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MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY—Some of the oldest remains of early human ancestors have been unearthed in Olduvai Gorge, a rift valley setting in northern Tanzania where anthropologists have discovered fossils of hominids that existed 1.8 million years ago. The region has preserved many fossils and stone tools, indicating that early humans settled and hunted there.

Now a team led by researchers at MIT and the University of Alcalá in Spain has discovered evidence that hot springs may have existed in Olduvai Gorge around that time, near early human archaeological sites. The proximity of these hydrothermal features raises the possibility that early humans could have used hot springs as a cooking resource, for instance to boil fresh kills, long before humans are thought to have used fire as a controlled source for cooking.

“As far as we can tell, this is the first time researchers have put forth concrete evidence for the possibility that people were using hydrothermal environments as a resource, where animals would’ve been gathering, and where the potential to cook was available,” says Roger Summons, the Schlumberger Professor of Geobiology in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).

Summons and his colleagues have published their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study’s lead author is Ainara Sistiaga, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow based at MIT and the University of Copenhagen. The team includes Fatima Husain, a graduate student in EAPS, along with archaeologists, geologists, and geochemists from the University of Alcalá and the University of Valladolid, in Spain; the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania; and Pennsylvania State University.

An unexpected reconstruction

In 2016, Sistiaga joined an archaeological expedition to Olduvai Gorge, where researchers with the Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project were collecting sediments from a 3-kilometer-long layer of exposed rock that was deposited around 1.7 million years ago. This geologic layer was striking because its sandy composition was markedly different from the dark clay layer just below, which was deposited 1.8 million years ago.

“Something was changing in the environment, so we wanted to understand what happened and how that impacted humans,” says Sistiaga, who had originally planned to analyze the sediments to see how the landscape changed in response to climate and how these changes may have affected the way early humans lived in the region.

It’s thought that around 1.7 million years ago, East Africa underwent a gradual aridification, moving from a wetter, tree-populated climate to dryer, grassier terrain. Sistiaga brought back sandy rocks collected from the Olduvai Gorge layer and began to analyze them in Summons’ lab for signs of certain lipids that can contain residue of leaf waxes, offering clues to the kind of vegetation present at the time.

“You can reconstruct something about the plants that were there by the carbon numbers and the isotopes, and that’s what our lab specializes in, and why Ainara was doing it in our lab,” Summons says. “But then she discovered other classes of compounds that were totally unexpected.”

An unambiguous sign

Within the sediments she brought back, Sistiaga came across lipids that looked completely different from the plant-derived lipids she knew. She took the data to Summons, who realized that they were a close match with lipids produced not by plants, but by specific groups of bacteria that he and his colleagues had reported on, in a completely different context, nearly 20 years ago.

The lipids that Sistiaga extracted from sediments deposited 1.7 million years ago in Tanzania were the same lipids that are produced by a modern bacteria that Summons and his colleagues previously studied in the United States, in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park.

One specific bacterium, Thermocrinis ruber, is a hyperthermophilic organism that will only thrive in very hot waters, such as those found in the outflow channels of boiling hot springs.

“They won’t even grow unless the temperature is above 80 degrees Celsius [176 degrees Fahrenheit],” Summons says. “Some of the samples Ainara brought back from this sandy layer in Olduvai Gorge had these same assemblages of bacterial lipids that we think are unambiguously indicative of high-temperature water.”

That is, it appears that heat-loving bacteria similar to those Summons had worked on more than 20 years ago in Yellowstone may also have lived in Olduvai Gorge 1.7 million years ago. By extension, the team proposes, high-temperature features such as hot springs and hydrothermal waters could also have been present.

“It’s not a crazy idea that, with all this tectonic activity in the middle of the rift system, there could have been extrusion of hydrothermal fluids,” notes Sistiaga, who says that Olduvai Gorge is a geologically active tectonic region that has upheaved volcanoes over millions of years — activity that could also have boiled up groundwater to form hot springs at the surface.

The region where the team collected the sediments is adjacent to sites of early human habitation featuring stone tools, along with animal bones. It is possible, then, that nearby hot springs may have enabled hominins to cook food such as meat and certain tough tubers and roots.

“Why wouldn’t you eat it?”

Exactly how early humans may have cooked with hot springs is still an open question. They could have butchered animals and dipped the meat in hot springs to make them more palatable. In a similar way, they could have boiled roots and tubers, much like cooking raw potatoes, to make them more easily digestible. Animals could have also met their demise while falling into the hydrothermal waters, where early humans could have fished them out as a precooked meal.

“If there was a wildebeest that fell into the water and was cooked, why wouldn’t you eat it?” Sistiaga poses.

While there is currently no sure-fire way to establish whether early humans indeed used hot springs to cook, the team plans to look for similar lipids, and signs of hydrothermal reservoirs, in other layers and locations throughout Olduvai Gorge, as well as near other sites in the world where human settlements have been found.

“We can prove in other sites that maybe hot springs were present, but we would still lack evidence of how humans interacted with them. That’s a question of behavior, and understanding the behavior of extinct species almost 2 million years ago is very difficult, Sistiaga says. “I hope we can find other evidence that supports at least the presence of this resource in other important sites for human evolution.”

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Olduvai Gorge. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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OLDUVAI PNAS 1Ingles from MADRID SCIENTIFIC FILMS S.L. on Vimeo.

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Article Source: MIT news release by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

This research was supported, in part, by the European Commission (MSCA-GF), the NASA Astrobiology Institute, and the Government of Spain.

*Paper: “Microbial biomarkers reval a hydrothermically-active landscape at Olduvai Gorge at the dawn of the Acheulean, 1.7 Mya” https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/09/14/2004532117

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GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY—WASHINGTON (Sept. 11, 2020)–A team of Israeli and American researchers funded by grants from the National Geographic Society and the Israel Science Foundation has uncovered new evidence that an earthquake may have caused the destruction and abandonment of a flourishing Canaanite palatial site about 3,700 years ago.

The group made the discovery at the 75-acre site of Tel Kabri in Israel, which contains the ruins of a Canaanite palace and city that dates back to approximately 1900-1700 B.C. The excavations, located on land belonging to Kibbutz Kabri in the western Galilee region, are co-directed by Assaf Yasur-Landau, a professor of Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Haifa, and Eric Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology at the George Washington University.

“We wondered for several years what had caused the sudden destruction and abandonment of the palace and the site, after centuries of flourishing occupation,” Yasur-Landau said. “A few seasons ago, we began to uncover a trench which runs through part of the palace, but initial indications suggested that it was modern, perhaps dug within the past few decades or a century or two at most. But then, in 2019, we opened up a new area and found that the trench continued for at least 30 meters, with an entire section of a wall that had fallen into it in antiquity, and with other walls and floors tipping into it on either side.”

According to Michael Lazar, the lead author of the study, recognizing past earthquakes can be extremely challenging in the archaeological record, especially at sites where there isn’t much stone masonry and where degradable construction materials like sun-dried mud bricks and wattle-and-daub were used instead. At Tel Kabri, however, the team found both stone foundations for the bottom part of the walls and mud-brick superstructures above.

“Our studies show the importance of combining macro- and micro-archaeological methods for the identification of ancient earthquakes,” he said. “We also needed to evaluate alternative scenarios, including climatic, environmental and economic collapse, as well as warfare, before we were confident in proposing a seismic event scenario.”

The researchers could see areas where the plaster floors appeared warped, walls had tilted or been displaced, and mud bricks from the walls and ceilings had collapsed into the rooms, in some cases rapidly burying dozens of large jars.

“It really looks like the earth simply opened up and everything on either side of it fell in,” Cline said. “It’s unlikely that the destruction was caused by violent human activity because there are no visible signs of fire, no weapons such as arrows that would indicate a battle, nor any unburied bodies related to combat. We could also see some unexpected things in other rooms of the palace, including in and around the wine cellar that we excavated a few years ago.”

In 2013, the team discovered 40 jars within a single storage room of the palace during an expedition also supported by a National Geographic Society grant. An organic residue analysis conducted on the jars indicated that they held wine; it was described at the time as the oldest and largest wine cellar yet discovered in the Near East. Since then, the team has found four more such storage rooms and at least 70 more jars, all buried by the collapse of the building.

“The floor deposits imply a rapid collapse rather than a slow accumulation of degraded mud bricks from standing walls or ceilings of an abandoned structure,” Ruth Shahack-Gross, a professor of geoarchaeology at the University of Haifa and a co-author on the study, said. “The rapid collapse, and the quick burial, combined with the geological setting of Tel Kabri, raises the possibility that one or more earthquakes could have destroyed the walls and the roof of the palace without setting it on fire.”

The investigators are hopeful that their methodological approach can be applied at other archaeological sites, where it can serve to test or strengthen cases of possible earthquake damage and destruction.

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Aerial view showing the Southern Storage Complex (SSC), the Northern Storage Complex (NSC; blue dashed box) and the trench (red dashed lines). Eric Cline/GW

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Overhead of excavation area after 2019 season. Eric Cline/GW

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Jars and floor falling into trench 2019. Eric Cline/GW

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Orthostat building looking south with trench across it 2011. Eric Cline/GW

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Wall fallen into trench 2019. Eric Cline/GW

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Article Source: GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY news release

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AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—Researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) have analyzed 18 ancient texts dating back to around 600 BCE from the Tel Arad military post using state-of-the-art image processing, machine learning technologies, and the expertise of a senior handwriting examiner. They have concluded that the texts were written by no fewer than 12 authors, suggesting that many of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah during that period were able to read and write, with literacy not reserved as an exclusive domain in the hands of a few royal scribes.

The special interdisciplinary study was conducted by TAU’s Dr. Arie Shaus, Ms. Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, and Dr. Barak Sober of the Department of Applied Mathematics; Prof. Eli Piasetzky of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy; and Prof. Israel Finkelstein of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations. The forensic handwriting specialist, Ms. Yana Gerber, is a senior expert who served for 27 years in the Questioned Documents Laboratory of the Israel Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science and its International Crime Investigations Unit.

The results were published in PLOS ONE on September 9, 2020.

“There is a lively debate among experts as to whether the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings were compiled in the last days of the kingdom of Judah or after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians,” Dr. Shaus explains. “One way to try to get to the bottom of this question is to ask when there was the potential for the writing of such complex historical works.

“For the period following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC, there is very scant archaeological evidence of Hebrew writing in Jerusalem and its surroundings, but an abundance of written documents has been found for the period preceding the destruction of the Temple. But who wrote these documents? Was this a society with widespread literacy, or was there just a handful of literate people?”

To answer this question, the researchers examined the ostraca (fragments of pottery vessels containing ink inscriptions) writings discovered at the Tel Arad site in the 1960s. Tel Arad was a small military post on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah; its built-up area was about 20,000 square feet and it housed between 20 and 30 soldiers.

“We examined the question of literacy empirically, from different directions of image processing and machine learning,” says Ms. Faigenbaum-Golovin. “Among other things, these areas help us today with the identification, recognition, and analysis of handwriting, signatures, and so on. The big challenge was to adapt modern technologies to 2,600-year-old ostraca. With a lot of effort, we were able to produce two algorithms that could compare letters and answer the question of whether two given ostraca were written by two different people.”

In 2016, the researchers theorized that 18 of the Tel Arad inscriptions were written by at least four different authors. Combined with additional textual evidence, the researchers concluded that there were in fact at least six different writers. The study aroused great interest around the world.

The TAU researchers then decided to compare the algorithmic methods, which have since been refined, to the forensic approach. To this end, Ms. Gerber joined the team. After an in-depth examination of the ancient inscriptions, she found that the 18 texts were written by at least 12 distinct writers with varying degrees of certainty. She examined the original Tel Arad ostraca at the Israel Museum, the Eretz Israel Museum, the Sonia and Marco Nedler Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, and the Israel Antiquities Authority’s warehouses at Beit Shemesh.

Ms. Gerber explained:

“This study was very exciting, perhaps the most exciting in my professional career. These are ancient Hebrew inscriptions written in ink on shards of pottery, utilizing an alphabet that was previously unfamiliar to me. I studied the characteristics of the writing in order to analyze and compare the inscriptions, while benefiting from the skills and knowledge I acquired during my bachelor’s degree studies in classical archaeology and ancient Greek at Tel Aviv University. I delved into the microscopic details of these inscriptions written by people from the First Temple period, from routine issues such as orders concerning the movement of soldiers and the supply of wine, oil, and flour, through correspondence with neighboring fortresses, to orders that reached the Tel Arad fortress from the high ranks of the Judahite military system. I had the feeling that time had stood still and there was no gap of 2,600 years between the writers of the ostraca and ourselves.

“Handwriting is made up of unconscious habit patterns. The handwriting identification is based on the principle that these writing patterns are unique to each person and no two people write exactly alike. It is also assumed that repetitions of the same text or characters by the same writer are not exactly identical and one can define a range of natural handwriting variations specific to each one. Thus, forensic handwriting analysis aims at tracking features corresponding to specific individuals, and concluding whether a single or rather different authors wrote the given documents.

“The examination process is divided into three steps: analysis, comparison, and evaluation. The analysis includes a detailed examination of every single inscription, according to various features, such as the spacing between letters, their proportions, slant, etc. The comparison is based upon the aforementioned features across various handwritings. In addition, consistent patterns, such as the same combinations of letters, words, and punctuation, are identified. Finally, an evaluation of identicalness or distinctiveness of the writers is made. It should be noted that, according to an Israel Supreme Court ruling, a person can be convicted of a crime based on the opinion of a forensic handwriting expert.”

Dr. Shaus further elaborated:

“We were in for a big surprise: Yana identified more authors than our algorithms did. It must be understood that our current algorithms are of a “cautious” nature—they know how to identify cases in which the texts were written by people with significantly different writing; in other cases they refrain from definite conclusions. In contrast, an expert in handwriting analysis knows not only how to spot the differences between writers more accurately, but in some cases may also arrive at the conclusion that several texts were actually written by a single person. Naturally, in terms of consequences, it is very interesting to see who the authors are. Thanks to the findings, we were able to construct an entire flowchart of the correspondence concerning the military fortress—who wrote to whom and regarding what matter. This reflects the chain of command within the Judahite army.

“For example, in the area of Arad, close to the border between the kingdoms of Judah and Edom, there was a military force whose soldiers are referred to as “Kittiyim” in the inscriptions, most likely Greek mercenaries. Someone, probably their Judahite commander or liaison officer, requested provisions for the Kittiyim unit. He writes to the quartermaster of the fortress in Arad “give the Kittiyim flour, bread, wine” and so on. Now, thanks to the identification of the handwriting, we can say with high probability that there was not only one Judahite commander writing, but at least four different commanders. It is conceivable that each time another officer was sent to join the patrol, they took turns.”

According to the researchers, the findings shed new light on Judahite society on the eve of the destruction of the First Temple—and on the setting of the compilation of biblical texts. Dr. Sober explains:

“It should be remembered that this was a small outpost, one of a series of outposts on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah. Since we found at least 12 different authors out of 18 texts in total, we can conclude that there was a high level of literacy throughout the entire kingdom. The commanding ranks and liaison officers at the outpost, and even the quartermaster Eliashib and his deputy, Nahum, were literate. Someone had to teach them how to read and write, so we must assume the existence of an appropriate educational system in Judah at the end of the First Temple period. This, of course, does not mean that there was almost universal literacy as there is today, but it seems that significant portions of the residents of the kingdom of Judah were literate. This is important to the discussion on the composition of biblical texts. If there were only two or three people in the whole kingdom who could read and write, then it is unlikely that complex texts would have been composed.”

Prof. Finkelstein concludes:

“Whoever wrote the biblical works did not do so for us, so that we could read them after 2,600 years. They did so in order to promote the ideological messages of the time. There are different opinions regarding the date of the composition of biblical texts. Some scholars suggest that many of the historical texts in the Bible, from Joshua to II Kings, were written at the end of the 7th century BC, very close to the period of the Arad ostraca. It is important to ask who these texts were written for. According to one view, there were events in which the few people who could read and write stood before the illiterate public and read texts out to them. A high literacy rate in Judah puts things into a different light.

“Until now, the discussion of literacy in the kingdom of Judah has been based on circular arguments, on what is written within the Bible itself, for example on scribes in the kingdom. We have shifted the discussion to an empirical perspective. If in a remote place like Tel Arad there was, over a short period of time, a minimum of 12 authors of 18 inscriptions, out of the population of Judah which is estimated to have been no more than 120,000 people, it means that literacy was not the exclusive domain of a handful of royal scribes in Jerusalem. The quartermaster from the Tel Arad outpost also had the ability to read and appreciate them.”

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Examples of Hebrew ostraca from Arad. Michael Cordonsky, TAU and the Israel Antiquities Authority

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Article Source: AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—Human impact can explain ninety-six percent of all mammal species extinctions of the last hundred thousand years, according to a new study* published in the scientific journal Science Advances.

Over the last 126,000 years, there has been a 1600-fold increase in mammal extinction rates, compared to natural levels of extinction. According to the new study, this increase is driven almost exclusively by human impact.

Human impact larger than the effects of climate

The study further shows that even prehistoric humans already had a significant destructive impact on biodiversity – one that was even more destructive than the largest climatic changes of Earth’s recent history, such as the last ice age.

“We find essentially no evidence for climate-driven extinctions during the past 126,000 years Instead, we find that human impact explains 96% of all mammal extinctions during that time”, asserts Daniele Silvestro, one of the researchers.

This is at odds with views of some scholars, who believe that strong climatic changes were the main driving force behind most prehistoric mammal extinctions. Rather, the new findings suggest that in the past mammal species were resilient, even to extreme fluctuations in climate.

“However, current climate change, together with fragmented habitats, poaching, and other human-related threats pose a large risk for many species”, says Daniele Silvestro.

Analyses based on large global data set

The researcher’s conclusions are based on a large data set of fossils. They compiled and analyzed data of 351 mammal species that have gone extinct since the beginning of the Late Pleistocene era. Among many others, these included iconic species such as mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, and giant ground sloths. Fossil data provided by the Zoological Society of London were an important contribution to the study.

“These extinctions did not happen continuously and at constant pace. Instead, bursts of extinctions are detected across different continents at times when humans first reached them. More recently, the magnitude of human driven extinctions has picked up the pace again, this time on a global scale”, says Tobias Andermann from the University of Gothenburg.

Extinction rates will increase further, if nothing is done

The current extinction rate of mammals is likely the largest extinction event since the end of the dinosaur era, according to the researchers. Using computer-based simulations they predict that these rates will continue to rise rapidly—possibly reaching up to 30,000-fold above the natural level by the year 2100. This is if current trends in human behavior and biodiversity loss continue.

“Despite these grim projections, the trend can still be changed. We can save hundreds if not thousands of species from extinction with more targeted and efficient conservation strategies. But in order to achieve this, we need to increase our collective awareness about the looming escalation of the biodiversity crisis, and take action in combatting this global emergency. Time is pressing. With every lost species, we irreversibly lose a unique portion of Earth’s natural history”, concludes Tobias Andermann.

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Verreaux’s sifaka. Tobias Andermann

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG news release

*”The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity”, published in Science Advances: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabb2313

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Around 100,000 years ago, the climate worsened abruptly and the environment of Central-Eastern Europe shifted from forested to open steppe/taiga habitat, promoting the dispersal of wooly mammoth, wooly rhino and other cold adapted species from the Arctic. Neanderthals living in these territories suffered severe demographic contractions due to the new ecological conditions and only returned to the areas above 48° N latitude during climatic ameliorations. However, in spite of the discontinuous settlement, specific bifacial stone tools persisted in Central-Eastern Europe from the beginning of this ecological shift until the demise of the Neanderthals. This cultural tradition is named Micoquian, and spread across the frosty environment between eastern France, Poland and the Caucasus. Previous genetic analyses showed that two major demographic turnover events in Neanderthal history are associated with the Micoquian cultural tradition. At ~90,000 years ago, western European Neanderthals replaced the local Altai Neanderthals population in Central Asia. Successively, by at least ~45,000 years ago, western European Neanderthals substituted the local groups in the Caucasus.

The paper published in Scientific Reports and led by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, Wroclaw University, Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals Polish Academy of Sciences, and University of Bologna reports the oldest mitochondrial genome of a Neanderthal found in Central-Eastern Europe. The molecular age of ~80,000 years places the tooth from Stajnia Cave in this important period of Neanderthal history when the environment was characterized by extreme seasonality and some groups dispersed eastwards to Central Asia. “Poland, located at the crossroad between the Western European Plains and the Urals, is a key region in understanding these migrations and for solving questions about the adaptability and biology of Neanderthals in periglacial habitat. The Stajnia S5000 molar is truly an exceptional find that sheds light on the debate over the wide distribution of the Micoquian artifacts”, says Andrea Picin, lead author of the study and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

Genetic analysis

Neanderthal remains associated with the Micoquian cultural tradition are very few and genetic information has only been extracted from samples of Germany, Northern Caucasus and Altai. “We were aware of the geographical importance of this tooth for adding more chronological points in the distribution map of genetic information of Neanderthals”, says Mateja Hajdinjak, co-author of the paper and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “We found that the mitochondrial genome of Stajnia S5000 was closest to the one of a Mezmaiskaya 1 Neanderthal from the Caucasus. We then used the molecular genetic clock in order to determine its approximate age. Although the molecular branch shortening approach comes with a wide error range, crossing the information with the archaeological record permitted us to place the fossil at the beginning of the Last Glacial”.

The tooth was discovered in 2007 during fieldwork directed by Mikolaj Urbanowski, co-author of the paper, within animal bones and a few stone tools. The opening of the cave was probably too narrow for prolonged settlement, and Neanderthal occupations were short-term. The site could have been a logistical location settled during forays into the Krakow-Czestochowa Upland.

“We were thrilled when the genetic analysis revealed that the tooth was at least ~80,000 years old. Fossils of this age are very difficult to find and, generally, the DNA is not well preserved”, say Wioletta Nowaczewska of Wroclaw University and Adam Nadachowski from the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals Polish Academy of Sciences, co-authors of the paper. “At the beginning, we thought that the tooth was younger since it was found in an upper layer. We were aware that Stajnia Cave is a complex site, and post-depositional frost disturbance mixed artifacts between layers. We are happily surprised by the result”. Concerning the paleoanthropological features, Stefano Benazzi of Bologna University, co-author of the paper, adds, “The morphology of the tooth is typical of Neanderthal, which was also confirmed by the genetic analysis. The worn condition of the crown suggests that it belonged to an adult”.

Neanderthals in periglacial environments

Archaeologists have been puzzled for a long time by the resilience of Neanderthals in these regions and by the persistence of Micoquian stone tools for more than 50,000 years across a huge area. Beyond the taphonomic issues, the lithic assemblage of Stajnia displays a set of features that are common to several key sites in Germany, Crimea, Northern Caucasus and Altai. These similarities are likely the result of increasing mobility of Neanderthal groups that frequently moved across the Northern and Eastern European Plains chasing cold adapted migratory animals. The Prut and Dniester rivers were probably used as the main corridors of dispersal from Central Europe to the Caucasus. Similar corridors could also have been used at ~45,000 years ago when other western Neanderthals carrying Micoquian stone tools replaced local populations at Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucasus.

In summarizing the wider implications of this study, Sahra Talamo from the University of Bologna says, “The multidisciplinary approach is always the best way to better contextualize a challenging archeological site, as is evident in this research. The result of the Neanderthal of Stajnia is a great example showing that the molecular clock is incredibly effective for dates older than 55,000 years BP”.

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Aerial view of Stajnia Cave. Marcinarski

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3D digital model of the Stajnia S5000 molar. Stefano Benazzi

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Stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic at Stajnia Cave: 1-3 Bifacial tools; 4 Preform of a bifacial tool; 5-8 Levallois flakes. Andrea Picin

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

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UNIVERSITY OF EXETER—Ancient hunters stayed in the coldest part of Northern Europe rather than migrating to escape freezing winter conditions, archaeologists have found.

Evidence from Arctic fox bones show communities living around 27,500 years ago were killing small prey in the inhospitable North European Plains during the winter months of the last Ice Age.

Researchers have found no evidence of dwellings, suggesting people only stayed for a short time or lived in tents in the area excavated, Kraków Spadzista in Southern Poland – one of the largest Upper Palaeolithic sites in Central Europe. Until now it wasn’t clear if people retreated elsewhere each winter to avoid the intense cold.

Dr Alexander Pryor, from the University of Exeter, who led the study, said: “Our research shows the cold harsh winter climates of the last ice age were no barrier to human activity in the area. Hunters made very specific choices about where and when to kill their prey.”

Inhabitants of Kraków Spadzista around 27,500 years ago killed and butchered large numbers of woolly mammoths and arctic foxes at the site. For the first time, the research team were able to reconstruct details of how the foxes were moving around in the landscape before they died, and also what time of the year they died, through analyzing the internal chemistry and growth structures of their tooth enamel and roots.

The analysis of teeth from four of the 29 hunted foxes show each was born and grew up in a different location, and had migrated tens or hundreds of kilometers to the region before being killed by hunters – by snares, deadfalls or other trapping methods – for both their thick warm furs as well as meat and fat for food. The carcasses were brought back to the site to be skinned and butchered.

Analysis of the dental cementum of at least 10 fox individuals demonstrate that the majority were killed between late winter and late spring, most likely in late winter. The foxes ranged in age, from sub-adult to very old.

The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, also involved Sylwia Pospu?a, Piotr Wojtal, Nina Kowalik and Jarosaw Wilczyski from the Polish Academy of Sciences and Tereza Nesnídalová from the University of Exeter.

Around 2,400 arctic fox bones were found about 30m south of a huge concentration of bones from more than 100 individual woolly mammoths that dominate the site , in an area used for the production of lithic tools and the processing of smaller prey animals.

The study suggests the Arctic fox colonized the area because they moved over long distances season by season, something they still do today, in order to find food.

Dr Pryor said: “Arctic fox provided both food and hides to Palaeolithic hunters, with their fur coats reaching full length around the beginning of December; this winter fur usually begins shedding by early spring. They also lay down substantial stores of body fats seasonally that are greatest from late autumn throughout the winter season and do not start to become seriously depleted until early spring. Hunters most likely targeted the foxes in the late winter period – before the onset of fur shedding and loss of critical fat supplies.

“The high numbers of fox remains found at the site suggests what was happening was a deliberate, organized procurement strategy rather than just simple incidental hunting.”

The analysis of teeth suggests hunters engaged in large-scale winter hunting of solitary Arctic foxes that were ranging widely across the landscape. The site was used as a base camp for ranging visits to maintain trapping lines and for processing hides.

Krakow Spadzista was one of the most northerly sites in central Europe during the Late Gravettian when much of the northern plains region had already been abandoned. Mean annual temperature was between ?1.0 °C and +4.3 °C.

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Arctic fox teeth. Alex Pryor

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Excavations. Alex Pryor

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER news release

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ELSEVIER—Amsterdam, September 7, 2020 – A recent study by a team based at the University of Bologna, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, has shed new light on the Minoan system of fractions, one of the outstanding enigmas tied to the ancient writing of numbers.

About 3,500 years ago, the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete developed a writing system composed of syllabic signs, called Linear A, which they sometimes used to inscribe offerings at sanctuaries and adorn their jewelry, but mainly assisted the administration of their palatial centers.

Today, this script remains largely undeciphered and includes a complex system of numerical notation with signs that indicated not only whole numbers, but also fractions (such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.). While the whole numbers were deciphered decades ago, scholars have been debating on the exact mathematical values of the fractional signs.

Principal Investigator Silvia Ferrara, Professor of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies of the University of Bologna, said: “We aimed to solve the problem through a lens combining different strands of research, very seldom tied together: close paleographical analysis of the signs and computational methods. In this way we realized that we could access information from a new perspective.”

The members of the European Research Council project INSCRIBE (Invention of Scripts and their Beginnings), Michele Corazza, Barbara Montecchi, Miguel Valério, and Fabio Tamburini, led by Dr. Ferrara, applied a method that combines the analysis of the sign shapes and their use in the inscriptions together with statistical, computational and typological strategies to assign mathematical values to the Linear A signs for fractions.

The team first studied the rules that the signs followed on the clay tablets and other accounting documents. Two problems had so far complicated the decipherment of Linear A fractions. First, all documents containing sums of fractional values with a registered total were damaged or difficult to interpret, and second, they contradicted uses of certain signs, which suggest the system changed over time. Thus, the starting premise had to rely on documents concentrated to a specific period (ca. 1600-1450 BCE), when the numerical system was in coherent use across Crete.

To investigate the possible values of each fractional sign, the team excluded impossible outcomes with the aid of computational methods. Then all possible solutions – almost four million – were whittled down also comparing fractions that are common in the history of the world (e.g., typological data) and using statistical tests. Finally, the team applied other strategies that considered the completeness and coherence of the fractions as a system and in this way the best values were identified, with the least redundancies. The result, in this case, was a system whose lowest fraction is 1/60 and which shows the ability to represent most values of the type n/60.

The system of values suggested by the Bologna team has yielded further important implications.

The results explain how the Linear B script, adopted by the later Mycenaean Greek culture (ca. 1450-1200 BCE) from Linear A, reused some of these fractions to express units of measurement. The new results suggest that, for example, the Linear A sign for 1/10 was adapted to represent a capacity unit for measuring dry products which was, in turn, 1/10 of a larger unit. This explains a historical continuity of use from fractions to units of measurements across two different cultures.

This research aims to show that traditional methods and computational models, when used in synergy, can help us make remarkable progress into explaining some unresolved issues tied to ancient scripts that are still undeciphered.

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On the left, the signs of the fractions in Linear A; on the right, one of the tablets analyzed. Elsevier

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Article Source: Elsevier news release.

*”The mathematical values of fraction signs in the Linear A script: A computational, statistical and typological approach,” by Michele Corazza, Silvia Ferrara, Barbara Montecchi, Fabio Tamburini, and Miguel Valério (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105214). It appears in Journal of Archaeological Science (September 2020), published by Elsevier.

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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—A Dartmouth-led study using multisensor drones has revealed a large circular earthwork at what may be Etzanoa, an archaeological site near Wichita, Kansas. Archaeologists speculate that the site was visited by a Spanish expedition, led by Juan de Oñate, a controversial conquistador, in 1601. The earthwork may be the remains of a so-called “council circle,” as it is similar to several other circular earthworks in the region, according to the study’s findings published in American Antiquity.

“Our findings demonstrate that undiscovered monumental earthworks may still exist in the Great Plains. You just need a different archeological approach to recognize them,” explained lead author, Jesse J. Casana, a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at Dartmouth. “Our results are promising in suggesting that there may be many other impressive archaeological features that have not yet been documented, if we look hard enough,” he added.

Archaeological features have various thermal effects. After the ground cools at nighttime, things below the ground cool and emit heat at different rates, enabling researchers to identify features based on thermal infrared radiation. The researchers obtained thermal and multispectral imagery of the site using drones.

The 18-hectare area of the site where the drone survey was conducted is currently home to a ranch property in the lower Walnut River valley, which has been used as a pasture. Topographically, the area is flat with no visible archaeological features. Yet, imagery shows that underground there is an ancient, circular shaped ditch measuring 50 meters wide and approximately 2 meters thick that has been infilled. As the soil erodes, it fills up the ditch with a different type of soil than was there before, and therefore retains water differently giving it unique thermal properties. The water retention levels also impact vegetation. Using near-infrared imagery, the researchers were able to identify areas that had been infilled because grass growth was more vigorous. As the study reports, the results provide evidence for what may have been a “single, sprawling population center” back in its day.

To confirm that the findings were not an anomaly, the team collected a time series of aerial and satellite images of the area from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. They found that the circular feature was “faintly visible in June 2015 and July 2017 but not in June 2012 or February 2017.”

The debate is widespread as to what council circles were used for, whether they were astronomical in nature or made for ceremonial, political and/or defense purposes. Casana added, “While we may never know what the council circles were used for or their significance, new archaeological methods allow us to see that people made these earthworks.”

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Left: Drone-acquired orthoimage of the site showing major features discussed in the paper. Right: Thermal images mosaic collected from 11:15 pm-12:15 am. (Images from Figure 6 of the study). Images by Jesse Casana, Elise Jakoby Laugier, and Austin Chad Hill.

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Aerial view of the site. Image is from Figure 3 of the study. Photograph by Jesse Casana.

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release

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ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY—A Rochester Institute of Technology researcher developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of an ancient civilization. In an article recently featured in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, Nishant Malik, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, outlined the new technique he developed and showed how shifting monsoon patterns led to the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization, a Bronze Age civilization contemporary to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

Malik developed a method to study paleoclimate time series, sets of data that tell us about past climates using indirect observations. For example, by measuring the presence of a particular isotope in stalagmites from a cave in South Asia, scientists were able to develop a record of monsoon rainfall in the region for the past 5,700 years. But as Malik notes, studying paleoclimate time series poses several problems that make it challenging to analyze them with mathematical tools typically used to understand climate.

“Usually the data we get when analyzing paleoclimate is a short time series with noise and uncertainty in it,” said Malik. “As far as mathematics and climate is concerned, the tool we use very often in understanding climate and weather is dynamical systems. But dynamical systems theory is harder to apply to paleoclimate data. This new method can find transitions in the most challenging time series, including paleoclimate, which are short, have some amount of uncertainty and have noise in them.”

There are several theories about why the Indus Valley Civilization declined–including invasion by nomadic Indo-Aryans and earthquakes–but climate change appears to be the most likely scenario. But until Malik applied his hybrid approach– rooted in dynamical systems but also draws on methods from the fields of machine learning and information theory–there was no mathematical proof. His analysis showed there was a major shift in monsoon patterns just before the dawn of this civilization and that the pattern reversed course right before it declined, indicating it was in fact climate change that caused the fall.

Malik said he hopes the method will allow scientists to develop more automated methods of finding transitions in paleoclimate data and leads to additional important historical discoveries. The full text of the study is published in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science.

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This figure shows the settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization during different phases of its evolution. RIT Assistant Professor Nishant Malik developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of the ancient civilization. RIT

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Article Source: ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY news release

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STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY, STONY BROOK, NY, September 3, 2020 – The ability for humans to digest milk as adults has altered our dietary habits and societies for centuries. But when and how that ability – known as lactase persistence or lactose tolerance – occurred and became established is up for debate. By testing the genetic material from the bones of people who died during a Bronze Age battle around 1,200 BC, an international team of scientists including Krishna Veeramah, PhD, of Stony Brook University, suggest that lactase persistence spread throughout Central Europe in only a few thousand years, an extremely fast transformation compared to most evolutionary changes seen in humans. Their findings are published in Current Biology.

Despite the prominence of milk drinking in Europe and North American today, approximately two-thirds of the world’s population remains lactose intolerant. Generally, no mammal digests milk as an adult, which is why for example people should not give adult cat or dog pets milk. However, a subset of humans have a genetic mutation that enables the enzyme lactase to digest the lactose sugar found in milk throughout an individual’s lifetime. Many of these people are from Central or Northern Europe.

The battle occurred on the banks of the Tollense, a river in present day Germany, and is the most significant that we know about from Bronze Age Europe, probably consisting of about 4,000 warriors, almost a quarter of which died during the fighting. Despite being more than three thousand years old, the researchers were able to sequence DNA from some of the bone fragments recovered from the battle site.

Veeramah, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution in the College of Arts and Sciences, led part of the research that involved analyzing how the overall genetic ancestry of the battlefield population compared to other modern and ancient populations, and then compared the frequency of the lactase-persistent allele to other modern and ancient populations, particularly medieval European populations.

The research team, led by Joachim Burger and colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), found that despite the battle occurring more than 4,000 years after the introduction of agriculture in Europe – which in part would have involved the consumption of dairy from early cattle, goats and sheep domesticates – only one in eight of the warriors had a genetic variant that enabled them to break down lactose.

“When we look at other European genetic data from the early Medieval period less than 2,000 years later, we find that more than 60 percent of individuals had the ability to drink milk as adults, close to what we observe in modern Central European countries, which ranges from 70 to 90 percent” said Veeramah. “This is actually an incredibly fast rate of change for the gene that controls milk digestion. It appears that by simply possessing this one genetic change, past European individuals with the ability to digest lactose had a six percent greater chance of producing children than those who could not. This is the strongest evidence we have for positive natural selection in humans.”

Joachim Burger of JGU, lead author on the study, added that there still is not definitive answer to the question: Why did being able to digest the sugar in milk after infancy provide such a big evolutionary advantage?

“With milk being a high-energy, relatively uncontaminated drink, its ingestion may have provided greater chances of survival during food shortages or when supplies of drinking water may have been contaminated,” explained Burger.

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Various bones at a Bronze Age battle excavation site, some of which were genetically tested to determine the presence of the lactase-persistent gene. Stefan Sauer / Tollense Valley Project

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Article Source: STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—Using radiocarbon dating and CT scanning to study ancient bones, researchers have uncovered for the first time a Bronze Age tradition of retaining and curating human remains as relics over several generations.

While the findings*, led by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Antiquity, may seem eerie or even gruesome by today’s convention, they indicate a tangible way of honoring and remembering known individuals between close communities and generations some 4,500 years ago.

“Even in modern secular societies, human remains are seen as particularly powerful objects, and this seems to hold true for people of the Bronze Age. However, they treated and interacted with the dead in ways which are inconceivably macabre to us today,” said lead author, Dr Thomas Booth, who carried out the radiocarbon dating work at the university’s School of Chemistry.

“After radiocarbon dating Bronze Age human remains alongside other materials buried with them, we found many of the partial remains had been buried a significant time after the person had died, suggesting a tradition of retaining and curating human remains.”

“People seem to have curated the remains of people who had lived within living or cultural memory, and who likely played an important role in their life or their communities, or with whom they had a well-defined relationship, whether that was direct family, a tradesperson, a friend or even an enemy, so they had a relic to remember and perhaps tell stories about them,” said Dr Booth.

In one extraordinary case from Wiltshire, a human thigh bone had been crafted to make a musical instrument and included as a grave good with the burial of a man found close to Stonehenge. The carefully carved and polished artifact, found with other items, including stone and bronze axes, a bone plate, a tusk, and a unique ceremonial pronged object, are displayed in the Wiltshire Museum. Radiocarbon dating of this musical instrument suggests it belonged to someone this person knew during their lifetime.

“Although fragments of human bone were included as grave goods with the dead, they were also kept in the homes of the living, buried under house floors and even placed on display”, said Professor Joanna Brück, principal investigator on the project, and Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology.

“This suggests that Bronze Age people did not view human remains with the sense of horror or disgust that we might feel today.”

The team also used microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) at the Natural History Museum to look at microscopic changes to the bone produced by bacteria, to get an indication of how the body was treated while it was decomposing.

“The micro-CT scanning suggested these bones had come from bodies that had been treated in similar ways to what we see for Bronze Age human remains more generally. Some had been cremated before being split up, some bones were exhumed after burial, and some had been de-fleshed by being left to decompose on the ground,” Dr Booth said.

“This suggests that there was no established protocol for the treatment of bodies whose remains were destined to be curated, and the decisions and rites leading to the curation of their remains took place afterwards.”

There is already evidence people living in Britain during the Bronze Age practiced a range of funerary rites, including primary burial, excarnation, cremation and mummification. However, this research reveals the dead were encountered not just in a funerary context, but that human remains were regularly kept and circulated amongst the living.

These findings may tell us something about how Bronze Age communities in Britain drew upon memory and the past to create their own social identities. Unlike our regard for saintly relics today, they do not seem to have focused on very old human remains and the distant past of ancestors, rather they were concerned with the remains of those within living memory.

“This study really highlights the strangeness and perhaps the unknowable nature of the distant past from a present-day perspective. It seems the power of these human remains lay in the way they referenced tangible relationships between people in these communities and not as a way of connecting people with a distant mythical past,” said Dr Booth.

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Burial of a woman from Windmill Fields, Stockton-upon-Tees accompanied by skulls and limb bones from at least 3 people. The 3 people represented by the skulls and long bones had died 60-170 years before the woman with whom they were buried. Tees Archaeology

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Unique Pronged Bronze Object from the Wilsford G58 burial found alongside the human bone musical instrument. Wiltshire Museum, copyright University of Birmingham/David Bukachit

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL news release

*’Radiocarbon and histo-taphonomic evidence for the curation and excarnation of human remains in Bronze Age Britain’ by Thomas Booth and Joanna Bruck in Antiquity

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UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN-NUREMBERG—Climate change occurring shortly before their disappearance triggered a complex change in the behavior of late Neanderthals in Europe: they developed more complex tools. This is the conclusion reached by a group of researchers from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Università degli Studi die Ferrara (UNIFE) on the basis of finds in the Sesselfelsgrotte cave in Lower Bavaria.

Neanderthals lived approximately 400,000 to 40,000 years ago in large areas of Europe and the Middle East, even as far as the outer edges of Siberia. They produced tools using wood and glass-like rock material, which they also sometimes combined, for example to make a spear with a sharp and hard point made of stone.

From approximately 100,000 years ago, their universal cutting and scraping tool was a knife made of stone, the handle consisting of a blunt edge on the tool itself. These Keilmesser (backed, asymmetrical bifacially-shaped knives) were available in various shapes, leading researchers to wonder why the Neanderthals created such a variety of knives? Did they use different knives for different tasks or did the knives come from different sub-groups of Neanderthals? This was what the international research project hoped to find out.

Keilmesser are the answer

‘Keilmesser are a reaction to the highly mobile lifestyle during the first half of the last ice age. As they could be sharpened again as and when necessary, they were able to be used for a long time – almost like a Swiss army knife today,’ says Prof. Dr. Thorsten Uthmeier from the Institute of Prehistory and Early History at FAU. ‘However, people often forget that bi-facially worked knives were not the only tools Neanderthals had. Backed knives from the Neanderthal period are surprisingly varied,’ adds his Italian colleague Dr. Davide Delpiano from Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche at UNIFE. ‘Our research uses the possibilities offered by digital analysis of 3D models to discover similarities and differences between the various types of knives using statistical methods.’

The two researchers investigated artifacts from one of the most important Neanderthal sites in Central Europe, the Sesselfelsgrotte cave in Lower Bavaria. During excavations in the cave conducted by the Institute of Prehistory and Early History at FAU, more than 100,000 artifacts and innumerable hunting remains left behind by the Neanderthals have been found, even including evidence of a Neanderthal burial. The researchers have now analyzed the most significant knife-like tools using 3D scans produced in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Marc Stamminger and Dr. Frank Bauer from the Chair of Visual Computing at the Department of Computer Science at FAU. They allow the form and properties of the tool to be recorded extremely precisely.

‘The technical repertoire used to create Keilmesser is not only direct proof of the advanced planning skills of our extinct relatives, but also a strategic reaction to the restrictions imposed upon them by adverse natural conditions,’ says Uthmeier, FAU professor for Early Prehistory and Archaeology of Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers.

Other climate, other tools

What Uthmeier refers to as ‘adverse natural conditions’ are climate changes after the end of the last interglacial more than 100,000 years ago. Particularly severe cold phases during the following Weichsel glacial period began more than 60,000 years ago and led to a shortage of natural resources. In order to survive, the Neanderthals had to become more mobile than before, and adjust their tools accordingly.

The Neanderthals probably copied the functionality of unifacial backed knives, which are only shaped on one side, and used these as the starting point to develop bi-facially formed Keilmesser shaped on both sides. ‘This is indicated in particular by similarities in the cutting edge, which consists in both instances of a flat bottom and a convex top, which was predominantly suited for cutting lengthwise, meaning that it is quite right to refer to the tool as a knife,’ says Davide Delpiano from UNIFE.

Both types of knife – the simpler older version and the newer, significantly more complex version – obviously have the same function. The most important difference between the two tools investigated in this instance is the longer lifespan of bi-facial tools. Keilmesser therefore represent a high-tech concept for a long-life, multi-functional tool, which could be used without any additional accessories such as a wooden handle.

‘Studies from other research groups seem to support our interpretation,’ says Uthmeier. ‘Unlike some people have claimed, the disappearance of the Neanderthals cannot have been a result of a lack of innovation or methodical thinking.’

Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN-NUREMBERG news release

Cover Image, Top Left: Charles R. Knight, oil on canavas, 1911, Public Domain

SIBERIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY—A team of archaeologists from Siberian Federal University and Novosibirsk State University provided a detailed reconstruction of a technology that was used to carve ornaments and sculptures from mammoth ivory. The team studied a string of beads and an ancient animal figurine found at the Paleolithic site of Ust-Kova in Krasnoyarsk Territory. Over 20 thousand years ago its residents used drills, cutters, and even leveling blades. The unusual features of some of the items showcased the mastery of the craftsmen. The new data obtained by the scientists will help study the relations between the residents of different Siberian sites. The article about the study was published in the highly respected journal Archaeological Research in Asia.

The Ust-Kova site is located in Kezhemsky District of Krasnoyarsk Territory at the mouth of the Kova river. Archaeologists from Krasnoyarsk have been working there since the middle of the 20th century, but the major part of the excavation work took place between 1980 and 2000. Based on the results of radiocarbon dating, the site is considered to be over 20 thousand years old. Of all findings from Ust-Kova, scientists consider animal figurines the most interesting. They also found various ornaments and tools made from mammoth ivory. However, until recently the technology of their manufacture has been unknown.

“We studied several mammoth ivory items found at Ust-Kova: a mammoth figurine, a seal sculpture, and bracelets and beads of different sizes that were created around 24 thousand years ago. Our group was supervised by Prof. L.V. Lbova, a PhD in History, from the Department of Archeology and Ethnography of Novosibirsk State University. We conducted detailed microscopic analysis of each object to identify the tools used in their manufacture by the markings they left,” said Prof. Nikolay Drozdov, a PhD in History, representing Siberian Federal University.

After processing the microscopic images of the mammoth figurine with DStretch, the team was able to reconstruct the ancient technology in every detail. The image showed markings that were left by different tools. According to the scientists, at first a craftsman had to break a mammoth tusk down into segments. After that smaller plates were turned into beads: the master cut them into rectangles and made a hole in the center of each piece using a stone drill. Bigger parts were used to create animal sculptures. To depict a mammoth, the craftsman outlined a head and legs with a leveling blade and then removed the excess of the bone with a cutter. After the figurine was finished, it was decorated with a pattern to imitate eyes and hair.

The team also analyzed the chemical composition of the findings. The scientists were especially interested in the traces of dark-red pigment on the surface of the sculpture. It turned out that ancient craftsmen used to paint many of their items with manganese and magnesium (presumably, they were extracted from salt rocks situated not far from the site). The mammoth figurine was painted with a red pigment on one side and with a black one on the other. In the mythology of the Ust-Kuva people red was a symbol of life and black meant death. The researchers also found several layers of pigment on the beads. They assumed that the ornaments had been in use for many years and had to be regularly repaired.

The study can help better understand the relationships between different tribes and territories. Now scientists will be able to compare tools from different sites by various parameters. This will show whether distant tribes were in contact with each other and also help identify individual styles of ancient master carvers.

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A team of archeologists from Siberian Federal University and Novosibirsk State University provided a detailed reconstruction of a technology that was used to carve ornaments and sculptures from mammoth ivory. The team studied a string of beads and an ancient animal figurine found at the Paleolithic site of Ust-Kova in Krasnoyarsk Territory. Over 20 thousand years ago its residents used drills, cutters, and even leveling blades. Lbova L. / 2020, Archaeological Research in Asia

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Article Source: SIBERIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The last decade has seen rapid development in the archaeology of Saudi Arabia. Recent discoveries range from early hominin sites hundreds of thousands of years old to sites just a few hundred years old. One enigmatic aspect of the archaeological record of western Arabia is the presence of millions of stone structures, where people have piled rocks to make different kinds of structures, ranging from burial tombs to hunting traps. One enigmatic form consists of vast rectangular shapes. Archaeologists working with the AlUla Royal Commission gave these the name ‘mustatils,’ which is Arabic for rectangle.

Mustatils only occur in northwest Saudi Arabia. They had been previously recognized from satellite imagery and as they were often covered by younger structures, it had been speculated that they might be ancient, perhaps extending back to the Neolithic.

In this new article led by Dr Huw Groucutt (group leader of the Extreme Events Research Group which is a Max Planck group spanning the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology, the Science of Human History, and Biogeochemistry) an international team of researchers under the auspices of the Green Arabia Project (a large project headed by Prof. Michael Petraglia from the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Saudi Ministry for Tourism as well as collaborators from multiple Saudi and international institutions) conducted the first every detailed study of mustatils. Through a mixture of field survey and analyzing satellite imagery, the team have considerably extended knowledge on these enigmatic stone structures.

More than one hundred new mustatils have been identified around the southern margins of the Nefud Desert, between the cities of Ha’il and Tayma, joining the hundreds previously identified from studies of Google Earth imagery, particularly in the Khaybar area. The team found that these structures typically consist of two large platforms, connected by parallel long walls, sometimes extending over 600 meters in length. The long walls are very low, had no obvious openings and are located in diverse landscape settings. It is also interesting that little in the way of other archaeology – such as stone tools – was found around the mustatils. Together these factors suggest that the structures were not simply utilitarian entities for something like water or animal storage.

At one locality the team were able to date the construction of a mustatil to 7000 thousand years ago, by radiocarbon dating charcoal from inside one of the platforms. An assemblage of animal bones was also recovered, which included both wild animals and possibly domestic cattle, although it is possible that the latter are wild auroch. At another mustatil the team found a rock with a geometric pattern painted onto it.

“Our interpretation of mustatils is that they are ritual sites, where groups of people met to perform some kind of currently unknown social activities,” says Groucutt. “Perhaps they were sites of animal sacrifices, or feasts.”

The fact that sometimes several of the structures were built right next to each other may suggest that the very act of their construction was a kind of social bonding exercise. Northern Arabia 7,000 years ago was very different to today. Rainfall was higher, so much of the area was covered by grassland and there were scattered lakes. Pastoralist groups thrived in this environment, yet it would have been a challenging place to live, with droughts a constant risk.

The team’s hypothesis is that mustatils were built as a social mechanism to live in this challenging landscape. They may not be the oldest buildings in the world, but they are on a uniquely large scale for this early period, more than two thousand years before pyramids began to be constructed in Egypt. Mustatils offer fascinating insights into how humans have lived in challenging environments and future studies promise to be extremely useful at understanding these ancient societies.

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New archaeological research in Saudi Arabia documents hundreds of stone structures interpreted as monumental sites where early pastoralists carried out rituals. Image shows character of these structures as two platforms connected by low walls. Note researchers at far end for scale. Huw Groucutt

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Mustatils only occur in northwest Saudi Arabia. They had been previously recognized from satellite imagery and as they were often covered by younger structures, it had been speculated that they might be ancient, perhaps extending back to the Neolithic. Image shows view from inside the largest mustatil yet identified, stretching for over 600 metres. Huw Groucutt

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

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – IRVINEIrvine, Calif., – Physical evidence found in caves in Laos helps tell a story about a connection between the end of the Green Sahara – when once heavily vegetated Northern Africa became a hyper-arid landscape – and a previously unknown megadrought that crippled Southeast Asia 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

In a paper published today in Nature Communications, scientists at the University of California, Irvine, the University of Pennsylvania, William Paterson University of New Jersey and other international institutions explain how this major climate transformation led to a shift in human settlement patterns in Southeast Asia, which is now inhabited by more than 600 million people.

“In this study, we provide the first proof for a strong link between the end of the Green Sahara and Southeast Asian monsoon failure during the mid- to late Holocene period,” said co-author Kathleen Johnson, UCI associate professor of Earth system science. “Our high-resolution and well-dated record suggests a strong connection between Northern Africa and mainland Southeast Asia during this time.”

To create a paleoclimate record for the study, Johnson and other researchers gathered stalagmite samples from caves in Northern Laos. In her UCI laboratory, they measured the geochemical properties of the oxygen and carbon isotopes, carbon-14, and trace metals found in the specimens. This helped them verify the occurrence of the drought and extrapolate its impacts on the region.

Johnson said they combined data from the analysis of these stalagmite-derived proxies with a series of idealized climate model simulations – conducted by co-author Francesco Pausata of the University of Quebec in Montreal – in which Saharan vegetation and dust concentrations were altered in a way that permitted them to investigate the ocean-atmosphere feedbacks and teleconnections associated with such an abrupt shift in precipitation.

The modeling experiments suggested that reduced plant growth in the Sahara led to increased airborne dust that acted to cool the Indian Ocean and shift the Walker circulation pattern eastward, causing it to behave in ways similar to modern-day El Niño events. This, ultimately, led to a large reduction in monsoon moisture across Southeast Asia that lasted more than 1,000 years, according to Johnson.

Anthropologists and archaeologists have previously studied the effects of the demise of the Green Sahara, also known as the African humid period, on population centers closer to Western Asia and North Africa, noting the collapse of the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, the de-urbanization of the Indus Civilization (near present-day Pakistan and India) and the spread of pastoralism along the Nile River.

But the link to the origin of the Southeast Asia megadrought and lifestyle pattern shifts in the region had not been previously investigated, according to lead author Michael Griffiths, professor of environmental science at William Paterson University of New Jersey.

“Archaeologists and anthropologists have been studying this event for decades now, in terms of societal adaptations and upheavals, but its exact cause has eluded the scientific community,” said Griffiths, who was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-supported postdoctoral scholar in Johnson’s lab and has collaborated with her on this research topic for more than 10 years.

“Results from this work provide a novel and convincing explanation for the origin of the Southeast Asia megadrought and could help us better understand, to varying degrees, the observed societal shifts across many parts of the tropics and extra-tropics,” he said.

The researchers suggest that the centuries-long megadrought corresponds to the “missing millennia” in Southeast Asia between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, a time characterized by a noticeable lack of archaeological evidence in interior Southeast Asia compared to earlier and later portions of the Holocene.

They propose that the mid-Holocene megadrought may have been an impetus for mass population movements and the adoption of new, more resilient subsistence strategies – and that it should now be considered as a possible driver for the inception of Neolithic farming in mainland Southeast Asia.

“This is outstanding evidence for the type of climate change that must have affected society, what plants were available, what animals were available,” said co-author Joyce White, adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. “All of life had to adjust to this very different climate. From an archaeological point of view, this really is a game changer in how we try to understand or reconstruct the middle Holocene period.”

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To create a paleoclimate record for the study, co-author Kathleen Johnson, UCI associate professor of Earth system science, and other researchers collected stalagmite samples from caves in Northern Laos. The specimens hold geochemical evidence of past climate change in the highly populated Asian monsoon region. Amy Ellsworth

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – IRVINE news release

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SWANSEA UNIVERSITY—Three mummified animals from ancient Egypt have been digitally unwrapped and dissected by researchers, using high-resolution 3D scans that give unprecedented detail about the animals’ lives – and deaths – over 2000 years ago.

The three animals – a snake, a bird and a cat – are from the collection held by the Egypt Centre at Swansea University. Previous investigations had identified which animals they were, but very little else was known about what lay inside the mummies.

Now, thanks to X-ray micro CT scanning, which generates 3D images with a resolution 100 times greater than a medical CT scan, the animals’ remains can be analyzed in extraordinary detail, right down to their smallest bones and teeth.

The team, led by Professor Richard Johnston of Swansea University, included experts from the Egypt Centre and from Cardiff and Leicester universities.

The ancient Egyptians mummified animals as well as humans, including cats, ibis, hawks, snakes, crocodiles and dogs. Sometimes they were buried with their owner or as a food supply for the afterlife.

But the most common animal mummies were votive offerings, brought by visitors to temples to offer to the gods, to act as a means of communication with them. Animals were bred or captured by keepers and then killed and embalmed by temple priests. It is believed that as many as 70 million animal mummies were created in this way.

Although other methods of scanning ancient artifacts without damaging them are available, they have limitations. Standard X-rays only give 2-dimensional images. Medical CT scans give 3D images, but the resolution is low.

Micro CT, in contrast, gives researchers high resolution 3D images. Used extensively within materials science to image internal structures on the micro-scale, the method involves building a 3D volume (or ‘tomogram’) from many individual projections or radiographs. The 3D shape can then be 3D printed or placed into virtual reality, allowing further analysis.

The team, using micro CT equipment at the Advanced Imaging of Materials (AIM) facility, Swansea University College of Engineering, found:

• The cat was a kitten of less than 5 months, according to evidence of unerupted teeth hidden within the jaw bone.
• Separation of vertebrae indicate that it had possibly been strangled
• The bird most closely resembles a Eurasian kestrel; micro CT scanning enables virtual bone measurement, making accurate species identification possible
• The snake was identified as a mummified juvenile Egyptian Cobra (Naja haje).
• Evidence of kidney damage showed it was probably deprived of water during its life, developing a form of gout.
• Analysis of bone fractures shows it was ultimately killed by a whipping action, prior to possibly undergoing an ‘opening of the mouth’ procedure during mummification; if true this demonstrates the first evidence for complex ritualistic behavior applied to a snake.

Professor Richard Johnston of Swansea University College of Engineering, who led the research, said:

“Using micro CT we can effectively carry out a post-mortem on these animals, more than 2000 years after they died in ancient Egypt.

With a resolution up to 100 times higher than a medical CT scan, we were able to piece together new evidence of how they lived and died, revealing the conditions they were kept in, and possible causes of death.

These are the very latest scientific imaging techniques. Our work shows how the hi-tech tools of today can shed new light on the distant past.”

Dr Carolyn Graves-Brown from the Egypt Centre at Swansea University said:

“This collaboration between engineers, archaeologists, biologists, and Egyptologists shows the value of researchers from different subjects working together.

Our findings have uncovered new insights into animal mummification, religion and human-animal relationships in ancient Egypt.”*

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Mummy snake: The coiled remains of an Egyptian Cobra, undisturbed for thousands of years. Digitally dissected and revealed beneath the wrappings. Swansea University

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Digitally dissected lower jaw (mandible) and teeth of the mummified kitten. Reveals fractures and unerupted mandibular first molars (red) indicating it was a kitten at the time of death. Scale: skull total length = 68.9 mm. Swansea University

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*Evidence of diet, deification, and death within ancient Egyptian mummified animals. Richard Johnston*, Richard Thomas, Rhys Jones, Carolyn Graves-Brown, Wendy Goodridge, Laura North. To be published in Scientific Reports at 16.00 (London) on Thursday 20 August 2020, and available from that time at this link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69726-0

Article Source: SWANSEA UNIVERSITY news release

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—An analysis of facial expressions in ancient Mesoamerican sculptures finds that some emotions expressed in these artworks match the emotions that modern U.S. participants would anticipate for each discernible context, including elation, sadness, pain, anger, and determination or strain. For instance, elation was predicted in the context of social touch while anger was predicted in the context of combat. The results support the hypothesis that some emotions conveyed through facial expressions are universal, reinforcing that feelings can be expressed nonverbally in ways that transcend culture. While previous studies have explored cross-cultural similarities and differences in how facial expressions convey emotions, these studies have typically asked people from Eastern or indigenous cultures to match depictions of Western expressions to situations or words in their native language. Such work may be perceived as biased since it treats Western emotional expression as the norm. To circumvent this bias, Alan Cowen and colleagues asked U.S. research subjects to label emotions expressed in ancient American art sculptures, which predated exposure to modern Western civilizations. The researchers combed through tens of thousands of images of Mesoamerican sculptures on museum websites, identifying 63 authentic sculptures that displayed facial expressions within clearly identifiable contexts, such as a smiling mother holding a baby. Next, Cowen et al. digitally separated each sculpture’s expression from its context, producing, for example, one image of just the smile and one image of the mother holding the baby, with no expression visible. They asked the U.S. participants to label each image of a sculpture’s facial expression with the emotion it depicted, and, separately, to label images of a sculpture’s context with the emotion they would expect to see. Sculptures depicting some emotions passed the test of universality, with facial expression labels (“elated,” for the mother’s facial expression) matching the expectations of participants who only saw the context (an expressionless mother holding a baby). This suggests that emotional expressions can be inferred through universal human themes, such as a mother-child relationship, even without a common language. “We would eventually be interested in replicating this work in other cultures,” says Cowen, noting examples of sculpture from ancient Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese cultures that could potentially be analyzed using similar study protocols. “For the time being, we are heavily focused on studying emotional expression in everyday life across many countries, aided by machine learning tools.”

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

Cover image, top left: Dezalb, Pixabay

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Science, AAAS—The Stone Age inhabitants of southern Africa used a mixture of grasses and ash to create comfortable, pest-free bedding at least 200,000 years ago, according to a new study. The findings represent the earliest known human use of grass bedding – exceeding previous evidence for the behavior by more than 100,000 years. Because plant material is so poorly preserved in the archaeological record, evidence for the early use of plants outside of being a source of food is rare and often difficult to interpret. Until now, the oldest-known use of plant bedding by Stone Age humans dated to around 77,000 years ago, where layered sedge interspersed with medicinal plants and the ashes of previous bedding was used to cover the living spaces of rockshelter habitations. Lyn Wadley and colleagues, however, describe new archaeological findings from the Border Cave site in the KwaZulu region of South Africa, that indicates that these practices likely began far earlier. The Border Cave site contains a well-preserved record of intermittent human occupation spanning nearly 230,000 years. Using a range of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, Wadley et al. identified the ephemeral micromorphological traces of the ancient grass bedding within thin slices of the cave’s complex stratigraphy. According to the findings, the Stone Age inhabitants of Border Cave used sheaves of leaved grass to create bedding atop layers of ash, which may have been used to deter ticks and other biting insects from infesting these living spaces. Relatedly, in the oldest bedding, remains of camphor-bush – an aromatic plant that is still used in East African bedding to repel insects – were identified. Wadley et al. argue that the findings suggest an early potential for the cognitive, behavioral and social complexity that become more apparent in the archaeological record beginning 100,000 years ago.

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Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains. Panorama from drone images. A. Kruger

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Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains. Drone image. A. Kruger

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Border Cave excavations. D. Stratford

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Field photograph of Border Cave 200,000-year-old fossilized grass fragments. L. Wadley

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Border Cave on site chemical analysis of ash, using ATR-FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared
Spectroscopy). L. Wadley

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Article Source: Science news release
This research appears in the 14 August 2020 issue of Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

Cover Image, Top Left: Border Cave excavations. F. d’Errico

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PLOS and CNRS—Ancient people in the Near East had begun the practice of intentionally cremating their dead by the beginning of the 7th millennium BC, according to a study published August 12, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fanny Bocquentin of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and colleagues.

Excavations at the Neolithic site of Beisamoun in Northern Israel have uncovered an ancient cremation pit containing the remains of a corpse that appears to have been intentionally incinerated as part of a funerary practice. These remains were directly dated to between 7013-6700 BC, making them the oldest known example of cremation in the Near East.

The gender of the human remains found inside remains unknown. What is known is that the individual was a young adult injured by a flint projectile several months prior to their death in spring some 9,000 years ago. Preserved due to it being buried, the pit represents the oldest proof of direct1 cremation in the Middle-East. An international team lead by CNRS archaeo-anthropologist Fanny Bocquentin2 with aid from PhD candidate Marie Anton and several experts in animal, plant, and mineral remains, discovered and studied the bones found inside the pyre. An analysis of the clay used to coat the inside of the pit showed the 355 bone fragments, some of which were burnt, were exposed to temperatures reaching 700°C. The position of the bones and the preserved joints seem to indicate the body was placed seated onto the pyre and was not moved during or after cremation. Whether used as fuel, as ornamentation, or as a scent, siliceous traces indicated the presence of flowering plants, which made it possible to identify the season the person died. In addition to the exceptional pyre pit, the cremated remains of five other adults were discovered at the site. They dated back to the same period as burials whose traces were discovered among the ruins of abandoned dwellings. 

This early cremation comes at an important period of transition in funerary practices in this region of the world. Old traditions were on the way out, such as the removal of the cranium of the dead and the burial of the dead within the settlement, while practices like cremation were new. This change in funeral procedure might also signify a transition in rituals surrounding death and the significance of the deceased within society. Further examination of other possible cremation sites in the region will help elucidate this important cultural shift.

Bocquentin says: “The funerary treatment involved in situ cremation within a pyre-pit of a young adult individual who previously survived from a flint projectile injury—the inventory of bones and their relative position strongly supports the deposit of an articulated corpse and not dislocated bones.” She adds, “This is a redefinition of the place of the dead in the village and in society.”

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A section of the Beisamoun site (Israel) where the pyre pit is visible. © mission Beisamoun

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Picture of bones in situ: A. Segment of axial skeleton: ribs and vertebrae exposed in the middle of the structure. B. Right coxal in situ; preserved almost complete by a piece of collapsed mud wall (see Fig 2D). C. Four right pedal proximal phalanges found directly under the right coxal. Bocquentin et al, 2020 (PLOS ONE, CC BY)

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Flint point thrust inside a burnt shoulder blade © mission Beisamoun

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Article Source: Adapted from news releases from PLOS and the CNRS.

*Bocquentin F, Anton M, Berna F, Rosen A, Khalaily H, Greenberg H, et al. (2020) Emergence of corpse cremation during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A multidisciplinary study of a pyre-pit burial. PLoS ONE 15(8): e0235386. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235386

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UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD—Radiocarbon dating is set to become more accurate than ever after an international team of scientists improved the technique for assessing the age of historical objects.

The team of researchers at the Universities of Sheffield, Belfast, Bristol, Glasgow, Oxford, St Andrews and Historic England, plus international colleagues, used measurements from almost 15,000 samples from objects dating back as far as 60,000 years ago, as part of a seven-year project.

They used the measurements to create new international radiocarbon calibration (IntCal) curves, which are fundamental across the scientific spectrum for accurately dating artefacts and making predictions about the future. Radiocarbon dating is vital to fields such as archaeology and geoscience to date everything from the oldest modern human bones to historic climate patterns.

Archaeologists can use that knowledge to restore historic monuments or study the demise of the Neanderthals, while geoscientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rely upon the curves to find out about what the climate was like in the past to better understand and prepare for future changes.

Professor Paula Reimer, from Queen’s University Belfast and head of the IntCal project, said: “Radiocarbon dating has revolutionised the field of archaeology and environmental science. As we improve the calibration curve, we learn more about our history. The IntCal calibration curves are key to helping answer big questions about the environment and our place within it.”

The team of researchers have developed three curves dependent upon where the object to be dated is found. The new curves, to be published in Radiocarbon, are IntCal20 for the Northern Hemisphere, SHCal20 for the Southern Hemisphere, and Marine20 for the world’s oceans.

Dr Tim Heaton, from the University of Sheffield and lead author on the Marine20 curve, said: “This is a very exciting time to be working in radiocarbon. Developments in the field have made it possible to truly advance our understanding. I look forward to seeing what new insights into our past these recalculated radiocarbon timescales provide.”

The previous radiocarbon calibration curves developed over the past 50 years, were heavily reliant upon measurements taken from chunks of wood covering 10 to 20 years big enough to be tested for radiocarbon.

Advances in radiocarbon testing mean the updated curves instead use tiny samples, such as tree-rings covering just single years, that provide previously impossible precision and detail in the new calibration curves. Additionally, improvements in understanding of the carbon cycle have meant the curves have now been extended all the way to the limit of the radiocarbon technique 55,000 years ago.

Radiocarbon dating is the most frequently used approach for dating the last 55,000 years and underpins archaeological and environmental science. It was first developed in 1949. It depends upon two isotopes of carbon called stable 12C and radioactive 14C.

While a plant or animal is alive it takes in new carbon, so has the same ratio of these isotopes as the atmosphere at the time. But once an organism dies it stops taking in new carbon, the stable 12C remains but the 14C decays at a known rate. By measuring the ratio of 14C to 12C left in an object the date of its death can be estimated.

If the level of atmospheric 14C were constant, this would be easy. However, it has fluctuated significantly throughout history. In order to date organisms precisely scientists need a reliable historical record of its variation to accurately transform 14C measurements into calendar ages. The new IntCal curves provide this link.

The curves are created based on collecting a huge number of archives which store past radiocarbon but can also be dated using another method. Such archives include tree-rings from up to 14,000 years ago, stalagmites found in caves, corals from the sea and cores drilled from lake and ocean sediments. In total, the new curves were based upon almost 15,000 measurements of radiocarbon taken from objects as old as 60,000 years.

Alex Bayliss, Head of Scientific Dating at Historic England, said: “Accurate and high-precision radiocarbon dating underpins the public’s enjoyment of the historic environment and enables better preservation and protection.

“The new curves have internationally important implications for archaeological methodology, and for practices in conservation and understanding of wooden built heritage.”

Darrell Kaufman of the IPCC said: “The IntCal series of curves are critical for providing a perspective on past climate which is essential for our understanding of the climate system, and a baseline for modelling future changes.”

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD news release

Cover Image, Top Left: Kestrel, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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