, confirmed its importance as a center of political and economic relevance within the political territory of El Argar. The diadem found in La Almoloya is the only one to be preserved in Spain.

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Map of Iberian Middle en:Bronze Age c. 1500 BCE, showing the main cultures, the two main cities and the location of strategic tin mines. VNSP stands for en:Vila Nova de São Pedro. Sugaar at English Wikipedia, Public Domain

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Typical jar burial of the El Argar culture. José-Manuel Benito Álvarez, Public Domain, Wikmedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA news release

*https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/emblems-and-spaces-of-power-during-the-argaric-bronze-age-at-la-almoloya-murcia/B27A3C7AD23625DD39C6D4F2C3981C2F

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UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE—New research conducted at the UNESCO World Heritage listed ‘Plain of Jars’ in Laos has established the stone jars were likely placed in their final resting position from as early as 1240 to 660 BCE.

Sediment samples from beneath stone jars from two of the more than 120 recorded megalithic sites were obtained by a team led Dr Louise Shewan from the University of Melbourne, Associate Professor Dougald O’Reilly from the Australian National University (ANU) and Dr Thonglith Luangkoth from the Lao Department of Heritage.

The samples were analyzed using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to determine when sediment grains were last exposed to sunlight.

“With these new data and radiocarbon dates obtained for skeletal material and charcoal from other burial contexts, we now know that these sites have maintained enduring ritual significance from the period of their initial jar placement into historic times,” Dr Shewan said.

The megalithic jar sites in Northern Laos comprise one to three-meter-tall carved stone jars, weighing up to 20 tonnes, dotted across the landscape, appearing alone or in groups of up to several hundred.

Dr Shewan and her team completed their most recent excavations in March 2020, revisiting Site 1 (Ban Hai Hin), and arriving back in Australia just before global pandemic international boarder closures.

Site 1 revealed more burials placed around the jars and confirmed earlier observations that the exotic boulders distributed across the site are markers for ceramic burial jars buried below.

Published today in PLOS One, Dr Shewan and collaborators present new radiocarbon results for site use and also introduce geochronological data determining the likely quarry source for one of the largest megalithic sites.

While geologists have used detrital zircon U-Pb dating for several decades, this methodology has recently been used to establish the provenance of ceramic and stone sources in archaeological contexts including Stonehenge.

Conducted at ANU by Associate Professor Richard Armstrong, the U-Pb zircon ages measured in jar samples from Site 1 were compared to potential source material, including a sandstone outcrop and an incomplete jar from a presumed quarry located some 8km away. The zircon age distributions revealed very similar provenance suggesting that this outcrop was the likely source of the material used for the creation of jars at the site.

“How the jars were moved from the quarry to the site, however, remains a mystery,” Associate Professor O’Reilly said.

The next challenge for the researchers is to obtain further samples from other sites and from across the geographic expanse of this megalithic culture to understand more about these enigmatic sites and the period over which they were created.

Dr Shewan said this is not an especially easy task given the extensive unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination in the region where less than 10 per cent of the known jar sites have been cleared.

“We expect that this complex process will eventually help us share more insights into what is one of Southeast Asia’s most mysterious archaeological cultures.”

The full team of researchers includes La Trobe University, James Cook University, University of Gloucestershire and international collaborators from Laos, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

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Dr Shewan and collaborators present new radiocarbon results for site use and also introduce geochronological data determining the likely quarry source for one of the largest megalithic sites. Plain of Jars Archaeological Research Project

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE news release

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PLOS—Genetic analysis provides clarity and also prompts further questions around an ancient massacre in Potočani, Croatia, in a study published March 10, 2021* in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mario Novak from the Institute for Anthropological Research, Croatia, Ron Pinhasi from the University of Vienna, Austria, David Reich from Harvard Medical School and Harvard University, USA, and colleagues.

To date anthropological and genomic analysis of early massacres has revealed cases where the victims were plausibly killed due to battle, in-versus-out-group conflicts (such as targeting of specific families or recent migrants), or religious ritual. The massacre of 41 individuals in Potočani, Croatia, 6,200 years ago described in this study, one of the largest-scale genetic analysis of an ancient massacre to date, marks an instance of indiscriminate killing at a large scale.

The authors were able to retrieve genomic data from the bones of 38 of the 41 individuals found buried in a mass grave at Potočani, Croatia, radiocarbon dated to 4,200 years cal BCE and belonging to the Lasinja culture of the Middle Eneolithic (Copper Age).

A combination of genetic and morphological analysis revealed the grave held individuals from both sexes (21 males and 20 females) and spanning age groups: over half of the sample (21) consisted of subadults (two younger children aged between two and five years, nine older children aged between six and 10 years, and 10 adolescents aged between 11 and 17 years. Of the remaining 20 adults, 14 individuals were aged between 18 and 35 years and five between 36 and 50 years, and one adult’s age at death could not be determined accurately. The genetic analysis also revealed that while some individuals in the grave were linked by family ties (eg a younger man, his two young daughters, and his nephew (brother’s son) were all found in the pit), the majority of individuals (70 percent) were unrelated and instead appear to be a sample of what was clearly a large pastoral population. Interestingly, though not linked in most cases by close kin-ties, genetic evidence shows the individuals found in this grave all shared homogenous ancestry (predominantly Anatolian Neolithic with ~9% Western European hunter-gatherer ancestry), indicating the local population was large and stable–and making it unlikely that the massacre was linked to the arrival of a new, genetically-unrelated group. Though there’s no way to know for sure with the evidence currently available, the authors suggest a possible reason for the massacre as potentially due to a combination of adverse climactic conditions and/or a significant increase in population size.

The results show that large-scale indiscriminate killing isn’t just restricted to modern and historic periods but was also a significant process in pre-state societies. The authors note further genetic analysis of ancient massacre sites will be necessary to determine just how frequently this type of violence occurred in the past.

The authors add: “A prehistoric massacre 6000 years ago in present-day Croatia: Ancient DNA reveals new insights about the 41 victims.”

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The Potočani mass burial, with the upper layers of the pit showing numerous commingled skeletons. Novak et al, 2021, PLOS ONE (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Novak M, Olalde I, Ringbauer H, Rohland N, Ahern J, Balen J, et al. (2021) Genome-wide analysis of nearly all the victims of a 6200 year old massacre. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0247332. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247332

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PLOS—Scythian people of ancient Ukraine led more complex lives than commonly assumed, according to a study published March 10, 2021* in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alicia R. Ventresca Miller of the University of Michigan and colleagues.

The Scythian people, who lived across the Pontic steppe around 700-200 BCE, are often portrayed as a culture of nomadic warriors. But this idea is challenged by archaeological evidence that indicates a more complex and varied culture at this place and time. In this study, researchers employed isotopic analyses to investigate patterns of diet and mobility in Scythian populations.

The authors measured isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium in human teeth and bones from several Scythian-era burial sites in Ukraine. Isotopes that reflect diet, indicate that in some places there was a varied diet including numerous domesticated crops, while isotopes that reflect geologic surroundings indicate that most people did not travel long distances during their lifetimes.

These results support the growing understanding that Scythian populations were not a homogenous culture, but a more diverse group which, in some places, lived more sedentary lives with a dependence on agriculture. The authors suggest that future studies should expand this work to compare multiple generations of people over more varied geographical locations. This work will help archaeologists move toward a more complete idea of what it meant to be Scythian.

The authors add: “Our multi-isotopic study challenges romantic notions of wide-ranging Scythian nomads. We show that while some individuals from classic Scythian contexts traveled long distances, the majority remained local to their settlements, farming millet and raising livestock in mixed economic systems.”

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Bronze mirror found at the site of Mamai-Gora. Svetlana Andrukh (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Ventresca Miller AR, Johnson J, Makhortykh S, Gerling C, Litvinova L, Andrukh S, et al. (2021) Re-evaluating Scythian lifeways: Isotopic analysis of diet and mobility in Iron Age Ukraine. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0245996. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245996

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Neanderthal remains from a Belgian cave may be thousands of years older than previously reported, according to a study. The timing of Neanderthal disappearance remains uncertain, and previous radiocarbon dating of Neanderthal remains from Spy Cave in Belgium has yielded ages as recent as approximately 24,000 years ago, placing the finds among the latest surviving Neanderthals in Europe. However, the reliability of these dates is uncertain due to possible sample contamination. Thibaut Devièse and colleagues re-dated four Spy Cave Neanderthal specimens using compound-specific radiocarbon analysis. In this method, a single amino acid, hydroxyproline, was isolated from bone collagen and dated, thereby minimizing risks of unremoved contamination. Most of the dates obtained using this method were much older than those obtained previously–up to 10,000 years in certain cases. The authors also dated Neanderthal specimens from two additional Belgian sites, Fonds-de-Forêt and Engis, and obtained ages comparable to those from Spy Cave. Based on the newly obtained radiocarbon dates, the authors estimate that Neanderthals disappeared from the region 44,200-40,600 years ago, much earlier than previously published dates suggest. The results support the use of robust pretreatment methods when dating Paleolithic human remains to minimize biases due to contamination, according to the authors.

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Maxilla and mandible assemblage of a late Neanderthal from Spy Cave, Belgium. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences/Patrick Semal.

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”Reevaluating the timing of Neanderthal disappearance in Northwest Europe,” by Thibaut Devièse et al.

DUKE UNIVERSITY, DURHAM, N.C.—When you think about what separates humans from chimpanzees and other apes, you might think of our big brains, or the fact that we get around on two legs rather than four. But we have another distinguishing feature: water efficiency.

That’s the take-home of a new study* that, for the first time, measures precisely how much water humans lose and replace each day compared with our closest living animal relatives.

Our bodies are constantly losing water: when we sweat, go to the bathroom, even when we breathe. That water needs to be replenished to keep blood volume and other body fluids within normal ranges.

And yet, research published March 5 in the journal Current Biology shows that the human body uses 30% to 50% less water per day than our closest animal cousins. In other words, among primates, humans evolved to be the low-flow model.

An ancient shift in our body’s ability to conserve water may have enabled our hunter-gatherer ancestors to venture farther from streams and watering holes in search of food, said lead author Herman Pontzer, associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University.

“Even just being able to go a little bit longer without water would have been a big advantage as early humans started making a living in dry, savannah landscapes,” Pontzer said.

The study compared the water turnover of 309 people with a range of lifestyles, from farmers and hunter-gatherers to office workers, with that of 72 apes living in zoos and sanctuaries.

To maintain fluid balance within a healthy range, the body of a human or any other animal is a bit like a bathtub: “water coming in has to equal water coming out,” Pontzer said.

Lose water by sweating, for example, and the body’s thirst signals kick in, telling us to drink. Chug more water than your body needs, and the kidneys get rid of the extra fluid.

For each individual in the study, the researchers calculated water intake via food and drink on the one hand, and water lost via sweat, urine and the GI tract, on the other hand.

When they added up all the inputs and outputs, they found that the average person processes some three liters, or 12 cups, of water each day. A chimpanzee or gorilla living in a zoo goes through twice that much.

Pontzer says the researchers were surprised by the results because, among primates, humans have an amazing ability to sweat. Per square inch of skin, “humans have 10 times as many sweat glands as chimpanzees do,” Pontzer said. That makes it possible for a person to sweat more than half a gallon during an hour-long workout — equivalent to two Big Gulps from a 7-Eleven.

Add to that the fact that the great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans—live lazy lives. “Most apes spend 10 to 12 hours a day resting or feeding, and then they sleep for 10 hours. They really only move a couple hours a day,” Pontzer said.

But the researchers controlled for differences in climate, body size, and factors like activity level and calories burned per day. So they concluded the water-savings for humans were real, and not just a function of where individuals lived or how physically active they were.

The findings suggest that something changed over the course of human evolution that reduced the amount of water our body uses each day to stay healthy.

Then as now, we could likely still only survive a few days without drinking, Pontzer said. “You probably don’t break that ecological leash, but at least you get a longer one if you can go longer without water.”

The next step, Pontzer says, is to pinpoint how this physiological change happened.

One hypothesis, suggested by the data, is that our body’s thirst response was re-tuned so that, overall, we crave less water per calorie compared with our ape relatives. Even as babies, long before our first solid food, the water-to-calories ratio of human breast milk is 25% less than the milks of other great apes.

Another possibility lies in front of our face: Fossil evidence suggests that, about 1.6 million years ago, with the inception of Homo erectus, humans started developing a more prominent nose. Our cousins gorillas and chimpanzees have much flatter noses.

Our nasal passages help conserve water by cooling and condensing the water vapor from exhaled air, turning it back into liquid on the inside of our nose where it can be reabsorbed.

Having a nose that sticks out more may have helped early humans retain more moisture with each breath.

“There’s still a mystery to solve, but clearly humans are saving water,” Pontzer said. “Figuring out exactly how we do that is where we go next, and that’s going to be really fun.”

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As the African environment dried up anciently, early humans adapted by requiring less water intake to survive. Mariamichelle, Pixabay

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Article Source: Duke University news release.

This research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (BCS-0643122, BCS-1317170, BCS-1440867, BCS-1440841, BCS-1440671), the United States Agency for International Development (APS-497-11-000001), the National Institutes of Health (R01DK080763), the John Templeton Foundation, L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 8670), the University of Arizona, Duke University, and Hunter College.

*”Evolution of Water Conservation in Humans,” Herman Pontzer, Mary H. Brown, Brian M. Wood, David A. Raichlen, Audax. Z.P. Mabulla, Jacob A. Harris, Holly Dunsworth, Brian Hare, Kara Walker, Amy Luke, Lara R. Dugas, Dale Schoeller, Jacob Plange-Rhule, Pascal Bovet, Terrence E. Forrester, Melissa Emery Thompson, Robert W. Shumaker, Jessica M. Rothman, Erin Vogel, Fransiska Sulistyo, Shauhin Alavi, Didik Prasetyo, Samuel S. Urlacher, and Stephen R. Ross. Current Biology, March 5, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.02.045

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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—Woolly mammoths may have walked the landscape at the same time as the earliest humans in what is now New England, according to a Dartmouth study published in Boreas. Through the radiocarbon dating of a rib fragment from the Mount Holly mammoth from Mount Holly, Vt., the researchers learned that this mammoth existed approximately 12,800 years ago. This date may overlap with the arrival of the first humans in the Northeast, who are thought to have arrived around the same time.

“It has long been thought that megafauna and humans in New England did not overlap in time and space and that it was probably ultimately environmental change that led to the extinction of these animals in the region but our research provides some of the first evidence that they may have actually co-existed,” explains co-author Nathaniel R. Kitchel, the Robert A. 1925 and Catherine L. McKennan Postdoctoral Fellow in anthropology at Dartmouth.

The Mount Holly mammoth, Vermont’s state terrestrial fossil, was discovered in the summer of 1848 in the Green Mountains during the construction of the Burlington and Rutland railroad lines. One molar, two tusks, and an unknown number of bones were excavated from a hilltop bog near Mount Holly. Over time, the specimens became scattered across several repositories, as they transferred from one collection to the next. A rib fragment from the Mount Holly mammoth became part of the Hood Museum of Art‘s collection and some of the other skeletal materials are now housed at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and the Mount Holly Historical Museum.

Kitchel stumbled across the Mount Holly mammoth rib fragment last December at the Hood Museum’s offsite storage facility, as curators had invited him to take a look at some of their artifacts from New Hampshire and Vermont. He came across a large bone (approximately 30 cm. in length) that was stained brown in color from age. He had a hunch that this was the remains of a mammoth and when he looked down at the tag, it read, “Rib of fossil elephant. Mt. Holly R.R. cut. Presented by Wm. A. Bacon Esq. Ludlow VT.” This was rather serendipitous for Kitchel, as he had recently delivered a talk at Mount Holly’s Historical Museum for which he had read up on the Mount Holly mammoth.

To appreciate the significance of the Mount Holly mammoth remains, including the rib fragment, it is helpful to understand the paleontology of the Northeast. During the Last Glacial Maximum around 18,000 – 19,000 years ago when glaciers were at their maximum extent, the ice began to retreat, gradually exposing what is now New England. During that period, it is likely that the glaciers probably sufficiently ripped up whatever soil might have been preserving fossils, reducing the likelihood for fossils to remain intact. These changes combined with the Northeast’s naturally acidic soils have created inhospitable conditions for the preservation of fossils. While Kitchel had discussed the complicated paleontology of the Northeast in the past with colleague and co-author Jeremy DeSilva, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth, he never thought that he would have much of an opportunity to work on it.

After seeing this mammoth material in the Hood’s collection, he and DeSilva decided to obtain a radiocarbon date of the fragmentary rib bone. They took a 3D scan of the material prior to taking a small (1 gram) sample from the broken end of the rib bone. The sample was then sent out to the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia for radiocarbon dating and a stable istotopic analysis.

Radiocarbon dating enables researchers to determine how long an organism has been dead based on its concentration of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope that decays over time. Stable isotopes however, are isotopes that do not decay over time, which provide a snapshot of what was absorbed into the animal’s body when it was alive. Nitrogen isotopes can be used to analyze the protein composition of an animal’s diet. The nitrogen isotopes of the Mount Holly mammoth revealed low values in comparison to that of other recorded mammoths globally while also reflecting the lowest value recorded in the Northeast for a mammoth. The low nitrogen values could have been the result of these mega-herbivores having to consume alder or lichens (nitrogen fixing species) during the last glacial period when the landscape was denser due to climate warming.

“The Mount Holly mammoth was one of the last known occurring mammoths in the Northeast,” says DeSilva. “While our findings show that there was a temporal overlap between mammoths and humans, this doesn’t necessarily mean that people saw these animals or had anything to do with their death but it raises the possibility now that maybe they did.”

The radiocarbon date for the Mount Holly mammoth of 12,800 years old overlaps with the accepted age of when humans may have initially settled in the region, which is thought to have occurred during the start of the Younger Dryas, a final pulse of glacial cold before temperatures warmed dramatically, marking the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age).

While other research on mammoths in the Midwest suggests that humans hunted and buried these animals in lakes and bogs to preserve the meat, there’s little evidence that early humans in New England hunted or scavenged these animals.

The researchers are intrigued by the Mount Holly mammoth. The rest of its rib and other bones could be waiting to be discovered. Or, through time, they could have broken apart, dissolved in the acidic soil, or a scavenger could have run off with the bones. There are still a lot of unknowns; yet, the team has already begun further research using modern and more sophisticated archaeological techniques to explore what may be underground at Mount Holly.

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Replica of a Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) in the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The display is from 1979, and the fur is muskox hair. Flying Puffin (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).

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Photograph showing the affixed tags and 3D model of the Mount Holly mammoth rib fragment housed at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth. The rib was 3D surface scanned using a Creaform Go!SCAN50 at a resolution of 1.00 mm and has been digitally archived in .stl format at Morphosource.org. Image by Nathaniel R. Kitchel and Jeremy DeSilva.

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release

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PLOS—A lone cranium in an Italian cave wound up there after being washed away from its original burial site, according to a study* published March 3, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Maria Giovanna Belcastro of the University of Bologna, Italy and colleagues.

In 2015, archaeologists discovered a single human cranium (a skull without a lower jaw) in a gypsum cave in Northern Italy called Marcel Loubens cave. Caves are known to have been used for funerary practices in ancient Italy, but the fact that there are no other human remains in this cave has raised questions about how this skull came to be there, inspiring the researchers in this study to conduct a detailed analysis on the bone.

The structure of the bone indicates that it belonged to a woman between 24 and 35 years old at death. Carbon dating places the remains between 3630-3380 BC, during the Eneolithic period. Several lesions on the bone appear to be damage caused during the removal of soft tissues after death as part of a funeral ritual, while other damage and encrusted sediment on the bone are evidence that it was moved by natural processes not long afterward.

With this evidence, the researchers reconstructed the journey of the skull. After being treated and laid to rest in a burial place, the skull of this corpse rolled away, most likely moved by water and mud down the slope of a sinkhole and into the cave. Later, continued sinkhole activity created the modern structure of the cave, with this bone still preserved within. Besides revealing this fascinating story, this specimen also likely represents evidence of funerary treatment of a corpse in Italy during this time period.

The authors add: “An intriguing archaeological cold case: an isolated human cranium was found in the natural Marcel Loubens gypsum Cave (Bologna area, northern Italy) at the top of a vertical shaft, reached by an artificial 12-meter technical climb. How and when did it get there? Whose was it?

The cadaver (or head) of an early Eneolithic young woman was likely manipulated and dismembered in a funerary or ritual context and the skull, after a long and bumpy ride, accidentally ended up in the cave in the position in which it was found!”

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MLC on the top of the shaft and Lucia Castagna, the young archaeologist of GSB-USB that secured and recovered the cranium (Archive SABAP-BO/GSB-USB, ph. F. Grazioli). Belcastro et al, 2021, PLOS ONE (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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MLC in frontal (a), superior (b), left (c), posterior (d), inferior (e) and right (f) views. The boxes indicate the Zones (A-M) with the ectocranial lesions. Belcastro et al, 2021, PLOS ONE (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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*Belcastro MG, Nicolosi T, Sorrentino R, Mariotti V, Pietrobelli A, Bettuzzi M, et al. (2021) Unveiling an odd fate after death: The isolated Eneolithic cranium discovered in the Marcel Loubens Cave (Bologna, Northern Italy). PLoS ONE 16(3): e0247306. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247306

Article Source: PLOS news release

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DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE—In June 2019, an international team brought the complete skull of the 3.67-million-year-old Little Foot Australopithecus skeleton, from South Africa to the UK and achieved unprecedented imaging resolution of its bony structures and dentition in an X-ray synchrotron-based investigation at the UK’s national synchrotron, Diamond Light Source. The X-ray work is highlighted in a new paper in e-Life, published today (2nd March 2021) focusing on the inner craniodental features of Little Foot. The remarkable completeness and great age of the Little Foot skeleton makes it a crucially important specimen in human origins research and a prime candidate for exploring human evolution through high-resolution virtual analysis.

To recover the smallest possible details from a fairly large and very fragile fossil, the team decided to image the skull using synchrotron X-ray micro computed tomography at the I12 beamline at Diamond, revealing new information about human evolution and origins. This paper outlines preliminary results of the X-ray synchrotron-based investigation of the dentition and bones of the skull (i.e., cranial vault and mandible).

Leading author and Principal Investigator, Dr Amelie Beaudet, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge and honorary research at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) explains: “We had the unique opportunity to look at the finest details of the craniodental anatomy of the Little Foot skull. While scanning it, we did not know how well the smallest structures would be preserved in this individual, who lived more than 3.5 million years ago. So, when we were finally able to examine the images, we were all very excited and moved to see such intimate details of the life of Little Foot for the first time. The microstructures observed in the enamel indicate that Little Foot suffered through two clear periods of dietary stress or illness when she was a child.”

The team were also able to observe and describe the vascular canals that are enclosed in the compact bone of the mandible. These structures have the potential to reveal a lot about the biomechanics of eating in this individual and its species, but also more broadly about how bone was remodeled in Little Foot. The branching pattern of these canals indicates some remodeling took place, perhaps in response to changes in diet, and that Little Foot died as an older individual.

The team also observed tiny (i.e., less than 1 mm) channels in the braincase that are possibly involved in brain thermoregulation (i.e., how to cool down the brain). Brain size increased dramatically throughout human evolution (about threefold), and, because the brain is very sensitive to temperature change, understanding how temperature regulation evolves is of prime interest. Dr Amelie Beaudet adds: “Traditionally, none of these observations would have been possible without cutting the fossil into very thin slices, but with the application of synchrotron technology there is an exciting new field of virtual histology being developed to explore the fossils of our distant ancestors.”

Dr Thomas Connolley, Principal Beamline Scientist at Diamond commented: “Important aspects of early hominin biology remain debated, or simply unknown. In that context, synchrotron X-ray imaging techniques like microtomography have the potential to non-destructively reveal crucial details on the development, physiology, biomechanics and taxonomy of fossil specimens. Little Foot’s skull was also scanned using the adjacent IMAT neutron instrument at ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, combining X-ray and neutron imaging techniques in one visit to the UK. With such a rich volume of information collected, we’re eager to make more discoveries in the complementary X-ray and neutron tomography scans.”

Applications of X-ray synchrotron-based analytical techniques in evolutionary studies have opened up new avenues in the field of (paleo)anthropology. In particular, X-ray synchrotron microtomography has proved to be enormously useful for observing the smallest anatomical structures in fossils that are traditionally only seen by slicing through the bones and looking at them under a microscope. Through the last decade, there have been more studies in palaeoanthropology using synchrotron radiation to investigate teeth and brain imprints in fossil hominins. However, scanning a complete skull such as the one of Little Foot and aiming to reveal very small details using a very high-resolution was quite challenging, but the team managed to develop a new protocol that made this possible. To recover the smallest possible details from a fairly large and very fragile fossil, the team decided to image the skull using synchrotron X-ray micro computed tomography at the I12 beamline at Diamond.

Principal Investigator, and Associate Professor, Prof Dominic Stratford, University of Witwatersrand (Wits University), School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies says: “This level of resolution is providing us with remarkably clear evidence of this individual’s life. We think there will also be a hugely significant evolutionary aspect, as studying this fossil in this much detail will help us understand which species she evolved from and how she differs from others found at a similar time in Africa. This is just our first paper so watch this space. Funding permitting, we hope to be able to bring other parts of Little Foot to Diamond,” adding:

“This research was about bringing the best-preserved Australopithecus skull to the best of the best synchrotron facility for our purposes. Traditionally, hominins have been analyzed by measuring and describing by the exterior shapes of their fossilized bones to assess how these differ between species. Synchrotron development and microCT resources means that we are now able to virtually observe structures inside the fossils, which hold a wealth of information. More recently, technology has developed to such an extent that we can now virtually explore minute histological structures in three dimensions, opening new avenues for our research.”

The first bones of the Little Foot fossil were discovered in the Sterkfontein Caves, northwest of Johannesburg, by Professor Ron Clarke of the University of the Witwatersrand in 1994. In 1997, following their discovery of the location of the skeleton, Professor Clarke and his team spent more than 20 years painstakingly removing the skeleton in stages from the concrete-like cave breccia using a small airscribe (a vibrating needle). Following cleaning and reconstructing, the skeleton was publicly unveiled in 2018. Wits University is the custodian of the StW 573, Little Foot, fossil.

Professor Ron Clarke, the British scientist based in South Africa who discovered and excavated Little Foot and conducted all the early examinations of the fossil, was also part of the research team and concludes: “It has taken us 23 years to get to this point. This is an exciting new chapter in Little Foot’s history, and this is only the first paper resulting from her first trip out of Africa. We are constantly uncovering new information from the wealth of new data that was obtained. We hope this endeavor will lead to more funding to continue our work. Our team and PAST* emphasize that all of humanity has had a long-shared ancestry in harmony with the natural world, and that learning from those earliest ancestors gives us perspective on the necessity to conserve nature and our planet.”

This paper is the first in what is expected to be a series of papers resulting from the wealth of data the Principal Investigators from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa the University of Cambridge in UK, co-investigators from the Natural History Museum and Diamond were able to gain from their collaboration. Little Foot also underwent neutron imaging at STFC’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source at the same time as the work undertaken at Diamond Light Source, providing unprecedented access to complementary advanced imaging techniques. Neutrons are absorbed very differently from X-rays by the fossil’s interior parts thanks to the sensitivity of neutrons to certain chemical elements. Despite having coarser spatial resolution, neutron tomography can sometimes differentiate between different mineralogical constituents for which contrast is very low for X-rays.

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Close-up of Little Foot Skull at Diamond Light Source. Diamond Light Source

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Little Foot Fossil skull in Diamond’s beamline I12. Diamond Light Source Ltd

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*’Preliminary paleohistological observations of the StW 573 Little Foot skull’ – Amelie Beaudet, Robert Atwood, Winfried Kockelmann, Vincent Fernandez, Thomas Connolley, Nghia Trong Vo, Ronald Clarke, Dominic Stratford. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64804

Article Source: DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE news release

The team: Principal Investigators, Professor Dominic Stratford and Dr Amelie Beaudet from the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Cambridge respectively, co-investigators Dr Vincent Fernandez, Natural History Museum, Dr Robert Atwood and Dr Nghia Trong Vo, Diamond Light Source, Dr Thomas Connolley, Principle Beamline Scientist, Diamond Light Source and Dr Winfried Kockelmann, the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Professor Ron Clarke, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

*PAST South Africa (Paleontological Scientific Trust https://www.past.org.za/learn/ ) was set up to fund research into LF and has since funded and facilitated research into literally tons of fossils and excavation project. It has funded numerous research projects on specimens that reveal details of our humanity and our link with nature ‘We are all from Africa’.

For further information please contact Diamond Communications: Lorna Campbell +44 7836 625999 or Isabelle Boscaro-Clarke +44 1235 778130

About Diamond Light Source:

W: http://www.diamond.ac.uk Twitter: @DiamondLightSou

Diamond Light Source provides industrial and academic user communities with access to state-of-the-art analytical tools to enable world-changing science. Shaped like a huge ring, it works like a giant microscope, accelerating electrons to near light speeds, to produce a light 10 billion times brighter than the Sun, which is then directed off into 33 laboratories known as beamlines. In addition to these, Diamond offers access to several integrated laboratories including the world-class Electron Bio-imaging Centre (eBIC) and the Electron Physical Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC).

Diamond serves as an agent of change, addressing 21st century challenges such as disease, clean energy, food security and more. Since operations started, more than 14,000 researchers from both academia and industry have used Diamond to conduct experiments, with the support of approximately 760 world-class staff. More than 10,000 scientific articles have been published by our users and scientists.

Funded by the UK Government through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and by the Wellcome Trust, Diamond is one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world, and its pioneering capabilities are helping to keep the UK at the forefront of scientific research.

About Wits University:

W: http://www.wits.ac.za Twitter: @Wits_News & @WitsUniversity

Wits University is a research-intensive University, one of the leading institutions on the African continent that produces world-class research that is locally relevant and globally competitive. Wits is a global leader in the palaeosciences, one of its key research areas. Wits research output has increased by over 45% in the last four years with more than 85% of its research published in international journals. Wits offers a free space for the exchange of ideas and a vibrant intellectual community that fosters debate and knowledge transfer both within and beyond our lecture halls. Wits latest research available at http://www.wits.ac.za/ research.

About the University of Cambridge

The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. To date, 110 affiliates of the University have won the Nobel Prize.

Founded in 1209, the University comprises 31 autonomous Colleges and 150 departments, faculties and institutions. Cambridge is a global university. Its 19,000 student body includes 3,700 international students from 120 countries. Cambridge researchers collaborate with colleagues worldwide, and the University has established larger-scale partnerships in Asia, Africa and America.

The University sits at the heart of the Cambridge cluster, which employs more than 61,000 people and has in excess of £15 billion in turnover generated annually by the 5,000 knowledge-intensive firms in and around the city. The city publishes 316 patents per 100,000 residents. http://www.cam.ac.uk

Twitter: @Cambridge_Uni @UCamArchaeology

About the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

W: https://stfc.ukri.org T: https://twitter.com/stfc_matters

ISIS Neutron and Muon Source produces beams of neutrons and muons that allow scientists to study materials at the atomic level using a suite of instruments, often described as ‘super-microscopes’. It supports a national and international community of more than 2000 scientists who use neutrons and muons for research in physics, chemistry, materials science, geology, engineering, and biology.

ISIS Neutron and Muon Source is a world-leading centre for research in the physical and life sciences. It is owned and operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council is part of UK Research and Innovation; the UK body which works in partnership with universities, research organisations, businesses, charities, and government to create the best possible environment for research and innovation to flourish. STFC funds and supports research in particle and nuclear physics, astronomy, gravitational research and astrophysics, and space science and also operates a network of five national laboratories as well as supporting UK research at a number of international research facilities including CERN, FERMILAB and the ESO telescopes in Chile.

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