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CNRS—For 50 years, the theory of the “descended larynx” has stated that before speech can emerge, the larynx must be in a low position to produce differentiated vowels. Monkeys, which have a vocal tract anatomy that resembles that of humans in the essential articulators (tongue, jaw, lips) but with a higher larynx, could not produce differentiated vocalizations. Researchers at the CNRS and the Université Grenoble Alpes, in collaboration with French, Canadian and US teams, show in a 11 December 2019 review article in Science Advances that monkeys produce well differentiated proto-vowels. The production of differentiated vocalizations is not therefore a question of anatomical variants but of control of articulators. This work leads us to think that speech could have emerged before the 200,000 years ago that linguists currently assert.

Since speech can be considered as being the cornerstone of the human species, it is not surprising that two pairs of researchers, in the 1930s-1950s, had tested the possibility of teaching a home-raised chimpanzee to speak, at the same time and under the same conditions as their baby. All their experiments ended in failure. To explain this result, in 1969 in a long series of articles a US researcher, Philip Lieberman, proposed the theory of the descended larynx (TDL). By comparing the human vocal tract to monkeys, this researcher has shown that these have a small pharynx, related to the high position of their larynx, whereas in humans, the larynx is lower. This anatomic block reportedly prevents differentiated vowel production, which is present in all the world’s languages and necessary for spoken language. Despite some criticisms and many acoustic observations that contradict the TDL, it would come to be accepted by most primatologists.

More recently, articles on monkeys’ articulatory capacities have shown that they may have used a system of proto-vowels. Considering the acoustic cavities formed by the tongue, jaw and lips (identical in primates and humans), they showed that production of differentiated vocalizations is not a question of anatomy but relates to control of articulators. The data used to establish the TDL came in fact from cadavers, so they could not reveal control of this nature.

This analysis, conducted by pluridisciplinary specialists in the GIPSA-Lab (CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes/Grenoble INP), in collaboration with the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université), the University of Alabama (USA), the Laboratoire d’Anatomie de l’Université de Montpellier, the Laboratoire de Phonétique de l’Université du Québec (Canada), CRBLM in Montréal (Canada) and the Laboratoire Histoire Naturelle de l’Homme Préhistorique (CNRS/Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle /UPVD), opens new perspectives: if the emergence of articulated speech is no longer dependent on the descent of the larynx, which took place about 200,000 years ago, scientists can now envisage much earlier speech emergence, as far back as at least 20 million years, a time when our common ancestor with monkeys lived, who already presumably had the capacity to produce contrasted vocalizations.

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Baboons raised in semi-liberty produce about ten vocalizations, associated with different ethological situations, that may be considered as proto-vowels, at the dawn of the emergence of speech. © Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université)

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Comparison of the anatomy of the vocal tract of baboons (on the left) and modern humans (on the right). The same articulators, with their muscles, bone and cartilages, but in humans the larynx is lower, increasing the relative size of the pharynx relative to the mouth. The acoustic analysis of monkey vocalizations shows that, despite this anatomical difference, they can produce differentiated “proto-vowels” that we can compare with vowels of world languages. © Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université) et GIPSA-lab (CNRS/Université Grenoble Alpes)

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Article Source: CNRS news release

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PLOS—The ancient Romans relied on long-distance timber trading to construct their empire, according to a study published December 4, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mauro Bernabei from the National Research Council, Italy, and colleagues.

The timber requirements of ancient Rome were immense and complex, with different types of trees from various locations around the Roman Empire and beyond used for many purposes, including construction, shipbuilding and firewood. Unfortunately, the timber trade in ancient Rome is poorly understood, as little wood has been found in a state adequate for analysis. In this study, Bernabei et al successfully date and determine the origin and chronology of unusually well-preserved ancient Roman timber samples.

The twenty-four oak timber planks (Quercus species) analyzed in this study were excavated during Metro construction in Rome during 2014-2016. They formed part of a Roman portico in the gardens of via Sannio (belonging to what was once a lavishly decorated and rich property). The authors measured the tree-ring widths for each plank and ran statistical tests to determine average chronology, successfully dating thirteen of the planks.

By comparing their dated planks to Mediterranean and central European oak reference chronologies, the authors found that the oaks used for the Roman portico planks were taken from the Jura mountains in eastern France, over 1700km away. Based on the sapwood present in 8 of the thirteen samples, the authors were able to narrow the date these oaks were felled to between 40 and 60 CE and determined that the planks all came from neighboring trees. Given the timber’s dimensions and the vast distance it travelled, the authors suggest that ancient Romans (or their traders) likely floated the timber down the Saône and Rhône rivers in present-day France before transporting it over the Mediterranean Sea and then up the river Tiber to Rome, though this cannot be confirmed.

The authors note that the difficulty of obtaining these planks–which were not specially sourced for an aesthetic function but used in the portico’s foundations–suggests that the logistical organization of ancient Rome was considerable, and that their trade network was highly advanced.

Bernabei notes: “This study shows that in Roman times, wood from the near-natural woodlands of north-eastern France was used for construction purposes in the centre of Rome. Considering the distance, calculated to be over 1700km, the timber sizes, [and] the means of transportation with all the possible obstacles along the way, our research emphasizes the importance of wood for the Romans and the powerful logistic organization of the Roman society.”

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Some of the oak planks in situ in the foundation of the portico. Bernabei at al., 2019

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Bernabei M, Bontadi J, Rea R, Büntgen U, Tegel W (2019) Dendrochronological evidence for long-distance timber trading in the Roman Empire. PLoS ONE 14(12): e0224077. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224077

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POLITECNICO DI MILANO—The technical skills of the Roman agrimensores – the technicians in charge of the centuriations (division of the lands) and of other surveys such as planning towns and aqueducts – are simply legendary. For instance, extremely accurate projects of centuriations are still visible today in Italy and in other Mediterranean countries. Their work had also religious and symbolic connections, being related to the foundation of towns and the Etruscan’s tradition.

These technicians were called Gromatics due to their chief working instrument, called the Groma. The Groma was based on a cross made of four perpendicular arms each bringing cords with identical weights, acting as plumb-lines. The surveyor could align with extreme precision two opposite, very thin plumb-lines with reference poles held at various distances by assistants or fixed in the terrain, in the same manner as palines (red and white posts) are used in modern theodolite surveying.

Up to now, the unique known example of a Groma was discovered in the Pompeii excavations, while images illustrating the work of the Gromatics were passed on only by medieval codex’s, dating to many centuries after the art of the agrimensores was no longer practiced. It now seems that, again, Pompeii is the place where new information about these ancient architects has come to light. As part of the Great Pompeii Project, inaugurated in 2014 and co-financed by the European Community, new archaeological investigations have unearthed a house with a solemn, ancient facade. Inside, almost intact floors have been found containing two beautiful mosaics probably representing Orion, and a series of enigmatic images.

The interpretation of the images has been recently reported in a joint paper by Massimo Osanna, Director of the Pompeii archaeological site, and Luisa Ferro and Giulio Magli, of the School of Architecture at the Politecnico of Milan. Among the images there is, for instance, a square inscribed in a circle. The circle is cut by two perpendicular lines, one of which coincides with the longitudinal axis of the atrium of the house and appears as a sort of rose of the winds that identifies a regular division of the circle in eight equally spaced sectors. The image is strikingly similar to one used in medieval codexes that illustrate the way in which the Gromatics divided the space. Another, complex image shows a circle with an orthogonal cross inscribed in it, connected by five dots disposed as a small circle to a straight line with a base. The whole appears as the depiction of a Groma.

Was the house used for meetings and/or did the owner himself belong to the gromatics’ guild? We do not know with certainty. In any case, Pompeii once again reveals itself as an invaluable source in understanding key aspects of Roman life and civilization.

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Plan of the house of Orion, Showing the disposition of the newly discovered images (1,2) and of the mosaics (3). L. Ferro, G Magli, M. Osanna

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The newly discovered images probably referring to the Roman surveyors. L. Ferro, G. Magli, M. Osanna

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Article Source: Edited from the  POLITECNICO DI MILANO news release

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS USA—A new article in the Review of English Studies argues that a manuscript translation of Tacitus’s Annales, completed in the late sixteenth century and preserved at Lambeth Palace Library, was done by Queen Elizabeth I.

The article analyzes the translation’s paper stock, style, and crucially the handwriting preserved in the manuscript to positively identify Elizabeth I as the translation’s author. Researchers here also trace the manuscript’s transmission from the Elizabethan Court to the Lambeth Palace Library, via the collection of Archbishop Thomas Tenison in the seventeenth century. Thanks to his interest in the Elizabethan court and in Francis Bacon, Tenison made the library at Lambeth one of the largest collections of State Papers from the Elizabethan era.

Researchers found persuasive similarities between unique handwriting styles in the Lambeth manuscript and numerous examples of the Queen’s distinctive handwriting in her other translations, including the extreme horizontal ‘m’, the top stroke of her ‘e’, and the break of the stem in’d’.

Researchers here identified the paper used for the Tacitus translation, which suggests a court context. The translation was copied on paper featuring watermarks with a rampant lion and the initials ‘G.B.’, with crossbow countermark, which was especially popular with the Elizabethan secretariat in the 1590s. Notably Elizabeth I used paper with the same watermarks both in her own translation of Boethius, and in personal correspondence.

The tone and style of the translation also matches earlier known works of Elizabeth I. The Lambeth manuscript retains the density of Tacitus’s prose and brevity, and strictly follows the contours of the Latin syntax at the risk of obscuring the sense in English. This style is matched by other translations by Elizabeth, which are compared with the Tacitus translation accordingly.

“The queen’s handwriting was, to put it mildly, idiosyncratic, and the same distinctive features which characterize her late hand are also to be found in the Lambeth manuscript. As the demands of governance increased, her script sped up, and as a result some letters such as ‘m’ and ‘n’ became almost horizontal strokes, while others, including her ‘e’ and ‘d’, broke apart. These distinctive features serve as essential diagnostics in identifying the queen’s work.”

This is the first substantial work by Elizabeth I to emerge in over a century and it has important implications for how we understand the politics and culture of the Elizabethan court.

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Queen Elizabeth was also known for her translations of important works.

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Article Source: Review of English Studies and Oxford University Press news release

PLOS—Small populations, inbreeding, and random demographic fluctuations could have been enough to cause Neanderthal extinction, according to a study* published November 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Krist Vaesen from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and colleagues.

Paleoanthropologists agree that Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago–about the same time that anatomically modern humans began migrating into the Near East and Europe. However, the role modern humans played in Neanderthal extinction is disputed. In this study, the authors used population modeling to explore whether Neanderthal populations could have vanished without external factors such as competition from modern humans.

Using data from extant hunter-gatherer populations as parameters, the authors developed population models for simulated Neanderthal populations of various initial sizes (50, 100, 500, 1,000, or 5,000 individuals). They then simulated for their model populations the effects of inbreeding, Allee effects (where reduced population size negatively impacts individuals’ fitness), and annual random demographic fluctuations in births, deaths, and the sex ratio, to see if these factors could bring about an extinction event over a 10,000-year period.

The population models show that inbreeding alone was unlikely to have led to extinction (this only occurred in the smallest model population). However, reproduction-related Allee effects where 25 percent or fewer Neanderthal females gave birth within a given year (as is common in extant hunter-gatherers) could have caused extinction in populations of up to 1,000 individuals. In conjunction with demographic fluctuations, Allee effects plus inbreeding could have caused extinction across all population sizes modeled within the 10,000 years allotted.

The population models are limited by their parameters, which are based on modern human hunter-gatherers and exclude the impact of the Allee effect on survival rates. It’s also possible that modern humans could have impacted Neanderthal populations in ways which reinforced inbreeding and Allee effects, but are not reflected in the models.

However, by showing demographic issues alone could have led to Neanderthal extinction, the authors note these models may serve as a “null hypothesis” for future competing theories—including the impact of modern humans on Neanderthals.

The authors add: “Did Neanderthals disappear because of us? No, this study suggests. The species’ demise might have been due merely to a stroke of bad, demographic luck.”

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Small populations, inbreeding, and random demographic fluctuations could have been enough to cause Neanderthal extinction, according to a study published November 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Krist Vaesen from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and colleagues. Petr Kratochvil (CC0)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Vaesen K, Scherjon F, Hemerik L, Verpoorte A (2019) Inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity might be sufficient to account for Neanderthal extinction. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0225117. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225117

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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON—MADISON, Wis.—Last year, scientists announced that a human jawbone and prehistoric tools found in 2002 in Misliya Cave, on the western edge of Israel, were between 177,000 and 194,000 years old.

The finding suggested that modern humans, who originated in Africa, began migrating out of the continent at least 40,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought.

But the story of how and when modern humans originated and spread throughout the world is still in draft form. That’s because science hasn’t settled how many times modern humans left Africa, or just how many routes they may have taken.

A new study published this week [Nov. 25, 2019] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by American and Israeli geoscientists and climatologists provides evidence that summer monsoons from Asia and Africa may have reached into the Middle East for periods of time going back at least 125,000 years, providing suitable corridors for human migration.

The likely timing of these northward monsoon expansions corresponds with cyclical changes in Earth’s orbit that would have brought the Northern Hemisphere closer to the sun and led to increased summer precipitation. With increased summer precipitation there may have been increased vegetation, supporting animal and human migration into the region.

“It could be important context for experts studying how, why, and when early modern humans were migrating out of Africa,” says lead author Ian Orland, a University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientist now at the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, in the Division of Extension. “The Eastern Mediterranean was a critical bottleneck for that route out of Africa and if our suggestion is right, at 125,000 years ago and potentially at other periods, there may have been more consistent rainfall on a year-round basis that might enhance the ability of humans to migrate.”

For as long as humans have kept records, winters have been wet and summers have been hot and dry in the Levant, a region that includes Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Before modern times, those hot, dry summers would have presented a significant barrier to people trying to move across the landscape.

Scientists, though, have found it difficult to determine what kinds of precipitation patterns might have existed in the prehistoric Levant. Some studies examining a variety of evidence, including pollen records, ancient lake beds, and Dead Sea sediments, along with some climate modeling studies, indicate summers in the region may have, on occasion, been wet.

To try to better understand this seasonality, Orland and colleagues looked at cave formations called speleothems in Israel’s Soreq Cave. Speleothems, such as stalactites and stalagmites, form when water drips into a cave and deposits a hard mineral called calcite. The water contains chemical fingerprints called isotopes that keep a record, like an archive, of the timing and environmental conditions under which speleothems have grown.

Among these isotopes are different forms of oxygen molecules — a light form called O16 and a heavy form called O18. Today, the water contributing to speleothem growth throughout much of the year has both heavy and light oxygen, with the light oxygen predominantly delivered by rainstorms during the winter wet season.

Orland and his colleagues hypothesized they might be able to discern from speleothems whether two rainy seasons had contributed to their growth at times in the past because they might show a similar signature of light oxygen in both winter and summer growth.

But to make this comparison, the scientists had to make isotope measurements across single growth bands, which are narrower than a human hair. Using a sensitive instrument in the UW-Madison Department of Geoscience called an ion microprobe, the team measured the relative amounts of light and heavy oxygen at seasonal increments across the growth bands of two 125,000-year-old speleothems from Soreq Cave.

This was the first time that seasonal changes were directly measured in a speleothem this old.

At the same time that Orland was in pursuit of geologic answers, his UW-Madison colleague in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Center for Climatic Research, Feng He, was independently using climate models to examine how vegetation on the planet has changed with seasonal fluctuations over the last 800,000 years. Colleagues since graduate school, He and Orland teamed up to combine their respective approaches after learning their studies were complementary.

A previous study in 2014 from UW-Madison climatologist and Professor Emeritus John Kutzbach showed that the Middle East may have been warmer and wetter than usual during two periods of time corresponding roughly to 125,000 years ago and 105,000 years ago. Meanwhile, at a point in between, 115,000 years ago, conditions there were more similar to today.

The wetter time periods corresponded to peak summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere, when Earth passes closer to the sun due to subtle changes in its orbit. The drier time period corresponded to one of its farthest orbits from the sun. Monsoon seasons tend to be stronger during peak insolation.

This provided He an opportunity to study high and low insolation rainfall during summer seasons in the Middle East and to study its isotopic signatures.

The climate model “fueled the summer monsoon hypothesis” because it suggested that “under these conditions, the monsoons could have reached the Middle East and would have a low O18 signature,” He, a study co-author, says. “It’s a very intriguing period in terms of climate and human evolution.”

His model showed that northward expansion of the African and Asian summer monsoons was possible during this time period, would have brought significant rainfall to the Levant in the summer months, would have nearly doubled annual precipitation in the region, and would have left an oxygen isotope signature similar to winter rains.

At the same time, Orland’s speleothem isotope analysis also suggested summers were rainier during peak insolation at 125,000 and 105,000 years ago.

For similar reasons, the Middle East may have also been warm and humid around 176,000 years ago, the researchers say — about when the jawbone made its way to Misliya Cave. And before the jawbone, the previous oldest modern human fossils found outside of Africa were at Israel’s Skhul Cave, dating back between 80,000 and 120,000 years ago.

Overall, the study suggests that during a period of time when humans and their ancestors were exploring beyond the African continent, conditions may have been favorable for them to traverse the Levant.

“Human migration out of Africa occurred in pulses, which is definitely consistent with our idea that every time the Earth is closer to the sun, the summer monsoon is stronger and that’s the climatic window that opened and provided opportunities for human migration out of Africa,” says He.

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Collapsed ceiling block from the Soreq Cave in Israel, with post-collapse stalagmites growing on it. Elisak, E. Kagan, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON news release

Kutzbach is a co-author of the study along with UW-Madison’s Guangshan Chen and Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon from the Geological Survey of Israel. The study was supported by computing resources funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy. The ion microprobe, in the Wisconsin Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, is supported by NSF grants EAR-1355590 and EAR-1658823 and UW-Madison. The study was also funded by NSF Grants 1603065, 1231155, 1702407, and by the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Project.

–Kelly April Tyrrell

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER—A unique group of dogs helped the Inuit conquer the tough terrain of the North American Arctic, major new analysis of the remains of hundreds of animals shows.

The study shows that the Inuit brought specialized dogs with them when they migrated from Alaska and Siberia instead of adopting local dogs they would have come across during their migration. They instead maintained their own dogs, suggesting they were keen to enhance or keep the special features they had. By analyzing the shape of elements from 391 dogs, the study shows that the Inuit had larger dogs with a proportionally narrower cranium to these earlier dogs. The Inuit dogs are the direct ancestors of modern Arctic sledge dogs, although their appearance has continued to change over time.

Experts had thought the Inuit used dogs to pull sledges, and this is the first study which shows they introduced a new dog population to the region to do this. These dogs then spread across the North American Arctic alongside Inuit migrants.

Dr Carly Ameen, an archaeologist from the University of Exeter who led the study, said: “Dogs have lived in North America for as long as humans, but we show here that the Inuit brought new dogs to the region which were genetically distinct and physically different from earlier dogs.

“Thousands of years ago there was not the huge number of dog breeds as we know them today. Through analyzing the DNA and morphology of the remains of hundreds of dogs we’ve found that the dogs used by the Inuit had distinctive skull and teeth shapes, and would have likely looked different in life to dogs already in the Arctic.”

Experts also examined the DNA from 921 dogs and wolves who lived during the last 4,500 years. This analysis of the DNA, and the locations and time periods in which they were found, shows dogs from Inuit sites occupied from around 2,000 years ago were genetically different from the dogs already in the region.

Study co-lead author Tatiana Feuerborn, from the Globe Institute in Denmark and the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden, said: “Archaeological evidence has shown us that before the Inuit arrived in North America dog sledging was a rarity. Our analysis of the DNA suggests dogs brought by the Inuit were distinct from the earlier dogs of the North American Arctic to fill specialist role in helping communities thrive in this hostile environment by aiding with transportation and hunting. The genetic legacy of these Inuit dogs can still be seen today in Arctic sledge dogs.”

The Inuit were specialized sea mammal hunters, and were more mobile than other groups living in the Arctic, migrating huge distances across the region over 1,000 years ago, with the help of dog sledges and water craft. Today, sledge dogs whose origins can be traced back to the Inuit period continue to be an important part of Arctic communities.

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“The Inuit brought new dogs to the region which were genetically distinct and physically different from earlier dogs.” Photo by Natalia Kollegova

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Article Source: University of Exeter news release

The article is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Ameen, Carly, Tatiana Feuerborn, Sarah K. Brown, Anna Linderholm, et al. 2019. “Specialized Sledge Dogs Accompanied Inuit Dispersal across the North American Arctic.” Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology 20191929 (November). 

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—Mongolia hosts one of the world’s most dynamic animal-based economies, including the world’s lowest latitude population of domestic reindeer herders, the Tsaatan people, who live in the high tundra (in Mongolian, taiga) along the Russian border in the country’s Khuvsgul province. While there is reason to suspect that reindeer herding and utilization of the area’s rich wildlife resources played an important role in the region’s history and prehistory, the area’s harsh climate and active geology mean that very few archaeological materials have survived to the present day. In the current study, an international team of researchers present new evidence of historic tool production and wild resource use, indicating that ice patches are likely to contain one of the few material records of premodern reindeer domestication in Mongolia and lower Central Asia.

Snow and ice patches may provide the key to understanding the taiga zone’s past

“These accumulations of ice and snow freeze objects that have fallen inside, preserving them to create one of our only archaeological datasets from this key region,” says lead author, William Taylor of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Colorado-Boulder. Conducting the first such work of its kind in the region, Taylor and his colleagues reported finding a number of wooden artifacts, including an object identified by local people as a willow fishing pole.

These objects preserve important information about traditional technologies, and suggest that future work may help answer persistent questions, such as when domestic reindeer were first introduced. Some of the objects found by the team were scientifically dated to the mid-20th century, indicating that summer ice melt is melting to levels that haven’t been seen in half a century or more.

Melting ice is an opportunity for scientists but a challenge for modern herders

Unfortunately, even as the melting ice shares its first clues into the past, it also poses a grave danger to modern reindeer herders. Reindeer rely on snow and ice to regulate heat and to escape disease-carrying insects. Melting snow also provides important sources of water for both people and animals. As the ice melts, sometimes for the very first time, the warming climate undercuts the viability of reindeer herding, and appears to be permanently influencing the fragile ecology of northern Mongolia’s tundra zones.

“Access to ice patches has been critical for the health and welfare of these animals in so many ways,” says Jocelyn Whitworth, a veterinary researcher and study co-author. “Losing the ice compromises reindeer health and hygiene and leaves them more exposed to disease, and impacts the well-being of the people who depend on the reindeer.”

Going forward, global warming appears to pose a powerful threat, both to Mongolia’s modern herders and to its archaeological cultural heritage. Dr. Julia Clark, the project’s co-director, is especially worried. “Archaeology is non-renewable,” she says. “Once the ice has melted and these artifacts are gone, we can never get them back. ” The team has redoubled their efforts for the coming year, in the hopes of saving these rare, well-preserved items, and using them to understand the origins of Mongolia’s unique pastoral way of life.

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A domestic reindeer saddled for riding outside a Tsaatan summer camp in Khuvsgul province, northern Mongolia. Julia Clark

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Mongolia’s domestic reindeer are increasingly threatened by warming temperatures, which are melting essential snow and ice patches. Julia Clark

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Ice patch nearing complete melt in northern Mongolia’s Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area, 2018. William Taylor

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

*Investigating reindeer pastoralism and exploitation of high mountain zones in northern Mongolia through ice patch archaeology Authors: William Taylor, Julia K. Clark, Björn Reichhardt, Gregory W.L. Hodgins, Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, Oyendelger Batchuluun, Jocelyn Whitworth, Myagmar Nansalmaa, Craig M. Lee, E. James Dixon 

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UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA—Ochre, one of Earth’s oldest naturally occurring materials, was often used as a vivid red paint in ancient rock art known as pictographs across the world. Despite its broad use throughout human history and a modern focus on how the artistic symbolism is interpreted, little research exists on the paint itself and how it was produced.

Now, scientists led by Brandi MacDonald at the University of Missouri are using archaeological science to understand how ochre paint was created by hunter-gatherers in North America to produce rock art located at Babine Lake in British Columbia. The study was published in Scientific Reports, a journal of Nature.

“Ochre is one of the only types of material that people have continually used for over 200,000 years, if not longer,” said MacDonald, who specializes in ancient pigments. “Therefore, we have a deep history in the archeological record of humans selecting and engaging with this material, but few people study how it’s actually made.”

This is the first study of the rock art at Babine Lake. It shows that individuals who prepared the ochre paints harvested an aquatic, iron-rich bacteria out of the lake — in the form of an orange-brown sediment.

In the study, the scientists used modern technology, including the ability to heat a single grain of ochre and watch the effects of temperature change under an electron microscope at MU’s Electron Microscopy Core facility. They determined that individuals at Babine Lake deliberately heated this bacteria to a temperature range of approximately 750°C to 850°C to initiate the color transformation.

“It’s common to think about the production of red paint as people collecting red rocks and crushing them up,” MacDonald said. “Here, with the help of multiple scientific methods, we were able to reconstruct the approximate temperature at which the people at Babine Lake were deliberately heating this biogenic paint over open-hearth fires. So, this wasn’t a transformation done by chance with nature. Today, engineers are spending a lot of money trying to determine how to produce highly thermo-stable paints for ceramic manufacturing or aerospace engineering without much known success, yet we’ve found that hunter-gatherers had already discovered a successful way to do this long ago.”

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One of the pieces of rock art found at Babine Lake. It is representative of the rock art that was analyzed in the study. University of Missouri

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In the study, the scientists heated a single grain of ochre and watched the effects of temperature change under an electron microscope at MU’s Electron Microscopy Core facility. University of Missouri

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA news release

The study, “Hunter-Gatherers Harvested and Heated Microbial Biogenic Iron Oxides to Produce Rock Art Pigment,” was published in Scientific Reports, a journal of Nature. MacDonald is an assistant research professor in the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) who also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology at the College of Arts and Science. Co-authors include David Stalla, Matt Maschmann, Tommi White and Xiaoqing He at MU; Farid Rahemtulla at the University of Northern British Columbia; David Emerson at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences; Paul Dube at the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research; and Catherine Klesner at the University of Arizona. The authors would like to acknowledge the permission and support of the descendant Lake Babine Nation, upon whose traditional territory the rock art resides.

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PLOS—In ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study* released November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Wasef of Griffith University, Australia and colleagues.

Egyptian catacombs are famously filled with the mummified bodies of Sacred Ibises. Between around 664BC and 250AD, it was common practice for the birds to be sacrificed, or much more rarely worshipped in ritual service to the god Thoth, and subsequently mummified. In ancient sites across Egypt, these mummified birds are stacked floor to ceiling along kilometers of catacombs, totaling many millions of birds. But how the Egyptians got access to so many birds has been a mystery; some ancient texts indicate that long-term farming and domestication may have been employed.

In this study, Wasef and colleagues collected DNA from 40 mummified Sacred Ibis specimens from six Egyptian catacombs dating to around 2500 years ago and 26 modern specimens from across Africa. 14 of the mummies and all of the modern specimens yielded complete mitochondrial genome sequences. These data allowed the researchers to compare genetic diversity between wild populations and the sacrificed collections.

If the birds were being domesticated and farmed, the expected result would be low genetic diversity due to interbreeding of restricted populations, but in contrast, this study found that the genetic diversity of mummified Ibises within and between catacombs was similar to that of modern wild populations. This suggests that the birds were not the result of centralized farming, but instead short-term taming. The authors suggest the birds were likely tended in their natural habitats or perhaps farmed only in the times of year they were needed for sacrifice.

The authors add: “We report the first complete ancient genomes of the Egyptian Sacred Ibis mummies, showing that priests sustained short-term taming of the wild Sacred Ibis in local lakes or wetlands contrary to centralised industrial scale farming of sacrificial birds.”

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Scene from the Books of the Dead (The Egyptian museum) showing the ibis-headed God Thoth recording the result of the final judgement. Wasef et al, 2019

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Wasef S, Subramanian S, O’Rorke R, Huynen L, El-Marghani S, Curtis C, et al. (2019) Mitogenomic diversity in Sacred Ibis Mummies sheds light on early Egyptian practices. PLoS ONE 14(11): e0223964. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223964

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Science Advances—Changes in climate may have contributed to both the rise and collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, which was considered the most powerful empire of its time, according to a new study. The results suggest that multi-decade megadroughts aligned with the timing of the empire’s collapse in 609 BCE, triggering declines in the region’s agricultural productivity that led to political and economic demise within 60 years. Previous explanations for the empire’s collapse have focused on political instability and wars; the role of climate change was largely “ignored,” the authors say, in part because of a lack of high-resolution paleoclimate records from the region. Ashish Sinha et al. gathered oxygen and carbon isotopic data from two stalagmites found in Kuna Ba Cave in northern Iraq, which provide a precisely dated record of precipitation over the last 4,000 years. These records indicate that the interval between 850 and 740 BCE (when the empire was at its zenith) was one of the wettest periods in 4,000 years, with precipitation levels during the cool season 15 to 30% higher than during the modern 1980-2007 period. However, the record also suggests that cool season precipitation during a seventh century BCE megadrought may have fallen below the level required for productive farming. Since the empire was highly dependent on agriculture, Sinha and colleagues conclude the megadrought would have likely exacerbated political unrest and may have encouraged invading armies that ultimately led to Assyrian collapse. The authors also note that their data suggest that the recent multi-year droughts, if they were to continue over a century, would constitute the worst episodes of regional drought in the last four millennia.

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Ashurbanipal, last major ruler of the Assyrian Empire, depicted in the royal lion hunt bas-reliefs (c. 645 BCE) that were ripped from the walls fo the North Palace at Nineveh during the excavations of 1852-1855 and shipped to the British Museum. The bas-reliefs are widely regarded as “the supreme masterpieces of Assyrian art”. British Museum

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‘Hall in Assyrian Palace’ restored from 1845 excavations at Nimrud, in the Monuments of Nineveh, from drawings made on the Spot, 1849, by Austen Henry Layard. The earlier Assyrian capital at Nimrud, 30 kms south of the last capital at Nineveh, was similarly destroyed in 612 BCE. New York Public library digital collections

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Article Source: Science Advances news release. Science Advances is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

If you liked this article, you may like End of Empire: The Archaeological Excavations at Ziyaret Tepe, about excavations that have revealed a massive ancient Assyrian provincial capital, including a unique and remarkable glimpse into the demise of the ancient empire.

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STANFORD UNIVERSITY—SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SCIENCES—Growing up in Israel, Gili Greenbaum would give tours of local caves once inhabited by Neanderthals and wonder along with others why our distant cousins abruptly disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Now a scientist at Stanford, Greenbaum thinks he has an answer.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Greenbaum and his colleagues propose that complex disease transmission patterns can explain not only how modern humans were able to wipe out Neanderthals in Europe and Asia in just a few thousand years but also, perhaps more puzzling, why the end didn’t come sooner.

“Our research suggests that diseases may have played a more important role in the extinction of the Neanderthals than previously thought. They may even be the main reason why modern humans are now the only human group left on the planet,” said Greenbaum, who is the first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in Stanford’s Department of Biology.

The slow kill

Archeological evidence suggests that the initial encounter between Eurasian Neanderthals and an upstart new human species that recently strayed out of Africa—our ancestors—occurred more than 130,000 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean in a region known as the Levant.

Yet tens of thousands of years would pass before Neanderthals began disappearing and modern humans expanded beyond the Levant. Why did it take so long?

Employing mathematical models of disease transmission and gene flow, Greenbaum and an international team of collaborators demonstrated how the unique diseases harbored by Neanderthals and modern humans could have created an invisible disease barrier that discouraged forays into enemy territory. Within this narrow contact zone, which was centered in the Levant where first contact took place, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in an uneasy equilibrium that lasted tens of millennia.

Ironically, what may have broken the stalemate and ultimately allowed our ancestors to supplant Neanderthals was the coming together of our two species through interbreeding. The hybrid humans born of these unions may have carried immune-related genes from both species, which would have slowly spread through modern human and Neanderthal populations.

As these protective genes spread, the disease burden or consequences of infection within the two groups gradually lifted. Eventually, a tipping point was reached when modern humans acquired enough immunity that they could venture beyond the Levant and deeper into Neanderthal territory with few health consequences.

At this point, other advantages that modern humans may have had over Neanderthals—such as deadlier weapons or more sophisticated social structures—could have taken on greater importance. “Once a certain threshold is crossed, disease burden no longer plays a role, and other factors can kick in,” Greenbaum said.

Why us?

To understand why modern humans replaced Neanderthals and not the other way around, the researchers modeled what would happen if the suite of tropical diseases our ancestors harbored were deadlier or more numerous than those carried by Neanderthals.

“The hypothesis is that the disease burden of the tropics was larger than the disease burden in temperate regions. An asymmetry of disease burden in the contact zone might have favored modern humans, who arrived there from the tropics,” said study co-author Noah Rosenberg, the Stanford Professor of Population Genetics and Society in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

According to the models, even small differences in disease burden between the two groups at the outset would grow over time, eventually giving our ancestors the edge. “It could be that by the time modern humans were almost entirely released from the added burden of Neanderthal diseases, Neanderthals were still very much vulnerable to modern human diseases,” Greenbaum said. “Moreover, as modern humans expanded deeper into Eurasia, they would have encountered Neanderthal populations that did not receive any protective immune genes via hybridization.”

The researchers note that the scenario they are proposing is similar to what happened when Europeans arrived in the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries and decimated indigenous populations with their more potent diseases.

If this new theory about the Neanderthals’ demise is correct, then supporting evidence might be found in the archaeological record. “We predict, for example, that Neanderthal and modern human population densities in the Levant during the time period when they coexisted will be lower relative to what they were before and relative to other regions,” Greenbaum said.

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Illustration of modern humans overcoming disease burden before Neanderthals. Vivian Chen Wong

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Article Source: STANFORD UNIVERSITY—SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SCIENCES news release

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—All roads may lead to Rome, and in ancient times, a great many European genetic lineages did too, according to a new study*. Its results, perhaps the most detailed analysis of changing genetic variation patterns in the region to date, reveal a dynamic population history from the Mesolithic (~10,000 BCE) into modern times, and spanning the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. At its height, the ancient Roman Empire sprawled across three continents, encompassing the entirety of the Mediterranean and the lives of tens of millions across Europe, the Near East and North Africa. The size of the city at its center, Rome – the first to reach more than one million residents in the ancient world – would remain unrivaled in Europe until the dawn of the industrial revolution nearly 1,500 years later. Even long before the rise of Imperial Rome, the region was an important cultural crossroads between Europe and the Mediterranean. However, while Rome and central Italy’s antiquity is well-documented in a rich archaeological and historical record, little is known about the region’s genetic history. Margaret Antonio and colleagues present a new genetic record, built from genome data of 127 ancient individuals from 29 archaeological sites in and around Rome, spanning nearly 12,000 years of Roman prehistory and history. Antonio et al. revealed two major prehistoric ancestry shifts – one occurring as Neolithic farmers replaced Mesolithic hunter-gathers roughly 7,000 years ago, and another during the Bronze age likely coinciding with increased trade and interaction with populations from across the Mediterranean. The results suggest that by Rome’s founding, the genetics of ancient central Italy were much the same as that seen in modern populations. However, throughout the historic period (the past 3,000 years), genetic ancestry was greatly diverse, with genetic contributions from individuals from across the Near East, Europe and North Africa, and changes largely reflected major Roman historical events, the authors say.

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Ancient Rome’s population was genetically diverse, say researchers. Pictured here is the Arch of Constantine, by Julius Silver (Pixabay).

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

*”Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean,” by M.L. Antonio, et al.

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UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA – BARCELONA—An international team of scientists has for the first time performed an analysis of the complete genome of the population of North Africa. They have identified a small genetic imprint of the inhabitants of the region in Palaeolithic times, thus ruling out the theory that recent migrations from other regions completely erased the genetic traces of ancient North Africans. The study was led by David Comas, principal investigator at UPF and at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-UPF) and it has been published in the journal Current Biology.

The field of genomics has evolved greatly in recent years. DNA sequencing is increasingly affordable and there are major projects studying genomes at the population level. However, some human populations like those of North Africa have been systematically ignored. This is the first genomic study to contextualize this region of the world.

The origin and history of the population of North Africa are different from the rest of the continent and are more similar to the demographic history of regions outside Africa: the Middle East, Europe or Asia. Palaeontological remains exist that prove the existence of humans in the region more than 300,000 years ago. In any case, previous genetic studies had shown that current populations of North Africa originated as a result of a Back to Africa process, that is, recent migrations from the Middle East that populated northern Africa.

Hence, the debate that arises is one of continuity versus replacement. On the one hand, the continuity hypothesis posits that current North African populations descend from Palaeolithic groups, i.e., that such ancient humans are the ancestors of present human populations. Meanwhile, other hypotheses argue that the populations that existed in Palaeolithic times were replaced, and that the humans that currently inhabit North Africa are the result of recent migrations that arrived there since the Neolithic.

In this study, the researchers compared genetic data from current North African individuals with data recently published on the DNA of fossil remains found at different sites in Morocco. “We see that the current populations of North Africa are the result of this replacement but we detect small traces of this continuity from Palaeolithic times, i.e., total replacement did not take place in the populations of North Africa”, reveals David Comas, full professor of Biological Anthropology at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS) at UPF. “We do not know whether the first settlers 300,000 years ago are their ancestors, but we do detect imprints of this continuity at least since Palaeolithic times, since 15,000 years ago or more”, he adds.

“We have seen that the genetic imprint of Palaeolithic populations of North Africa is unique to the current North African populations and is decreasingly distributed from west to east in the region, inversely proportional to the Neolithic component coming from the Middle East, which had a greater effect on the eastern region, which is geographically closer”, says Gerard Serra-Vidal, first author of the article.

“Therefore, our results confirm that migrations from other regions such as Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa to this area did not completely erase the genetic traces of the ancient North Africans”, explains David Comas, head of the Human Genome Diversity research group of the IBE.

These results of the populations of North Africa are in contrast with what is known about the European continent, in whose current populations a strong Palaeolithic component is found, i.e., more continuity and less replacement than in North Africa.

Many genomic data are still missing, both of current populations and of fossil remains, to be able to establish the population history of the human species. “This is or particular concern in populations such as those of North Africa about which we have very little information compared to other populations in the world. In order to have a complete picture of human genome diversity we still have to do a considerable amount of research”, David Comas concludes.

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The origin and history of the population of North Africa are different from the rest of the continent and are more similar to the demographic history of regions outside Africa. Michael Gaida, Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA news release

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AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—Who exactly were the Aurignacians, who lived in the Levant 40,000 years ago? Researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Ben-Gurion University now report that these culturally sophisticated yet mysterious humans migrated from Europe to the Levant some 40,000 years ago, shedding light on a significant era in the region’s history.

The Aurignacian culture first appeared in Europe some 43,000 years ago and is known for having produced bone tools, artifacts, jewelry, musical instruments, and cave paintings. For years, researchers believed that modern man’s entry into Europe led to the rapid decline of the Neanderthals, either through violent confrontation or wresting control of food sources. But recent genetic studies have shown that Neanderthals did not vanish. Instead, they assimilated into modern human immigrant populations. The new study adds further evidence to substantiate this theory.

Through cutting-edge dental research on six human teeth discovered at Manot Cave in the Western Galilee, Dr. Rachel Sarig of TAU’s School of Dental Medicine and Dan David Center Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, Sackler Faculty of Medicine in collaboration with Dr. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority and colleagues in Austria and the United States, have demonstrated that Aurignacians arrived in modern-day Israel from Europe some 40,000 years ago — and that these Aurignacians comprised Neanderthals and Homo sapiens alike.

A report on the new findings was published in the Journal of Human Evolution on October 11.

“Unlike bones, teeth are preserved well because they’re made of enamel, the substance in the human body most resistant to the effects of time,” Dr. Sarig explains. “The structure, shape, and topography or surface bumps of the teeth provided important genetic information. We were able to use the external and internal shape of the teeth found in the cave to associate them with typical hominin groups: Neanderthal and Homo sapiens.”

The researchers performed in-depth lab tests using micro-CT scans and 3D analyses on four of the teeth. The results surprised the researchers: Two teeth showed a typical morphology for Homo sapiens; one tooth showed features characteristic of Neanderthals; the last tooth showed a combination of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens features.

This combination of Neanderthal and modern human features has, to date, been found only in European populations from the early Paleolithic period, suggesting their common origin.

“Following the migration of European populations into this region, a new culture existed in the Levant for a short time, approximately 2,000-3,000 years. It then disappeared for no apparent reason,” adds Dr. Sarig. “Now we know something about their makeup.”

“Until now, we hadn’t found any human remains with valid dating from this period in Israel,” adds Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, head of the Dan David Center, “so the group remains a mystery. This groundbreaking study contributes to the story of the population responsible for some of the world’s most important cultural contributions.”

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A view of Manot cave and a close up of the area where some of the teeth were found. Prof. Israel Hershkovitz/American Friends of Tel Aviv University

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Upper and lower molars taken from the Manot cave, dated to 38,000 years ago, showing a mixture of characteristics. Dr. Rachel Sarig

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Article Source: AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY news release

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AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR HORTICULTURAL SCIENCE—Roland Ebel of the Sustainable Food Systems Program at Montana State University conducted a research project to determine the extent to which an ancient Aztec agricultural technique could benefit 21st century horticultural needs.

Specifically, Ebel examined the use of “chinampas” with the hope of discovering their modern utility. A chinampa is a raised field on a small artificial island on a freshwater lake (usually surrounded by canals and ditches), where vegetables can be produced year round. The irrigation needs of chinampas is low and the productivity extremely high. Chinampas provide fresh produce for a megacity such as Mexico City and are conceivable around many of today’s exploding urban areas.

Ebel’s findings are illustrated in the article “Chinampas: An Urban Farming Model of the Aztecs and a Potential Solution for Modern Megalopolis”, found open access in the online journal HortTechnology.

The chinampa system, commonly called floating gardens, is still practiced in certain suburban areas in Xochimilco, in the southern valley of Mexico City. These raised fields are constructed by digging the canals and mounding the displaced earth onto platforms. Similar historic raised field systems can be found in South America, Asia, Oceania, and parts of Africa.

In a chinampa, the canal water rises through capillary action to the plant roots, which reduces irrigation demand. Additionally, a considerable portion of the soil fertility is generated in the canal floors. Complex rotations allow up to seven harvests in a year. Chinampas also provide ecosystem services, particularly greenhouse gas sequestration and biodiversity. In addition, the recreational benefits are tremendous: today, chinampas generate even more money from tourism than by horticultural production.

Ebel discovered the chinampa to be one of the most intensive and prolific production systems ever developed, and it is highly sustainable. It can be kept in almost continuous cultivation, and the microclimate is favorable for many horticultural crops, including ornamentals, which play an increasingly important role in Xochimilco. Even small animals can be raised on chinampas.

During the Aztec period (1325-1521), the development of chinampas is linked to high regional population density and the growth of sizable local urban communities. The raised field agriculture provided pre-Columbian farmers with better drainage, soil aeration, moisture retention during the dry season, and higher and longer-term soil fertility than in conventional outdoor production.

“Today, many cities face very similar challenges as Mexico City did 700 years ag– a rapidly growing population, and less and less arable land available for food production. Highly intensive production systems with low resource demand are, therefore, a strategic goal of urban agriculture developers. Thus, while most strategists emphasize high-tech solutions such as complex vertical farms, I think it is worthwhile to learn from the achievements of our ancestors,” states Ebel.

Nevertheless, despite versatile efforts to revitalize and reinterpret chinampas, the raised-field production system today is mostly limited to small-scale research and development projects.

Ebel supports efforts for a revitalization of the chinampa system. “A restored use of chinampas would allow intensive production of fresh vegetables close to Mexico City, avoiding transport needs and avoiding negative consequences on produce quality and greenhouse gas emissions,” he states.

Furthermore, chinampas could provide a series of desirable ecosystem services, including water filtration, regulation of water levels, microclimate regulation, increased biodiversity, and carbon capture and storage. Ebel adds, “Wherever you have freshwater lakes near a big city, chinampa-like systems are conceivable–and this applies for many parts of the world.”

The benefits of creating chinampas are not limited to big cities, although the assistance it could provide urban farming would be difficult to overstate. This system could be adopted into smaller rural communities as well, especially in tropical wetlands.

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The ancient agricultural practice of the chinampa could provide a solution to sustainable agriculture. Image by Oscar Frazelle

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Article Source: AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR HORTICULTURAL SCIENCE news release

The complete article is available on the ASHS HortTechnology electronic journal web site: https://journals.ashs.org/horttech/view/journals/horttech/aop/article-10.21273-HORTTECH04310-19.xml.

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Science Advances—Neanderthals used eagle talons as symbolic adornments thirty-nine thousand years ago, according to a new report, which contributes to the scarce evidence that ancient humans used animal parts for symbolic purposes as opposed to practical ones. The finding represents the most recent known use of talons for adornments by Neanderthals and is the first such discovery on the Iberian Peninsula. Previously, archaeologists suggested that Neanderthals used seashells as beads and to hold paints, indicating that these ancient humans may have conveyed ideas like social status or rank with symbolic objects. Additionally, archaeologists have found eagle talons or bones from which talons had been removed at 10 other Neanderthal sites across Eurasia dated between 130 and 39 thousand years ago, and thus researchers have proposed that they had been used for symbolic purposes because of the eagles’ relative scarcity and impracticality as a food or tool source. Because these kinds of finds are uncommon, some researchers have argued that Neanderthals did not have symbolic culture, at least until modern humans introduced it to them after migrating into Europe and Eurasia.

In 2015, Antonio Rodriguez-Hidalgo and colleagues discovered the Imperial eagle toe bone (phalanx) in the Foradada Cave, located on the Catalonia coast in Spain. The find was associated with a lower depositional strata that featured objects identified to the Châtelperronian, a culture developed by the last Neanderthals during the transition period to the Upper Paleolithic. The phalanx showed distinctive cut marks. Using 3-D analysis, they found that the cut marks could only have been made by a stone tool, likely to remove the talon. Given that there is little nutritional content on that part of the bird, the researchers suggest that the Neanderthals who occupied the cave, the makers of the Châtelperronian culture, may have used eagle talons and feathers to evoke connotations of eagles as majestic predators. 

Rodriguez-Hidalgo and colleagues suggest that, based on the archaeological record, modern humans did not use raptor talons until they arrived in Europe, suggesting the possibility that the Neanderthals had an eagle talon ornamental tradition that the modern humans adopted after arrival. Such a tradition would be the oldest known expression of symbolism prior to modern human arrival. 

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Exterior view of the prehistoric site of Cova Foradada (Calafell, Tarragona). Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo

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Eagle bone from Cova Foradada showing cut marks. Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo

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3-D imaging analysis showed cut marks made by stone tools. Screenshot from video, The Necklace of the Last Neanderthal. Antonio Rodriguez-Hidalgo

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Article Source: Edited and adapted from the subject Science Advances news release. Science Advances is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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FLINDERS UNIVERSITY—The largest water management feature in Khmer history was built in the 10th century as part of a short-lived ancient capital in northern Cambodia to store water but the system failed in its first year of operation, possibly leading to the return of the capital to Angkor.

An international team of researchers led by Dr Ian Moffat from Flinders University in Australia used ground penetrating radar to map the surface of a buried spillway in Koh Ker to better understand why the reservoir failed during its first year of use.

In a study published in Geoarchaeology, archaeologists explain that the 7km long embankment was designed to capture water from the Stung Rongea river but modelling indicates it was inadequate to contain the average water flow in the catchment, putting into question the legitimacy of Khmer kings, and forcing them to re-establish their capital in Angkor.

“At that time, embarking on projects of civil engineering such as temple building, urban renewal, and the development of water infrastructure was central to establishing the legitimacy of Khmer kings,” says Dr Moffat

“It’s not difficult to envisage that the failure of the embankment at Koh Ker–the largest and most ambitious infrastructure project of the era–may have had a significant impact on the prestige of the sovereign capital, and contributed to the decision to re-establish Angkor as the capital of the Khmer Empire.”

“Our study shows that this ambitious engineering feat was always doomed to rapid failure.”

The monumental complex of Koh Ker, located 90 km northeast of Angkor, remains relatively poorly understood even though it was briefly the capital in the middle of the 10th century CE under King Jayavarman IV, the only capital throughout six centuries to be established outside of the Angkor region.

The site is located in an area of gently sloping hills and stone outcrops, far removed from the low-lying floodplains that define the Khmer heartland.

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Regional map of Koh Ker showing the location of the chute and key archaeological features. The detailed map area (top right) is shown as a white dashed box on the regional map (left). The black dashed line in the detailed map area shows the approximate area of Fig 2. The location of Koh Ker compared with Angkor, Phnom Penh, and Ho Chi Minh City is shown in the bottom right. North is up in all figures. Dr Ian Moffat, Flinders University

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Article Source: Flinders University news release

Researchers from Flinders, University of British Columbia and Ecole francaise d’Extreme-Orient in Paris contributed to the study.

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PLOS—Buried alongside the famous Ötzi the Iceman are at least 75 species of bryophytes – mosses and liverworts – which hold clues to Ötzi’s surroundings, according to a study released October 30, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by James Dickson of the University of Glasgow, UK and colleagues at the University of Innsbruck.

Ötzi the Iceman is a remarkable 5,300-year-old human specimen found frozen in ice approximately 3,200 meters above sea level in the Italian Alps. He was frozen alongside his clothing and gear as well as an abundant assemblage of plants and fungi. In this study, Dickson and colleagues aimed to identify the mosses and liverworts preserved alongside the Iceman.

Today, 23 bryophyte species live the area near where Ötzi was found, but inside the ice the researchers identified thousands of preserved bryophyte fragments representing at least 75 species. It is the only site of such high altitude with bryophytes preserved over thousands of years. Notably, the assemblage includes a variety of mosses ranging from low-elevation to high-elevation species, as well as 10 species of liverworts, which are very rarely preserved in archaeological sites. Only 30% of the identified bryophytes appear to have been local species, with the rest having been transported to the spot in Ötzi’s gut or clothing or by large mammalian herbivores whose droppings ended up frozen alongside the Iceman.

From these remains, the researchers infer that the bryophyte community in the Alps around 5,000 years ago was generally similar to that of today. Furthermore, the non-local species help to confirm the path Ötzi took to his final resting place. Several of the identified moss species thrive today in the lower Schnalstal valley, suggesting that Ötzi traveled along the valley during his ascent. This conclusion is corroborated by previous pollen research, which also pinpointed Schnalstal as the Iceman’s likely route of ascent.

Dickson adds, “Most members of the public are unlikely to be knowledgeable about bryophytes (mosses and liverworts). However, no fewer than 75 species of these important investigative clues were found when the Iceman (aka Ötzi) was removed from the ice. They were recovered as mostly small scraps from the ice around him, from his clothes and gear, and even from his alimentary tract. Those findings prompted the questions: Where did the fragments come from? How precisely did they get there? How do they help our understanding of the Iceman?”

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Taphonomic processes. These led to the deposition of flowering plant remains at the Ötzi discovery site according to Heiss and Oeggl. Dickson et al, 2019

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Dickson JH, Oeggl KD, Kofler W, Hofbauer WK, Porley R, Rothero GP, et al. (2019) Seventy-five mosses and liverworts found frozen with the late Neolithic Tyrolean Iceman: Origins, taphonomy and the Iceman’s last journey. PLoS ONE 14(10): e0223752. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223752

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