AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—Ancestors of modern West Africans interbred with a yet-undiscovered species of archaic human, similar to how ancient Europeans mated with Neanderthals, researchers report. Their work helps inform how archaic hominins added to the genetic variation of present-day Africans, which has been poorly understood, in part because of the sparse fossil record in Africa and the difficulty of obtaining ancient DNA. The authors’ computer modeling technique overcomes these challenges, enabling the discovery of genetic contributions from archaic hominins when fossils or DNA are lacking. Well-established research shows that sequences of Neanderthal DNA are found in modern European populations, and Denisovan DNA appears in Oceanian populations. These segments arrived in modern humans through introgression, the process by which members of two populations mate, and the resulting hybrid individuals then breed with members of the parent populations. Recent studies have shown that, though modern West Africans do not have Neanderthal or Denisovan ancestry, there may have been introgression by other ancient hominins in their past. Now, by comparing 405 genomes of West Africans with Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes, Arun Durvasula and Sriram Sankararaman found differences that could be best explained by introgression by an unknown hominin whose ancestors split off from the human family tree before Neanderthals. The authors’ data suggests this introgression may have happened relatively recently, or it may have involved multiple populations of archaic human, hinting at complex and long-lived interactions between anatomically modern humans and various populations of archaic hominins. The authors call for more analysis of modern and ancient African genomes to reveal the nature of this complex history.
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA—Boulder, Colo., USA: In Australia, the onset of human occupation (about 65,000 years?) and dispersion across the continent are the subjects of intense debate and are critical to understanding global human migration routes. A lack of ceramic artifacts and permanent structures has resulted in a scarcity of dateable archaeological sites older than about 10,000 years.
Existing age constraints are derived largely from radiocarbon dating of charcoal and/or optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz grains in rock shelter sediments, and there is a need for independent age constraints to test more controversial ages. In southeastern Australia, only six sites (located in Tasmania, New South Wales, and South Australia) older than 30,000 years are considered definitively dated by 14C and/or OSL methods, with ages spanning 37,000-50,000 years.
The strong oral traditions of Australian Aboriginal peoples have enabled perpetuation of ecological knowledge across many generations and can likely provide additional archeological insights. Some surviving traditions allude to different geological events, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and meteorite impacts. It has been proposed that some of these traditions may have been transmitted for thousands of years.
The Newer Volcanic Province of southeastern Australia contains over 400 basaltic eruption centers, a number of which are thought to have erupted within the last 100,000 years, although precise ages remain elusive for most. Technological improvements over the last decade have firmly established applicability of the 40Ar/39Ar dating technique (which relies on the natural radioactive decay of 40K in minerals) to archeological timescales, enabling many of these younger volcanoes to be dated by this method.
Rare reported occurrences of archaeological evidence beneath volcanic ash deposits and lava flows, and the longevity of Aboriginal oral histories, presents an opportunity for novel investigation into the timing of human occupation of this region. In particular, oral traditions surrounding the Budj Bim Volcanic Complex (previously Mount Eccles) in western Victoria have been interpreted to reference volcanic activity.
This new study published in Geology presents a new 40Ar/39Ar eruption age of 36,900 ± 3,100 thousand years for the Budj Bim Volcanic Complex and an age of 36,800 ± 3,800 thousand years for the nearby Tower Hill Volcanic Complex; the latter is of archaeological significance due to the historical discovery of a stone axe from a sequence of volcanic ash deposits.
These ages fall within the range of 14C and OSL ages reported for the six earliest known occupation sites in southeastern Australia. The age of Tower Hill directly represents the minimum age for human presence in Victoria. If oral traditions surrounding Budj Bim do indeed reference volcanic activity, this could mean that these are some of the longest-lived oral traditions in the world.
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Lake Surprise, Budj Bim Volcanic Complex, Victoria, Australia. Creative Commons
University of Oregon and Binghamton University—The timing of the collapse of Easter Island’s monument-building society did not occur as long thought, according to a fresh look at evidence by researchers at four institutions.
The island of Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island, is well-known for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly its numerous statues (moai) and the monumental platforms that supported them (ahu). A widely-held narrative posits that construction of these monuments ceased sometime around 1600, following a major societal collapse. Located about 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) from South America and 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from any other inhabited island, it is believed to have been settled in the 13th century by Polynesian seafarers. They soon began building massive stone platforms stacked with megalithic statues and large, cylindrical stone hats that were used for cultural and religious rituals, including burial and cremation. A widely-held narrative is that monument construction stopped around 1600 after a major societal collapse.
Researchers, led by the University of Oregon’s Robert J. DiNapoli, examined radiocarbon dates, relative architectural stratigraphy and ethnohistoric accounts to quantify the onset, rate and end of monument construction as a means of testing the collapse hypothesis.
“Archaeologists assign ages to the archaeological record by getting what are known as radiocarbon dates,” said Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at Binghamton University. “These dates represent the amount of time since some organisms (a bush, tree, etc.) died. Assembling groups of these dates together to look at patterns requires some sophisticated statistical analyses that have only recently been available to archaeologists. In this paper, we use these tools to provide the first-ever look at the history of platform construction on Easter Island.”
The project began as part of DiNapoli’s dissertation, which is focused on the process of building the monuments’ architecture. Looking at 11 sites, the researchers examined the necessary sequence of construction, beginning with building a central platform and then adding different structures and statues.
That helped make sense of differing radiocarbon dates found at various excavation sites. Monument construction, according to the team, began soon after initial Polynesian settlement and increased rapidly, sometime between the early 14th and mid-15th centuries, with a steady rate of construction events that continued well beyond the hypothesized collapse and the European arrival.
When the Dutch arrived in 1722, their written observations reported that the monuments were in use for rituals and showed no evidence for societal decay. The same was reported in 1770, when Spanish seafarers landed on the island.
“Their stays were short and their descriptions brief and limited,” DiNapoli said. “But they provide useful information to help us think about the timing of building and using these structures as part of their cultural and religious lives.”
However, when British explorer James Cook arrived four years later, in 1774, he and his crew described an island in crisis, with overturned monuments.
“The way we interpret our results and this sequence of historical accounts is that the notion of a pre-European collapse of monument construction is no longer supported,” DiNapoli said.
“Once Europeans arrive on the island, there are many documented tragic events due to disease, murder, slave raiding and other conflicts,” said co-author Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at Binghamton University in New York.
“These events are entirely extrinsic to the islanders and have, undoubtedly, devastating effects. Yet, the Rapa Nui people – following practices that provided them great stability and success over hundreds of years – continue their traditions in the face of tremendous odds,” he said. “The degree to which their cultural heritage was passed on – and is still present today through language, arts and cultural practices – is quite notable and impressive. I think this degree of resilience has been overlooked due to the collapse narrative and deserves recognition.”
“What we found is that once people started to build monuments shortly after arrival to the island, they continued this construction well into the period after Europeans arrived,” said Lipo. “This would not have been the case had there been some pre-contact “collapse”—indeed, we should have seen all construction stop well before 1722. The lack of such a pattern supports our claims and directly falsifies those who continue to support the ‘collapse’ account.
The researchers believe that their model-based approach to test hypotheses regarding the chronology of collapse can be extended to other case studies around the world where similar debates remain difficult to resolve.
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Ahu Nau Nau, a cultural and religious site built by Rapa Nui society on Easter Island’s Anakena beach, was among 11 sites where previously gathered data were examined as part of the new study led by University of Oregon doctoral candidate Robert DiNapoli. The site is located on the north shore of the Easter Island. Robert DiNapoli
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East Polynesia (left), and Rapa Nui showing the locations of all documented platform ahu as well as those analyzed in this study (right). Journal of Archaeological Science
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Schematic of a typical platform ahu showing a plan view (top) and cross-section (bottom). Figure adapted from Martinsson-Wallin (1994) and Skjølsvold (1994). Journal of Archaeological Science
The paper, “A model-based approach to the tempo of collapse: The case of Rapa Nui (Easter Island),” was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Also contributing to this research were Timothy M. Rieth (International Archaeological Research Institute) and Terry Hunt (University of Arizona).
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Science Advances—By using a relatively rare approach to date pre-historic rock paintings in Western Australia – involving dating the remnants of mud wasp nests found over and under the art – scientists found the artwork to be much younger than previously suspected. The study is one of few in recent decades to attempt the challenge of dating of wasp nest materials in order to determine the age of prehistoric art. To date, evidence has indicated the Gwion paintings of the Kimberly region of Australia were painted as far back as 17,000 years ago (17kya) and over the span of several thousand years, suggesting a remarkably long-lived artistic tradition. This body of artwork, however, has been notoriously hard to date. Now, Damien Finch and colleagues present evidence suggesting the Gwion motifs were painted during a narrow timeframe, about 12,400 years ago. To do this, they used radiocarbon dating, a technique to determine how long ago living material died. Working with the traditional owners of the aboriginal sites, they analyzed the nests of wasps that build mud nests on rock walls, sometimes incorporating charcoal from regular local brushfires. By dating the charcoal in the nests, researchers estimated when the nests were built. By dating nests that were painted over, they determined the maximum age of the artwork. By dating nests on top of paintings, they found minimum ages. The possible age ranges of 19 of the 21 paintings studied overlap during a brief period between 12 and 13 kya. Two samples fall outside of that range. One, which was found under a painting but dated at only 6,900 years old, is thought to be unreliable and possibly contaminated. However, the second was found over a painting and more reliably estimated to be 16,600 years old, complicating the findings. The authors call for further mud nest samples to be responsibly identified and dated.
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Researchers record details of mud wasp nest overlying one of a pair of Gwion rock art motifs prior to removal of the nest for radiocarbon dating. Mark Jones
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Two classic Gwion human figures with headdresses and arm and waist decorations. Mark Jones
*“12,000-Year-old aboriginal rock art from the Kimberley region, Western Australia,” by D. Finch; A. Gleadow; J. Hergt; H. Green at University of Melbourne in Melbourne, VIC, Australia; V.A. Levchenko at Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney, VIC, Australia; P. Heaney at Lettuce Create in Strathpine, QLD, Australia; P. Veth; S. Harper; S. Ouzman at University of Western Australia in Crawley, WA, Australia; C. Myers at Dunkeld Pastoral Co. Pty Ltd. Theda Station in Kununurra, WA, Australia.
Science Advances—Scientists have germinated six ancient date palms from 2,000-year-old seeds recovered in southern Israel between the Judean Hills and the Dead Sea, confirming the long-term survival of Judean date palm seeds, according to a new study. Genetic information gleaned from the findings confirm written accounts by classical writers and may provide insights into the highly sophisticated cultivation practices that contributed to the fruit’s legendary size, sweet taste, extended storage, and medicinal properties—traits that lent it status as a desirable commodity exported throughout the Roman Empire. Date palms are noted as one of the earliest domesticated tree crops, with records suggesting their cultivation began about 7000 years ago. The Kingdom of Judea, which arose in the 11th century BCE, was especially known for the quality of its dates, but the last remains of the region’s date plantations were wiped out by the 19th century. Following up on a 2008 study in which they first germinated a 1900 year-old date seed from a historical site near the Dead Sea, Sarah Sallon et al. planted a selection of well-preserved seeds in a research site in Kibbutz Ketura, drawing from a collection of hundreds of ancient date seeds plucked from archaeological sites between 1963 and 1991. While the seeds dwarfed modern varieties, the researchers could not visually identify any characteristics linked to seeds that germinated or those that did not. Radiocarbon dating revealed that the genomes of older seeds originated in more eastern geographic locations, although Sallon and colleagues note that the sample size was too small to represent a trend. The western-rooted genomes of younger seeds coincide with Judea’s wars with the Roman Empire and the population’s resulting deportation.
UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG—A prehistoric human skeleton found on the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico is at least 10,000 years old and most likely dates from the end of the most recent ice age, the late Pleistocene. An international research team led by geoscientists from Heidelberg University studied the remains of the approximately 30-year-old woman. The uranium-thorium dating technique was used to determine the age of the fossil record, which provides important clues on the early settlement history of the American continent.
The skeleton was discovered near the city of Tulúm in the Chan Hol cave, which is now water-filled as the result of global warming and sea-level rise approximately 8,000 years ago. Nine other prehistoric skeletons had already been discovered in this intricate submerged cave system near the coast in the eastern part of the peninsula. According to Prof. Dr Wolfgang Stinnesbeck, the leader of the research team, not all of the ten skeletons were complete, but they were well preserved. They offer valuable archaeological, palaeontological and climatic information about the American continent and its first inhabitants, the Paleoindians. The Tulúm skeletons exhibit round-headed – mesocephalic – cranial characteristics different to the long-headed – dolicocephalic – morphology of Paleoindians from Central Mexico and North America, explains Prof. Stinnesbeck, who teaches and conducts research at the Institute of Earth Sciences of Heidelberg University.
To the researchers, the head shape is an indication that two morphologically different groups of Paleoindians must have lived in America at the same time. They may have reached the American continent from different geographical points of origin. Or a small group of early settlers may have been living in isolation on the Yucatán Peninsula and developed a different skull morphology over a short period of time. Prof. Dr Silvia Gonzalez and Dr Sam Rennie, both from Liverpool John Moores University (Great Britain), suggest that the early settlement history of the Americas is therefore more complicated and may date back earlier than commonly believed.
The woman’s remains were recovered by Mexican divers Vicente Fito and Iván Hernández and then documented. She was approximately 30 years old at the time of her death. Her skull had multiple injuries, but they may not have been the cause of death. The researchers also discovered signs of a potential treponemal bacterial infection that caused severe alteration of the cranial bones. Like the other Tulúm skeletons, the woman’s teeth had cavities, possibly due to a diet high in sugar. In contrast, the teeth of most Paleoindian skeletons from Central Mexico and North American are worn down and cavity-free, suggesting they ate hard food.
To precisely date the find, the researchers used a dating method from physics based on the radioactive decay of uranium and its conversion into thorium. The researchers dated the uranium-thorium isotopes of a lime crust that had grown on the finger bones in the originally dry Chan Hol cave. Prof. Dr Norbert Franck and his team from the Institute of Environmental Physics of Heidelberg University were able to give the skeleton a minimum age of 9,900 years. However, the body was then already skeletonised and the prehistoric find may be older.
In 2017, Wolfgang Stinnesbeck and his team of researchers had already documented another human skeleton from Chan Hol cave, which was then considered to be 13,000 years old based on a stalagmite that had grown on its hip bone. For the researchers, these bone finds prove the unexpectedly early settlement of southern Mexico. Scientists from Germany, Great Britain, and Mexico took part in the research, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The results of the research were published in the journal “PLOS ONE“.
The authors add (from PLOS ONE): “The Tulúm skeletons indicate that either more than one group of people reached the American continent first, or that there was enough time for a small group of early settlers who lived isolated on the Yucatán peninsula to develop a different skull morphology. The early settlement history of America thus seems to be more complex and, moreover, to have occurred at an earlier time than previously assumed.”
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The skeleton was found in the Chan Hol underwater cave near the city of Tulúm on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. Eugenio Acevez
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Diver holds cranium from the prehistoric skeleton. Eugenio Acevez.
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Team from Liverpool John Moores University, UK, involved in the Ixchel skeleton description and comparisons with other Paleoindian skeletons from Central Mexico and Brazil. Dr Sam Rennie (right) and Prof Silvia Gonzalez (left). Jerónimo Avilés Olguín
UNIVERSITY OF YORK—The research – which was undertaken at the University of York – also suggests there was no single point of origin for the world’s oldest pottery.
Academics extracted and analyzed ancient fats and lipids that had been preserved in pieces of ancient pottery – found at a number of sites on the Amur River in Russia – whose dates ranged between 16,000 and 12,000 years ago.
Professor Oliver Craig, Director of the BioArch Lab at the University of York, where the analysis was conducted, said: “This study illustrates the exciting potential of new methods in archaeological science: we can extract and interpret the remains of meals that were cooked in pots over 16,000 years ago.
“It is interesting that pottery emerges during these very cold periods, and not during the comparatively warmer interstadials when forest resources, such as game and nuts, were more available.”
Why these pots were first invented in the final stages of the last Ice Age has long been a mystery, as well as the kinds of food that were being prepared in them.
Researchers also examined pottery found from the Osipovka culture also on the Amur River. Analysis proved that pottery from there had been used to process fish, most likely migratory salmon, which offered local hunters an alternative food source during periods of major climatic fluctuation. An identical scenario was identified by the same research group in neighbouring islands of Japan.
The new study demonstrates that the world’s oldest clay cooking pots were being made in very different ways in different parts of Northeast Asia, indicating a “parallel” process of innovation, where separate groups that had no contact with each other started to move towards similar kinds of technological solutions in order to survive.
Lead author, Dr Shinya Shoda, of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Nara, Japan said: “We are very pleased with these latest results because they close a major gap in our understanding of why the world’s oldest pottery was invented in different parts of Northeast Asia in the Late Glacial Period, and also the contrasting ways in which it was being used by these ancient hunter-gatherers.
“There are some striking parallels with the way in which early pottery was used in Japan, but also some important differences that we had not expected. This leaves many new questions that we will follow up with future research.”
Professor Peter Jordan, senior author of the study at the Arctic Centre and Groningen Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen, the Netherlands said: “The insights are particularly interesting because they suggest that there was no single “origin point” for the world’s oldest pottery. We are starting to understand that very different pottery traditions were emerging around the same time but in different places, and that the pots were being used to process very different sets of resources.
“This appears to be a process of “parallel innovation” during a period of major climatic uncertainty, with separate communities facing common threats and reaching similar technological solutions.”
The last Ice Age reached its deepest point between 26,000 to 20,000 years ago, forcing humans to abandon northern regions, including large parts of Siberia. From around 19,000 years ago, temperatures slowly started to warm again, encouraging small bands of hunters to move back into these vast empty landscapes.
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Shards of pottery from a cooking pot used by Siberian hunters. Yanshina Oksana
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY—When the first Neanderthal genome was sequenced, using DNA collected from ancient bones, it was accompanied by the discovery that modern humans in Asia, Europe and America inherited approximately 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals — proving humans and Neanderthals had interbred after humans left Africa. Since that study, new methods have continued to catalogue Neanderthal ancestry in non-African populations, seeking to better understand human history and the effects of Neanderthal DNA on human health and disease. A comparable catalogue of Neanderthal ancestry in African populations, however, has remained an acknowledged blind spot for the field due to technical constraints and the assumption that Neanderthals and ancestral African populations were geographically isolated from each other.
In a paper published today in the journal Cell, a team of Princeton researchers detailed a new computational method for detecting Neanderthal ancestry in the human genome. Their method, called IBDmix, enabled them for the first time to search for Neanderthal ancestry in African populations as well as non-African ones. The project was led by Joshua Akey, a professor in Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics (LSI).
“This is the first time we can detect the actual signal of Neanderthal ancestry in Africans,” said co-first author Lu Chen, a postdoctoral research associate in LSI. “And it surprisingly showed a higher level than we previously thought,” she said.
The method the Princeton researchers developed, IBDmix, draws its name from the genetic principle “identity by descent” (IBD), in which a section of DNA in two individuals is identical because those individuals once shared a common ancestor. The length of the IBD segment depends on how long ago those individuals shared a common ancestor. For example, siblings share long IBD segments because their shared ancestor (a parent) is only one generation removed. Alternatively, fourth cousins share shorter IBD segments because their shared ancestor (a third-great grandparent) is several generations removed.
The Princeton team leveraged the principle of IBD to identify Neanderthal DNA in the human genome by distinguishing sequences that look similar to Neanderthals because we once shared a common ancestor in the very distant past (~500,000 years ago), from those that look similar because we interbred in the more recent present (~50,000 years ago). Previous methods relied on “reference populations” to aid the distinction of shared ancestry from recent interbreeding, usually African populations believed to carry little or no Neanderthal DNA. However, this reliance could bias estimates of Neanderthal ancestry depending on which reference population was used. The Princeton researchers termed IBDmix a “reference free method” because it does not use an African reference population. Instead, IBDmix uses characteristics of the Neanderthal sequence itself, like the frequency of mutations or the length of the IBD segments, to distinguish shared ancestry from recent interbreeding. The researchers were therefore able to identify Neanderthal ancestry in Africans for the first time and make new estimates of Neanderthal ancestry in non-Africans, which showed Europeans and Asians to have more equal levels than previously described.
Kelley Harris, a population geneticist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, noted that the new estimates of Neanderthal ancestry using IBDmix highlight the technical problem in methods reliant on reference panels. “We might have to go back and revisit a bunch of results from the published literature and evaluate whether the same technical issue has been throwing off our understanding of gene flow in other species,” she said.
In addition to identifying Neanderthal ancestry in African populations, the researchers described two revelations about the origin of the Neanderthal sequences. First, they determined that the Neanderthal ancestry in Africans was not due to an independent interbreeding event between Neanderthals and African populations. Based on features of the data, the research team concluded that migrations from ancient Europeans back into Africa introduced Neanderthal ancestry into African populations.
Second, by comparing data from simulations of human history to data from real people, the researchers determined that some of the detected Neanderthal ancestry in Africans was actually due to human DNA introduced into the Neanderthal genome. The authors emphasized that this human-to-Neanderthal gene flow involved an early dispersing group of humans out of Africa, occurring at least 100,000 years ago — before the Out-of-Africa migration responsible for modern human colonization of Europe and Asia and before the interbreeding event that introduced Neanderthal DNA into modern humans. The finding reaffirmed that hybridization between humans and closely related species was a recurrent part of our evolutionary history.
While the Princeton researchers acknowledged the limited number of African populations they were able to analyze, they hope their new method and their findings will encourage more study of Neanderthal ancestry across Africa and other populations. Regarding the overall significance of the research, Chen said: “This demonstrates the remnants of Neanderthal genomes survive in every modern human population studied to date.”
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A team of Princeton researchers led by Joshua Akey found that that African individuals have considerably more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought, which was only observable through the development of new methods. Matilda Luk, Princeton University Office of Communications
*”Identifying and Interpreting Apparent Neanderthal Ancestry in African Individuals,” by Lu Chen, Aaron B. Wolf, Wenqing Fu, Liming Li and Joshua M. Akey, appears in the Feb. 20 issue of Cell, with an advance online publication on Jan. 30 (Chen et al., 2020, Cell 180, 1-11, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.012). The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01 GM110068).
PLOS—Ancient skulls from the cave systems at Tulum, Mexico suggest that the earliest populations of North America may have already had a high level of morphological diversity, according to a study published January 29, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mark Hubbe from Ohio State University, USA, Alejandro Terrazas Mata from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, and colleagues.
Debate about the origins of the earliest humans in the Americas has relied on relatively little data, in part due to the rarity of early human remains in North America.
The coastal, mostly-flooded limestone cave system in the city of Tulum in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo encompasses at least eight different sites with ancient human remains (approximately 13-8 kya). After dating and scanning four relatively well-preserved skulls retrieved from different sites within this cave network, Hubbe and colleagues used craniofacial morphology to compare these skulls with a reference dataset of worldwide modern human populations.
The authors found unexpectedly high diversity among the skulls. While the oldest skull showed close morphological associations with modern arctic North Americans in Greenland and Alaska, the second-oldest skull demonstrated strong affinities with modern European populations–a new finding for early American remains using this type of reference comparison. Of the two remaining skulls, one appeared to show associations with Asian and Native American groups, while the other showed associations to arctic populations in addition to having some modern South American features.
These findings are surprising considering that previous studies have not shown this level of diversity: earlier work on South American remains has instead found consistent associations with modern Australo-Melanesian and African groups, and with Late Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and Asia. The authors posit that early North American colonizers may have been highly diverse, but that diversity reduced when some populations dispersed into South America. This study underscores the need to pursue new archaeological evidence across the continent to build more robust models of early diversity, migration and dispersal across the Americas.
The authors add: “Four ancient skulls discovered in the submerged caves of Quintana Roo, Mexico, show that Early Americans had high biological diversity since the initial occupation of the continent.”
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Original position of the skeletal remains inside submerged cave of Muknal. Jerónimo Avilés
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – BERKELEY—A University of California, Berkeley, archaeologist has dug up ancient human feces, among other demographic clues, to challenge the narrative around the legendary demise of Cahokia, North America’s most iconic pre-Columbian metropolis.
In its heyday in the 1100s, Cahokia—located in what is now southern Illinois—was the center for Mississippian culture and home to tens of thousands of Native Americans who farmed, fished, traded and built giant ritual mounds.
By the 1400s, Cahokia had been abandoned due to floods, droughts, resource scarcity and other drivers of depopulation. But contrary to romanticized notions of Cahokia’s lost civilization, the exodus was short-lived, according to a new UC Berkeley study.
The study takes on the “myth of the vanishing Indian” that favors decline and disappearance over Native American resilience and persistence, said lead author A.J. White, a UC Berkeley doctoral student in anthropology.
“One would think the Cahokia region was a ghost town at the time of European contact, based on the archeological record,” White said. “But we were able to piece together a Native American presence in the area that endured for centuries.”
The findings, just published in the journal American Antiquity, make the case that a fresh wave of Native Americans repopulated the region in the 1500s and kept a steady presence there through the 1700s, when migrations, warfare, disease and environmental change led to a reduction in the local population.
White and fellow researchers at California State University, Long Beach, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northeastern University analyzed fossil pollen, the remnants of ancient feces, charcoal and other clues to reconstruct a post-Mississippian lifestyle.
Their evidence paints a picture of communities built around maize farming, bison hunting and possibly even controlled burning in the grasslands, which is consistent with the practices of a network of tribes known as the Illinois Confederation.
Unlike the Mississippians who were firmly rooted in the Cahokia metropolis, the Illinois Confederation tribe members roamed further afield, tending small farms and gardens, hunting game and breaking off into smaller groups when resources became scarce.
The linchpin holding together the evidence of their presence in the region were “fecal stanols” derived from human waste preserved deep in the sediment under Horseshoe Lake, Cahokia’s main catchment area.
Fecal stanols are microscopic organic molecules produced in our gut when we digest food, especially meat. They are excreted in our feces and can be preserved in layers of sediment for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Because humans produce fecal stanols in far greater quantities than animals, their levels can be used to gauge major changes in a region’s population.
To collect the evidence, White and colleagues paddled out into Horseshoe Lake, which is adjacent to Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site, and dug up core samples of mud some 10 feet below the lakebed. By measuring concentrations of fecal stanols, they were able to gauge population changes from the Mississippian period through European contact.
Fecal stanol data were also gauged in White’s first study of Cahokia’s Mississippian Period demographic changes, published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. It found that climate change in the form of back-to-back floods and droughts played a key role in the exodus of Cahokia’s Mississippian inhabitants.
But while many studies have focused on the reasons for Cahokia’s decline, few have looked at the region following the exodus of Mississippians, whose culture is estimated to have spread through the Midwestern, Southeastern and Eastern United States from 700 A.D. to the 1500s.
White’s latest study sought to fill those gaps in the Cahokia area’s history.
“There’s very little archaeological evidence for an indigenous population past Cahokia, but we were able to fill in the gaps through historical, climatic and ecological data, and the linchpin was the fecal stanol evidence,” White said.
Overall, the results suggest that the Mississippian decline did not mark the end of a Native American presence in the Cahokia region, but rather reveal a complex series of migrations, warfare and ecological changes in the 1500s and 1600s, before Europeans arrived on the scene, White said.
“The story of Cahokia was a lot more complex than, ‘Goodbye, Native Americans. Hello, Europeans,’ and our study uses innovative and unusual evidence to show that,” White said.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study examines the dispersal of Neanderthals into Siberia. Neanderthals once populated Europe and Asia, spreading as far east as southern Siberia. Chagyrskaya Cave, located in the foothills of Siberia’s Altai Mountains, has yielded 74 Neanderthal fossils and thousands of stone artifacts and animal and plant remains dating to between 59,000 and 49,000 years ago. Kseniya Kolobova, Richard Roberts, and colleagues analyzed more than 3,000 stone tools from Chagyrskaya Cave and discovered that the tools closely resemble Micoquian tools made by Neanderthals in eastern Europe, more than 3,000 km west of Chagyrskaya Cave. Environmental reconstructions based on ancient fauna and flora suggest that Chagyrskaya Neanderthals hunted bison and were adapted to the cold and dry climate. However, the nearby site of Denisova Cave, which was occupied by Neanderthals more than 100,000 years ago, exhibited no evidence of Micoquian artifacts. DNA from a Chagyrskaya Neanderthal also indicated a closer connection with eastern European Neanderthals than with a 110,000 year-old Neanderthal from Denisova Cave. The findings suggest at least two separate dispersals of Neanderthals into southern Siberia, with the most recent arrivals carrying Micoquian tools from their ancestral homeland in eastern Europe, according to the authors.
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Stone tool used as a meat knife by Neanderthals at Chagyrskaya Cave (Altai Mountains, southern Siberia, Russia) around 54,000 years ago. Alexander Fedorchenko (Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia).
AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—The ancient Samaria ostraca — eighth-century BCE ink-on-clay inscriptions unearthed at the beginning of the 20th century in Samaria, the capital of the biblical kingdom of Israel — are among the earliest collections of ancient Hebrew writings ever discovered. But despite a century of research, major aspects of the ostraca remain in dispute, including their precise geographical origins — either Samaria or its outlying villages — and the number of scribes involved in their composition.
A new Tel Aviv University (TAU) study finds that just two writers were involved in composing 31 of the more than 100 inscriptions and that the writers were contemporaneous, indicating that the inscriptions were written in the city of Samaria itself.
Research for the study was conducted by Ph.D. candidate Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Dr. Arie Shaus, Dr. Barak Sober and Prof. Eli Turkel, all of TAU’s School of Mathematical Sciences; Prof. Eli Piasetzky of TAU’s School of Physics; and Prof. Israel Finkelstein, Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages, of TAU’s Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology. The study was published in PLOS ONE on January 22, 2020.
The inscriptions list repetitive shipment details of wine and oil supplies to Samaria and span a minimal period of seven years. For archaeologists, they also provide critical insights into the logistical infrastructure of the kingdom of Israel. The inscriptions feature the date of composition (year of a given monarch), commodity type (oil, wine), name of a person, name of a clan and name of a village near the capital. Based on letter-shape considerations, the ostraca have been dated to the first half of the eighth century BCE, possibly during the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel.
“If only two scribes wrote the examined Samaria texts contemporaneously and both were located in Samaria rather than in the countryside, this would indicate a palace bureaucracy at the peak of the kingdom of Israel’s prosperity,” Prof. Finkelstein explains.
“Our results, accompanied by other pieces of evidence, seem also to indicate a limited dispersion of literacy in Israel in the early eighth century BCE,” Prof. Piasetzky says.
“Our interdisciplinary team harnessed a novel algorithm, consisting of image processing and newly developed machine learning techniques, to conclude that two writers wrote the 31 examined texts, with a confidence interval of 95%,” said Dr. Sober, now a member of Duke University’s mathematics department.
“The innovative technique can be used in other cases, both in the Land of Israel and beyond. Our innovative tool enables handwriting comparison and can establish the number of authors in a given corpus,” adds Faigenbaum-Golovin.
The new research follows up from the findings of the group’s 2016 study, which indicated widespread literacy in the kingdom of Judah a century and a half to two centuries later, circa 600 BCE. For that study, the group developed a novel algorithm with which they estimated the minimal number of writers involved in composing ostraca unearthed at the desert fortress of Arad. That investigation concluded that at least six writers composed the 18 inscriptions that were examined.
“It seems that during these two centuries that passed between the composition of the Samaria and the Arad corpora, there was an increase in literacy rates within the population of the Hebrew kingdoms,” Dr. Shaus says. “Our previous research paved the way for the current study. We enhanced our previously developed methodology, which sought the minimum number of writers, and introduced new statistical tools to establish a maximum likelihood estimate for the number of hands in a corpus.”
Next, the researchers intend to use their methodology to study other corpora of inscriptions from various periods and locations.
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Ostraca (ink on clay inscriptions) from Samaria, the capital of biblical Israel. The inscriptions are dated to the early 8th century BCE. Colorized Ostraca images are courtesy of the Semitic Museum, Harvard University. American Friends of Tel Aviv University. Colorized images courtesy of the Semitic Museum, Harvard University.
PLOS—During the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, Italy was home to complex networks of metalwork exchange, according to a study* published January 22, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrea Dolfini of Newcastle University (UK), and Gilberto Artioli and Ivana Angelini of the University of Padova (Italy).
Research in recent decades has revealed that copper mining and metalwork in Italy began earlier and included more complex technologies than previously thought. However, relatively little is known about metalwork exchange across the country, especially south of the Alps. In this study, Dolfini and colleagues sought to understand how commonly and how widely copper was imported and exchanged throughout Late Neolithic (Copper Age) Italy.
The researchers conducted an analysis of 20 copper items, including axe-heads, halberds, and daggers, from central Italy dating to the Copper Age, between 3600 and 2200 BC. Comparing archaeological data and chemical signatures of these items to nearby sources of copper ore, as well as to other prehistoric sites, they were able to determine that most of the examined objects were cast from copper mined in Tuscany, with the rest sourced from the western Alps and possibly the French Midi.
These results not only confirm the importance of the Tuscan region as a source of copper for Copper Age communities in Italy, reaching as far as the Tyrolean area home of the Alpine Iceman, but also reveal the unexpected finding that non-Tuscan copper was a significant import to the region at this time. These data contribute to a growing picture of multiple independent networks of Copper Age metal exchange in the Alps and neighboring regions. The authors note that future research might uncover other early sources of copper, as well as more details of the interactions between these early trade networks.
The authors add: “The first systematic application of lead isotope analysis (a geological sourcing technique) to Copper Age metal objects from central Italy, 3600-2200 BC, has shed new light on the provenance of the copper used to cast them. The research has revealed that, while some of the copper was sourced from the rich ore deposits of Tuscany, as was expected, some is from further afield. This unforeseen discovery demonstrates that far-reaching metal exchange networks were in operation in prehistoric Europe over a thousand years before the Bronze Age.”
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Articulated burial and dismembered human remains from Ponte San Pietro, tomb 22. The chamber tomb is typical of the Rinaldone burial custom, central Italy, c.3600-2200 BC. Reprinted from Miari 1995 under a CC BY licence, with permission from Monica Miari, original copyright 1995. Dolfini et al, 2020
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL—An international team led by Harvard Medical School scientists has produced the first genome-wide ancient human DNA sequences from west and central Africa.
The data, recovered from four individuals buried at an iconic archaeological site in Cameroon between 3,000 and 8,000 years ago, enhance our understanding of the deep ancestral relationships among populations in sub-Saharan Africa, which remains the region of greatest human diversity today.
The findings*, published Jan. 22 in Nature, provide new clues in the search to identify the populations that first spoke and spread Bantu languages. The work also illuminates previously unknown “ghost” populations that contributed small portions of DNA to present-day African groups.
Map of Africa with Cameroon in dark blue and approximate location of Shum Laka marked with star. Image adapted from Alvaro1984 18/Wikimedia Commons
Research highlights:
DNA came from the remains of two pairs of children who lived around 3,000 years ago and 8,000 years ago, respectively, during the transition from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.
The children were buried at Shum Laka, a rock shelter in the Grassfields region of northwestern Cameroon where ancient people lived for tens of thousands of years. The site has yielded prolific artifacts along with 18 human skeletons and lies in the region where researchers suspect Bantu languages and cultures originated. The spread of Bantu languages–and the groups that spoke them–over the past 4,000 years is thought to explain why the majority of people from central, eastern and southern Africa are closely related to one another and to west/central Africans.
Surprisingly, all four individuals are most closely related to present-day central African hunter-gatherers, who have very different ancestry from most Bantu speakers. This suggests that present-day Bantu speakers in western Cameroon and across Africa did not descend from the sequenced children’s population.
One individual’s genome includes the earliest-diverging Y chromosome type, found almost nowhere outside western Cameroon today. The findings show that this oldest lineage of modern human males has been present in that region for more than 8,000 years, and perhaps much longer.
Genetic analyses indicate that there were at least four major lineages deep in human history, between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. This radiation hadn’t been identified previously from genetic data.
Contrary to common models, the data suggest that central African hunter-gatherers diverged from other African populations around the same time as southern African hunter-gatherers did.
Analyses reveal another set of four branching human lineages between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, including the lineage known to have given rise to all present-day non-Africans.
The Shum Laka individuals themselves harbor ancestry from multiple deep lineages, including a previously unknown, early-diverging ancestry source in West Africa.
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The Shum Laka rock shelter in Cameroon, home to an ancient population that bears little genetic resemblance to most people who live in the region today. Pierre de Maret
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*Mark Lipson, et al., “Ancient West African foragers in the context of African population history,” Nature, DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-1929-1
HARVARD UNIVERSITY—A new study in the journal Nature Sustainability overturns long-held interpretations of the role humans played in shaping the American landscape before European colonization. The findings give new insight into the rationale and approaches for managing some of the most biodiverse landscapes in the eastern U.S.
The study, led by archaeologists, ecologists, and paleoclimatologists at Harvard, Emerson College and elsewhere, focuses on the coast from Long Island to Cape Cod and the nearby islands of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island, and Naushon–areas that historically supported the greatest densities of Native people in New England and today are home to the highest concentrations of rare habitats in the region, including sandplain grasslands, heathlands, and pitch pine and scrub oak forests.
“For decades, there’s been a growing popularization of the interpretation that, for millennia, Native people actively managed landscapes – clearing and burning forests, for example – to support horticulture, improve habitat for important plant and animal resources, and procure wood resources,” says study co-author David Foster, Director of the Harvard Forest at Harvard University. This active management is said to have created an array of open-land habitats and enhanced regional biodiversity.
But, Foster says, the data reveal a new story. “Our data show a landscape that was dominated by intact, old-growth forests that were shaped largely by regional climate for thousands of years before European arrival.”
Fires were uncommon, the study shows, and Native people foraged, hunted, and fished natural resources without actively clearing much land.
“Forest clearance and open grasslands and shrublands only appeared with widespread agriculture during the European colonial period, within the last few hundred years,” says Wyatt Oswald, a professor at Emerson College and lead author of the study.
The authors say the findings transform thinking about how landscapes have been shaped in the past – and therefore how they should be managed in the future.
“Ancient Native people thrived under changing forest conditions not by intensively managing them but by adapting to them and the changing environment,” notes Elizabeth Chilton, archaeologist, co-author of the study, and Dean of the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences at Binghamton University.
To reconstruct historical changes to the land, the research team combined archaeological records with more than two dozen intensive studies of vegetation, climate, and fire history spanning ten thousand years. They found that old-growth forests were predominant for millennia but are extremely uncommon today.
“Today, New England’s species and habitat biodiversity are globally unique, and this research transforms our thinking and rationale for the best ways to maintain it,” says Oswald. “It also points to the importance of historical research to help us interpret modern landscapes and conserve them effectively into the future.”
The authors also note the unique role that colonial agriculture played in shaping landscapes and habitat. “European agriculture, especially the highly varied activity of sheep and cattle grazing, hay production, and orchard and vegetable cultivation in the 18th and 19th centuries, made it possible for open-land wildlife species and habitats that are now rare or endangered – such as the New England cottontail – to thrive,” says Foster. Open-land species have declined dramatically as forests regrow on abandoned farmland, and housing and commercial development of both forests and farms have reduced their habitat.
Foster notes that the unique elements of biodiversity initiated through historical activities can be encouraged through analogous management practices today.
“Protected wildland reserves would preserve interior forest species that were abundant before European settlement,” he says. “Lands managed through the diversified farming and forestry practices that created openlands and young forests during the colonial period would support another important suite of rare plants and animals.”
For successful conservation models that leverage this historical perspective, the authors point to efforts by The Trustees of Reservations, the oldest land trust in the world, which manages more than 25,000 acres in Massachusetts embracing old and young forests, farms, and many cultural resources. The organization uses livestock grazing to keep lands open for birds like bobolinks and meadowlarks, which in turn supports local farmers and produces food for local communities.
Jocelyn Forbush, Executive Vice President for the Trustees, says, “Maintaining the legacy of our conserved openlands in Massachusetts is an important goal for The Trustees and we are increasingly looking to agricultural practices to yield a range of outcomes. In particular, we are employing grazing practices to support the habitats of our open and early successional lands in addition to the scenic and cultural landscapes that shape the character of our communities.”
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Archaeologists Dianna Doucette, Deena Duranleau, and Randy Jardin conducting investigations at the Lucy Vincent Beach Site, Martha’s Vineyard. The long-held belief that native people used fire to create a diverse landscape of woodlands, grasslands, heathlands, and shrublands in New England has led to a widespread use of prescribed fire as a conservation tool. Research by Oswald and colleagues indicates that these openlands actually arose following European contact, deforestation, and agricultural expansion. Elizabeth Chilton, Binghamton University
UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—The human-caused biodiversity decline started much earlier than researchers used to believe. According to a new study published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters the process was not started by our own species but by some of our ancestors.
The work was done by an international team of scientists from Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The researchers point out in the study that the ongoing biological diversity crisis is not a new phenomenon, but represents an acceleration of a process that human ancestors began millions of years ago.
“The extinctions that we see in the fossils are often explained as the results of climatic changes but the changes in Africa within the last few million years were relative minor and our analyses show that climatic changes were not the main cause of the observed extinctions,” explains Søren Faurby, researcher at Gothenburg University and the main author of the study.
“Our analyzes show that the best explanation for the extinction of carnivores in East Africa is instead that they are caused by direct competition for food with our extinct ancestors,” adds Daniele Silvestro, computational biologist and co-author of the study.
Carnivores disappeared
Our ancestors have been common throughout eastern Africa for several million years and during this time there were multiple extinctions according to Lars Werdelin, co-author and expert on African fossils.
“By investigating the African fossils, we can see a drastic reduction in the number of large carnivores, a decrease that started about 4 million years ago. About the same time, our ancestors may have started using a new technology to get food called kleptoparasitism,” he explains.
Kleptoparasitism means stealing recently killed animals from other predators. For example, when a lion steals a dead antelope from a cheetah.
The researchers are now proposing, based on fossil evidence, that human ancestors stole recently killed animals from other predators. This would lead to starvation of the individual animals and over time to extinction of their entire species.
“This may be the reason why most large carnivores in Africa have developed strategies to defend their prey. For example, by picking up the prey in a tree that we see leopards doing. Other carnivores have instead evolved social behavior as we see in lions, who among other things work together to defend their prey,” explains Søren Faurby
Humans today affect the world and the species that live in it more than ever before.
“But this does not mean that we previously lived in harmony with nature. Monopolization of resources is a skill we and our ancestors have had for millions of years, but only now are we able to understand and change our behavior and strive for a sustainable future. ‘If you are very strong, you must also be very kind’,” concludes Søren Faurby and quotes Astrid Lindgrens book about Pippi Longstocking.
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER—Did Neanderthals wear swimsuits? Probably not. But a new study suggests that some of these ancient humans might have spent a lot of time at the beach. They may even have dived into the cool waters of the Mediterranean Sea to gather clam shells.
The findings come from Grotta dei Moscerini, a picturesque cave that sits just 10 feet above a beach in what is today the Latium region of central Italy.
In 1949, archaeologists working at the site dug up some unusual artifacts: dozens of seashells that Neanderthals had picked up, then shaped into sharp tools roughly 90,000 years ago.
Now, a team led by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Boulder has uncovered new secrets from those decades-old discoveries. In research published today in the journal PLOS ONE, she and her colleagues report that the Neanderthals didn’t just collect shells that were lying out on the beach. They may have actually held their breath and went diving for the perfect shells to meet their needs.
Villa, an adjoint curator in the CU Museum of Natural History, said the results show that Neanderthals may have had a much closer connection to the sea than many scientists thought.
“The fact they were exploiting marine resources was something that was known,” Villa said. “But until recently, no one really paid much attention to it.”
Cave discoveries
When archaeologists first found shell tools in Grotta dei Moscerini, it came as a surprise. While Neanderthals are well-known for crafting spear tips out of stone, few examples exist of them turning shells into tools.
But the find wasn’t a fluke. The 1949 excavation of the cave unearthed 171 such tools, all valves from shell belonging to a local species of mollusk called the smooth clam (Callista chione). Villa explained that the ancient humans used stone hammers to chip away at these shells, forming cutting edges that would have stayed thin and sharp for a long time.
“No matter how many times you retouch a clam shell, its cutting edge will remain very thin and sharp,” she said.
But did the Neanderthals, like many beachgoers today, simply collect these shells while taking a stroll along the sand?
To find out, Villa and her colleagues took a closer look at those tools. In the process, they found something they weren’t expecting. Nearly three-quarters of the Moscerini shell tools had opaque and slightly abraded exteriors, as if they had been sanded down over time. That’s what you’d expect to see, Villa said, on shells that had washed up on a sandy beach.
The rest of the shells had a shiny, smooth exterior.
Those shells, which also tended to be a little bit bigger, had to have been plucked directly from the seafloor as live animals.
“It’s quite possible that the Neanderthals were collecting shells as far down as 2 to 4 meters,” Villa said. “Of course, they did not have scuba equipment.”
Researchers also turned up a large number of pumice stones from the cave that Neanderthals had collected and may have used as abrading tools. The stones, Villa and her colleagues determined, washed onto the Moscerini beach from volcanic eruptions that occurred more than 40 miles to the south.
Going for a dip
She’s not alone in painting a picture of beach-loving Neanderthals.
In an earlier study, for example, a team led by anthropologist Erik Trinkaus identified bony growths on the ears of a few Neanderthal skeletons. These features, called “swimmer’s ear,” can be found in people who practice aquatic sports today.
For Villa, the findings are yet more proof that Neanderthals were just as flexible and creative as their human relatives when it came to eking out a living–a strong contrast to their representation in popular culture as a crude cavemen who lived by hunting or scavenging mammoths.
“People are beginning to understand that Neanderthals didn’t just hunt large mammals,” Villa said. “They also did things like freshwater fishing and even skin diving.”
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General morphology of retouched shell tools, Figs C-L are from the Pigorini Museum. Villa et al., 2020
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Other coauthors on the new study included researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the University of Geneva, Roma Tre University, Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Pisa.
PLOS—The Pachacamac Idol of ancient Peru was a multicolored and emblematic sacred icon worshipped for almost 700 hundred years before Spanish conquest, according to a study* published January 15, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marcela Sepúlveda of the University of Tarapacá, Chile and colleagues.
The Pachacamac Idol is a symbolically carved wooden statue known from the Pachacamac archaeological complex, the principal coastal Inca sanctuary 31 km south of Lima, Peru during the 15th-16th centuries. The idol was reportedly damaged in 1533 during Spanish conquest of the region, and details of its originality and antiquity have been unclear. Also unexplored has been the question of whether the idol was symbolically colored, a common practice in Old World Antiquity.
In this study, Sepúlveda and colleagues obtained a wood sample from the Pachacamac Idol for chemical analysis. Through carbon-dating, they were able to determine that the wood was cut and likely carved approximately 760-876 AD, during the Middle Horizon, suggesting the statue was worshipped for almost 700 years before Spanish conquest. Their analysis also identified chemical traces of three pigments that would have conferred red, yellow, and white coloration to the idol.
This nondestructive analysis not only confirms that the idol was painted, but also that it was polychromatic, displaying at least three colors and perhaps others not detected in this study. The fact that the red pigment used was cinnabar, a material not found in the local region, demonstrates economic and symbolic implications for the coloration of the statue. The authors point out that coloration is a rarely discussed factor in the symbolic, economic, and experiential importance of religious symbols of the pre-Columbian periods, and that more studies on the subject could illuminate unknown details of cultural practices of the Andean past in South America.
The authors add: “Here, polychromy of the so-called Pachacamac Idol is demonstrated, including the presence of cinnabar.”
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The wooden statue of the Pachacamac Idol. Sepúlveda et al, 2020.
Join Dr. Anabel Ford of UC Santa Barbara’s Mesoamerican Research Center to journey through three countries of Mesoamerica, exploring one of the world’s greatest monumental ancient civilizations — the ancient Maya. See the iconic sites of Tikal, Calakmul, Palenque, among other well-known sites, including a unique exploration of El Pilar, a major Maya city where visitors can walk by monuments on paths enshrouded in the forest and where research programs are revealing how the ancient Maya practiced sustainable agricultural strategies.
In contrast with other tours of the Maya forest, this mega-trip will include visits to no less than 15 archaeological sites over 15 days, so it will be archaeologically immersive! This experience will also introduce you to the distinctive research that Dr. Ford* has conducted on the conservation of ancient Maya monuments, and a unique Maya practice of sustainable agriculture known as the Milpa Forest Garden. You will also meet local community members and see how the legacy of the ancient Maya past lives on today in its people.
See the itinerary below.Individuals who are interested in participating in this travel opportunity should email Dan McLerran at populararchaeology@gmail.com. More information will be provided when the program has been finalized.
The Itinerary
Day 1: Arrive at the Philip Goldson International Airport near Belize City and transfer to settle into your hotel in the Corozal Region with a Welcome Dinner, where your Tour Director and the tour expert Dr. Anabel Ford will go over the goals and logistics of the fascinating trip ahead of you.
Day 2:Next, travel by deluxe motor coach and boat to the monumental ancient city of Lamanai. Your local guide will walk you through the imposing structural remains, including the Mask Temple, the Jaguar Temple, and the High Temple. This city was occupied for over three millennia, beginning in the Early Preclassic Maya period and continuing through the Spanish and British Colonial periods, and even into the 20th century with Central American refugee resettlement. The Classic monuments of Lamanai were neglected like other Maya cities, yet archaeological research show that it was a vital occupation at the time of the brutal Spanish contact. Your breakfast, lunch and dinner will be included on this day.
Day 3: Your local guides will spend a combined time of one full day to explore the monumental remains of ancient Cerros,located on a distant coastal point, and Santa Rita within the town. Santa Rita, anciently known as Chetumal, had its beginning as much as 4,000 years ago, but flourished most notably in the Postclassic period, when many other cities of the Classic Maya declined. The ancient center of Cerros is dated to the Preclassic and endured to the Postclassic period, but saw its zenith in the Late Preclassic. Enjoy the view of the Bay and the Caribbean from here! Your breakfast, lunch and dinner will be included on this day.
Day 4: We will spend a full day of travel as we make our way by private motor coach to the Chetumal region of Mexico, crossing the border and then shortly to our hotel destination where we will relax in the evening. Breakfast and dinner are both included on this day.
Day 5: Today in Chetumal we will visit the Museum of Maya Culture, which features multi-media exhibits on the history, culture and accomplishments of the Mayas. After lunch, we will visit the famous Fort San Felipe Bacalar. The beautifully preserved small Spanish fort is over 270 years old and is surrounded by a moat. It is known for its spectacular canons and ramparts, and also features a museum with artifacts, murals and interactive exhibits. Enjoy a free evening afterwards in Chetumal. Breakfast is included on this day.
Day 6: Today we depart early for the Mexican state of Campeche. On our way, we will stop at the archaeological sites of Dzibanche and Kohunlich. Dzibanche was a large city and is now thought to have been the early capital of the Kan dynasty, which later ruled from the city of Calakmul. The hieroglyphic stairway at Dzibanche features the earliest known use of the Kan dynasty emblem glyph, dated to AD 495. Kohunlich, a large site where most of the mounds still remain unexcavated, was settled by 200 BC. Kohunlich was a regional trade center and is best known for its Temple of the Masks, an Early Classic pyramid whose central stairway is flanked by huge humanized stucco masks. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Day 7:Today we will visit — count them — three ancient Maya centers: Becan, Xpuhil, Chicana, and the historic town of Zoh Laguna. Becan was occupied as early as about 550 BC, and became a major population center in the Late Preclassic. Notably, substantial earthworks and ramparts were constructed around the city. Becan was neglected by about 1200. Xpuhil, occupied between 300 and 1200 AD, was settled in the Early Classic period, although most of the structures and artifacts found at the site are dated to the end of the Classic period. Xpuhil is known for its “false” temples, structures that are not functional but serve as as living performance spaces and unclimbable stairways. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Day 8:Our guide will afford us an entire day to explore the great ancient city of Calakmul which, along with Tikal, was one of the ancient Maya’s most significant power centers. Calakmul and Tikal were known to be great ancient rivals, fighting each other for regional control. Calakmul was the seat of the ‘Kingdom of the Snake.’ The Snake Kingdom reigned during most of the Classic period and the city is thought to have had a population of 50,000, wielding influence at some times over other centers as distant as 150 kilometers. Consisting of 6,750 identified structures, the largest is the massive Structure 2 pyramid, which is over 148 ft high, among the tallest and largest of the Maya pyramids. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Day 9:Today we make our way to Palenque, the ancient city dubbed by some scholars as the ‘Athens’ of the ancient Maya. On our way, we will stop to visit the Balamku archaeological site not far from the entrance to Calakmul. Although Balamku is a small site, it features elaborate plaster facades dating to the Early Classic period discovered when looters were apprehended. It is known for having one of the largest surviving stucco friezes in the Maya world. First occupied in about 300 BC, its most important buildings date from AD 300–600. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Day 10: We spend the entire day at Palenque, which boasts some of the most beautiful architecture, sculpture, and roof combs and bas-relief carvings of the Maya world. Scholars have reconstructed the history of Palenque through decipherment of the hieroglyphic inscriptions on its monuments, such that historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dynasty of Palenque in the 5th century, including extensive knowledge of the city’s rivalry with other states such as Calakmul and Toniná. Palenque is known for its ruler K’inich Janaab Pakal, or Pacal the Great, whose famous spectacular tomb was found and excavated in the Temple of the Inscriptions. The Museum of Palenque, which we will visit, provides a remarkable experience for understanding this tomb.
As with all of the sites we are visiting, it is estimated that less than 10% of the city’s total area has been exposed, with more than a thousand structures still enshrouded by the surrounding jungle.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Day 11: We will spend a full day of travel as we make our way by private motor coach to the Tikal region in Guatemala, crossing the border from Mexico and eventually to our hotel destination where we will relax in the evening. This trip will traverse south of the Lacandon forest and cross the Usumacinta River near Tenosique, across the savannas into the Lake Peten Itza area.Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all included on this day.
Day 12: We will spend a full day exploring the magnificent city of ancient Tikal, including the causeways, great plaza, central acropolis, ball courts and the towering temples that afford views of the vast Maya forest. We will also make time for the museums. Tikal was the capital of one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya. Monumental architecture dates back to the 4th century BC, but the city reached its zenith during the Classic Period, from c. 200 to 900 AD. It was during this time that Tikal dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily, while also interacting with the greater Mesoamerican sphere, including Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico.
Tikal declined at the end of the Late Classic Period, and was neglected from the 10th century AD. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Day 13: Today the group will transfer back into Belize for a stay in the Cayo District, stopping en route to tour the monuments at Yaxha and Topoxte Island. Yaxha was founded in the Middle Preclassic period (c. 1000–350 BC), and grew to become a large city in the eastern Petén lakes region during the Late Preclassic (c. 350 BC – AD 250), expanding further during the Early Classic (c. AD 250–600).
Evidence suggests that Yaxha was also influenced by Teotihuacan during the Early Classic with a stela representing the goggle eyes of Tlaloc. The city thrived into the Terminal Classic (c. 800–900). By the Postclassic period (c. 900–1525), focused attention was at Topoxte, located on islands on Yaxha Lake. Tppoxte was the capital of the Kowoj Maya, linked in rivalry to Noh Petén, on the island of Flores. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all included on this day.
Day 14:Today the group will visit the El Pilar archaeological site. Here you will be able to compare your experiences of the great Maya world to a new alternative: Archaeology Under the Canopy. With a construction chronology that dates from at least 800 BCE to 1000 CE, the site is among the largest in the local area. At El Pilar, trails wander beneath the jungle cover, beckoning you past temples, inviting you to linger across open plazas, and tempting you around houses. On the archaeological trails atEl Pilar, efforts were made to feature the exquisite flora and encourage you to enjoy the fauna.
Image courtesy Macduff Everton
Day 15: The integral Maya forest garden: It is a common belief that the milpa fields destroyed the forests. New studies, however, show that the forest today was shaped by sustainable practicesdeveloped by the ancient Maya millennia ago. The ancient Maya both maintained the environment and utilized it for food, shelter, and medicine. The practice of milpa, a sophisticated and sustainable sequence that alternates between cultivated fields and forest gardens, builds a landscape of useful plants that contribute to the biodiversity of the forest. Contemporary Maya forest gardeners maintain the forest as a garden through the practices of their ancestors. We will have a chance to visit a working forest garden, the ChakHaKol of master forest gardener Narciso Torres.He will also share his vision for the school garden. You will learn how the Forest Garden contributes to action on climate change by:
1. Reducing temperature
2. Increasing biodiversity
3. Conserving water
4. Building fertility; and
5. Reducing erosion
…….and caring for people
Day 16: We visit the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center with a local guide. The Belize Zoo is home to more than 175 animals of about 48 species, all native to Belize. The zoo differs from most other typical zoos in that the natural environment of Belize is left entirely intact within the zoo. The dense, natural vegetation is separated only by gravel trails through the forest. The zoo’s goal is to educate visitors about the wildlife of Belize through encountering the animals in their natural habitat. Breakfast and dinner are included on this day.
Day 17: We transfer to the airport in Belize City to depart for home. Breakfast is included.
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It is estimated at this point that the tour cost will range between $4,500 and $5,000 per person, double occupancy, land trip. A single room will add between $850 and $900. Airfare could add about $1,000, more or less, depending upon the person’s departure point.
If 14 or more individuals participate in this travel opportunity, Popular Archaeology Magazine will be donating funds toward the research and programs related to El Pilar and the Maya Forest Garden. Thus, your participation will constitute an important contribution to the development and sustenance of these programs.
Individuals who are interested in participating in this travel opportunity should email Dan McLerran at populararchaeology@gmail.com. More information will be provided when the program has been finalized.
*About Dr. Ford
Dr. Anabel Ford has decoded the ancient Maya landscape by combining archaeological research with traditional Maya knowledge. Ford distinguished herself in Mesoamerican archaeology with the study of patterns of settlement and environment, demystifying traditional views of the ancient Maya by examining the common human aspects of this civilization that shed light on sustainable farming practices. This forms the foundation for her current inquiries.
Ford is recognized for her rediscovery of the ancient Maya city center of El Pilar, on the contemporary divide of Belize and Guatemala, which she has transformed into a living museum and laboratory. El Pilar has become a familiar and innovative archaeological site practicing “Archaeology Under the Canopy” — using the landscape as a tool of conservation. Monuments covered with sweet moss and draped with Ramon trees make a striking and unique Maya experience. El Pilar is a model of synergy between nature and culture and is where Ford’s focus on cultural ecology — the multifaceted relationships of humans and their environment—is being applied to benefit contemporary populations. The co-evolution of human societies and the environment bring particular relevance to the study of Maya prehistory.
At El Pilar, Ford is advancing programs that simulate “Maya Forest Gardens” as an alternative to conventional monocrop farming. Using anthropology as a springboard for interdisciplinary research, she proposes that ancient traditions are yielding contemporary solutions for the Maya forest of Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico.
UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—Several passages on the Rök stone – the world’s most famous Viking Age runic monument – suggest that the inscription is about battles and for over a hundred years, researchers have been trying to connect the inscription with heroic deeds in war. Now, thanks to an interdisciplinary research project, a new interpretation of the inscription is being presented. The study* shows that the inscription deals with an entirely different kind of battle: the conflict between light and darkness, warmth and cold, life and death.
The Rök runestone, erected in Östergötland around 800 CE, is the world’s most famous runestone from the Viking Age, but has also proven to be one of the most difficult to interpret. This new interpretation is based on a collaboration between researchers from several disciplines and universities.
“The key to unlocking the inscription was the interdisciplinary approach. Without these collaborations between textual analysis, archaeology, history of religions and runology, it would have been impossible to solve the riddles of the Rök runestone,” says Per Holmberg, professor in Swedish at the University of Gothenburg, who led the study.
A previous climate catastrophe
The study is based on new archaeological research describing how badly Scandinavia suffered from a previous climate catastrophe with lower average temperatures, crop failures, hunger and mass extinctions. Bo Gräslund, professor in Archaeology at Uppsala University, points to several reasons why people may have feared a new catastrophe of this kind:
“Before the Rök runestone was erected, a number of events occurred which must have seemed extremely ominous: a powerful solar storm coloured the sky in dramatic shades of red, crop yields suffered from an extremely cold summer, and later a solar eclipse occurred just after sunrise. Even one of these events would have been enough to raise fears of another Fimbulwinter,” says Bo Gräslund.
Nine riddles
According to the researchers’ new interpretation now being published, the inscription consists of nine riddles. The answer to five of these riddles is “the Sun”. One is a riddle asking who was dead but now lives again. The remaining four riddles are about Odin and his warriors.
Olof Sundqvist, professor in History of Religions at Stockholm University, explains the connection:
“The powerful elite of the Viking Age saw themselves as guarantors for good harvests. They were the leaders of the cult that held together the fragile balance between light and darkness. And finally at Ragnarök, they would fight alongside Odin in the final battle for the light.”
Parallels with other Old Norse texts
According to the researchers, several points in the inscription have clear parallels with other Old Norse texts that no one has previously noted.
“For me, it’s been almost like discovering a new literary source from the Viking Age. Sweden’s answer to the Icelandic Poetic Edda!” says Henrik Williams, professor in Scandinavian Languages with a specialty in Runology at Uppsala University.
Experience a unique, up-close-and-personal hike among ancient hilltop towns in central Italy. You will walk the sensational countryside of the regions of Umbria and Tuscany, soaking in important sites attesting to the advanced Etruscan civilization, forerunners of the ancient Romans; imposing architectural and cultural remains of Medieval Italy; local food and drink; and perhaps best of all — spectacular scenic views!Join usin this collaborative event for the trip of a lifetime!
WHO WERE THE AEGEANS? The exciting new podcast series exploring the mysteries of the ancient Aegeans, the Bronze Age people who inspired Homer's epic stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Next, travel by deluxe motor coach and boat to the monumental ancient city of Lamanai. Your local guide will walk you through the imposing structural remains, including the Mask Temple, the Jaguar Temple, and the High Temple. This city was occupied for over three millennia, beginning in the Early Preclassic Maya period and continuing through the Spanish and British Colonial periods, and even into the 20th century with Central American refugee resettlement. The Classic monuments of Lamanai were neglected like other Maya cities, yet archaeological research show that it was a vital occupation at the time of the brutal Spanish contact. Your breakfast, lunch and dinner will be included on this day.
Today we depart early for the Mexican state of Campeche. On our way, we will stop at the archaeological sites of Dzibanche and Kohunlich. Dzibanche was a large city and is now thought to have been the early capital of the Kan dynasty, which later ruled from the city of Calakmul. The hieroglyphic stairway at Dzibanche features the earliest known use of the Kan dynasty emblem glyph, dated to AD 495. Kohunlich, a large site where most of the mounds still remain unexcavated, was settled by 200 BC. Kohunlich was a regional trade center and is best known for its Temple of the Masks, an Early Classic pyramid whose central stairway is flanked by huge humanized stucco masks. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Today we will visit — count them — three ancient Maya centers: Becan, Xpuhil, Chicana, and the historic town of Zoh Laguna. Becan was occupied as early as about 550 BC, and became a major population center in the Late Preclassic. Notably, substantial earthworks and ramparts were constructed around the city. Becan was neglected by about 1200. Xpuhil, occupied between 300 and 1200 AD, was settled in the Early Classic period, although most of the structures and artifacts found at the site are dated to the end of the Classic period. Xpuhil is known for its “false” temples, structures that are not functional but serve as as living performance spaces and unclimbable stairways. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Our guide will afford us an entire day to explore the great ancient city of Calakmul which, along with Tikal, was one of the ancient Maya’s most significant power centers. Calakmul and Tikal were known to be great ancient rivals, fighting each other for regional control. Calakmul was the seat of the ‘Kingdom of the Snake.’ The Snake Kingdom reigned during most of the Classic period and the city is thought to have had a population of 50,000, wielding influence at some times over other centers as distant as 150 kilometers. Consisting of 6,750 identified structures, the largest is the massive Structure 2 pyramid, which is over 148 ft high, among the tallest and largest of the Maya pyramids. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are included on this day.
Today the group will visit the El Pilar archaeological site. Here you will be able to compare your experiences of the great Maya world to a new alternative: Archaeology Under the Canopy. With a construction chronology that dates from at least 800 BCE to 1000 CE, the site is among the largest in the local area. At El Pilar, trails wander beneath the jungle cover, beckoning you past temples, inviting you to linger across open plazas, and tempting you around houses. On the archaeological trails at
