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FLINDERS UNIVERSITY—The known timeline of the Aboriginal occupation of South Australia’s Riverland region has been vastly extended by new research led by Flinders University in collaboration with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation (RMMAC).

Radiocarbon dating of shell middens – remnants of meals eaten long ago – capture a record of Aboriginal occupation that extends to around 29,000 years, confirming the location as one of the oldest sites along the 2500km river to become the oldest River Murray Indigenous site in South Australia.

In the first comprehensive survey of the region, one of the oldest Indigenous sites along Australia’s longest river system has been discovered. The results, published in Australian Archaeology, used radiocarbon dating methods to analyze river mussel shells from a midden site overlooking the Pike River floodplain downstream of Renmark.

“These results include the first pre-Last Glacial Maximum ages returned on the River Murray in South Australia and extend the known Aboriginal occupation of the Riverland by approximately 22,000 years,” says Flinders University archaeologist and PhD candidate Craig Westell.

More than 30 additional radiocarbon dates were collected in the region, spanning the period from 15,000 years ago to the recent present. Together, the results relate Aboriginal people to an ever-changing river landscape, and provide deeper insights into how they responded to these challenges.

The period represented by the radiocarbon results brackets the Last Glacial Maximum (commonly known as the last Ice Age) when climatic conditions were colder and drier and when the arid zone extended over much of the Murray-Darling Basin. The river and lake systems of the basin were under stress during this time.

In the Riverland, dunes were advancing into the Murray floodplains, river flows were unpredictable, and salt was accumulating in the valley.

The ecological impacts witnessed during one of the worst droughts on record, the so-called Millennium Drought (from late 1996 extending to mid-2010), provides an idea of the challenges Aboriginal people may have faced along the river during the Last Glacial Maximum, and other periods of climate stress, researchers conclude.

“These studies show how our ancestors have lived over many thousands of years in the Riverland region and how they managed to survive during times of hardship and plenty,” says RMMAC spokesperson Fiona Giles.

“This new research, published in Australian Archaeology, fills in a significant geographic gap in our understanding of the Aboriginal occupation chronologies for the Murray-Darling Basin,” adds co-author Associate Professor Amy Roberts.

The dating, which was undertaken at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) and Waikato University, forms part of a much larger and ongoing research program led by Associate Professor Amy Roberts which is undertaking a broad-ranging investigation of past and contemporary Aboriginal connections to the Riverland region.

The paper, ‘Initial results and observations on a radiocarbon dating program in the Riverland region of South Australia’ (2020) by C Westell, A Roberts, M Morrison, G Jacobsen and the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation has been published in Australian Archaeology DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2020.1787928

The Last Glacial Maximum is the most significant climatic event to face modern humans since their arrival in Australia some 40,000-50,000 years ago. Recent studies have demonstrated that the LGM in Australia was a period of significant cooling and increased aridity beginning 30 ka and peaking between 23 and 18 ka.

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Midden shell exposed on the Pike cliff line on the River Murray. Flinders University

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Location map shows the areas studied by archaeologists and the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal community in South Australia. Flinders University

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Article Source: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY news release

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A 1.4-million-year-old handaxe made from hippopotamus bone expands the known technological repertoire of early human ancestors, according to a study*. During the Pleistocene, Homo species developed handaxes from stone and, occasionally, bone, a tool production style known as the Acheulean. Gen Suwa and colleagues report a rare handaxe made from bone in the Konso Formation, showing that the advanced flaking techniques used on lithic materials were also practiced on bone by early Homo species living in southern Ethiopia. The 13-cm-long bone was recovered from strata dating to 1.4 million years ago. The authors characterized the bone, noting that it retained the surface of an original hippopotamus femur on the dorsal side and exhibited extensive flake scars. Analysis of the flake scars showed that the scars are continuous and that those near the handaxe’s tip appear in an alternate pattern, suggesting deliberate shaping of the bone. The authors also analyzed wear on the handaxe, finding macroscopic rounding near the tip and on both faces, suggesting cutting and sawing activities. Microscopic analysis of the handaxe revealed areas of polish and striation patterns similar to stone tools used for butchery. Given the small number of bone tools unearthed and a dearth of knowledge about bone polish patterns, the nature of the materials on which the rare bone handaxe was used remains unclear, according to the authors.

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Both sides of the 1.4 million-year-old bone handaxe Berhane Asfaw

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The bone handaxe (micro-ct based render) shown placed in a hippopotamus femur. Gen Suwa

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”A 1.4-million-year-old bone handaxe from Konso, Ethiopia, shows advanced tool technology in the early Acheulean,” by Katsuhiro Sano et al.

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* uncovers multiple lines of evidence suggesting state-enforced resettlement of people along the Peruvian coast during the 15th century. The Inca in Peru are thought to have forcibly resettled masses of nonlocal people in the 15th century to support the economy and quell threats to authority, transforming the sociopolitical landscape of the Andes. However, archaeological evidence of the Inca policy of forced resettlement remains scant. Charles Stanish, Jacob Bongers, and colleagues combined multiple lines of evidence – ancient DNA, archaeological artifacts, written records, and biogeochemical sources – to construct a model of ancient human mobility that lends support to the theory of state-enforced resettlement of people along the Peruvian coast during 1400-1532 CE. Whole genome sequence analysis of the remains of six individuals found in mausoleum-like graves in two cemeteries in the middle Chincha Valley on the south Peruvian coast suggested that the individuals were of Peruvian north coast ancestry–a finding reinforced by strontium isotope analysis. Radiocarbon dating of the skeletal remains indicated an age of 1415-1805 CE, consistent with the period called the Late Horizon, when such resettlement is thought to have occurred. Additional evidence from north-coast-style ceramics and textiles as well as Colonial-era written documents describing Inca resettlement policies suggested movement of people during the Late Horizon. According to the authors, the disparate strands of evidence bolster a theory of Inca-enforced resettlement of people, who may have traveled south by foot or on oceangoing vessels from Peru’s northern coast.

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Male cranium from UC-008 Tomb 1 that was sampled for ancient DNA analysis.
Colleen O’Shea

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A tunic from UC-008 Tomb 1. Colleen O’Shea

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”Integration of ancient DNA with transdisciplinary dataset finds strong support for Inca resettlement in the south Peruvian coast,” by Jacob L. Bongers et al.

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UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN—The cold, famine and unrest in ancient Rome and Egypt after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE has long been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen, has found evidence suggesting that the mega-eruption of an Alaskan volcano may be to blame.

Dark times befell the Mediterranean around the time of Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE. Written accounts describe the region as severely impacted by unusual cooling, failed harvests, famine and disease, all of which combined to contribute to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom. While researchers long suspected that a volcanic eruption was to blame, they were unable to pinpoint exactly where and when such an eruption might have occurred.

The brightness of the sun was darkened, the disc was pale for a year and the sun did not rise with its usual brilliance and force. It gave but slight heat. For this reason, the crops brought forth were so poor and immature that they rotted in the cold air.

Greek Roman philosopher Plutarch describing the weather in the wake of Julius Caesar’s death

Now, an international team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada and the University of Bern has analyzed volcanic ash in Greenlandic ice core samples, which together with historical accounts, can be linked to an inexplicable cooling event in the Mediterranean region during this crux in the history of Western civilization.

The ash comes from the remote Okmok volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Island Chain. According to the ice core tests, the volcano experienced a two-year mega-eruption that began in early 43 BCE, one that filled Earth’s atmosphere with enough smoke and ash to significantly impact climate.

“The eruption is regarded as one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the past 2,500 years. Using the ice core samples, climate models and historical records, we are quite certain that the eruption is linked to the violent climatic changes noted around the Mediterranean and in Rome,” says Jørgen Peder Steffensen, professor of ice, climate and geophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute and one of the researchers behind the discovery.

Coldest years in the Northern Hemisphere

In an extensive collaboration with historians and others, researchers collected prehistoric climate data from around the planet to confirm the likelihood that this particular eruption was responsible for widespread climate change. The sources of evidence include tree ring archives from Scandinavia, Austria and California and a Chinese cave formation.

The researchers’ extensive analysis of climate during this ancient era demonstrates that the years after the Okmok eruption were some of the coldest in the northern hemisphere over the past 2,500 years. The researchers’ climate models indicate that temperatures were roughly seven degrees Celsius below normal during the summer and autumn after the eruption in 43 BCE.

“Historical accounts describe how wet and extremely cold weather led to poorer harvests, as well as how the Nile overflowed its banks—destroying crops and leading to famine—all of which correlates with our results,” says Jørgen Peder Steffensen.

While the researchers believe that a variety of factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom, they maintain that Okmok’s eruption played an unmistakably large role and that their discovery serves to fill in gaps which have been missing in history books dealing with the era.

The research was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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The Okmok caldera.

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN news release

The Niels Bohr Institute’s Ice and Climate Group has been working on the “Caesar Volcano” since the 1980’s. The group was the first in the world to systematically use the counting of annual layers in ice cores to date volcanic eruptions.

The group also invented the ECM-method (Electric Conductivity Method) to find volcanic ash in ice cores. ECM consists of placing two electrodes along fresh ice cores and measuring resistance. Sulphuric acid from volcanoes changes the resistance in the ice, making it quite easy to identify volcanic layers.

The new research article is the latest in more than 40 years of work on the volcano.

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PLOS—Ancient humans deliberately collected perforated shells in order to string them together as beads, according to a study published July 8, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Iris Groman-Yaroslavski (University of Haifa, Israel), and colleagues.

Shells are one of the oldest ways humans have adorned and expressed themselves, with examples of deliberately-collected shell assemblages at human sites dating as far back as 160,000 years ago found across North Africa, South Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Shells from one Mediterranean Paleolithic site, Qafzeh Cave (dated to 120,000 years ago) are all naturally perforated (in contrast to the unperforated shells found at a nearby older site, Misliya Cave), suggesting that these shells were deliberately collected and strung together as beads.

To investigate the possibility of deliberate suspension to create strings of shell beads, Bar-Yosef Mayer and Groman-Yaroslavski collected the same species of perforated clamshells (Glycymeris) and simulated the potential use and wear present on the original shells: first systematically abrading the shells against different materials like leather, sand, and stone to produce a catalogue of wear patterns, then hanging the shells on strings made from wild flax to to identify wear patterns specific to string suspension. They then compared these wear patterns to those of the original Qafzeh Cave shells.

Microscopic analysis of the five best-preserved Qafzeh Cave shells revealed traces consistent with those created in the simulated shells via contact with a string, as well as traces of shell-to-shell contact (indicating the shells hung closely together). Four of the five original shells also revealed traces of an ochre coloring treatment.

Though it’s not possible to determine the precise symbolic meaning of the shell bead strand from Qafzeh Cave, the fact that bivalve shells are a frequent hallmark across Paleolithic sites gives a sense of their importance. Additionally, the presence of a string seems to suggest that not only was shell collection important–the ability to display the shells to others also likely held significance. As one of the earliest instances of perforated objects hung on strings, the Qafzeh Cave shells also bring us closer to understanding the origins of string-making technology probably between 160-120,000 years ago.

Bar-Yosef Mayer adds: “Modern humans collected unperforated cockle shells for symbolic purposes at 160,000 years ago or earlier, and around 120,000 they started collecting perforated shells and wearing them on a string. We conclude that strings, which had many more applications, were invented within this time frame.”

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Shells from Qafzeh Cave on which use-wear was studied. Bar-Yosef Mayer et al, 2020

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Bar-Yosef Mayer DE, Groman-Yaroslavski I, Bar-Yosef O, Hershkovitz I, Kampen-Hasday A, Vandermeersch B, et al. (2020) On holes and strings: Earliest displays of human adornment in the Middle Palaeolithic. PLoS ONE 15(7): e0234924. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234924

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FLINDERS UNIVERSITY—The first underwater Aboriginal archaeological sites have been discovered off northwest Australia dating back thousands of years ago when the current seabed was dry land.

The discoveries were made through a series of archaeological and geophysical surveys in the Dampier Archipelago, as part of the Deep History of Sea Country Project, funded through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project Scheme.

The Aboriginal artifacts discovered off the Plibara coast in Western Australia represent Australia’s oldest known underwater archaeology.

An international team of archaeologists from Flinders University, The University of Western Australia, James Cook University, ARA – Airborne Research Australia and the University of York (United Kingdom) partnered with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation to locate and investigate ancient artifacts at two underwater sites which have yielded hundreds of stone tools made by Aboriginal peoples, including grinding stones.

In a study published today in PLOS ONE, the ancient underwater sites, at Cape Bruguieres and Flying Foam Passage, provide new evidence of Aboriginal ways of life from when the seabed was dry land, due to lower sea levels, thousands of years ago.

The submerged cultural landscapes represent what is known today as Sea Country to many Indigenous Australians, who have a deep cultural, spiritual and historical connection to these underwater environments.

“Today we announce the discovery of two underwater archaeological sites that were once on dry land. This is an exciting step for Australian archaeology as we integrate maritime and Indigenous archaeology and draw connections between land and sea,” says Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin who is the Maritime Archaeology Program Coordinator at Flinders University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

“Australia is a massive continent but few people realize that more than 30% of its land mass was drowned by sea-level rise after the last ice age. This means that a huge amount of the archaeological evidence documenting the lives of Aboriginal people is now underwater.”

“Now we finally have the first proof that at least some of this archaeological evidence survived the process of sea level rise. The ancient coastal archaeology is not lost for good; we just haven’t found it yet. These new discoveries are a first step toward exploring the last real frontier of Australian archaeology.

The dive team mapped 269 artifacts at Cape Bruguieres in shallow water at depths down to 2.4 meters below modern sea level. Radiocarbon dating and analysis of sea-level changes show the site is at least 7000 years old.

The second site at Flying Foam Passage includes an underwater freshwater spring 14 meters below sea level. This site is estimated to be at least 8500 years old. Both sites may be much older as the dates represent minimum ages only; they may be even more ancient.

The team of archaeologists and geoscientists employed predictive modeling and various underwater and remote sensing techniques, including scientific diving methods, to confirm the location of sites and presence of artifacts.

“At one point there would have been dry land stretching out 160 km from the current shoreline. That land would have been owned and lived on by generations of Aboriginal people. Our discovery demonstrates that underwater archaeological material has survived sea-level rise, and although these sites are located in relatively shallow water, there will likely be more in deeper water offshore” says Chelsea Wiseman from Flinders University who has been working on the DHSC project as part of PhD research.

“These territories that are now underwater harbored favorable environments for Indigenous settlements including freshwater, ecological diversity and opportunities to exploit marine resources which would have supported relatively high population densities” says Dr Michael O’Leary, a marine geomorphologist at The University of Western Australia.

The discovery of these sites emphasizes the need for stronger federal legislation to protect and manage underwater heritage across 2 million square kilometers of landscapes that were once above sea level in Australia, and hold major insights into human history.

“Managing, investigating and understanding the archaeology of the Australian continental shelf in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional owners and custodians is one of the last frontiers in Australian archaeology” said Associate Professor Benjamin.

“Our results represent the first step in a journey of discovery to explore the potential of archaeology on the continental shelves which can fill a major gap in the human history of the continent” he said.

In Murujuga this adds substantial additional evidence to support the deep time history of human activities accompanying rock art production in this important National Heritage Listed Place.

Deep History of Sea Country Project with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation

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Location maps of the study area and sites referenced in text. 1) Cape Bruguieres Island; (2) North Gidley Island; (3) Flying Foam Passage; (4) Dolphin Island; (5) Angel Island; (6) Legendre Island; (7) Malus Island; (8) Goodwyn Island; (9) Enderby Island. PLOS ONE

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Aerial view of Cape Bruguieres Channel at high tide (Photo: J. Leach); (below) divers record artifacts in the channel (Photos: S. Wright, J. Benjamin, and M. Fowler). PLOS ONE

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Diver at work. Hiro Yoshida

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Above and below: Artifacts discovered at the underwater sites. PLOS ONE

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Article Source: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI—Reservoirs in the heart of an ancient Maya city were so polluted with mercury and algae that the water likely was undrinkable.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati found toxic levels of pollution in two central reservoirs in Tikal, an ancient Maya city that dates back to the third century B.C. in what is now northern Guatemala.

UC’s findings suggest droughts in the ninth century likely contributed to the depopulation and eventual abandonment of the city.

“The conversion of Tikal’s central reservoirs from life-sustaining to sickness-inducing places would have both practically and symbolically helped to bring about the abandonment of this magnificent city,” the study concluded.

A geochemical analysis found that two reservoirs nearest the city palace and temple contained toxic levels of mercury that UC researchers traced back to a pigment the Maya used to adorn buildings, clayware and other goods. During rainstorms, mercury in the pigment leached into the reservoirs where it settled in layers of sediment over the years.

But the former inhabitants of this city, made famous by its towering stone temples and architecture, had ample potable water from nearby reservoirs that remained uncontaminated, UC researchers found.

The study was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

UC’s diverse team was composed of anthropologists, geographers, botanists, biologists and chemists. They examined layers of sediment dating back to the ninth century when Tikal was a flourishing city.

Previously, UC researchers found that the soils around Tikal during the ninth century were extremely fertile and traced the source to frequent volcanic eruptions that enriched the soil of the Yucatan Peninsula.

“Archaeologists and anthropologists have been trying to figure out what happened to the Maya for 100 years,” said David Lentz, a UC professor of biological sciences and lead author of the study.

For the latest study, UC researchers sampled sediment at 10 reservoirs within the city and conducted an analysis on ancient DNA found in the stratified clay of four of them.

Sediment from the reservoirs nearest Tikal’s central temple and palace showed evidence of toxic algae called cyanobacteria. Consuming this water, particularly during droughts, would have made people sick even if the water were boiled, Lentz said.

“We found two types of blue-green algae that produce toxic chemicals. The bad thing about these is they’re resistant to boiling. It made water in these reservoirs toxic to drink,” Lentz said.

UC researchers said it is possible but unlikely the Maya used these reservoirs for drinking, cooking or irrigation.

“The water would have looked nasty. It would have tasted nasty,” said Kenneth Tankersley, an associate professor of anthropology in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “There would have been these big algae blooms. Nobody would have wanted to drink that water.”

But researchers found no evidence of the same pollutants in sediments from more distant reservoirs called Perdido and Corriental, which likely provided drinking water for city residents during the ninth century.

Today, Tikal is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Researchers believe a combination of economic, political and social factors prompted people to leave the city and its adjacent farms. But the climate no doubt played a role, too, Lentz said.

“They have a prolonged dry season. For part of the year, it’s rainy and wet. The rest of the year, it’s really dry with almost no rainfall. So they had a problem finding water,” Lentz said.

Co-author Trinity Hamilton, now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, worked on the analysis of ancient DNA from algae that sank to the reservoir bottom and was buried by centuries of accumulated sediment.

“Typically, when we see a lot of cyanobacteria in freshwater, we think of harmful algal blooms that impact water quality,” Hamilton said.

Finding some reservoirs that were polluted and others that were not suggests the ancient Maya used them for different purposes, she said.

Reservoirs near the temple and palace likely would have been impressive landmarks, much like the reflecting pool at the National Mall is today.

“It would have been a magnificent sight to see these brightly painted buildings reflected off the surface of these reservoirs,” said co-author Nicholas Dunning, head of geography in UC’s College of Arts and Sciences.

“The Maya rulers conferred to themselves, among other things, the attribute of being able to control water. They had a special relationship to the rain gods,” Dunning said. “So the reservoir would have been a pretty potent symbol.”

UC’s Tankersley said one popular pigment used on plaster walls and in ceremonial burials was derived from cinnabar, a red-colored mineral composed of mercury sulfide that the Maya mined from a nearby volcanic feature known as the Todos Santos Formation.

A close examination of the reservoir sediment using a technique called energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry found that mercury did not leach into the water from the underlying bedrock. Likewise, Tankersley said, UC ruled out another potential source of mercury — volcanic ash that fell across Central America during the frequent eruptions. The absence of mercury in other nearby reservoirs where ash would have fallen ruled out volcanoes as the culprit.

Instead, Tankersley said, people were to blame.

“That means the mercury has to be anthropogenic,” Tankersley said.

With its bright red color, cinnabar was commonly used as a paint or pigment across Central America at the time.

“Color was important in the ancient Maya world. They used it in their murals. They painted the plaster red. They used it in burials and combined it with iron oxide to get different shades,” Tankersley said.

“We were able to find a mineral fingerprint that showed beyond a reasonable doubt that the mercury in the water originated from cinnabar,” he said.

Tankersley said ancient Maya cities such as Tikal continue to captivate researchers because of the ingenuity, cooperation and sophistication required to thrive in this tropical land of extremes.

“When I look at the ancient Maya, I see a very sophisticated people with a very rich culture,” Tankersley said.

UC’s team is planning to return to the Yucatan Peninsula to pursue more answers about this remarkable period of human civilization.

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The ancient city of Tikal rises above the rainforest in northern Guatemala. David Lentz/UC

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University of Cincinnati graduate student Brian Lane climbs out of the Perdido Reservoir at Tikal. Nicholas Dunning/UC

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UC researchers Nicholas Dunning, Vernon Scarborough and David Lentz set up equipment to take sediment samples of ancient reservoirs at Tikal. Liwy Grazioso Sierra

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI news release

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—Modern sled dogs – Arctic-adapted breeds like the Greenland sled dog, Alaskan Malamute and Husky – share ancient Siberian roots and represent a distinct genetic lineage that likely emerged as the final glacial remnants of the last ice-age subsided nearly 10,000 years ago. These findings, from a genetic study of modern and ancient Arctic dogs, reveal the antiquity of sled dog breeds and highlight their importance to human survival in the Arctic since the dawn of the Holocene. “Our results imply that the combination of these dogs with the innovation of sled technology facilitated human subsistence” at this time, Mikkel-Holder Sinding and colleagues say. Archaeological evidence from eastern Siberia suggests that Arctic-adapted dogs have likely been integral to human life in the Arctic for at least 15,000 years. Similar to their roles in these regions today, ancient Arctic dogs were used to pull sleds, facilitating long-distance travel and transportation of resources across the harsh, frozen landscape. Despite being one of the most unique groups of dogs, little is known about the modern sled dog’s ancient genetic and evolutionary past. Sinding and colleagues sequenced the genomes of 10 modern Greenland sled dogs, an ancient 9,500-year-old Siberian sled dog and a roughly 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf and compared them to a host of other modern dog genomes to assess the genetic origin of the Arctic sled dog. Sinding et al. revealed the ancient Siberian dog as a common ancestor to modern sled dog breeds – particularly Greenland sled dogs, which, due to their isolated populations, can trace more direct genomic ancestry to ancient sled dogs. While the results indicate gene flow from Siberian Pleistocene wolves, unlike many other dog breeds, the authors found no significant admixture between any sled dog – modern or ancient – and American-Arctic wolves, suggesting a roughly 9,500-year genetic continuity in Arctic dog breeds. Sinding et al. also illustrate several convergent adaptations in Arctic dogs, including one that allowed sled dogs to eat the fat-rich and starch poor diets of their human counterparts.

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Modern day sled dogs have Siberian roots. Skeeze, Pixabay

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

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Today, Fiumicino in Italy is a busy airport, but 2,000 years ago this area was filled with boats – it was a large artificial harbor only a stone’s throw from the ancient port of Rome (Ostia). To tie in with the opening of the site’s newly refurbished museum, Giulia Boetto, a CNRS researcher at the Camille Jullian Centre (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université), has coordinated 3D reconstructions of three of the wooden boats found at Fiumicino. These boats, in use between the 2nd and early 5th centuries AD, were abandoned in the port when they became outdated. At which time, they became waterlogged and covered with a layer of sediment. These oxygen-free conditions enabled the boats to survive until they were excavated, almost 60 years ago. Recovered and initially housed in the museum, which required major structural work, these wooden remains were documented using state-of-the-art digital survey techniques, then analyzed and reconstructed in 3D, thanks to Boetto’s expertise in naval archaeology. The researcher also called on Marseille-based start-up Ipso Facto to create 3D models of the remains and on her colleague Pierre Poveda, a CNRS research engineer in the same laboratory, to restore the missing parts using archaeological comparisons and iconographic representations. By the end of the year, these 3D reconstructions will be housed at the new Roman Ship Museum in the Archaeological Park of Ancient Ostia. This exhibition will enable visitors to discover ancient boat construction techniques and what life was like on board these Roman vessels. It will also allow them to virtually navigate in what was the most important Mediterranean port complex during the Roman Empire.

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3D reconstructions of the three boat types found in Fiumicino: fishing boat (left), small sailboat (centre) and a harbour lighter (right). © D. Peloso, Ipso Facto scoop. Marseille/P. Poveda, Centre Camille Jullian, CNRS, Aix Marseille Université.

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3D reconstructions of the three boat types found in Fiumicino: fishing boat (right), small sailboat (centre) and a harbour lighter (left). © D. Peloso, Ipso Facto scoop. Marseille/P. Poveda, Centre Camille Jullian, CNRS, Aix Marseille Université.

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Article Source: CNRS news release

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—According to a study*, a massive volcanic eruption in Alaska in 43 BCE coincided with the fall of the Roman Republic and subsequent rise of the Roman empire. The years following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE were among the coldest of the last 2,500 years, with inclement weather and widespread famine. Joseph R. McConnell and colleagues report that a massive volcanic eruption in 43 BCE may have been responsible for the unusual atmospheric and climatic events that coincided with the fall of the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic Kingdom, which subsequently led to the rise of the Roman Empire. The authors obtained high-resolution measurements of volcanic fallout, including tephra, in six dated Arctic ice cores. The authors found evidence of two high-latitude volcanic eruptions. The effects of the first eruption, in 45 BCE, appeared short-lived and limited in scale. In early 43 BCE, however, the second eruption produced fallout that lasted 2 years and coincided with temperature anomalies in tree-ring and cave records. Geochemical analysis of the tephra identified particles unique to the Okmok volcano in Alaska. Earth system modeling of the eruption’s effect on the ancient Mediterranean climate showed pronounced cooling, especially in summer and autumn, and markedly increased precipitation. Such climate conditions likely resulted in crop failures, famine, and disease, exacerbating social unrest and contributing to political realignments throughout the Mediterranean region, according to the authors.

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The 10-km wide caldera on Alaska’s Unmak Island formed during the 43 BCE Okmok II eruption. This massive eruption caused among the most extreme Northern Hemisphere weather conditions of the past 2,500 years that coincided with the fall of the Roman Republic. Kerry Key (Columbia University, New York, NY)

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Apparatus for continuous analysis of ice cores used to develop detailed records of volcanic fallout from the Okmok II eruption in 43 BCE.  Joseph R. McConnell.

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”Extreme climate after massive eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano in 43 BCE and effects on the late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom,” by Joseph R. McConnell et al.

Cover Image, Top Left: Enrique Lopez Garre, Pixabay

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UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER—Today’s modern cities, from Denver to Dubai, could learn a thing or two from the ancient Pueblo communities that once stretched across the southwestern United States. For starters, the more people live together, the better the living standards.

That finding comes from a study published today in the journal Science Advances and led by Scott Ortman, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. He’s one of a growing number of antiquarians who argue that the world’s past may hold the key to its future. What lessons can people living today take from the successes and failures of civilizations hundreds or thousands of years ago?

Recently, Ortman and Jose Lobo from Arizona State University took a deep dive into data from the farming towns that dotted the Rio Grande Valley between the 14th and 16th centuries. Modern metropolises should take note: As the Pueblo villages grew bigger and denser, their per capita production of food and other goods seemed to go up, too.

Busy streets, in other words, may lead to better-off citizens.

“We see an increasing return to scale,” said Ortman, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology who is also affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. “The more people work together, the more they produce per person.”

Whether the same thing is true today remains an open question, especially amid the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities and human proximity. But the results from the sunny Southwest suggest that it’s an idea worth exploring.

“The archaeological record can help us to learn about issues we care about today in ways that we can’t do using the data available to us from modern societies,” Ortman said.

The good dishes

The research is an offshoot of an effort that Ortman leads called the Social Reactors Project, which has explored patterns of growth in civilizations from ancient Rome to the Incan world.

It’s an attempt to chase down an idea first proposed in the 18th century by Adam Smith, often known as the father of modern economics. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith made the case for the fundamental benefits of market size–that if you make it easier for more people to trade, the economy will grow.

Just look at any city in the U.S. where you might find a hair salon next to a bakery next to a doggie daycare.

“As people interact more frequently, a person can make and do fewer things themselves and get more of what they need from their social contacts,” Ortman said.

The problem, he explained, is that such “agglomeration-driven” growth is difficult to isolate in today’s big and complex cities. The same isn’t true for the Rio Grande Valley.

Before the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century, hundreds of villages spanned the region near what is now Santa Fe. These settlements ranged in size from a few dozen residents to as many as 3,000 people, most of whom made their living by growing crops like maize and cotton.

Such a subsistence lifestyle didn’t mean that these communities were simple.

“The traditional view in ancient history was that economic growth didn’t happen until the onset of the industrial revolution,” Ortman said.

He and Lobo decided to put that assumption to the test. The duo pored through an exhaustive database of archaeological finds from the region–capturing everything from the number and size of rooms in Pueblo communities to the pottery from rubbish heaps.

They unearthed a clear trend: When villages got more populous, their residents seemed to get better off on average–exactly as Smith predicted. Living spaces grew in size and families collected more painted pottery.

“You might think of it as more sets of dishes for sharing meals together,” Ortman said.

Social connection

That growth, the team discovered, also seemed to follow a pattern that researchers on the Social Reactors Project have seen in a range of civilizations throughout history. Every time villages doubled in size, markers of economic growth increased by about 16% on average.

Ortman said that the effect doesn’t happen in the same way everywhere. Factors like inequality and racism, for example, can keep urban residents from working together even when they live in cramped spaces.

But, Ortman added, these Pueblo communities hold an important lesson for modern-day societies: the more people can connect with others, the more prosperous they become.

“All other things being equal, urbanization should lead to improvements in the material conditions of life for people everywhere,” he said. “We suspect this is why the world continues to urbanize, despite all of the associated problems.”

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Mesa Verde represents classic ancient pueblo living. Dassel, Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER news release

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UNIVERSITY OF EXETER—Innovation by ancient farmers to improve soil fertility continues to have an impact on the biodiversity of the Amazon, a major new study shows.

Early inhabitants fertilized the soil with charcoal from fire remains and food waste. Areas with this “dark earth” have a different set of species than the surrounding landscape, contributing to a more diverse ecosystem with a richer collection of plant species, researchers from the State University of Mato Grosso in Brazil and the University of Exeter have found.

The legacy of this land management thousands of years ago means there are thousands of these patches of dark earth dotted around the region, most around the size of a small field. This is the first study to measure the difference in vegetation in dark and non-dark earth areas in mature forests across a region spanning a thousand kilometers.

The team of ecologists and archaeologists studied abandoned areas along the main stem of the Amazon River near Tapajós and in the headwaters of the Xingu River Basin in southern Amazonia.

Lead author Dr Edmar Almeida de Oliveira said: “This is an area where dark earth lush forests grow, with colossal trees of different species from the surrounding forest, with more edible fruit trees, such as taperebá and jatobá.”

The number of indigenous communities living in the Amazon collapsed following European colonization of the region, meaning many dark earth areas were abandoned.

The study, published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, reveals for the first time the extent to which pre-Columbian Amerindians influenced the current structure and diversity of the Amazon forest of the areas they once farmed.

Researchers sampled around 4,000 trees in southern and eastern Amazonia. Areas with dark earth had a significantly higher pH and more nutrients that improved soil fertility. Pottery shards and other artefacts were also found in the rich dark soils.

Professor Ben Hur Marimon Junior, from the State University of Mato Grosso, said: “Pre-Columbian indigenous people, who fertilized the poor soils of the Amazon for at least 5,000 years, have left an impressive legacy, creating the dark earth, or Terras Pretas de Índio”

Professor José Iriarte, an archaeologist from the University of Exeter, said: “By creating dark earth early inhabitants of the Amazon were able to successfully cultivate the soil for thousands of years in an agroforestry system

“We think ancient communities used dark earth areas to grow crops to eat, and adjacent forests without dark earth for agroforestry.”

Dr Ted Feldpausch, from the University of Exeter, who co-authored the study with Dr Luiz Aragão from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil, said: “After being abandoned for hundreds of years, we still find a fingerprint of the ancient land-use in the forests today as a legacy of the pre-Colombian Amazonian population estimated in millions of inhabitants.

“We are currently expanding this research across the whole Amazon Basin under a project funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to evaluate whether historical fire also affected the forest areas distant from the anthropogenic dark earths”.

Many areas with dark earth are currently cultivated by local and indigenous populations, who have had great success with their food crops. But most are still hidden in the native forest, contributing to increased tree size, carbon stock and regional biodiversity. For this reason, the lush forests of the “Terra Preta de Índio” and their biological and cultural wealth in the Amazon must be preserved as a legacy for future generations, the researchers have said. Areas with dark earth are under threat due to illegal deforestation and fire.

“Dark earth increases the richness of species, an important consideration for regional biodiversity conservation. These findings highlight the small?scale long?term legacy of pre?Columbian inhabitants on the soils and vegetation of Amazonia,” said co-author Prof Beatriz Marimon, from the State University of Mato Grosso.

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Innovation by ancient farmers to improve soil fertility continues to have an impact on the biodiversity of the Amazon, a major new study shows. Ben Hur Marimon Junior

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER news release

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Cover Image, Top Left: Blackend464

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UNIVERSITY OF YORK—Prehistoric pioneers could have relied on shellfish to sustain them as they followed migratory routes out of Africa during times of drought, a new study suggests.

The study* examined fossil reefs near to the now-submerged Red Sea shorelines that marked prehistoric migratory routes from Africa to Arabia. The findings suggest this coast offered the resources necessary to act as a gateway out of Africa during periods of little rainfall when other food sources were scarce.

The research team, led by the University of York, focused on the remains of 15,000 shells dating back 5,000 years to an arid period in the region. With the coastline of original migratory routes submerged by sea-level rise after the last Ice Age, the shells came from the nearby Farasan Islands in Saudi Arabia.

The researchers found that populations of marine mollusks were plentiful enough to allow continuous harvests without any major ecological impacts and their plentiful availability would have enabled people to live through times of drought.

Lead author, Dr Niklas Hausmann, Associate Researcher at the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “The availability of food resources plays an important role in understanding the feasibility of past human migrations – hunter-gatherer migrations would have required local food sources and periods of aridity could therefore have restricted these movements.

“Our study suggests that Red Sea shorelines had the resources necessary to provide a passage for prehistoric people.”

The study also confirms that communities settled on the shorelines of the Red Sea could have relied on shellfish as a sustainable food resource all year round.

Dr Hausmann added: “Our data shows that at a time when many other resources on land were scarce, people could rely on their locally available shellfish. Previous studies have shown that people of the southern Red Sea ate shellfish year-round and over periods of thousands of years. We now also know that this resource was not depleted by them, but shellfish continued to maintain a healthy population.”

The shellfish species found in the archaeological sites on the Farasan Islands were also found in abundance in fossil reefs dating to over 100 thousand years ago, indicating that these shellfish have been an available resource over longer periods than archaeological sites previously suggested.

Co-author of the study, Matthew Meredith-Williams, from La Trobe University, said: “We know that modeling past climates to learn about food resources is extremely helpful, but we need to differentiate between what is happening on land and what is happening in the water. In our study we show that marine foods were abundant and resilient and being gathered by people when they couldn’t rely on terrestrial food.”

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Living specimen of the marine mollusc Conomurex fasciatus. Millions of these shells were found on the Farasan Islands in Saudi Arabia as the food refuse of prehistoric fishers. Niklas Hausmann

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF YORK news release

*Shellfish resilience to prehistoric human consumption in the southern Red Sea: Variability in Conomurex fasciatus across time and space is published in Quaternary International. The research was funded by the European Research Council.

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Remains of hunter-gatherers found in a French cave offer fresh insight into Paleolithic mortuary rituals, according to a study*. Around 30,000 years ago, before the Last Glacial Maximum, the Gravettian culture was known for its prolific cave art, Venus figurines, and elaborate burials. Sacha Kacki, Sébastien Villotte, Erik Trinkaus, and colleagues describe the details and dynamics of burials at the Grotte de Cussac, a cave discovered 20 years ago in southwestern France. The authors used photographs and 3D photogrammetric models due to restrictions on direct contact with cave surfaces or remains. In one area deep in the cave, the authors observed a complete male skeleton in the shallow bowl-like depression of a former bear nest and bones from at least two individuals sorted anatomically in other former nests. Additionally, the authors observed bones from at least three individuals sorted into hollows along the wall. The bones appeared to be sorted roughly by lower and upper anatomy. The authors report that the burial sites at Cussac were farther inside the cave than is typical. The authors also found elaborate cave art, with more than 800 engravings—another feature unusual for burial sites. According to the authors, the mortuary practices at Cussac offer rich insight into the social diversity and complex interactions between the living and the dead in this foraging culture.

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The disarticulated skeletal remains of an adult male deposited in a bear nest. Pascal Mora

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Photogrammetric model of the bones of an adult and an adolescent, clustered on one side of a bear nest. Pascal Mora

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Article Source: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES news release

*”Complex mortuary dynamics in the Upper Paleolithic of the decorated Grotte de Cussac, France,” by Sacha Kacki et al.

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The origins of human innovation have traditionally been sought in the grasslands and coasts of Africa or the temperate environments of Europe. More extreme environments, such as the tropical rainforests of Asia, have been largely overlooked, despite their deep history of human occupation. A new study provides the earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow use, and perhaps the making of clothes, outside of Africa ~48-45,000 years ago -in the tropics of Sri Lanka.

The island of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, just south of the Indian subcontinent, is home to the earliest fossils of our species, Homo sapiens, in South Asia. It also preserves clear evidence for human occupation and the use of tropical rainforest environments outside of Africa from ~48,000 to 3,000 years ago – refuting the idea that these supposedly resource-poor environments acted as barriers for migrating Pleistocene humans. The question as to exactly how humans obtained rainforest resources – including fast-moving food sources like monkeys and squirrels – remains unresolved.

In this new study, published in Science Advances, an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Germany, Griffith University in Australia and the Department of Archaeology, Government of Sri Lanka, present evidence for the earliest use of bow-and-arrow technologies by humans anywhere outside of Africa. At ~48,000 years old, these tools are earlier than the first similar technology found in Europe. Clear evidence for use on the preserved bone arrowheads shows that they were likely used for hunting difficult-to-catch rainforest prey. Not only that, but the scientists show that other bone tools may have been used for making nets or clothing in tropical settings, dramatically altering traditional assumptions about how certain human innovations were linked with specific environmental requirements.

Hunting in the open and sheltering from the cold?

European cultural products in the form of cave art, amazingly detailed bone carvings, bone tool technologies, and tailored clothing have been frequently held up as the pinnacle of Late Pleistocene human cultural development. There, symbolic and technological innovations have been seen as key survival mechanisms equipping expanding populations to face cold northern climates. Meanwhile, discoveries of older bow-and-arrow technology and artistic or symbolic behaviors in open grassland or coastal settings in Africa have framed ‘savannah’ and marine environments, respectively, as key drivers behind early hunting and cultural experiments by Pleistocene humans in their evolutionary homeland.

As co-author of the new study, Patrick Roberts of the MPI-SHH argues that “this traditional focus has meant that other parts of Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas have often been side-lined in discussions of the origins of material culture, such as novel projectile hunting methods or cultural innovations associated with our species.” Nevertheless, the last twenty years have highlighted how Pleistocene humans occupied and adapted to a variety of extreme environments as they migrated beyond Africa, including deserts, high-altitude settings and tropical rainforests such as those of Sri Lanka.

A tropical home

The new study saw scientists turn to the beautifully preserved material culture from the cave of Fa-Hien Lena, deep in the heart of Sri Lanka’s Wet Zone forests. As co-author Oshan Wedage, PhD at MPI-SHH, states, “Fa-Hien Lena has emerged as one of South Asia’s most important archaeological sites since the 1980s, preserving remains of our species, their tools, and their prey in a tropical context.” Some of the main finds from the site include remarkable single and doubled pointed bone tools that scientists had suspected were used in the exploitation of tropical resources. Direct proof had been lacking, however, in the absence of detailed high-powered microscopic analysis.

Michelle Langley of Griffith University, the lead author of the new study, is an expert in the study of microscopic traces of tool use and the creation of symbolic material culture in Pleistocene contexts. Applying cutting edge methods to the Fa-Hien Lena material confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis. As Langley states, “the fractures on the points indicate damage through high-powered impact – something usually seen in the use of bow-and-arrow hunting of animals. This evidence is earlier than similar findings in Southeast Asia 32,000 years ago and is currently the earliest clear evidence for bow-and-arrow use beyond the African continent.”

The evidence for early human innovation did not stop there. Applying the same microscopic approach to other bone tools, the team identified implements which seem to have been associated with freshwater fishing in nearby tropical streams, as well as the working of fiber to make nets or clothing. “We also found clear evidence for the production of colored beads from mineral ochre and the refined making of shell beads traded from the coast, at a similar age to other ‘social signaling’ materials found in Eurasia and Southeast Asia, roughly 45,000 years ago,” says Michelle Langley. Together, this reveals a complex, early human social network in the tropics of South Asia.

A flexible toolkit for new hunting grounds

The new study highlights that archaeologists can no longer link specific technological, symbolic, or cultural developments in Pleistocene humans to a single region or environment. “The Sri Lankan evidence shows that the invention of bows-and-arrows, clothing, and symbolic signaling occurred multiple times and in multiple different places, including within the tropical rainforests of Asia,” says co-author Michael Petraglia of the MPI-SHH. In addition to insulation in cold environments, clothes may have also helped against tropical mosquitoes, “and instead of just hunting large grassland mammals,” adds zooarchaeologist Noel Amano, another MPI-SHH co-author, “bows and arrows helped humans procure small, tree-dwelling primates and rodents.”

While archaeologists have long focused on the uniqueness of European markers of behavioural modernity, the new study is part of a growing awareness that many regions of the world saw extraordinary and complex new technologies emerge at the end of the Palaeolithic. “Humans at this time show extraordinary resourcefulness and the ability to exploit a range of new environments,” notes Nicole Boivin, Director at the MPI-SHH and study coauthor. “These skills enabled them to colonize nearly all of the planet’s continents by about 10,000 years ago, setting us clearly on the path to being the global species we are today.”

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Map of Sri Lanka with the site of Fa-Hien Lena shown alongside views of the cave and section from which the materials of the study come. Wedage et al., 2019

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Fa-Hien Lena has emerged as one of South Asia’s most important archaeological sites since the 1980s, preserving remains of our species, their tools, and their prey in a tropical context. Langley et al., 2020

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The team found clear evidence for the production of colored beads from mineral ochre and the refined making of shell beads traded from the coast, at a similar age to other ‘social signaling’ materials found in Eurasia and Southeast Asia, roughly 45,000 years ago. Adapted from Langley et al., 2020

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

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CNRS—Carved from burnt bone, this miniature bird statuette is the oldest known Chinese work of art, according to an international team involving the CNRS, the universities of Bordeaux (France), Shandong (China), Bergen (Norway), and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). It was unearthed at Lingjing, a site in Henan Province, in an archaeological context dated to between 13,800 and 13,000 years ago. This discovery pushes back the origins of animal sculpture and representations in East Asia by more than 8,500 years (1). The stylistic and technical particularities of the figurine – it is the only known Palaeolithic sculpture representing an animal standing on a pedestal – point to an original artistic tradition, different from those known in Western Europe and Siberia. The object’s exceptional state of preservation and the researchers’ use of state-of-the-art analytical techniques, such as confocal microscopy and microtomography, have enabled the team to meticulously reconstruct the Palaeolithic artist’s approach. This discovery is published on June 10th 2020 in the journal PLOS ONE.

To find out more, watch this video: https://youtu.be/dCWwTLnrV2Y

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Photo (top) and 3D reconstruction using microtomography (bottom) of the miniature bird sculpture. Its production combined four different techniques (abrasion, gouging, scraping and incision), which left 68 microfacets on the surface of the object. © Francesco d’Errico and Luc Doyon

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Article Source: CNRS news release

Notes: (1) Previously, the oldest known sculptures were the jade and steatite animal figurines from Shangzhai, a 6000 year old site near Beijing.

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In contrast to the prehistoric remains of the Near East, the megalithic monuments of Arabia remain largely unknown. These monumental structures, made of dry stone walls, still hold many secrets in terms of their construction, function and chronology. An international collaboration of scientists from France, Saudi Arabia and Italy, led by Olivia Munoz, a researcher at the CNRS, have discovered a 35-meter long triangular platform in the oasis of Dûmat al-Jandal (northern Saudi Arabia). Built in several phases from the 6th millennium BC, this exceptional monument was probably dedicated to ritual practices, some of which were probably funerary and commemorative. To arrive at these conclusions, scientists studied and dated the objects and human remains from deposits found in and around the platform – in the two side niches and also in nearby tombs. These discoveries, which are published in the journal Antiquity on June 9^th, 2020*, demonstrate a ritual use during Prehistory, and are a potentially symbolic imprint left by nomadic pastoralists in the landscape during this remote period.

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The platform during excavation © MADAJ

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Aerial view of the platform © MADAJ, Marianne Cotty, Olivia Munoz et Ronald Schwerdtner

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Article Source: A CNRS news release

*Marking the sacral landscape of a north Arabian oasis: a sixth-millennium BC monumental stone platform and surrounding burials, Olivia Munoz, Marianne Cotty, Guillaume Charloux, Charlène Bouchaud, Hervé Monchot, Céline Marquaire, Antoine Zazzo, Rémy Crassard, Olivier Brunet, Vanessa Boschloos, Thamer al-Malki. Antiquity, 9 June 2020. DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2020.81

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