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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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MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT—In 1997, the very first Neanderthal DNA sequence – just a small part of the mitochondrial genome – was determined from an individual discovered in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856. Since then, improvements in molecular techniques have enabled scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to determine high quality sequences of the autosomal genomes of several Neanderthals, and led to the discovery of an entirely new group of extinct humans, the Denisovans, who were relatives of the Neanderthals in Asia.

However, because all specimens well-preserved enough to yield sufficient amounts of DNA have been from female individuals, comprehensive studies of the Y chromosomes of Neanderthals and Denisovans have not yet been possible. Unlike the rest of the autosomal genome, which represents a rich tapestry of thousands of genealogies of any individual’s ancestors, Y chromosomes have a peculiar mode of inheritance – they are passed exclusively from father to son. Y chromosomes, and also the maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA, have been extremely valuable for studying human history.

New method to identify Y chromosome molecules

In this study, the researchers identified three male Neanderthals and two Denisovans that were potentially suitable for DNA analysis, and developed an approach to fish out human Y chromosome molecules from the large amounts of microbial DNA that typically contaminate ancient bones and teeth. This allowed them to reconstruct the Y chromosome sequences of these individuals, which would not have been possible using conventional approaches.

By comparing the archaic human Y chromosomes to each other and to the Y chromosomes of people living today, the team found that Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes are more similar to one another than they are to Denisovan Y chromosomes. “This was quite a surprise to us. We know from studying their autosomal DNA that Neanderthals and Denisovans were closely related and that humans living today are their more distant evolutionary cousins. Before we first looked at the data, we expected that their Y chromosomes would show a similar picture,” says Martin Petr, the lead author of the study. The researchers also calculated that the most recent common ancestor of Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes lived around 370,000 years ago, much more recently than previously thought.

It is by now well established that all people with non-African ancestry carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA as a result of interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans approximately 50,000-70,000 years ago, quite shortly after modern humans migrated out of Africa and started spreading around the world. However, whether Neanderthals might also carry some modern human DNA has been a matter of some debate.

These Y chromosome sequences now provide new evidence that Neanderthals and early modern humans met and exchanged genes before the major out of Africa migration – potentially as early as 370,000 years ago and certainly more than 100,000 years ago. This implies that some population closely related to early modern humans must already have been in Eurasia at that time. Surprisingly, this interbreeding resulted in the replacement of the original Neanderthal Y chromosomes with those of early modern humans, a pattern similar to what has been seen for Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA in an earlier study.

Selection for Y chromosomes from early modern humans

At first, the complete replacement of both Y chromosomes and mtDNA of early Neanderthals was puzzling, as such replacement events are quite unlikely to occur by chance alone. However, the researchers used computer simulations to show that the known small size of Neanderthal populations may have led to an accumulation of deleterious mutations in their Y chromosomes which would reduce their evolutionary fitness. This is quite similar to situations where extremely small population sizes and inbreeding can sometimes increase the incidence of some diseases. “We speculate that given the important role of the Y chromosome in reproduction and fertility, the lower evolutionary fitness of Neanderthal Y chromosomes might have caused natural selection to favor the Y chromosomes from early modern humans, eventually leading to their replacement” says Martin Petr.

Janet Kelso, the senior author of the study, is optimistic that this replacement hypothesis could be tested in the near future: “If we can retrieve Y chromosome sequences from Neanderthals that lived prior to this hypothesized early introgression event, such as the 430,000 year old Neanderthals from Sima de los Huesos in Spain, we predict that they would still have the original Neanderthal Y chromosome and will therefore be more similar to Denisovans than to modern humans.”

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Matthias Meyer at work in the clean laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology

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Article Source: MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT news release

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CNRS—Millions of ibis and birds of prey mummies, sacrificed to the Egyptian gods Horus, Ra or Thoth, have been discovered in the necropolises of the Nile Valley. Such a quantity of mummified birds raises the question of their origin: were they bred, like cats, or were they hunted? Scientists from the CNRS, the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and the C2RMF have carried out extensive geochemical analyses on mummies from the Musée des Confluences, Lyon. According to their results, published on 22nd September 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports, they were wild birds.

Mammals, reptiles, birds: the tens of millions of animal mummies deposited as offerings in the necropolises of the Nile Valley bear witness to an intense religious fervor, and to the practices of collecting and preparing animals that undoubtedly contributed significantly to the economy from the Old Kingdom (3rd millennium BC) to Roman Egypt (1st-3rd centuries AD). However, the origin of these animals and the methods of supply remain unknown. For some tamed species, such as the cat, breeding was probably the most efficient way of supplying large numbers of animals for mummification. But unlike cats, bird mummies cover all stages of development, from egg to adult, which may indicate more opportunistic sourcing practices.

In order to determine the origin—breeding or hunting—of the mummified birds, tiny fragments of feathers, bones and embalming strips were taken from 20 ibis and birds of prey mummies from the collections of the Musée des Confluences, Lyon. If these birds, which migrate in the wild, had been bred, their diet would have been homogeneous, of local origin and reflected in the uniform isotopic composition of the animal remains, regardless as to whether that diet had been produced specifically or derived from that of coexisting humans.

The various tissues were therefore dated using the carbon-14 method; and the isotopic compositions of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and strontium were measured, interpreted in terms of food sources and compared with those of contemporaneous human mummies. However, far from being homogeneous, these isotopic compositions showed a high variability and “exotic” signatures compared to those of ancient Egyptian humans: the birds were wild, migrating seasonally out of the Nile Valley.

These results, combined with that of a genetic study carried out by another team, suggest the mass hunting and capture of birds as documented on certain tomb frescoes (for example on the wall of Nakht’s tomb in the Theban Necropolis). Indeed, the Egyptians probably exerted a significant ecological pressure on wild bird populations long before the decline in avifauna observed today.

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First author Marie Linglin samples a mummified Northern long-legged buzzard specimen at the Musée des Confluences, Lyon. © Romain Amiot/LGL-TPE/CNRS

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Mummified sacred ibis from the Egyptology collections at the Musée des Confluences, Lyon. © Romain Amiot/LGL-TPE/CNRS

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Article Source: CNRS news release

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UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO—New bioarchaeology research from a University of Otago PhD candidate has shown how infectious diseases may have spread 4000 years ago, while highlighting the dangers of letting such diseases run rife.

Yaws – from the same bacteria species responsible for syphilis (Treponema pallidum) – is a childhood disease causing highly infectious skin lesions. It is spread via touch from person to person and, in advanced cases, can leave sufferers with severe bone disfigurement. While it is easily curable in its early stages, the bone disfigurements are irreversible.

The disease has been eradicated from much of the world but is still prevalent in the Western Pacific, affecting some 30,000 people. A previous global attempt to eradicate this tropical disease failed at the last hurdle in the 1950’s and a new attempt was curtailed by the COVID-19 outbreak, University of Otago Department of Anatomy PhD candidate Melandri Vlok says.

Ms Vlok’s PhD research uses archaeology to shed light on the spread of diseases when different human populations interact for the first time. Her specific interest is in what she calls the “friction zone”, where ancient agricultural people met hunter gatherer people.

In 2018 she travelled to Vietnam to study skeletal remains from the Man Bac archaeological site. From the Ninh Bình Province in the north of the country, Man Bac was excavated in 2005 and 2007 and has delivered a treasure trove of information for archaeologists thanks to its role during the transition away from foraging to farming in Mainland Southeast Asia.

Now housed in Hanoi’s Institute of Archaeology those remains are well-studied but had not been analyzed for evidence of yaws, Ms Vlok says.

Her supervisor at Otago, renowned bioarchaeologist Professor Hallie Buckley, had seen what she thought might be yaws on a photograph of Man Bac remains. Professor Buckley travelled with Ms Vlok and together with a passionate team of experts from Vietnam they confirmed their suspicions, Ms Vlok says. Later, Ms Vlok found a second example of the disease.

This was significant, as the Man Bac site dates back 4000 years. Till now, there was no strong evidence for yaws in prehistoric Asia.

Ms Vlok’s research suggests yaws was introduced to hunter-gatherers in present-day Vietnam by an agricultural population moving south from modern-day China. These hunter-gatherers descended from the first people out of Africa and into Asia who also eventually inhabited New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Australia.

The farmers had been in China for at least 9000 years but it wasn’t until around 4000 years ago farming was introduced to Southeast Asia. It is possible this movement of people brought diseases, including yaws, at the same time.

Ms Vlok says the length of time the disease has existed in the region is relevant when addressing how hard it has been to eradicate.

“This matters, because knowing more about this disease and its evolution, it changes how we understand the relationship people have with it. It helps us understand why it’s so difficult to eradicate. If it’s been with us thousands of years it has probably developed to fit very well with humans.”

This year’s COVID-19 pandemic has focused people’s attention on infectious diseases, and there are lessons to be learned from the past, Ms Vlok says.

“Archaeology like this is the only way to document how long a disease has been with us and been adapting to us. We understand with COVID-19 today how fantastic that disease is at adapting to humans. And Treponema has been with us for so much longer.

“So, this shows us what happens when we don’t take action with these diseases. It’s a lesson of what infectious diseases can do to a population if you let them spread widely. It highlights the need to intervene, because sometimes these diseases are so good at adapting to us, at spreading between us.”

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New bioarchaeology research from a University of Otago PhD candidate has shown how infectious diseases may have spread 4000 years ago, while highlighting the dangers of letting such diseases run rife. University of Otago

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* Ms Vlok’s research paper, published in the journal Bioarchaeology International, can be read here: https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2020.1000

Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO news release

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UNIVERSITY OF BERN—Ancient historiographers described steppe nomads as violent people dedicated to warfare and plundering. Little archaeological and anthropological data are however available regarding violence in these communities during the early centuries CE. In a new study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, an international team led by researchers from the University of Bern and the Russian Academy of Sciences presents new discoveries about the types of violence lived by nomads from Siberia between the 2nd-4th centuries CE. The study “Troubles in Tuva: patterns of perimortem trauma in a nomadic community from Southern Siberia (2nd-4th c. CE)” was performed by Dr. Marco Milella from the Department of Physical Anthropology, Institute of Forensic Medicine (IRM), University of Bern and colleagues.

A late antique cemetery in the heart of Siberia

The Republic of Tuva in Southern Siberia features a rich archaeological record documenting its human occupation since the Paleolithic. Of particular importance are Scythians from the Bronze-Iron Age and Late Antique funerary structures. The site of Tunnug1 is one of the earliest “royal” tombs of Scythian material culture in Siberia known to date, and it has been excavated from 2017 by an archaeological mission co-led by Dr. Gino Caspari from the University of Bern as well as Timur Sadykov and Jegor Blochin from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Recent excavations at Tunnug1 have exposed a peripheral cemetery dating to the 2nd-4th centuries CE including the skeletal remains of 87 individuals. Of these, several presented exceptional traces of violence, not exclusively related to warfare, but possibly also due to rituals.

A research team performed a detailed analysis of the traumas found on the skeletal remains. The researchers were interested in reconstructing the possible scenarios leading to the observed anthropological evidence. In conjunction with this study, the Institute of Forensic Medicine is completing the work on stable isotope ratios and ancient DNA of the bones. This will allow in the next future to reconstruct the diet, mobility, genetic affiliation of these people.

Violence, warfare, and rituals

The study demonstrates that 25% of the individuals died as a consequence of interpersonal violence, mostly related to hand-to-hand combat, often represented by traces of decapitation. Even though violence affected mostly men, also women and children were found among the victims. Some of the individuals from Tunnug1 show traces of throat-slitting and scalping. According to Marco Milella, first author of the study “this suggests that violence was not only related to raids and battles, but probably also due to specific, still mysterious, rituals involving the killing of humans and the collection of war trophies”.

Political instability and violence in the past

Marco Milella states: “Our data show that the individuals buried at Tunnug1 experienced high levels of violence. During the early centuries CE the whole area of Southern Siberia went through a period of political instability. Our study demonstrates how political changes affected, in the past like nowadays, the life and death of people.”

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1700 years old skeletons of southsiberian steppe nomads site of Tunnug1. Tunnug 1 Research Project

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BERN news release

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UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA—A milk-tooth found in the vicinity of “Riparo del Broion” on the Berici Hills in the Veneto region bears evidence of one of the last Neanderthals in Italy. This small canine tooth belonged to a child between 11 and 12 that had lived in that area around 48,000 years ago. This is the most recent Neanderthal finding in Northern Italy.

The study uncovering this tooth was carried out by a group of researchers from the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara, who have recently published a paper* in the Journal of Human Evolution. “This work stems from the synergy between different disciplines and specializations”, says Matteo Romandini, lead author of this study and researcher at the University of Bologna. “High-resolution prehistoric field archaeology allowed us to find the tooth, then we employed virtual approaches to the analyses of its shape, genome, taphonomy and of its radiometric profile. Following this process, we could identify this tooth as belonging to a child that was one of the last Neanderthals in Italy”.

The genetic analysis reveals that the owner of the tooth found in Veneto was a relative, on their mother’s side, of Neanderthals that had lived in Belgium. This makes this site in Veneto a key area for comprehending the gradual extinction of Neanderthals in Europe.

“This small tooth is extremely important”, according to Stefano Benazzi, professor at the University of Bologna and research coordinator. “This is even more relevant if we consider that, when this child who lived in Veneto lost their tooth, Homo sapiens communities were already present a thousand kilometers away in Bulgaria”.

Researchers analyzed the tooth by employing highly innovative virtual methods. “The techniques we employed to analyze the tooth led to the following discovery: this is an upper canine milk-tooth that belonged to a Neanderthal child, aged 11 or 12, that lived between 48,000 and 45,000 years ago”, as reported by Gregorio Oxilia and Eugenio Bortolini, who are co-authors of the study and researchers at the University of Bologna. “According to this dating, this little milk-tooth is the most recent finding of the Neanderthal period in Northern Italy and one of the latest in the entire peninsula”.

The findings retrieved from the “Riparo del Broion” are still being analyzed. However, preliminary results show that this site had been used for a long period of time as there are signs of hunting activities and butchering of large prey. “The manufacturing of tools, mainly made of flint, shows Neanderthals’ great adaptability and their systematic and specialized exploitation of the raw materials available in this area”, adds Marco Peresanti, a professor of the University of Ferrara who contributed to the study.

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An upper canine milk-tooth that belonged to a Neanderthal child, aged 11 or 12, that lived between 48,000 and 45,000 years ago. Journal of Human Evolution

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The findings retrieved from the “Riparo del Broion” are still being analyzed. However, preliminary results show that this site had been used for a long period of time as there are signs of hunting activities and butchering of large prey. Journal of Human Evolution

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Article Source: UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA news release

*The paper reporting about the results of this study was published in the Journal of Human Evolution and its title is “A late Neanderthal tooth from northeastern Italy”. Matteo Romandini, Gregorio Oxilia, Eugenio Bortolini, Simona Arrighi, Federica Badino, Carla Figus, Federico Lugli, Giulia Marciani, Sara Silvestrini and Stefano Benazzi (all from the Department of Cultural Heritage) participated in the study proudly representing the University of Bologna.

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For the first time, an international team of scientists have uncovered fossilized footprints of humans that inhabited the present-day Nefud Desert in Saudi Arabia about 120,000 years ago. The discovery provides evidence for the presence of anatomically modern humans (AMH, or Homo sapiens) in a region suggested by some scientists to have been inhabited during early exodus episodes of humans out of Africa well before the date range thought by archaeologists for the exit (about 60,000 years ago). 

Through investigative field efforts led by Mathew Stewart of the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology (MPI-CE), the research team, consisting of members from MPI-CE and the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany and Royal Holloway University of London, UK, along with other partners, discovered the footprints along with numerous other large mammal footprint tracks in the Alathar ancient paleolake deposit located within the western Nefud desert. The geological deposit, like the desert that surrounds it, has been dry for tens of thousands of years, but at one time it formed the bed of a fresh water lake. The researchers surveyed two sections within a 1.8-meter-thick deposit of sandy-silt diatomite layer, which was overlaid by a layer formed by windblown sand. They uncovered a total of 376 tracks, which included 44 elephant, 107 camel, and 7 hominin footprints. The sediment in which the tracks were found was sandwiched between a younger sediment above and an older sediment below, dating the tracks to a time between 112,00 and 121,000 years ago. 

The finding was nothing less than remarkable. “We immediately realized the potential of these findings,” said Stewart. “Footprints are a unique form of fossil evidence in that they provide snapshots in time, typically representing a few hours or days, a resolution we tend not get from other records.” Similar striking snapshots on the spectrum of human evolution have been discovered, for example, at Laetoli in Tanzania and near Happisburgh in the UK.

Other than the human footprints, equally noteworthy were the elephant tracks, as elephants are thought to have gone extinct in the Levant to the west about 400 thousand years ago. According to team member and study author Michael Petraglia of MPI-SHH, the evidence for the presence of large mammals like elephants and water-loving hippos, along with the paleoenvironmental evidence for open grasslands and significant water resources such as lakes in Arabia at this ancient time, likely made the region a desirable place for animals, including humans, to pass through and inhabit as a kind of corridor region between Africa and Eurasia. In the case of Alathar, the findings suggest that the animals and humans were coming together to forage and survive around the ancient lake during a time of increasing aridification (drying) and diminishing water resources. “We know people visited the lake, but the lack of stone tools or evidence of the use of animal carcasses suggests that their visit to the lake was only brief,” says Stewart. 

Following the Green

The findings actually represent an event within a larger pattern of environmental fluctuations and animal and human movements over time in the region. “In the present day,” says Ash Parton of the University of Oxford, a specialist on palaeoenvironmental change, “monsoon rains only reach the very south-southwestern edges of the peninsula; however, palaeoclimatic evidence suggests that over the past 130,000 years there have been several periods in which these rains extended all the way into the desert interior. Utilizing a technique that allows researchers to know when individual grains of sand were buried (optically stimulated luminescence dating), findings suggest that the ‘greening of Arabia’ occurred approximately every 22,000 years between around 130,000 and 50,000 years ago. During these times drainage systems became active, leading to the expansion of large meandering rivers and the development of vast freshwater lakes, some of which were up to 2000 km². Palaeoenvironmental evidence from relict lake beds in what are now the hyper-arid Nefud and Rub al Khali deserts of Saudi Arabia, also shows that these large lakes were fringed with grasslands and trees, and home to a wide variety of fauna.”

The Gateway to Eurasia 

The species of human that moved through the region during this time period remains a matter of debate. Neanderthals were in Eurasia at the time. But the archaeological record thus far does not support their presence in Arabia during this period, and the record for modern human habitation of the Levant region just to the west dates back to about 180,000 years ago. “It is only after the last interglacial with the return of cooler conditions that we have definitive evidence for Neanderthals moving into the region,” says Stewart. “The footprints, therefore, most likely represent [anatomically modern] humans, or Homo sapiens.”  

The footprints are located within what many scientists suggest was a ‘gateway’ between Africa and Eurasia, a possible general route for the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa and into the rest of the world. Although the earliest fossils of AMH discovered outside of Africa date to about 210,000 years ago in southern Greece and 180,000 years ago in the Levant, the exit routes they took from Africa into Eurasia remain largely unknown and a topic of scholarly debate. But it is clear that investigations in Arabia will continue to play a prominent role in the debate. “Every new site being discovered in Arabia reveals remarkable new information which makes it a very exciting time to be working in the area,” said Huw Groucutt, an archaeologist and paleoanthropologist currently with the MPI-SHH who has been conducting research and working at sites in Saudi Arabia for years. “We are confident that……..we will make some major discoveries. We are also keen to see archaeological data emphasized when it seems that many archaeologists have been living in the shadow of genetics interpretations over recent years. Yet archaeological data is the only record of how humans were behaving in particular times and places, so we are trying to restore the balance to the subjects contributing to the story of modern human origins.” Thus the Alathar footprints, maintain Stewart and his colleagues, make an important contribution to the search for early movements of AMH out of Africa into the Eurasian continent.

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View of the edge of the Alathar ancient lake deposit and surrounding landscape. Klint Janulis

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Researchers surveying the Alathar ancient lake deposit. Palaeodeserts Project

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Elephant (left) and camel (right) trackways. Stewart et al., 2020

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The first human footprint discovered at Alathar and its corresponding digital elevation model (DEM). Stewart et al., 2020

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Above and below: First human footprint discovered at the Alathar ancient lake. Klint Janulis

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Article sources: SCIENCE ADVANCES and MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY press releases, and The First Arabians, published June 5, 2014 in Popular Archaeology Magazine. 

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If you liked this article, you may like The First Wave, an in-depth premium article now available in the summer issue with a subscription to Popular Archaeology.

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ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Invaders, pirates, warriors – the history books taught us that Vikings were brutal predators who travelled by sea from Scandinavia to pillage and raid their way across Europe and beyond.

Now cutting-edge DNA sequencing of more than 400 Viking skeletons from archaeological sites scattered across Europe and Greenland will rewrite the history books as it has shown:

• Skeletons from famous Viking burial sites in Scotland were actually local people who could have taken on Viking identities and were buried as Vikings.
• Many Vikings actually had brown hair not blonde hair.
• Viking identity was not limited to people with Scandinavian genetic ancestry. The study shows the genetic history of Scandinavia was influenced by foreign genes from Asia and Southern Europe before the Viking Age.
• Early Viking Age raiding parties were an activity for locals and included close family members.
• The genetic legacy in the UK has left the population with up to six per cent Viking DNA.

The six-year research project, published in Nature today (16 September 2020), debunks the modern image of Vikings and was led by Professor Eske Willerslev, a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and director of The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen.

He said: “We have this image of well-connected Vikings mixing with each other, trading and going on raiding parties to fight Kings across Europe because this is what we see on television and read in books – but genetically we have shown for the first time that it wasn’t that kind of world. This study changes the perception of who a Viking actually was – no one could have predicted these significant gene flows into Scandinavia from Southern Europe and Asia happened before and during the Viking Age.”

The word Viking comes from the Scandinavian term ‘vikingr’ meaning ‘pirate’. The Viking Age generally refers to the period from A.D. 800, a few years after the earliest recorded raid, until the 1050s, a few years before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The Vikings changed the political and genetic course of Europe and beyond: Cnut the Great became the King of England, Leif Eriksson is believed to have been the first European to reach North America – 500 years before Christopher Columbus – and Olaf Tryggvason is credited with taking Christianity to Norway. Many expeditions involved raiding monasteries and cities along the coastal settlements of Europe but the goal of trading goods like fur, tusks and seal fat were often the more pragmatic aim.

Professor Willerslev added: “We didn’t know genetically what they actually looked like until now. We found genetic differences between different Viking populations within Scandinavia which shows Viking groups in the region were far more isolated than previously believed. Our research even debunks the modern image of Vikings with blonde hair as many had brown hair and were influenced by genetic influx from the outside of Scandinavia.”

The team of international academics sequenced the whole genomes of 442 mostly Viking Age men, women, children and babies from their teeth and petrous bones found in Viking cemeteries. They analyzed the DNA from the remains from a boat burial in Estonia and discovered four Viking brothers died the same day. The scientists have also revealed male skeletons from a Viking burial site in Orkney, Scotland, were not actually genetically Vikings despite being buried with swords and other Viking memorabilia.

There wasn’t a word for Scandinavia during the Viking Age – that came later. But the research study shows that the Vikings from what is now Norway travelled to Ireland, Scotland, Iceland and Greenland. The Vikings from what is now Denmark travelled to England. And Vikings from what is now Sweden went to the Baltic countries on their all male ‘raiding parties’.

Dr Ashot Margaryan, Assistant Professor at the Section for Evolutionary Genomics, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen and first author of the paper, said: “We carried out the largest ever DNA analysis of Viking remains to explore how they fit into the genetic picture of Ancient Europeans before the Viking Age. The results were startling and some answer long-standing historical questions and confirm previous assumptions that lacked evidence.

“We discovered that a Viking raiding party expedition included close family members as we discovered four brothers in one boat burial in Estonia who died the same day. The rest of the occupants of the boat were genetically similar suggesting that they all likely came from a small town or village somewhere in Sweden.”

DNA from the Viking remains were shotgun sequenced from sites in Greenland, Ukraine, The United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia.

Professor Martin Sikora, a lead author of the paper and an Associate Professor at the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, said: “We found that Vikings weren’t just Scandinavians in their genetic ancestry, as we analyzed genetic influences in their DNA from Southern Europe and Asia which has never been contemplated before. Many Vikings have high levels of non-Scandinavian ancestry, both within and outside Scandinavia, which suggest ongoing gene flow across Europe.”

The team’s analysis also found that genetically Pictish people ‘became’ Vikings without genetically mixing with Scandinavians. The Picts were Celtic-speaking people who lived in what is today eastern and northern Scotland during the Late British Iron Age and Early Medieval periods.

Dr Daniel Lawson, lead author from The University of Bristol, explained: “Individuals with two genetically British parents who had Viking burials were found in Orkney and Norway. This is a different side of the cultural relationship from Viking raiding and pillaging.”

The Viking Age altered the political, cultural and demographic map of Europe in ways that are still evident today in place names, surnames and modern genetics.

Professor Søren Sindbæk, an archaeologist from Moesgaard Museum in Denmark who collaborated on the ground-breaking paper, explained: “Scandinavian diasporas established trade and settlement stretching from the American continent to the Asian steppe. They exported ideas, technologies, language, beliefs and practices and developed new socio-political structures. Importantly our results show that ‘Viking’ identity was not limited to people with Scandinavian genetic ancestry. Two Orkney skeletons who were buried with Viking swords in Viking style graves are genetically similar to present-day Irish and Scottish people and could be the earliest Pictish genomes ever studied.”

Assistant Professor Fernando Racimo, also a lead author based at the GeoGenetics Centre in the University of Copenhagen, stressed how valuable the dataset is for the study of the complex traits and natural selection in the past. He explained: This is the first time we can take a detailed look at the evolution of variants under natural selection in the last 2,000 years of European history. The Viking genomes allow us to disentangle how selection unfolded before, during and after the Viking movements across Europe, affecting genes associated with important traits like immunity, pigmentation and metabolism. We can also begin to infer the physical appearance of ancient Vikings and compare them to Scandinavians today.”

The genetic legacy of the Viking Age lives on today with six per cent of people of the UK population predicted to have Viking DNA in their genes compared to 10 per cent in Sweden.

Professor Willeslev concluded: “The results change the perception of who a Viking actually was. The history books will need to be updated.”

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DNA from a female skeleton named Kata found at a Viking burial site in Varnhem, Sweden, was sequenced as part of the study. Västergötlands Museum

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A mass grave of around 50 headless Vikings from a site in Dorset, UK. Some of these remains were used for DNA analysis. Dorset County Council/Oxford Archaeology

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An artistic reconstruction of ‘Southern European’ Vikings emphasising the foreign gene flow into Viking Age Scandinavia. Jim Lyngvild

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

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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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