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CARDIFF UNIVERSITY—People transported animals over huge distances for mass gatherings at one of Ireland’s most iconic archaeological sites, research* concludes.

Dr Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University led the study, which analyzed the bones of 35 animals excavated from Navan Fort, the legendary capital of Ulster. Researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, Memorial University Newfoundland and the British Geological Survey were also involved in the research.

The site had long been considered a center for ritual gatherings, as excavations found a huge 40m diameter building and a barbary ape cranium, likely from at least as far as Iberia. Results suggest the pigs, cattle and sheep were brought from across Ireland, perhaps being reared as far afield as Galway, Donegal, Down, Tyrone and Antrim. Evidence suggests some were brought over more than 100 miles.

Dr Madgwick, based in Cardiff University’s School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: “Our results provide clear evidence that communities in Iron Age Ireland were very mobile and that livestock were also moved over greater distances than was previously thought.

“The high proportion of pig remains found there is very rare for this period. This suggests that Navan Fort was a feasting centre, as pigs are well-suited as feasting animals and in early Irish literature pork is the preferred food of the feast.

“It is clear that Navan Fort had a vast catchment and that the influence of the site was far-reaching.”

Researchers used multi-isotope analysis on samples of tooth enamel to unlock the origins of each animal. Food and water have chemical compositions linked to the geographical areas where they are sourced. When animals eat and drink, these chemical signals are archived in their teeth, allowing scientists to investigate the location where they were raised.

Co-author of the research, Dr Finbar McCormick, of Queen’s University, Belfast, said: “In the absence of human remains, multi-isotope analysis of animals found at Navan Fort provides us with the best indication of human movement at that time.

“Feasting, almost invariably associated with sacrifice, was a social necessity of early societies where the slaughter of a large domesticate necessitated the consumption of a large amount of meat in a short period of time.”

Earlier this year, Dr Madgwick’s research of 131 pigs found at sites near Stonehenge revealed animals came from as far away as Scotland and numerous other locations across the British Isles. Before this, the origins of people who visited this area and the extent of the population’s movements at the time had been long-standing enigmas in British prehistory.

Dr Madgwick added: “Transporting animals across the country would have involved a great deal of time and effort so our findings demonstrate the important role they played in society. Food was clearly a central part of people’s exchanges and traditions.”

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One of the analyzed pig jaws for the study. Dr Richard Madgwick

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Article Source: Cardiff University news release

*http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-55671-0

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FLINDERS UNIVERSITY—Ancient Neolithic villagers on the Carmel Coast in Israel built a seawall to protect their settlement against rising sea levels in the Mediterranean, revealing humanity’s struggle against rising oceans and flooding stretches back thousands of years.

An international team of researchers from the University of Haifa, Flinders University in Australia, the Israel Antiquities Authority and The Hebrew University uncovered and analyzed the oldest known coastal defence system anywhere in the world, constructed by ancient settlers from boulders sourced in riverbeds from 1-2km near their village.

In a study published today in PLOS ONE, Dr Ehud Galili from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, explains that the over 100 meter long seawall proved to be a temporary reprieve and the ancient village was eventually abandoned and inundated.

This discovery provides new insights into ancient human responses to current threats posed by sea level rise.

“During the Neolithic, Mediterranean populations would have experienced a sea-level rise of 4 to 7 mm a year or approximately 12-21cm during a lifetime (up to 70 cm in a 100 years). This rate of sea-level rise means the frequency of destructive storms damaging the village would have risen significantly,” says Dr Galili.

“The environmental changes would have been noticeable to people, during the lifetime of a settlement across several centuries. Eventually the accumulating yearly sea-level necessitated a human response involving the construction of a coastal protection wall similar to what we’re seeing around the world now.”

In a scenario comparable to the sinking capital of Jakarta today, ancient Tel Hreiz was built at a safe elevation of up to 3 meters above sea level but post glacial sea-level rises of up to 7mm a year posed a threat to settlers and their homes.

Coauthor Dr Jonathan Benjamin from Flinders University in Australia says the Tel Hreiz settlement was first recognized as a potential archaeological site in the 1960’s but the relevant areas that were exposed by natural processes in 2012, revealed this previously unknown archaeological material

“There are no known or similar built structures at any of the other submerged villages in the region, making the Tel Hreiz site a unique example of this visible evidence for human response to sea-level rise in the Neolithic.”

“Modern sea-level rise has already caused lowland coastal erosion around the world. Given the size of coastal populations and settlements, the magnitude of predicted future population displacement differs considerably to the impacts on people during the Neolithic period.”

Current estimates predict 21st century sea level rise to range from 1.7 to 3mm per year, representing a smaller change when compared to the threat experienced by the Neolithic community that built the ancient sea wall, however many of the same challenges will be posed according to the authors.

“Many of the fundamental human questions and the decision-making relating to human resilience, coastal defense, technological innovation and decisions to ultimately abandon long-standing settlements remain relevant.” says Dr Galili.

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Eastern Mediterranean and the Israeli coast: Submerged Neolithic settlements off the Carmel coast 2019. John McCarthy after Galili et al.

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Photographs of finds from the Tel Hreiz settlement:
(a-b) exposure of stone-built features in shallow water.
(c) wooden posts dug into the seabed.
(d) bifacial flintadze.
(e) in situ stone bowl made of sandstone.
(f) in situ basalt grounding stone (scale = 20cm);
(g) burial 1.
(h) suspected stone-built cist grave – view from the east
(scale = 20cm).
(i) in situ antler of Mesopotamian fallow deer, Dama dama mesopotamica. All photographs by E. Galili with the exception of Fig 3G by V. Eshed

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Isometric modeling of the Tel Hreiz seawall based on an aerial photograph of the site and its hinterland: (b) schematic cross section of the site today; (c) during the Pottery Neolithic period. J. McCarthy, E. Galili, and J. Benjamin.

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Article Source: Flinders University news release

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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA—Homo erectus, one of modern humans’ direct ancestors, was a wandering bunch. After the species dispersed from Africa about two million years ago, it colonized the ancient world, which included Asia and possibly Europe.

But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially vanished. The lone exception was a spot called Ngandong, on the Indonesian island of Java. But scientists were unable to agree on a precise time period for the site–until now.

In a new study published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers led by the University of Iowa; Macquarie University; and the Institute of Technology Bandung, Indonesia, dates the last existence of Homo erectus at Ngandong between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago.

The researchers time-stamped the site by dating animal fossils from the same bonebed where 12 Homo erectus skull caps and two tibia had been found, and then dated the surrounding land forms–mostly terraces below and above Ngandong–to establish an accurate record for the primeval humans’ possible last stand on Earth.

“This site is the last known appearance of Homo erectus found anywhere in the world,” says Russell Ciochon, professor in the Department of Anthropology at Iowa and co-corresponding author on the study. “We can’t say we dated the extinction, but we dated the last occurrence of it. We have no evidence Homo erectus lived later than that anywhere else.”

The research team presents 52 new age estimates for the Ngandong evidence. They include animal fossil fragments and sediment from the rediscovered fossil bed where the original Homo erectus remains were found by Dutch surveyors in the 1930s, and a sequence of dates for the river terraces below and above the fossil site.

In addition, the researchers determined when mountains south of Ngandong first rose by dating stalagmites from caves in the Southern Mountains. This allowed them to determine when the Solo River began coursing through the Ngandong site, and the river terrace sequence was created.

“You have this incredible array of dates that are all consistent,” Ciochon says. “This has to be the right range. That’s why it’s such a nice, tight paper. The dating is very consistent.”

“The issues with the dating of Ngandong could only ever be resolved by an appreciation of the wider landscape,” says Kira Westaway, associate professor at Macquarie University and a joint-lead author on the paper. “Fossils are the byproducts of complex landscape processes. We were able to nail the age of the site because we constrained the fossils within the river deposit, the river terrace, the sequence of terraces, and the volcanically active landscape.”

Previous research by Ciochon and others shows Homo erectus hopscotched its way across the Indonesian archipelago, and arrived on the island of Java about 1.6 million years ago. The timing was good: The area around Ngandong was mostly grassland, the same environment that cradled the species in Africa. Plants and animals were abundant. While the species continued to venture to other islands, Java, it appears, likely remained home–or least a way station–to some bands of the species.

However, around 130,000 years ago, the environment at Ngandong changed, and so did Homo erectus‘s fortunes.

“There was a change in climate,” Ciochon explains. “We know the fauna changed from open country, grassland, to a tropical rainforest (extending southward from today’s Malaysia). Those were not the plants and animals that Homo erectus was used to, and the species just could not adapt.”

Ciochon co-led a 12-member, international team that dug at Ngandong in 2008 and in 2010, accompanied by Yan Rizal and Yahdi Zaim, the lead researchers from the Institute of Technology, Bandung, on the excavation. Using notes from the Dutch surveyors’ excavation in the 1930s, the team found the original Homo erectus bone bed at Ngandong and re-exposed it, collecting and dating 867 animal fossil fragments. Meanwhile, Westaway’s team had been dating the surrounding landscapes, such as the terraces, during that time.

“It was coincidental” the teams were working in the same place–one group at the fossil bed, the other group dating the surrounding area, Ciochon says.

“With the data we had, we couldn’t really date the Ngandong fossils,” Ciochon continues. “We had dates on them, but they were minimum ages. So, we couldn’t really say how old, although we knew we were in the ballpark. By working with Kira, who had a vast amount of dating data for the terraces, mountains, and other landscape features, we were able to provide precise regional chronological and geomorphic contexts for the Ngandong site.”

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Excavators at the site of Ngandong. Screenshot from the subject University of Iowa video release.

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Closeup of Homo erectus skull caps excavated at Ngandong. Screenshot from subject University of Iowa video release.

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University of Iowa anthropologist Russell Ciochon led an international team that has determined the age of the last known settlement by Homo erectus, a direct ancestor to modern humans. Tim Schoon, University of Iowa

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Article Source: University of Iowa news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI—Archaeologists with the University of Cincinnati have discovered two Bronze Age tombs containing a trove of engraved jewelry and artifacts that promise to unlock secrets about life in ancient Greece.

The UC archaeologists announced the discovery Tuesday in Greece.

Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, archaeologists in UC’s classics department, found the two beehive-shaped tombs in Pylos, Greece, last year while investigating the area around the grave of an individual they have called the “Griffin Warrior,” a Greek man whose final resting place they discovered nearby in 2015 [see the in-depth article, The Tomb of the Griffin Warrior, about this important discovery].

Like the Griffin Warrior’s tomb, the princely tombs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea also contained a wealth of cultural artifacts and delicate jewelry that could help historians fill in gaps in our knowledge of early Greek civilization.

UC’s team spent more than 18 months excavating and documenting the find. The tombs were littered with flakes of gold leaf that once papered the walls.

“Like with the Griffin Warrior grave, by the end of the first week we knew we had something that was really important,” said Stocker, who supervised the excavation.

“It soon became clear to us that lightning had struck again,” said Davis, head of UC’s classics department.

The Griffin Warrior is named for the mythological creature — part eagle, part lion — engraved on an ivory plaque in his tomb, which also contained armor, weaponry and gold jewelry. Among the priceless objects of art was an agate sealstone depicting mortal combat with such fine detail that Archaeology magazine hailed it as a “Bronze Age masterpiece.”

Artifacts found in the princely tombs tell similar stories about life along the Mediterranean 3,500 years ago, Davis said. A gold ring depicted two bulls flanked by sheaves of grain, identified as barley by a paleobotanist who consulted on the project.

“It’s an interesting scene of animal husbandry — cattle mixed with grain production. It’s the foundation of agriculture,” Davis said. “As far as we know, it’s the only representation of grain in the art of Crete or Minoan civilization.”

Like the grave of the Griffin Warrior, the two family tombs contained artwork emblazoned with mythological creatures. An agate sealstone featured two lion-like creatures called genii standing upright on clawed feet. They carry a serving vase and an incense burner, a tribute for the altar before them featuring a sprouting sapling between horns of consecration, Stocker said.

Above the genii is a 16-pointed star. The same 16-pointed star also appears on a bronze and gold artifact in the grave, she said.

“It’s rare. There aren’t many 16-pointed stars in Mycenaean iconography. The fact that we have two objects with 16 points in two different media (agate and gold) is noteworthy,” Stocker said.

The genius motif appears elsewhere in the East during this period, she said.

“One problem is we don’t have any writing from the Minoan or Mycenaean time that talks of their religion or explains the importance of their symbols,” Stocker said.

UC’s team also found a gold pendant featuring the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Hathor.

“Its discovery is particularly interesting in light of the role she played in Egypt as protectress of the dead,” Davis said.

The identity of the Griffin Warrior is a matter for speculation. Stocker said the combination of armor, weapons and jewelry found in his tomb strongly indicate he had military and religious authority, likely as the king known in later Mycenaean times as a wanax.

Likewise, the princely tombs paint a picture of accumulated wealth and status, she said. They contained amber from the Baltic, amethyst from Egypt, imported carnelian and lots of gold. The tombs sit on a scenic vista overlooking the Mediterranean Sea on the spot where the Palace of Nestor would later rise and fall to ruins.

“I think these are probably people who were very sophisticated for their time,” she said. “They have come out of a place in history where there were few luxury items and imported goods. And all of a sudden at the time of the first tholos tombs, luxury items appear in Greece.

“You have this explosion of wealth. People are vying for power,” she said. “It’s the formative years that will give rise to the Classic Age of Greece.”

The antiquities provide evidence that coastal Pylos was once an important destination for commerce and trade.

“If you look at a map, Pylos is a remote area now. You have to cross mountains to get here. Until recently, it hasn’t even been on the tourist path,” Stocker said. “But if you’re coming by sea, the location makes more sense. It’s on the way to Italy. What we’re learning is that it’s a much more central and important place on the Bronze Age trade route.”

The princely tombs sit close to the palace of Nestor, a ruler mentioned in Homer’s famous works “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” The palace was discovered in 1939 by the late UC Classics professor Carl Blegen. Blegen had wanted to excavate in the 1950s in the field where Davis and Stocker found the new tombs but could not get permission from the property owner to expand his investigation. The tombs would have to wait years for another UC team to make the startling discovery hidden beneath its grape vines.

Excavating the site was particularly arduous. With the excavation season looming, delays in procuring the site forced researchers to postpone plans to study the site first with ground-penetrating radar. Instead, Stocker and Davis relied on their experience and intuition to focus on one disturbed area.

“There were noticeable concentrations of rocks on the surface once we got rid of the vegetation,” she said.

Those turned out to be the exposed covers of deep tombs, one plunging nearly 15 feet. The tombs were protected from the elements and potential thieves by an estimated 40,000 stones the size of watermelons.

The boulders had sat undisturbed for millennia where they had fallen when the domes of the tombs collapsed. And now 3,500 years later, UC’s team had to remove each stone individually.

“It was like going back to the Mycenaean Period. They had placed them by hand in the walls of the tombs and we were taking them out by hand,” Stocker said. “It was a lot of work.”

At every step of the excavation, the researchers used photogrammetry and digital mapping to document the location and orientation of objects in the tomb. This is especially valuable because of the great number of artifacts that were recovered, Davis said.

“We can see all levels as we excavated them and relate them one to the other in three dimensions,” he said. UC’s team will continue working at Pylos for at least the next two years while they and other researchers around the world unravel mysteries contained in the artifacts.

“It has been 50 years since any substantial tombs of this sort have been found at any Bronze Age palatial site. That makes this extraordinary,” Davis said.

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UC archaeologists discovered two large family tombs at Pylos, Greece, strewn with flakes of gold that once lined their walls. The excavation took more than 18 months. UC Classics

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UC archaeologists found a sealstone made from semiprecious carnelian in the family tombs at Pylos, Greece. The sealstone was engraved with two lionlike mythological figures called genii carrying serving vessels and incense burners facing each other over an altar and below a 16-pointed star. The other image is a putty cast of the sealstone. UC Classics

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A gold ring depicts bulls and barley, the first known representation of domesticated animals and agriculture in ancient Greece. UC Classics

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Article Source:Edited from the  University of Cincinnati news release

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If you liked this article, then you may also like The Tomb of the Griffin Warrior, published in 2015 by Popular Archaeology magazine.

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ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY—Research on global biodiversity has long assumed that present-day biodiversity patterns reflect present-day factors, namely contemporary climate and human activities. A new study* shows that climate changes and human impacts over the last 100,000 years continue to shape patterns of tropical and subtropical mammal biodiversity today — a surprising finding.

The new research — coauthored by Kaye E. Reed and Irene Smail, Arizona State University; Lydia Beaudrot, Rice University; Janet Franklin, University of California Riverside; and John Rowan, Andrew Zamora, and Jason M. Kamilar, University of Massachusetts Amherst — will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Understanding the factors that structure global biodiversity patterns — the distribution and diversity of life on Earth — has been of long-standing scientific interest. To date, much of this research has focused on present-day climate, such as average temperature or rainfall, because climate is well-known to influence species geographic distributions and because human-caused climate change is a major threat. Likewise, other recent human impacts are well-known to influence biodiversity and are well-studied, such as deforestation and urbanization of wild lands that destroy habitats for many species.

What many of these studies overlook, however, is that present-day biodiversity patterns are the outcome of thousands of years of changes in Earth’s climate and, more recently, prehistoric human activity. Thus, present-day biodiversity patterns need not be primarily driven by recent climate or human impacts. A small but growing body of studies suggest that legacies of the ancient past continue to structure patterns of life on Earth today. Indeed, though this may be the case, global-scale analyses on this issue remained elusive until now.

To tackle this issue, the researchers analyzed a database of 515 mammal communities across the globe. For each community (i.e., an assemblage of mammal species occupying the same area), they collected data on the species present, their ecological characteristics (body size, diet, etc.) and their evolutionary relationships to one another. They used this information to measure the ecological and evolutionary structure of each community and then asked whether it was best explained by present-day climate (current temperature and rainfall), Quaternary paleoclimate changes (changes in temperature and rainfall from around 22,000 years ago and 6,000 years ago to the present), recent human activity (land-use change since the Industrial Revolution) or prehistoric human activity (human-driven mammal extinctions that happened over the last 100,000 years as humans spread across the globe).

The research findings show, for the first time, that current patterns of mammal diversity across the world’s tropical and subtropical regions are structured by both past and present climate and human impacts, but specific effects vary by region.

“We have long been interested in finding overarching explanations for what drives mammal diversity across the globe,” said John Rowan. “For our research group, this study made us realize that there probably isn’t one — every region of the world has its own distinct history, and that history matters today.”

In the Neotropics (South and Central America), for example, mammal communities are strongly influenced by prehistoric human-driven extinctions over the last 100,000 years. When humans arrived in the Neotropics, they caused massive extinctions of the region’s mammals, the effects of which linger today in the surviving communities. Conversely, Africa was lightly impacted by these extinctions, and the region’s present-day communities are mainly shaped by current and prehistoric climates. Southeast Asia and Madagascar also have their own suite of past and present climatic and human factors that shape them.

These global differences highlight an important finding of the study — there is no one-size-fits-all explanation for what structures mammal biodiversity across the world. Each of world’s major regions has a unique ecological and evolutionary history, and these histories continue to strongly influence the distribution and diversity of mammalian life on Earth.

“Now that we have a global study of the similarities and differences of the overarching effects on mammal communities,” said Kaye Reed, “we will continue to explore each region in depth to examine other factors that affected these communities in the past and what that might mean for the future.”

The climatic and human-impact legacies of the ancient past can be, and often are, as or more important than their present-day counterparts. As scientists continue to understand global patterns of biodiversity, the researchers suggest that past climate and human impact factors should be incorporated into future studies. They propose that this will result in a more holistic understanding of what drives biodiversity and how it may respond to ongoing and future human-caused changes in the 21st century.

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The tropics and subtropics cradle the vast majority of the world’s remaining large mammals. John Rowan

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Article Source: Arizona State University news release

*Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Geographically divergent evolutionary and ecological legacies shape mammal biodiversity in the global tropics and subtropics. John Rowan, Lydia Beaudrot, Janet Franklin, Kaye E. Reed, Irene Smail, Andrew Zamora, Jason M. Kamilar.

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UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES—At a prehistoric archaeological site in Turkey, researchers have discovered two 8,500-year-old human teeth, which had been used as pendants in a necklace or bracelet. Researchers have never documented this practice before in the prehistoric Near East, and the rarity of the find suggests that the human teeth were imbued with profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore them.

During excavations at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey between 2013 and 2015, researchers found three 8,500-year-old-teeth that appeared to have been intentionally drilled to be worn as beads in a necklace or bracelet. Subsequent macroscopic, microscopic and radiographic analyses confirmed that two of the teeth had indeed been used as beads or pendants, researchers conclude in a newly published article in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

“Not only had the two teeth been drilled with a conically shaped microdrill similar to those used for creating the vast amounts of beads from animal bone and stone that we have found at the site, but they also showed signs of wear corresponding to extensive use as ornaments in a necklace or bracelet,” University of Copenhagen archaeologist and first author of the article Scott Haddow said. He added:

“The evidence suggests that the two teeth pendants were probably extracted from two mature individuals post-mortem. The wear on the teeth’s chewing surfaces indicates that the individuals would have been between 30-50 years old. And since neither tooth seems to have been diseased-which would likely have caused the tooth to fall out during life, the most likely scenario is that both teeth were taken from skulls at the site.”

Deep symbolic value

Researchers have previously found human teeth used for ornamental purposes at European sites from the Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic, but this practice has never been documented before in the Near East during these or subsequent timeframes. This makes these finds extremely rare and surprising.

“Given the amount of fragmentary skeletal material often circulating within Neolithic sites, not least at Çatalhöyük where secondary burial practices associated with the display of human skulls were frequent, what is most interesting is the fact that human teeth and bone were not selected and modified more often. Thus, because of the rarity of the find, we find it very unlikely that these modified human teeth were used solely for aesthetic purposes but rather carried profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore them,” Scott Haddow explained.

He concluded:

“The fact that the teeth were recovered from non-burial contexts is also highly interesting in that burials at the site often contain beads and pendants made from animal bone/teeth and other materials, indicating that it seems to have been a deliberate choice not to include items made from human bone and teeth with burials. So perhaps these human teeth pendants were related to specific – and rare – ritual taboos? Or perhaps we should look to the identity of the two individuals from whom the teeth were extracted for an explanation? However, given the small sample size, the ultimate meaning of the human teeth pendants will remain elusive until new findings at Çatalhöyük or elsewhere in the Near East can help us better contextualize the meaning these human teeth artifacts.”

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The two drilled 8,500-year-old human teeth found at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. University of Copenhagen

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES news release

Read the article in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X19304894)

MCMASTER UNIVERSITY—New research from anthropologists at McMaster University and California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), is shedding light on ancient dietary practices, the evolution of agricultural societies and ultimately, how plants have become an important element of the modern diet.

Researchers examined plant remains found on ceramic artifacts such as bowls, bottles and jars, and stone tools such as blades and drills, dating to the Early Formative period (2000-1000 BCE), which were excavated from the village site of La Consentida, located in the coastal region of Oaxaca in southwest Mexico.

They focused on remnants of starch grains, which are where plants store energy, and phytoliths, also known as ‘microfossils,’ a rigid, microscopic structure made of silica which is produced by plants and can survive the decay process. Both types of microbotanical remains are routinely recovered from artifacts to analyze ancient foodways.

A careful analysis found the remains of flowering plants, wild bean families and grasses, including maize. The findings support existing evidence that the village was transitioning from a broad, Archaic period (7000-2000 BCE) diet to one based on agriculture.

“This is an important piece of the puzzle. The work provides us with a better idea of how plants became cultivated and how they made their way to our plates,” explains Éloi Bérubé, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University, who conducted the work with advisor Shanti Morell-Hart, an assistant professor of anthropology.

“It gives us a more complete understanding of the daily activities that played a significant role in ancient societies,” he says.

For example, researchers found maize microfossils pointing to the storage and processing of different parts of the plant, as well as indications of heat damage, likely caused by cooking. Evidence of maize and wild beans was also found in artifacts used for burial offerings.

“The Early Formative was a key moment of social transformation for native peoples of Mesoamerica,” says Guy Hepp, director of the La Consentida Archaeological Project and assistant professor of anthropology at CSUSB. “La Consentida was among Mesoamerica’s earliest villages, and these new dietary results help us better understand some of the changes the community was experiencing, including a shift toward permanent settlements and the beginnings of social complexity.”

Combined with other evidence from the site, including variations in burial offerings and the diversity of human depictions in small-scale ceramic figurines, this study suggests that the community was in the early stages of establishing a complex social organization.

The artifacts considered for the study come from a variety of contexts at La Consentida, including mounded earthen architecture, the spaces around ancient houses, and even human burials.

Pottery from the site includes jars used in domestic and communal cooking events and likely also for storage. Some of the jars were later reused as offerings with human burials. Decorative bowls were likely used for serving foods at communal feasts. Ceramic bottles, also found in feasting refuse, likely held beverages brewed from maize and possibly even cacao.

The research is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

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The site of La Consentida, Mexico. Guy Hepp

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An ancient bowl found at La Consentida, Mexico. Shanti Morell-Hart

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Article Source: McMaster University news release

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UNIVERSITY OF BONN—Several years ago, Maya archaeologists from the University of Bonn found the bones of about 20 people at the bottom of a water reservoir in the former Maya city of Uxul, in what is now Mexico. They had apparently been killed and dismembered about 1,400 years ago. Did these victims come from Uxul or other regions of the Maya Area? Dr. Nicolaus Seefeld, who heads the project that is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation at the University of Bonn, is now one step further: A strontium isotope analysis by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) showed that some of the dead grew up at least 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Uxul.

Strontium is ingested with food and stored like calcium in bones and teeth. The isotope ratios of strontium vary in rocks and soils, which is why different regions on earth have their own characteristic signatures. “As the development of tooth enamel is completed in early childhood, the strontium isotope ratio indicates the region where a person grew up,” says Dr. Nicolaus Seefeld, who heads a project at the University of Bonn on the mass grave of Uxul and the role of ritualized violence in Maya society.

Together with researchers from the Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory of the Geophysics Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Seefeld took tiny samples of tooth enamel from a total of 13 individuals early this summer. “Unfortunately it was not possible to examine the strontium isotope ratio of the remaining individuals, because the teeth were too decayed and the result would have been distorted,” reports Seefeld.

The victims apparently had a high social status

The results of the isotope analysis show that most of the victims grew up at least 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Uxul in the southern lowlands, in what is now Guatemala. “However, at least one adult and also one infant were local residents from Uxul,” says the researcher. They were apparently mostly people of high social status, as eight of the individuals had elaborate jade tooth jewelry or engravings in their incisors.

In 2013, Seefeld was investigating the water supply system of the former Maya city of Uxul when he discovered a well, in which the remains of about 20 people had been buried during the seventh century AD. The excavations of this mass grave were carried out as part of the Uxul archaeological project by the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn, which was headed by Prof. Dr. Nikolai Grube during the research period from 2009 to 2015. The investigations of the mass grave have been under the leadership of Dr. Seefeld and funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation since January 2018.

Detailed investigations revealed that, in addition to at least 14 men and one woman, the mass grave contained the remains of several adolescents and an 18-month-old infant. Nearly all the bones showed marks of cuts and injuries by stone blades. Their regular distribution clearly shows that the individuals had been systematically and deliberately dismembered. The victims were killed and decapitated outside the water reservoir, then dismembered and the body parts placed at the bottom of the reservoir.

Heat marks on the bones showed that the bodies were exposed to fire – presumably so that skin and muscles could be removed more easily. However, there were no human bite marks on the bones that would indicate cannibalism. After dismemberment, body parts that were originally connected were deliberately placed as far apart from each other as possible. “This clearly demonstrates the desire to destroy the physical unity of the individuals,” says Seefeld.

Killing and dismemberment as a demonstration of power

The latest results of the strontium isotope analysis and the anthropological investigations now allow more precise conclusions about the identity of the victims and the possible reasons for the killings. It is known from pictorial representations of ritual violence of the Classic Maya that the beheading and dismemberment of humans mostly occurred in the context of armed conflicts. These representations often show victorious rulers who chose to take the elites of the defeated city as prisoners of war and later publicly humiliate and kill them. “The documented actions in Uxul should therefore not be regarded as a mere expression of cruelty or brutality, but as a demonstration of power,” says Seefeld.

The most plausible explanation for the current evidence is that the majority of the victims were prisoners of war from a city in the southern Maya lowlands, who were defeated in a military confrontation with Uxul. These formerly powerful individuals were then brought to Uxul and killed. Seefeld recently presented his findings at the Archaeological Conference of Central Germany in Halle and at the conference “Investigadores de la Cultura Maya” in Campeche in Mexico.

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After the bodies had been dismembered, the body parts were placed at the bottom of an artificial water reservoir and covered with large stone blocks. © Photo: Nicolaus Seefeld

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Study shows that skin, muscles and tendons were removed from the limbs. © Photo: Nicolaus Seefeld

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Article Source: University of Bonn news release

*https://www.iae.uni-bonn.de/forschung/forschungsprojekte/laufende-projekte/the-mass-grave-of-uxul-and-the-function-of-ritual-violence-in-classic-maya-society/the-mass-grave-of-uxul-and-the-function-of-ritual-violence-in-classic-maya-society

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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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