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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI—Ancient Maya in the once-bustling city of Tikal built sophisticated water filters using natural materials they imported from miles away, according to the University of Cincinnati.

UC researchers discovered evidence of a filter system at the Corriental reservoir, an important source of drinking water for the ancient Maya in what is now northern Guatemala.

A multidisciplinary team of UC anthropologists, geographers and biologists identified crystalline quartz and zeolite imported miles from the city. The quartz found in the coarse sand along with zeolite, a crystalline compound consisting of silicon and aluminum, create a natural molecular sieve. Both minerals are used in modern water filtration.

The filters would have removed harmful microbes, nitrogen-rich compounds, heavy metals such as mercury and other toxins from the water, said Kenneth Barnett Tankersley, associate professor of anthropology and lead author of the study.

“What’s interesting is this system would still be effective today and the Maya discovered it more than 2,000 years ago,” Tankersley said.

UC’s discovery was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The Maya created this water filtration system nearly 2,000 years before similar systems were used in Europe, making it one of the oldest water treatment systems of its kind in the world, Tankersley said.

Researchers from UC’s College of Arts and Sciences traced the zeolite and quartz to steep ridges around the Bajo de Azúcar about 18 miles northeast of Tikal. They used X-ray diffraction analysis to identify zeolite and crystalline quartz in the reservoir sediments.

At Tikal, zeolite was found exclusively in the Corriental reservoir. 

For the ancient Maya, finding ways to collect and store clean water was of critical importance. Tikal and other Maya cities were built atop porous limestone that made ready access to drinking water difficult to obtain for much of the year during seasonal droughts.

UC geography professor and co-author Nicholas Dunning, who has studied ancient civilizations most of his career, found a likely source of the quartz and zeolite about 10 years ago while conducting fieldwork in Guatemala.

“It was an exposed, weathered volcanic tuff of quartz grains and zeolite. It was bleeding water at a good rate,” he said. “Workers refilled their water bottles with it. It was locally famous for how clean and sweet the water was.”

Dunning took samples of the material. UC researchers later determined the quartz and zeolite closely matched the minerals found at Tikal. 

UC assistant research professor Christopher Carr, an expert in geographic information system mapping, also conducted work on the UC projects at Bajo de Azúcar and Corriental.

“It was probably through very clever empirical observation that the ancient Maya saw this particular material was associated with clean water and made some effort to carry it back,” Dunning said.

UC anthropology professor emeritus Vernon Scarborough, another co-author, said most research on ancient water management has tried to explain how civilizations conserved, collected or diverted water. 

“The quality of water put to potable ends has remained difficult to address,” Scarborough said. “This study by our UC team has opened the research agenda by way of identifying the quality of a water source and how that might have been established and maintained.”

Of course, reconstructing the lives, habits and motivations of a civilization 1,000 years ago is tricky.

“We don’t have absolute proof, but we have strong circumstantial evidence,” Dunning said. “Our explanation makes logical sense.”

“This is what you have to do as an archaeologist,” UC biologist and co-author David Lentz said. “You have to put together a puzzle with some of the pieces missing.”

Lentz said the filtration system would have protected the ancient Maya from harmful cyanobacteria and other toxins that might otherwise have made people who drank from the reservoir sick.

“The ancient Maya figured out that this material produced pools of clear water,” he said.

Complex water filtration systems have been observed in other ancient civilizations from Greece to Egypt to South Asia, but this is the first observed in the ancient New World, Tankersley said.

“The ancient Maya lived in a tropical environment and had to be innovators. This is a remarkable innovation,” Tankersley said. “A lot of people look at Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere as not having the same engineering or technological muscle of places like Greece, Rome, India or China. But when it comes to water management, the Maya were millennia ahead.”

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A temple rises above the rainforest at the ancient Maya city of Tikal. David Lentz

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UC researchers Nicholas Dunning, left, Vernon Scarborough and David Lentz set up equipment to take sediment samples during their field research at Tikal. Liwy Grazioso Sierra

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI news release

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Analysis of a 139-meter long drill core taken from a site in the Koora basin, Kenya, shows an environmental record of the past 1 million years in the East African Rift Valley, indicating an ancient fluctuation of the climate, landscape and ecosystem that precipitated a major transitional period in the course of human evolution in the region.

Richard Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, along with a research team and collaborators from the National Museums of Kenya, have been conducting investigations and excavations in the Olorgesailie Basin, Kenya, for decades. Here, they have uncovered artifacts and other evidence of a hominin (human and human biological ancestor) presence spanning more than 1 million years. Olorgesailie is perhaps best known for its numerous Acheulean stone handaxes—a stone tool type produced by hominins and typically associated with the Homo erectus species. The form and prevalence of these artifacts remained remarkably consistent in the area for about 700,000 years. Beginning in 2002, Potts and colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution, the George Washington University and the National Museums of Kenya began encountering artifacts that differed markedly from the Acheulean. Dated to as early as 320,000 years ago, they were smaller, more elaborate, and included projectiles. Many of them were made from materials that had to be acquired from relatively distant locations. Coloring materials were also uncovered. These discoveries suggested a different behavioral lifestyle and more advanced technology. Classified as Middle Stone Age materials, it seemed clear that a very different kind of hominin created them. The findings suggested an evolutionary transition had occurred.

In their effort to investigate more about this transition, however, Potts and his team were stymied by the discovery of a significant 180,000-year ‘gap’ in the environmental history, created by the geological erosion of layers corresponding to this time period. The ‘gap’ would have represented a record of the evolutionary transition. This led them to seek elsewhere for this missing time period. 

Moving to a different location about 15 miles from their Olorgesailie excavations at Koora basin, they obtained services from a Nairobi company to drill a 139-meter core into the surface, obtaining a record of 1 million years of environmental history. Their subsequent analysis revealed a history of tectonic activity and ecological changes that showed the environment began to become much more variable at around 400,000 years ago, presenting new survival challenges to the animals, including the hominins, in the region. The changes coincided with the transitional period that featured the Middle Stone Age artifacts.

Pots and his team found the missing gap, and combined with analysis of the archaeological and fossil record in the area, they were able to reconstruct a time when early hominin adaptability to change, an important hallmark of humans, and particularly Home sapiens—the lone survivor of the genus Homo—opens a window on human evolution.

More detail can be read in the Oct. 21, 2020 issue of the journal Science Advances and the subject Smithsonian news release.

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Map of Kenya, showing location of Olorgesailie. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian

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Aerial photo of Olorgesailie. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian

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Olorgesailie Acheulean handaxes compared to Olorgesailie MSA points and pigments. Potts and colleagues documented a major behavioral and cultural shift among humans in 2018 based on artifacts recovered at the Olorgesailie archaeological site  in modern day Kenya. Decades of study at Olorgesailie by Potts’ team and collaborators at the National Museums of Kenya have determined that early humans at Olorgesailie relied on the same tools, stone handaxes, for 700,000 years. Then, beginning around 320,000 years ago, people living there entered the Middle Stone Age, crafting smaller, more sophisticated weapons, including projectiles. At the same time, they began to trade resources with distant groups and to use coloring materials, suggesting symbolic communication. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian

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Topographic map of the drill site based on the TanDEM X Science DEM (DLR 2017). Courtesy of R. Dommain, University of Potsdam. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian

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View of the drill site, with apparatus in place. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian

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The LaCore Workshop. Drill cores were shipped to the National Lacustrine Core Facility (La Core) at the University of Minnesota. Colleagues in the National Museum of Natural History’s Human Origins Program and Department of Paleobiology and dozens of collaborators at institutions worldwide worked to analyze the environmental record they had obtained, which is now the most precisely dated African environmental record of the past 1 million years. Charting radioisotope ages and changes in chemical composition and deposits left by plants and microscopic organisms through the different layers of the core, the team reconstructed key features of the ancient landscape and climate across time.
They found that after a long period of stability, the environment in this part of Africa became more variable around 400,000 years ago, when tectonic activity fragmented the landscape. By integrating information from the drill core with knowledge gleaned from fossils and archaeological artifacts, they determined that the entire ecosystem evolved in response. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian

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Drill Core detail. The team’s analysis suggests that as parts of the grassy plains in the region were fragmented along fault lines due to tectonic activity, small basins formed. These areas were more sensitive to changes in rainfall than the larger lake basins that had been there before. Elevated terrain also allowed water runoff from high ground to contribute to the formation and drying out of lakes. These changes occurred during a period when precipitation had become more variable, leading to frequent and dramatic fluctuations in water supply.
With the fluctuations, a broader set of ecological changes took place. The team found that vegetation in the region also changed repeatedly, shifting between grassy plains and wooded areas. Meanwhile, large grazing herbivores, which no longer had large tracts of land to feed on, began to die out and were replaced by smaller mammals with more diverse diets.
The findings suggest that instability in their surrounding climate, land and ecosystem was a key driver in the development of new traits and behaviors underpinning human adaptability. Human Origins Program, Smithsonian; Core image courtesy of LaCore, University of Minnesota

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See also Olorgesailie, a free premium article published in the summer 2018 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.   

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SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE—Sweat baths have a long history of use in Mesoamerica. Commonly used by midwives in postpartum and perinatal care in contemporary Maya communities, these structures are viewed as grandmother figures, a pattern that can also be traced to earlier periods of history. At the site of Xultun, Guatemala, a Classic Maya sweat bath with an unusual collection of artifacts led archaeologists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), the Archaeology Program at Boston University and other collaborating institutions to gather new evidence of these beliefs and an early example of the related ritual practices.

Indigenous people of Mesoamerica see the natural world as a place populated by ancestors and supernatural beings, many of whom live within natural features and ancient buildings. This was certainly the case for the Classic Maya. Dating to the Early Classic period (250-550 A.D.), the sweat bath at Xultun, named Los Sapos, appears to have been embodied by an amphibian goddess. Outside the sweat bath, the scientists encountered a representation of this little-known Classic Maya deity, possibly “ix.tzutz.sak.” The goddess is depicted squatting in a toad-like position with legs ornamented with iguanas and cane toads (Rhinella marina).

“No other structure in Mesoamerica–sweat bath or otherwise–looks like this building,” said STRI archaeologist Ashley Sharpe, co-author of the study. “It would seem that when someone enters the front of the structure, they are entering the amphibian goddess who personified the sweat bath.”

“Although this goddess’ name remains undeciphered, proposed readings suggest she was responsible for gestation cycles, both of time and human life,” said Boston University archaeologist Mary Clarke, main author of the study. “Linking notions of birth to reptilian figures, however, is not uncommon among the Classic Maya as they express the verb ‘to birth’ as an upended reptilian mouth glyph. What we see at Xultun is an example where this reptilian goddess, as well as the ideas and myths she embodied, are expressed as a physical place.”

The Los Sapos sweat bath was an active part of the Xultun community for about 300 years. Around 600 A.D. an adult individual was interred within the doorway, after which the entire building was buried, even though the Maya continued living at Xultun for several more centuries. About 300 years later, the buried building was revisited, the majority of human remains removed and a new and unusual offering was presented to the structure, including a human child, juvenile animals including a puppy and birds, several complete cane toads and iguanas, and numerous stone tools and ceramic sherds.

The deposited items had varying degrees of heat damage. The Maya built a fire within the vacated tomb, where they began placing their offerings. For the authors, the selection of artifacts may have been associated with the sweat bath’s identity as a grandmother figure and the early understanding of the structure as a place of birth and human creation.

“Maya archaeologists often find artifact concentrations like these that were likely dedications to structures, but there is rarely an obvious link between the objects and the structure,” Sharpe said. “Because of the iconography on the outside of Los Sapos and because we know it was a sweat bath, we have a rare case where we can associate the offerings–an infant, figurines of women, and frogs and iguanas–with the role the structure played in the community.”

The Los Sapos deposit suggests that the sweat bath’s historical role in Xultun continued centuries after the building had been buried. As the goddesses related to sweat baths throughout Mesoamerican history are described as holding sway over the conditions for life on Earth, the offering was likely an attempt at requesting assistance from the goddess embodying the Los Sapos structure. This could have been a last effort to please the supernatural entity and prevent losing hold of their lands, which were abandoned soon after, around the Maya Collapse of 900 A.D.

“This supernatural figure is a ferocious embodiment of the Earth,” Clarke said. “When displeased, she may take revenge or withhold the things people need to survive. The offering at Los Sapos was both an attempt to appease this goddess and an act of resilience. Rather than seeing a population succumbing to collapse, we see them trying to negotiate with this goddess for their survival.”

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An assortment of toad bones was placed in the Los Sapos sweat bath offering.
San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project

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The remains of a juvenile skeleton were recovered from the sweat bath offering, suggesting an early understanding of the structure as a place of birth and human creation.
David Del Cid

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Article Source: SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE news release

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FIELD MUSEUM—All good things must come to an end. Whether societies are ruled by ruthless dictators or more well-meaning representatives, they fall apart in time, with different degrees of severity. In a new paper, anthropologists examined a broad, global sample of 30 pre-modern societies. They found that when “good” governments–ones that provided goods and services for their people and did not starkly concentrate wealth and power–fell apart, they broke down more intensely than collapsing despotic regimes. And the researchers found a common thread in the collapse of good governments: leaders who undermined and broke from upholding core societal principles, morals, and ideals.

“Pre-modern states were not that different from modern ones. Some pre-modern states had good governance and weren’t that different from what we see in some democratic countries today,” says Gary Feinman, the MacArthur curator of anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum and one of the authors of a new study in Frontiers in Political Science. “The states that had good governance, although they may have been able to sustain themselves slightly longer than autocratic-run ones, tended to collapse more thoroughly, more severely.”

“We noted the potential for failure caused by an internal factor that might have been manageable if properly anticipated,” says Richard Blanton, a professor emeritus of anthropology at Purdue University and the study’s lead author. “We refer to an inexplicable failure of the principal leadership to uphold values and norms that had long guided the actions of previous leaders, followed by a subsequent loss of citizen confidence in the leadership and government and collapse.”

In their study, Blanton, Feinman, and their colleagues took an in-depth look at the governments of four societies: the Roman Empire, China’s Ming Dynasty, India’s Mughal Empire, and the Venetian Republic. These societies flourished hundreds (or in ancient Rome’s case, thousands) of years ago, and they had comparatively more equitable distributions of power and wealth than many of the other cases examined, although they looked different from what we consider “good governments” today as they did not have popular elections.

“There were basically no electoral democracies before modern times, so if you want to compare good governance in the present with good governance in the past, you can’t really measure it by the role of elections, so important in contemporary democracies. You have to come up with some other yardsticks, and the core features of the good governance concept serve as a suitable measure of that,” says Feinman. “They didn’t have elections, but they had other checks and balances on the concentration of personal power and wealth by a few individuals. They all had means to enhance social well-being, provision goods and services beyond just a narrow few, and means for commoners to express their voices.”

In societies that meet the academic definition of “good governance,” the government meets the needs of the people, in large part because the government depends on those people for the taxes and resources that keep the state afloat. “These systems depended heavily on the local population for a good chunk of their resources. Even if you don’t have elections, the government has to be at least somewhat responsive to the local population, because that’s what funds the government,” explains Feinman. “There are often checks on both the power and the economic selfishness of leaders, so they can’t hoard all the wealth.”

Societies with good governance tend to last a bit longer than autocratic governments that keep power concentrated to one person or small group. But the flip side of that coin is that when a “good” government collapses, things tend to be harder for the citizens, because they’d come to rely on the infrastructure of that government in their day-to-day life. “With good governance, you have infrastructures for communication and bureaucracies to collect taxes, sustain services, and distribute public goods. You have an economy that jointly sustains the people and funds the government,” says Feinman. “And so social networks and institutions become highly connected, economically, socially, and politically. Whereas if an autocratic regime collapses, you might see a different leader or you might see a different capital, but it doesn’t permeate all the way down into people’s lives, as such rulers generally monopolize resources and fund their regimes in ways less dependent on local production or broad-based taxation.”

The researchers also examined a common factor in the collapse of societies with good governance: leaders who abandoned the society’s founding principles and ignored their roles as moral guides for their people. “In a good governance society, a moral leader is one who upholds the core principles and ethos and creeds and values of the overall society,” says Feinman. “Most societies have some kind of social contract, whether that’s written out or not, and if you have a leader who breaks those principles, then people lose trust, diminish their willingness to pay taxes, move away, or take other steps that undercut the fiscal health of the polity.”

This pattern of amoral leaders destabilizing their societies goes way back–the paper uses the Roman Empire as an example. The Roman emperor Commodus inherited a state with economic and military instability, and he didn’t rise to the occasion; instead, he was more interested in performing as a gladiator and identifying himself with Hercules. He was eventually assassinated, and the empire descended into a period of crisis and corruption. These patterns can be seen today, as corrupt or inept leaders threaten the core principles and, hence, the stability of the places they govern. Mounting inequality, concentration of political power, evasion of taxation, hollowing out of bureaucratic institutions, diminishment of infrastructure, and declining public services are all evidenced in democratic nations today.

“What I see around me feels like what I’ve observed in studying the deep histories of other world regions, and now I’m living it in my own life,” says Feinman. “It’s sort of like Groundhog Day for archaeologists and historians.”

“Our findings provide insights that should be of value in the present, most notably that societies, even ones that are well governed, prosperous, and highly regarded by most citizens, are fragile human constructs that can fail,” says Blanton. “In the cases we address, calamity could very likely have been avoided, yet, citizens and state-builders too willingly assumed that their leadership will feel an obligation to do as expected for the benefit of society. Given the failure to anticipate, the kinds of institutional guardrails required to minimize the consequences of moral failure were inadequate.”

But, notes Feinman, learning about what led to societies collapsing in the past can help us make better choices now: “History has a chance to tell us something. That doesn’t mean it’s going to repeat exactly, but it tends to rhyme. And so that means there are lessons in these situations.”

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The ruins of the Roman Forum, once a site of a representational government. Linda Nicholas, Field Museum

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Article Source: Field Museum news release

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CELL PRESS—Of the six or more different species of early humans, all belonging to the genus Homo, only we Homo sapiens have managed to survive. Now, a study reported* in the journal One Earth on October 15 combining climate modeling and the fossil record in search of clues to what led to all those earlier extinctions of our ancient ancestors suggests that climate change–the inability to adapt to either warming or cooling temperatures–likely played a major role in sealing their fate.

“Our findings show that despite technological innovations including the use of fire and refined stone tools, the formation of complex social networks, and–in the case of Neanderthals–even the production of glued spear points, fitted clothes, and a good amount of cultural and genetic exchange with Homo sapiens, past Homo species could not survive intense climate change,” says Pasquale Raia of Università di Napoli Federico II in Napoli, Italy. “They tried hard; they made for the warmest places in reach as the climate got cold, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t enough.”

To shed light on past extinctions of Homo species including H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens, the researchers relied on a high-resolution past climate emulator, which provides temperature, rainfall, and other data over the last 5 million years. They also looked to an extensive fossil database spanning more than 2,750 archaeological records to model the evolution of Homo species’ climatic niche over time. The goal was to understand the climate preferences of those early humans and how they reacted to changes in climate.

Their studies offer robust evidence that three Homo species–H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neanderthalensis–lost a significant portion of their climatic niche just before going extinct. They report that this reduction coincided with sharp, unfavorable changes in the global climate. In the case of Neanderthals, things were likely made even worse by competition with H. sapiens.

“We were surprised by the regularity of the effect of climate change,” Raia says. “It was crystal clear, for the extinct species and for them only, that climatic conditions were just too extreme just before extinction and only in that particular moment.”

Raia notes that there is uncertainty in paleoclimatic reconstruction, the identification of fossil remains at the level of species, and the aging of fossil sites. But, he says, the main insights “hold true under all assumptions.” The findings may serve as a kind of warning to humans today as we face unprecedented changes in the climate, Raia says.

“It is worrisome to discover that our ancestors, which were no less impressive in terms of mental power as compared to any other species on Earth, could not resist climate change,” he said. “And we found that just when our own species is sawing the branch we’re sitting on by causing climate change. I personally take this as a thunderous warning message. Climate change made Homo vulnerable and hapless in the past, and this may just be happening again.”

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Courtesy Caniceus, Pixabay

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Article Source: CELL PRESS news release

This work was supported by MCTIC/CNPq/FAPEG.

*One Earth, Raia et al.: “Past extinctions of Homo species coincided with increased vulnerability to climatic change” https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(20)30476-0

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UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE—Favorable climatic conditions influenced the sequence of settlement movements of Homo sapiens in the Levant on their way from Africa to Europe. In a first step, modern humans settled along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Only then did they spread out into the Sinai desert and the eastern Jordanian Rift Valley. This is the result of archaeological research conducted by Collaborative Research Centre ‘Our Way to Europe’ (CRC 806) at the universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Aachen. The article ‘Al-Ansab and the Dead Sea: mid-MIS 3 Archaeology and Environment of the Early Ahmarian Population of the Levantine Corridor’ was published in PLOS ONE.

For more than ten years, the team has been analyzing sediments, pollen, and archaeological artifacts around the site of Al-Ansab 1 near the ancient ruin-city of Petra (Jordan). The goal was to gain an understanding of the environmental conditions that prevailed at the time of human expansion. ‘Human presence consolidated in the region under favorable climate conditions’, said Professor Dr Jürgen Richter, lead author of the study.

The success story of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa began about 100,000 years ago with well-known sites such as Qafzeh and Skhul in Israel. However, these early records only reveal a brief, temporary expansion of the territory into the Levant. Permanent settlement of the region only dates back to about 43,000 years ago, scientists believe. During the epoch of the so-called ‘Early Ahmarian’, modern humans gradually had been spreading throughout the Levant – a first step on their way to Asia and Europe.

Favorable climatic conditions were preconditions for permanent human settlement. On a large scale, this is illustrated by the presence of the so-called Lake Lisan. This freshwater lake was located where the Dead Sea is today. However, it was of a much larger extent and carried greater water volume. Most of the water evaporated only with the end of the last ice age, leaving behind the hypersaline Dead Sea known today.

Even on a small scale, the scientists were able to recognize the favorable environmental conditions: geo-archaeological teams from the University of Cologne and RWTH Aachen University examined the site of Al-Ansab 1. Whereas today, the Wadi Sabra, in which the site is located, is strongly shaped by seasonal flash floods, geomorphological and archaeological investigations showed that at the time of settlement, the conditions were less erosive and continuously wet, permitting the presence of humans.

‘This enabled the spread of humans from the coastal Mediterranean area to the formerly drier regions of the Negev desert and the eastern slopes of the Jordan Rift Valley. They hunted gazelles in the open landscape – a prey we found in many sites in the region from this period’, says Richter. ‘Humans did not come by steady expansion out of Africa through the Levant and further to Europe and Asia. Rather, they first settled in a coastal strip along the Mediterranean Sea.’

The region around the site of Al-Ansab 1 therefore was a stepping stone on Homo sapiens’ way – a journey that did not take a straight path to the European continent, but was guided by complex interactions between humans and their environment.

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The region near Petra, as it appears today. Fulpez, Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE news release

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UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH—Today, ball games are one of the most popular leisure activities in the world, an important form of mass entertainment and big business. But who invented balls, where and when? The oldest balls that are currently known about were made in Egypt about 4,500 years ago using linen. Central Americans have been playing ball games for at least 3,700 years, as evidenced through monumental ball courts made of stone and depictions of ball players. Their oldest balls were made of rubber. Until now, it was believed that ball games in Europe and Asia followed much later: In Greece about 2,500 years ago and in China about 300 years after that.

Eurasia’s oldest known balls

Researchers from the University of Zurich, together with German and Chinese researchers, have now examined in more detail three leather balls found in graves in the old Yanghai cemetery near the city of Turfan in northwest China. The balls, measuring between 7.4 and 9.2cm in diameter, have been dated at around 2,900 to 3,200 years old. “This makes these balls about five centuries older than the previously known ancient balls and depictions of ball games in Eurasia,” says first author Patrick Wertmann of the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies of the University of Zurich. “Unfortunately, however, the associated archaeological information is not sufficient to answer the question of exactly how these balls were played.”

The earliest illustrations from Greece show ball players running, and depictions from China show riders using sticks. Comparable curved sticks were also found in Yanghai, but there was no apparent direct connection with the balls. Moreover, they are dated to a more recent period. “Therefore, the leather balls from Yanghai are not connected to early forms of field hockey or polo, even though two of the balls were found in the graves of horsemen,” says Wertmann.

New era of Central Asian equestrian warfare

In one of the riders’ graves, the preserved remains of a composite bow and a pair of trousers (1) were found, which were made in the region at that time and are among the oldest in the world. Both are signs of a new era of horse riding, equestrian warfare and fundamental societal transformations which accompanied increasing environmental changes and a rising mobility in eastern Central Asia. The current study shows that balls and ball games were part of physical exercise and military training from the very beginning. In addition, just like today, sport also played a central role in society and was a widespread leisure activity. The study’s findings once again highlight that this region was a center of innovation within Eurasia several millennia ago.

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The area near the city of Turfan in northwest China. (Picture: UZH)

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The three leather balls with diameters between 7.4 and 9.2 cm are between 3200 and 2900 years old.(Picture: UZH)

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH news release

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Science Advances—Neanderthal babies were born with the characteristic barrel-shaped rib cage shape previously identified in adult specimens, according to an analysis of digitally reconstructed rib cages from four Neanderthal infants. The findings suggest that Neanderthals’ rib cages were already shorter and deeper than that of modern humans at birth, rather than shifting their shape later in development. While scientists have known that adult Neanderthals were heavier than modern humans, requiring significant differences in skeletal shape, there have been few studies that have compared the earliest postnatal developmental stages of Neanderthals and modern humans, due to a lack of well-preserved fossil remains of Neanderthal children. To investigate whether the shape of this hominid’s thorax changed between birth and adulthood, Daniel García-Martínez and colleagues scanned and virtually reconstructed ribcages from 4 young Neanderthals estimated to be about 1 to 2 weeks old, less than 4 months old, 1.5 years old, and 2.5 years old. The most complete Neanderthal specimen (the 1.5-year-old) also revealed the species had relatively longer mid-thoracic ribs compared to its uppermost and lowermost ribs and a spine folded inward toward the center of the body, forming a cavity on the outside of the back. The researchers compared rib cage development in these specimens with a baseline for modern human development in the first three years of life, which they derived from a forensic assessment of remains from 29 humans. The Neanderthal specimens had consistently shorter spines and deeper rib cages, regardless of their age at death. García-Martínez et al. conclude that the bulky Neanderthal ribcage may have been genetically inherited, at least in part, from early Pleistocene ancestors.

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Development of the Neanderthal ribcage, from newborns to three years old. Marcos Galeano Prados/Dr. Daniel García-Martínez

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Article Source: Science Advances news release

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AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—A new study by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority indicates that a workshop for smelting copper ore once operated in the Neveh Noy neighborhood of Beer Sheva, the capital of the Negev Desert. The study, conducted over several years, began in 2017 in Beer Sheva when the workshop was first uncovered during an Israel Antiquities Authority emergency archeological excavation to safeguard threatened antiquities.

The new study also shows that the site may have made the first use in the world of a revolutionary apparatus: the furnace.

The study was conducted by Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, Dana Ackerfeld, and Omri Yagel of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University, in conjunction with Dr. Yael Abadi-Reiss, Talia Abulafia, and Dmitry Yegorov of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Dr. Yehudit Harlavan of the Geological Survey of Israel. The results of the study were published online on September 25, 2020, in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

According to Ms. Abulafia, Director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The excavation revealed evidence for domestic production from the Chalcolithic period, about 6,500 years ago. The surprising finds include a small workshop for smelting copper with shards of a furnace — a small installation made of tin in which copper ore was smelted — as well as a lot of copper slag.”

Although metalworking was already in evidence in the the Chalcolithic period, the tools used were still made of stone. (The word “chalcolithic” itself is a combination of the Greek words for “copper” and “stone.”) An analysis of the isotopes of ore remnants in the furnace shards show that the raw ore was brought to Neveh Noy neighborhood from Wadi Faynan, located in present-day Jordan, a distance of more than 100 kilometers from Beer Sheva.

During the Chalcolithic period, when copper was first refined, the process was made far from the mines, unlike the prevalent historical model by which furnaces were built near the mines for both practical and economic reasons. The scientists hypothesize that the reason was the preservation of the technological secret.

“It’s important to understand that the refining of copper was the high-tech of that period. There was no technology more sophisticated than that in the whole of the ancient world,” Prof. Ben-Yosef says. “Tossing lumps of ore into a fire will get you nowhere. You need certain knowledge for building special furnaces that can reach very high temperatures while maintaining low levels of oxygen.”

Prof. Ben-Yosef notes that the archeology of the land of Israel shows evidence of the Ghassulian culture. The culture was named for Tulaylât al-Ghassûl, the archeological site in Jordan where the culture was first identified. This culture, which spanned the region from the Beer Sheva Valley to present-day southern Lebanon, was unusual for its artistic achievements and ritual objects, as evidenced by the copper objects discovered at Nahal Mishmar and now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

According to Prof. Ben-Yosef, the people who lived in the area of the copper mines traded with members of the Ghassulian culture from Beer Sheva and sold them the ore, but they were themselves incapable of reproducing the technology. Even among the Ghassulian settlements along Wadi Beer Sheva, copper was refined by experts in special workshops. A chemical analysis of remnants indicates that every workshop had its own special “recipe” which it did not share with its competitors. It would seem that, in that period, Wadi Beer Sheva was filled with water year-round, making the location convenient for smelting copper where the furnaces and other apparatus were made of clay.

Prof. Ben-Yosef further notes that, even within Chalcolithic settlements that possessed both stone and copper implements, the secret of the gleaming metal was held by the very few members of an elite. “At the beginning of the metallurgical revolution, the secret of metalworking was kept by guilds of experts. All over the world, we see metalworkers’ quarters within Chalcolithic settlements, like the neighborhood we found in Beer Sheva.”

The study discusses the question of the extent to which this society was hierarchical or socially stratified, as society was not yet urbanized. The scientists feel that the findings from Neveh Noy strengthen the hypothesis of social stratification. Society seems to have consisted of a clearly defined elite possessing expertise and professional secrets, which preserved its power by being the exclusive source for the shiny copper. The copper objects were not made to be used, instead serving some ritual purpose and thus possessing symbolic value. The copper axe, for example, wasn’t used as an axe. It was an artistic and/or cultic object modeled along the lines of a stone axe. The copper objects were probably used in rituals while the everyday objects in use continued to be of stone.

“At the first stage of humankind’s copper production, crucibles rather than furnaces were used,” says Prof. Ben-Yosef. “This small pottery vessel, which looks like a flower pot, is made of clay. It was a type of charcoal-based mobile furnace. Here, at the Neveh Noy workshop that the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered, we show that the technology was based on real furnaces. This provides very early evidence for the use of furnaces in metallurgy and it raises the possibility that the furnace was invented in this region.

“It’s also possible that the furnace was invented elsewhere, directly from crucible-based metallurgy, because some scientists view early furnaces as no more than large crucibles buried in the ground,” Prof. Ben-Yosef continues. “The debate will only be settled by future discoveries, but there is no doubt that ancient Beer Sheva played an important role in advancing the global metal revolution and that in the fifth millennium BCE the city was a technological powerhouse for this whole region.”

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Work on the dig in Beer Sheva. Anat Rasiuk, Israel Antiquities Authority

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Excavation location, Neveh Noy, Beer Sheva. Talia Abulafia, Israel Antiquities Authority

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Copper slag found at the Neveh Noy excavation. Anat Rasiuk, Israel Antiquities Authority

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Article Source: AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF READING—Archaeologists have uncovered a warrior burial in Berkshire that could change historians’ understanding of southern Britain in the early Anglo-Saxon era.

The burial, on a hilltop site near with commanding views over the surrounding Thames valley, must be of a high-status warlord from the 6th century AD, archaeologists from the University of Reading believe.

The ‘Marlow Warlord’ was a commanding, six-foot-tall man, buried alongside an array of expensive luxuries and weapons, including a sword in a decorated scabbard, spears, bronze and glass vessels, and other personal accoutrements.

The pagan burial had remained undiscovered and undisturbed for more than 1,400 years until two metal detectorists, Sue and Mick Washington came across the site in 2018.

Sue said: “On two earlier visits I had received a large signal from this area which appeared to be deep iron and most likely not to be of interest. However, the uncertainty preyed on my mind and on my next trip I just had to investigate, and this proved to be third time lucky!”

Sue, who along with other members of the Maidenhead Search Society metal detecting club had visited the site several times previously, initially unearthed two bronze bowls. Realizing the age and significance of the find, she stopped digging and the Club, in line with best practice, registered this discovery with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. (PAS).

The PAS Finds Liaison Officer for Buckinghamshire undertook a targeted excavation to recover the very fragile bronze vessels and, in the process, recovered a pair of iron spearheads suggested that the context was likely to be an Anglo-Saxon grave.

Thanks to their actions, the bowls and spearheads were identified and conserved, and following Sue’s generous donation, are soon to go on display at Buckinghamshire Museum in Aylesbury.

Recognizing the importance of the burial and the need for more detailed archaeological investigation, a team led by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading carried out a full survey and excavation in August 2020. The burial was at a very shallow depth, making the excavation crucial to protect it from farming activity.

Dr Gabor Thomas, a specialist in early medieval archaeology at the University of Reading, said: “We had expected to find some kind of Anglo-Saxon burial, but what we found exceeded all our expectations and provides new insights into this stretch of the Thames in the decades after the collapse of the Roman administration in Britain.

“This the first burial of its kind found in the mid-Thames basin, which is often overlooked in favor of the Upper Thames and London. It suggests that the people living in this region may have been more important than historians previously suspected.

“This guy would have been tall and robust compared to other men at the time, and would have been an imposing figure even today. The nature of his burial and the site with views overlooking the Thames suggest he was a respected leader of a local tribe and had probably been a formidable warrior in his own right.”

The early Anglo-Saxon period was one of great change in England with significant levels of immigration from the continent and the formation of new identities and power structures in the vacuum created by the collapse of the Roman administration around 400 AD. Around a century later – the period in which the Marlow Warlord lived -England was occupied by local tribal groupings, some of which expanded into Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, such as Wessex, Mercia and Kent.

The region of the mid-Thames between London and Oxford was previously thought to be a ‘borderland’ in this region, with powerful tribal groups on each side. This new discovery suggests that the area may have hosted important groups of its own. It is likely that the area was later squeezed out or absorbed into the larger neighboring proto-kingdoms of Kent, Wessex and Mercia.

A team involving archaeologists from the University of Reading and local volunteer groups carried out a two-week excavation of the site in August 2020 with the kind permission of the supportive landowner. This activity included geophysical survey, test excavations, and a full excavation of the grave site.

Found buried with the Marlow Warlord were a sword with an exceptionally well-preserved scabbard – making it one of the best-preserved sheathed swords known from the period -made of wood and leather with decorative bronze fittings, spears, bronze and glass vessels, dress-fittings, shears and other implements.

These objects are currently being conserved by Pieta Greaves of Drakon Heritage and Conservation. Further analysis of the human remains will be carried out at the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, to help determine the man’s age, health, diet and geographical origins.

Michael Lewis, Head of the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme, said: “This is a great example of archaeologists and metal-detectorists working together. Especially important is the fact that the finders stopped when they realized they had discovered something significant and called in archaeological assistance. By doing so they ensure much more could be learnt about this interesting burial.”

The team are now hoping to raise funds to pay for further conservation work, to allow some of the finds to go on display to the public at the Buckinghamshire Museum in 2021, when their newly refurbished permanent galleries re-open.

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The remains of the warlord. University of Reading

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Overhead drone photo of the excavation at the burial site. University of Reading

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Sue Washington, the metal detectorist who discovered the burial. James Mather

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF READING news release

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OKINAWA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (OIST) GRADUATE UNIVERSITY—Since first appearing in late 2019, the novel virus, SARS-CoV-2, has had a range of impacts on those it infects. Some people become severely ill with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and require hospitalization, whereas others have mild symptoms or are even asymptomatic.

There are several factors that influence a person’s susceptibility to having a severe reaction, such as their age and the existence of other medical conditions. But one’s genetics also plays a role, and, over the last few months, research by the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative has shown that genetic variants in one region on chromosome 3 impose a larger risk that their carriers will develop a severe form of the disease.

Now, a new study, published in Nature, has revealed that this genetic region is almost identical to that of a 50,000-year old Neanderthal from southern Europe. Further analysis has shown that, through interbreeding, the variants came over to the ancestors of modern humans about 60,000 years ago.

“It is striking that the genetic heritage from Neanderthals has such tragic consequences during the current pandemic,” said Professor Svante Pääbo, who leads the Human Evolutionary Genomics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST).

Is severe COVID-19 written in our genes?

Chromosomes are tiny structures that are found in the nucleus of cells and carry an organism’s genetic material. They come in pairs with one chromosome in each pair inherited from each parent. Humans have 23 of these pairs. Thus, 46 chromosomes carry the entirety of our DNA – millions upon millions of base pairs. And although the vast majority are the same between people, mutations do occur, and variations persist, at the DNA level.

The research by the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative looked at over 3,000 people including both people who were hospitalized with severe COVID-19 and people who were infected by the virus but weren’t hospitalized. It identified a region on chromosome 3 that influences whether a person infected with the virus will become severely ill and needs to be hospitalized.

The identified genetic region is very long, spanning 49.4 thousand base pairs, and the variants that impose a higher risk to severe COVID-19 are strongly linked – if a person has one of the variants then they’re very likely to have all thirteen of them. Variants like these have previously been found to come from Neanderthals or Denisovans so Professor Pääbo, in collaboration with Professor Hugo Zeberg, first author of the paper and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Karolinska Institutet, decided to investigate whether this was the case.

They found that a Neanderthal from southern Europe carried an almost identical genetic region whereas two Neanderthals from southern Siberia and a Denisovan did not.

Next, they questioned whether the variants had come over from Neanderthals or had been inherited by both Neanderthals and present-day people through a common ancestor.

If the variants had come from interbreeding between the two groups of people, then this would have occurred as recently as 50,000 years ago. Whereas, if the variants had come from the last common ancestor, they would have been around in modern humans for about 550,000 years. But random genetic mutations, and recombination between chromosomes, would have also occurred during this time and because the variants between the Neanderthal from southern Europe and present-day people are so similar over such a long stretch of DNA, the researchers showed that it was much more likely that they came from interbreeding.

Professor Pääbo and Professor Zeberg concluded that Neanderthals related to the one from southern Europe contributed this DNA region to present-day people around 60,000 years ago when the two groups met.

Neanderthal variants pose up to three times the risk

Professor Zeberg explained that those who carry these Neanderthal variants have up to three times the risk of requiring mechanical ventilation. “Obviously, factors such as your age and other diseases you may have also affect how severely you are affected by the virus. But among genetic factors, this is the strongest one.”

The researchers also found that there are major differences in how common these variants are in different parts of the world. In South Asia about 50% of the population carry them. However, in East Asia they’re almost absent.

It is not yet known why the Neanderthal gene region is associated with increased risk of becoming severely ill. “This is something that we and others are now investigating as quickly as possible,” said Professor Pääbo.

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These genetic variants are almost completely absent in Africa and occur in the highest frequency in Bangladesh. Professor Svante Pääbo and Professor Hugo Zeberg. This figure appeared in the publication in Nature.

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Article Source: OKINAWA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (OIST) GRADUATE UNIVERSITY news release

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TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP—Stunning Arnhem Land rock art images including three rare depictions of bilbies and a dugong have been described by researchers in a new paper in Australian Archaeology today (Oct 1).

Led by Professor Paul Taçon, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Griffith University Chair in Rock Art Research, the team documented 572 previously unknown images ranging in age from 6000 to 9400 years from 87 sites from 2008 to 2018.

Named Maliwawa Figures, they are found in northwest Arnhem Land and recorded at sites from Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile area) to the Namunidjbuk clan estate of the Wellington Range.

The Maliwawa images include large (over 50cm high, sometimes life-size) naturalistic humans and macropods with animals more often depicted than human figures. Painted in various shades of red with stroke-infill or outline forms with a few red strokes as infill, they are shown with little material culture other than various forms of headdresses.

Professor Taçon said the rock art provided a window into the past and showed us what people were doing at this time. “They’re a missing link between the well-known early-style Dynamic Figures, about 12,000 years of age, and X-ray figures made in the past 4000 years.”

“Maliwawas are depicted as solitary figures and as part of group scenes showing various activities and some may have a ceremonial context. Human figures are frequently depicted with animals, especially macropods, and these animal-human relationships appear to be central to the artists’ message,” he said.

He also said the Maliwawa Figures and scenes were not just simple depictions of everyday life.

“The artists are clearly communicating aspects of their cultural beliefs, with an emphasis on important animals and interactions between humans and other humans or animals.

“Indeed, animals are much more common than in the Dynamic Figure style rock art in terms of percentage of subject matter, as 89% of Dynamic Figures are human, whereas only about 42% of Maliwawa Figures are human.”

Professor Taçon said in some images animals almost appeared to be participating in or watching some human activity.

“This occurrence, and the frequency and variability of headdresses, suggests a ritual context for some of the production of Maliwawa rock art.

Co-author Dr Sally K. May from Griffith University’s Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit said the discovery of what appear to be depictions of ‘bilbies’ at an Awunbarna site was surprising.

“Bilbies are associated with arid and semi-arid environments far to the south and Arnhem Land has not been within their range in historic times,” she said.

“Two of these animals are back-to-back and almost identical in size. The third bilby-like depiction appears to have been made at a different time, and perhaps by a different artist, as it is larger, has a longer snout, has more line infill, and is in a lighter shade of red.

“There is also the possibility that the depictions are of Agile Wallabies, Northern Nailtail Wallabies or Short-eared Rock-wallabies, all widespread across Kakadu-Arnhem Land today, but all of these species have much shorter ears and snouts than extant bilbies and the creatures depicted at Awunbarna.”

The researchers also recorded the oldest know depiction of a dugong.

“The solitary dugong painting also seems out of place,” Dr May said.

“Today it is located about 15 kilometers south of the Arafura Sea but 6000-9400 years ago the coast would have been further north. It indicates a Maliwawa artist visited the coast but the lack of other saltwater fauna may suggest this was not a frequent occurrence.”

At some sites there are two large macropods shown back-to-back with a small space between them. There are also some back-to-back human figures and the back-to-back ‘bilbies’.

“The Maliwawa back-to-back figures are the oldest known for western Arnhem Land and it appears this painting convention began with the Maliwawa style. It continues to the present with bark paintings and paintings on paper,” Professor Taçon said.

“But was the Maliwawa rock art sporadic and made during a short time period or did it continue over a long period of time?

He said they could not rule out the possibility that Maliwawa rock paintings were produced by a small number of artists. It is even possible only a couple artists made most of the paintings, with one responsible for the more outline forms with minimal infill and another creating much of the fuller stroke-line infill examples.

“At the same time, much art produced after the Maliwawa style demonstrates a remarkable consistency in the manner of depiction and a significant increase in the standardization of some subject matter such as X-ray fish.

“So, perhaps what we are observing is increasing standardization in the manner of depiction after the period in which Dynamic Figures were made. This has implications for rock art research everywhere in which a style or manner of depiction is suggested to have been made over hundreds of years or millennia.”

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Maliwawa macropod over 3MFC hand stencil, Namunidjbuk P. Tac¸on

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Indeterminate Maliwawa human with lines suggestive of hair all over its body, Awunbarna P. Tac¸on

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Large male Maliwawa human figures from an Awunbarna site. The largest male is 1.15 meters wide by 1.95 meters high. P. Tac¸on

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Article Source: TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP news release

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Stretching from the border with Namibia to the border of Mozambique, the coastline of South Africa extends an impressive 1,770 miles. In many places, its dramatic scenic allure reminds one of the rugged, rocky coastline of northern California, drawing both local and foreign visitors throughout the year as they escape to popular resort destinations. Perhaps less known to the general public, however, are coastal locations that in recent years have yielded tantalizing clues to a modern human presence dating back as much, or even more than, 100,000 years. Here, scientists have uncovered evidence for behaviorally modern humans who lived in caves such as Blombos and Pinnacle Point, who crafted comparatively advanced stone and bone tools, created symbolic art, and exploited marine environments, requiring a level of cooperation, organization and planning unrecorded for their earlier hominin ancestors. To some scientists, these discoveries suggest the birthplace of the first behaviorally modern humans — surviving and thriving in a resource-rich southern coastal refugium during a time when other locations were not as hospitable.

Ancient Tracks

Along with ancient caves, the South African coast also features another geological formation known as aeolianite — coastal limestone consisting of carbonate sediment that has formed into coastal dunes by the wind, and then lithified (hardened into stone) with the passage of time. These geologic structures take tens of thousands of years to form, today characterizing part of the greater Pleistocene deposits that make up what is called the Bredasdorp Group, marine and marine-related formations along the coast of South Africa’s Cape Province. Within these aeolianites lie a physical record of life, like the tracks of animals that once lived and traveled along the dunes long before they solidified into their present state. It turns out these animal tracks also included those of humans, discovered first in 1964 at the site of Nahoon in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. Found in hyporelief (natural casts of solidified impressions on the original surface) they were dated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to about 124,000 years ago. More tracks identified as human, this time in epirelief (the solidified impressions in the original surface), were also discovered at Langebaan in the Western Cape Province in 1995 and dated to about 117,000 years ago. And in 2016 at Brenton-on-Sea, a series of 40 tracks in hyporelief were discovered on the ceiling and walls of a coastal cave, with an estimated date of about 90,000 years ago. A more precise date for this latter site awaits the results of OSL analysis. Without doubt, these aeolianite tracks have added a new dimension to the mounting evidence for early modern humans on the South African coastal landscape.

But new developments have expanded on this story……..

New Sites

Most recently, a team of scientists led by Charles Helm of Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, along with experts from the University of Colorado, Denver and the Council for Geoscience in Cape Town, South Africa, identified a number of additional human footprints at new coastal sites. The discoveries were actually made within the context of a larger endeavor, where the researchers documented more than 250 animal track sites across 350 kilometers, even identifying animals not previously represented in the fossil record for the area, such as giraffe, crocodiles, and sea turtles. But the most exciting track sites for enthusiasts and scholars of human prehistory were those exhibiting the human tracks. 

Finding them was not easy. “Firstly, there were physical challenges, involving working in confined spaces in small caves, working on tracks on ceilings, or on high overhangs,” said Helm. “Secondly, in many cases the features that identified the tracks as hominin in origin were rather subtle, as dune sand does not always lead to great track quality. Photogrammetry proved really important. But perhaps the most important factor in our favor was obtaining Dr Martin Lockley as part of our team. He is an internationally renowned ichnologist, based in Colorado, and one of the global leaders in the interpretation of hominin tracks.”

Their resulting study report*, published September 29, 2020 in the South African Journal of Science, documented field investigations at four sites, three of which yielded data robust enough to draw some conclusions. The first set of tracks was identified as 18 natural casts on the ceiling of a sandy cave within the coastal area of Garden Route National Park. Only 10 of the 18 tracks were sufficiently well enough defined to be described in detail. The second set, found  on the coast of the Goukamma Nature Reserve, featured no less than 32 tracks. Remarkably, these tracks were manifested in two corresponding exposed surfaces, one above on a cliff face overhang with tracks in natural cast hyporelief, and one below on a fallen block featuring the same tracks, in this case exhibited in epirelief. The third site, also along the coast of the Goukamma Nature Reserve, featured some partial track impressions. This site, however, showed what the researchers cautiously interpret as possible “ammoglyphs”, or associated markings or impressions in the ancient sand that may have been deliberately made by humans, providing a possible whisper of insight into their behavior at the location. More specifically, the team observed and recorded parallel grooves next to the track impressions, as well as “a number of smaller circular impressions, all clustered around an impression of what resembled the anterior portion of a left human foot”.*  In all three sites, tracks of various sizes were identified and recorded, suggesting that there was more than one track maker at each location. The varying sizes and their positioning on the ancient surface further suggested that they consisted of a mixture of adults and juveniles, particularly as the size and shape of the larger tracks all showed a common consistency. This raises the possibility of family groups, according to the report authors, providing some possible insight into the social relationships and group structure of these early modern humans. Finally, the team returned to a previously explored site known as Brenton-on-Sea, where earlier investigations yielded as many as 40 tracks in hyporelief and cross sections on the walls and ceiling of a coastal cave, the tracks securely dated with OSL to about 117 ka. In this area, along a coastal cliff exposure, seven apparent human tracks were newly identified. The description and interpretation of this track site location remains inconclusive, however, and a more detailed study has been left for future excavation or exploration.

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Map of South Africa and the Cape south coast, showing places mentioned and the locations of Site 1 — Site 4, and the extent of outcrops of the Bredasdorp Group. Text and image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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At the entrance to the small cave that contains Site 1. Image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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Photogrammetry color mesh of two tracks at Site 1, using 131 images. Image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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Photo image of a track, lightly outlined in chalk, at Site 1. Below the photo image, the same track in photogrammetry color mesh, using 59 images. Image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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(a) The figure is standing on top of the loose slab block containing the tracks in epirelief (indicated by arrow) at Site 2. He is analyzing the tracks on the opposing/corresponding hyporelief surface above him. (b) The hyporelief surface, viewed from a distance. (c) Close-up view of a track that is only seen on the epirelief surface. (d) Close-up view of a track. Text and image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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Trackway map of Site 2. Text and image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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(a) Photogrammetry color mesh of the Site 2 hyporeleif surface, using 193 images. (b) Close-up photogrammetry view of tracks A9 – A15. (c) Close-up photogrammetry view of tracks B5 and B6, indicating a likely left-right sequence. Text and image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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An Unfolding Story

Even with the publication of the report, Helm makes clear that the jury is still out on precise dating—an essential factor in interpreting the results of their research—while they await the results of testing. “Samples [from the sites described in this latest report] have been sent to the University of Leicester in the U.K., and are under the supervision of Dr Andrew Carr,” he explained. “We are reasonably confident of the approximate dates, because of other dated samples from nearby, but knowing the dates with more precision will be really important.” The sites rest in or very near to the Wilderness Embayment, where specific OSL dating of sediments have already been obtained from previous investigations. OSL results from this region yielded dates between about 148 ka to about 79 ka. Combined with the track site results from the three previous investigations at Nahoon, Langebaan, and Brenton-on-Sea, this would make South Africa arguably the region where scientists have thus far found the earliest record of Homo sapiens footprints in Africa, and possibly the world (with the possible exception of the recent Homo sapiens footprint discoveries in the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia).

Interpreting actual ancient human behavior at these sites, says Helm, is a somewhat trickier proposition. Referring to the finds at the third site, located in the Gaukamma Nature Reserve, Helm explains: “We have been very careful not to over-interpret in areas where we really cannot be sure. Our focus is ichnology, which includes pattern recognition. The presence of what appear to be foot impressions beside these patterns seems compelling, but we try to avoid ascribing meaning. Foraging and messaging are two possibilities, but are by no means certain. The sub-parallel grooves and the smaller [circular] depressions could have been made by a finger or a stick in the sand, but while these may be the likeliest explanations, this is speculative.”

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Above, the originally documented surface of Site 3, with a foot impression (indicated by arrow) and the surrounding groove and circular impression features. Below, the same site surface after scouring by wave action; white arrows indicate three likely partial human tracks; black arrows indicate newly exposed groove features after wave action. Text and image courtesy Helm, et al., Newly identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa, South African Journal of Science 2020.

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Going forward, Helm says that further field work and study will need to be done before the bigger picture of what was happening in this region can be formulated. Site 4 (the Brenton-on Sea site) “has potential as a possible hominin track site, but nothing more conclusive can be stated until further features are exposed, through either an excavation or natural forces or erosions.”* Indeed, the study authors maintain, all four sites are open to further excavation. But there are upsides and downsides to excavating, says Helm, including the risks involved in digging in and around cave ceilings and rock overhangs.

“No field season for me on the Cape south coast this year due to COVID,”, wrote Helm to Popular Archaeology when asked about the immediate future of research and exploration at the sites and any other new sites. “But our experience has taught us that we have to be nimble and have to keep looking. Many of the sites are ephemeral, and others are only free from sand cover for brief intervals. So, constant exploration by our team members is crucial.”

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*Helm, C.W., Lockley, M.G., Cawthra, H.C., De Vynck, J.C., Dixon, M.G., Helm, C.J.Z, Thesen, G.H.H. Newly Identified hominin trackways from the Cape south coast of South Africa. S Afr J Sci 2020; 116(9/10), Art. #8156, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.17.159/ says.2020/8156

More Reading:

See much more about the fascinating evidence uncovered for the earliest behaviorally modern humans in the (now free) premium article, Where Hominins Became Human, published in the Fall 2016 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine, and the recently re-published interview of world-renowned pioneering archaeologist Christ Henshilwood in Exploring the Roots of Modern Human Behavior.

See more about how other ancient hominin track record discoveries have shed light on our understanding of human origins and human evolution in the premium articles, Laetoli: The Unfolding Story and Footprints in the Silt, both published previously in Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE, LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Modern humans arrived in the westernmost part of Europe 41,000 – 38,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously known, according to Jonathan Haws, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Louisville, and an international team of researchers. The team has revealed the discovery of stone tools used by modern humans dated to the earlier time period in a report published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The tools, discovered in a cave named Lapa do Picareiro, located near the Atlantic coast of central Portugal, link the site with similar finds from across Eurasia to the Russian plain. The discovery supports a rapid westward dispersal of modern humans across Eurasia within a few thousand years of their first appearance in southeastern Europe. The tools document the presence of modern humans in westernmost Europe at a time when Neanderthals previously were thought to be present in the region. The finding has important ramifications for understanding the possible interaction between the two human groups and the ultimate disappearance of the Neanderthals.

“The question whether the last surviving Neanderthals in Europe have been replaced or assimilated by incoming modern humans is a long-standing, unsolved issue in paleoanthropology,” said Lukas Friedl, an anthropologist at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and project co-leader. “The early dates for Aurignacian stone tools at Picareiro likely rule out the possibility that modern humans arrived into the land long devoid of Neanderthals, and that by itself is exciting.”

Until now, the oldest evidence for modern humans south of the Ebro River in Spain came from Bajondillo, a cave site on the southern coast. The discovery of stone stools characterized as Aurignacian, technology associated with early modern humans in Europe, in a secure stratigraphic context at Picareiro provide definitive evidence of early modern human arrival.

“Bajondillo offered tantalizing but controversial evidence that modern humans were in the area earlier than we thought,” Haws said. “The evidence in our report definitely supports the Bajondillo implications for an early modern human arrival, but it’s still not clear how they got here. People likely migrated along east-west flowing rivers in the interior, but a coastal route is still possible.”

“The spread of anatomically modern humans across Europe many thousands of years ago is central to our understanding of where we came from as a now-global species,” said John Yellen, program director for archaeology and archaeometry at the National Science Foundation, which supported the work. “This discovery offers significant new evidence that will help shape future research investigating when and where anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe and what interactions they may have had with Neanderthals.”

The Picareiro cave has been under excavation for 25 years and has produced a record of human occupation over the last 50,000 years. An international research team from the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB) in Faro, Portugal, is investigating the arrival of modern humans and extinction of Neanderthals in the region.

The project is led by Haws, Michael Benedetti of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Friedl, in collaboration with Nuno Bicho and João Cascalheira of the University of Algarve, where ICArEHB is housed, and Telmo Pereira of the Autonomous University of Lisbon.

With support from U.S. National Science Foundation grants to Haws and Benedetti, the team has uncovered rich archaeological deposits that include stone tools in association with thousands of animal bones from hunting, butchery and cooking activities.

Sahra Talamo of the University of Bologna, Italy, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, joined the research team to determine the age of the early modern human and Neanderthal occupations. She used state-of-the-art bone pretreatment and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to date the bones that show evidence of butchery cut marks and intentional breakage by humans to extract bone marrow, a highly prized and nutritious food consumed by ancient people. The dating results place the modern human arrival to the interval between 41,000 and 38,000 years ago. The last Neanderthal occupation at the site took place between 45,000 and 42,000 years ago.

“The radiocarbon results from Lapa do Picareiro are not only very precise in terms of the dating method, but also demonstrate the meticulous work of the archeologists at the site,” Talamo said. “The importance of collaboration between the radiocarbon specialist and the archaeologists is essential in order to obtain an accurate chronology like in the case of Picareiro.”

Spatial analysis of high-resolution three-dimensional data confirmed the precise stratigraphic relationships between artifacts and radiocarbon samples and revealed discrete layers of occupation at the site.

“Analysis of high-resolution spatial data is crucial for documenting and observing lenses of human occupation and reconstructing occupational patterns, especially in cave environments where complex formation processes exist,” said Grace Ellis, a Ph.D. student at Colorado State University studying landscape archaeology and ancient settlement patterns.

This was backed up by artifact refitting that showed the stone tools were not moved through post-depositional processes.

“Refitting is a task that requires a lot of time and patience, and in this case, it really was worthwhile because the results verified the geospatial observations,” said Pereira, an archaeologist who specializes in stone technology.

While the dates suggest that modern humans arrived after Neanderthals disappeared, a nearby cave, Oliveira, has evidence for Neanderthals’ survival until 37,000 years ago. The two groups may have overlapped for several thousand years in the area.

“If the two groups overlapped for some time in the highlands of Atlantic Portugal, they may have maintained contacts between each other and exchanged not only technology and tools, but also mates. This could possibly explain why many Europeans have Neanderthal genes,” said Bicho, director of ICArEHB.

“Besides genetic and archeological evidence, high-resolution temporal context and fossil evidence across the continent is crucial for answering this question. With the preserved key layers dated to the transitional period, we are now awaiting human fossils to tell us more about the nature of the transition,” Friedl said.

Despite the overlap in dates, there does not appear to be any evidence for direct contact between Neanderthals and modern humans. Neanderthals continued to use the same stone tools they had before modern humans arrived, bringing a completely different stone technology.

“Differences between the stone tool assemblages dated before and after about 41,000 years ago are striking at Picareiro,” said Cascalheira, an ICArEHB board member and specialist on stone tool technology. “Older levels are dominated by quartzite and quartz raw materials and marked by the presence of Levallois technology, a typical element of Neanderthal occupations in Europe. Aurignacian levels, on the other hand, are dominated by flint and the production of very small blades that were likely used as inserts in arrow shafts for hunting.”

Flint also was used to make tools for butchering animals such as red deer, ibex and possibly rabbits. The team recovered a few red deer canine teeth, often used as personal adornments, but so far these do not show traces of manufacturing jewelry.

“The bones from Lapa do Picareiro make up one of the largest Paleolithic assemblages in Portugal, and the preservation of these animal bones is remarkable,” said Milena Carvalho, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico and ICArEHB researcher studying the diets and paleoecology of Neanderthals and modern humans. “The collection will provide tremendous amounts of information on human behavior and paleoecology during the Paleolithic and we will be studying it for decades.”

The cave sediments also contain a well-preserved paleoclimatic record that helps reconstruct environmental conditions at the time of the last Neanderthals and arrival of modern humans.

“We studied changes in the size of limestone clasts and the chemistry of muddy fine sediment filling the cave to understand the paleoclimatic context for the transition,” Benedetti said. “Our analysis shows that the arrival of modern humans corresponds with, or slightly predates, a bitterly cold and extremely dry phase. Harsh environmental conditions during this period posed challenges that both modern human and Neanderthal populations had to contend with.”

The cave itself has an enormous amount of sediment remaining for future work and the excavation still hasn’t reached the bottom.

“I’ve been excavating at Picareiro for 25 years and just when you start to think it might be done giving up its secrets, a new surprise gets unearthed,” Haws said. “Every few years something remarkable turns up and we keep digging.”

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View of the excavation of the early modern human (foreground) and Neanderthal layers (background) of Lapa do Picareiro. Jonathan Haws

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Tools discovered in Lapa do Picareiro in central Portugal. Jonathan Haws.

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE news release

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UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE—Experts from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology of the University of Seville have just published a study in the prestigious journal PLOS ONE on an important archaeological find in the Cueva de la Dehesilla (Cádiz). Specifically, two human skulls and a juvenile goat were discovered along with various archaeological structures and materials from a funerary ritual from the Middle Neolithic period (4800-4000 BC) hitherto unknown in the Iberian Peninsula.

“This finding opens new lines of research and anthropological scenarios, where human and animal sacrifice may have been related to ancestral cults, propitiatory rituals and divine prayers in commemorative festivities,” explains US researcher Daniel García Rivero.

The archaeological site located in the Cueva de la Dehesilla consists of two adult human skulls, one male one female, the former being older. The female skull shows a depression in the frontal bone, which probably comes from an incomplete trepanation, as well as cuts in the occipital bone produced by decapitation. In addition, a wall was found separating the human skulls and the skeleton of the goat, on the one hand, from a stone altar with a stele and a hearth, on the other. Finally, several uniquely decorated ceramic vessels, some lithic objects and charred plant remains were discovered in the so-called Locus 2.

“These elements display various characteristics that make it an exceptional archaeological find. The differential treatment of skulls with traumatological evidence along with sacrificed animals, as well as the documented archaeological structures and materials do not match the normative funerary record we were working with until now. This discovery is of great importance not only because of its peculiarity, but also because it constitutes a sealed, intact ritual deposit, which is a great opportunity to gain a more detailed insight into the funerary and ritual behaviors of the Neolithic populations of the Iberian Peninsula,” emphasizes professor García Rivero.

Neolithic funeral rituals

This work contributes in a particular way to the knowledge of the funerary rituals of the middle part of the 5th millennium before Christ, currently the least well known period of the Neolithic populations of the Iberian Peninsula as a whole. The scarce funerary record from that time shows fundamentally individual burials, with secondary burials being unusual. The sort of context just discovered is really extraordinary. Burials usually occur in areas of habitat, and are mostly associated with remains of ceramics and shells, as well as homes, which reflect the importance of activities related to the use of fire, but without stone structures like those now documented in the mountains of Cádiz.

The study and review of the entire funerary record of this period allows us to offer a kind of cultural mosaic in relation to the funerary and ritual traditions of these peasant and herding populations, with a probable division between the Andalusian region and the eastern seaboard of the peninsula, the two regions where most data is available today.

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Skulls found in the Cueva de la Dehesilla. Universidad de Sevilla

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE news release

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