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Rising to nearly 6,000 feet above sea level, Mount Homa dominates a Kenyan landscape that features sediments as old as the Miocene epoch — a geologic time period that ended more than 5 million years ago. This mountain’s real name, however, is Got Uma or God Marahuma, meaning “famous mountain,” bestowed by the Luo fishing people who have inhabited the surrounding region for centuries. Considered an inactive volcano, Got Uma, or Mount Homa, defines its namesake Peninsula, which extends into Africa’s massive Lake Victoria and helps to define the lake’s Winam Gulf, which laps the peninsula’s shoreline from the north. Though the peninsula, like anywhere else, has a regional and local natural and cultural history that extends back thousands of years, its most recent claim to fame lies in ancient sediments featuring a rich array of fossils that have drawn paleontologists, geologists, archaeologists, and many other scientists to explore and study a remarkable mosaic of prehistory. It is a mosaic that has also included evidence of a hominin presence — deep-time human relatives that have long become extinct.  

Archaeologist Tom Plummer, Professor of Anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York, has been conducting field research on the Homa Peninsula since the 1990’s. Among other things, a record of significant fossil finds of Theropithecus oswaldi monkeys drew him and others to the area, as fossils of these monkeys have historically been frequently found near fossil evidence of hominins. Together with Richard Potts, who directs the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, along with a team of other scientists and universities, he has uncovered robust evidence for hominin activity as far back as over 2 million years ago at key locations across this landscape.  

One of the first “eureka moments” of these discoveries emerged at a place on the northwestern shore of the peninsula.

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View of Mount Homa and surrounding landscape where investigations have taken place. Chip Clark (Smithsonian Institution), Public Domain

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Toolmaking and Butchery at Kanjera South

Early on, Plummer and a team of scientist specialists and excavators began investigating a site designated as Kanjera South, located near the margins of what was, at one time, an ancient lake. Digging methodically through fossil-bearing silts and fine sands, they penetrated several meters of sediment. In the process, they encountered stone artifacts and associated fauna, all revealed within three major beds. (A “bed” being a layer with a defined sequence of related or associated geologic events and fossil occurrences, such as what were initially described in excavations at Olduvai Gorge.) One 169-square meter excavation area alone yielded about 3,700 animal fossils and 2,900 artifacts in a sequence measured 1 meter in depth. Stone artifacts found during the excavation represented, according to Plummer, “one of the largest collections of Oldowan artifacts”* found to date, from anywhere in the world. The first Oldowan stone tools were discovered by archaeologist Louis Leakey in the 1930s at Olduvai Gorge. This very early technology usually consisted of simple cores, choppers, scrapers, awls and burins made of quartz, quartzite, basalt, obsidian, flint and chert. Early humans produced them by striking a core stone on the edge with a hammerstone to produce a conchoidal fracture with sharp edges and flakes that could be used for a variety of functions, such as cutting meat. Unmodified pieces, called manuports — stones transported from other locations —  have also been found at some sites. Though the quantity and concentration of the Kanjera South finds at this location was significant, it was not altogether precedent-setting, because the Oldowan stone tool industry is considered, Plummer saya, “the oldest geographically widespread and long-lasting technology.”  

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Location of Kanjera along the modern shoreline of Lake Victoria, East Africa. Joseph V. Ferraro, Thomas W. Plummer, Briana L. Pobiner, James S. Oliver, Laura C. Bishop, David R. Braun, Peter W. Ditchfield, John W. Seaman III, Katie M. Binetti, John W. Seaman Jr, Fritz Hertel, Richard Potts,  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Artifacts made from a representative sample of raw materials from Kanjera. Photo credit: Tom Plummer. See The Hard Stuff of Culture: Oldowan Archaeology at Kanjera South, Kenya, by Tom Plummer, Popular Archaeology, May 30, 2016.

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But there was more. 

Notable from their analysis of the Oldowan artifacts, Plummer and colleagues observed that they had been fashioned from a great variety of raw material sources, including not only local sources of carbonate, limestone, iolite, nephelinite, and fenitized stone, but also from non-local, more remote sources for the quartzite, rhyolite, granite, basalt, and schistose stone. This led to an interesting implication. As stated by Plummer in a 2012 article published in Popular Archaeology Magazine:  

“What we found is that approximately 30% of the artifacts recovered from Kanjera were made from rocks that were transported to the site from conglomerates at least 10-13 km away (Braun et al., 2008)…The finding that there are not nearly enough cores to account for all of the flakes at the site further hints that the artifact sample at Kanjera was part of a larger transport system. It appears that cores were being carried by hominins, for use to dispense flakes…”*

In this sense, the Kanjera site is unusual compared to other Oldowan sites in East Africa and elsewhere. 

“The fact that hominins were investing energy in the transport of hard raw materials, and more efficiently reducing them, suggests that artifact manufacture was of great importance in their day-to-day lives,” wrote Plummer in The Hard Stuff of Culture.* 

But why?

Analysis of the faunal remains at the site has given some clues. The site investigators recorded a comparatively significant number of associated bones of small antelopes about the size of or slightly larger than today’s Grants Gazelles. Bone type representation accumulated at the location suggested complete carcasses were brought to the site. Moreover, use-wear analysis of the associated artifacts, as well as damage analysis of the bones, indicated intentional cut-marks using the stone tools.

“Damage to the fossils indicates that hominins were using stone tools to slice meat off of bones, and to break bones open for their fatty marrow,” wrote Plummer.* Carnivore toothmarks were also found on the bones but most of those marks were made after the cut marks, suggesting carnivore scavenging after the hominins had completed processing the carcasses.

“The overall pattern of hominin access to the complete carcasses of small antelopes may be the signal of hominin hunting,” suggests Plummer. “If so, this would be the oldest evidence of hunting to date in the archaeological record.”[statement made based on fossil and artifact discoveries made as documented in the record by 2015]*

Moreover, use-wear analysis of the artifacts also suggested that these hominins were not limited to a carnivorous diet. They were processing a variety of plant tissues, including tubers and wood. 

A new window on early hominin behavior was beginning to emerge.

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A small bovid metatarsal, bearing cut marks; from bed KS-2 of Kanjera, an archaeological and paleoanthropological site on the southern shores of the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria, Homa Bay County, Kenya (scale: 1 cm). Joseph V. Ferraro, Thomas W. Plummer, Briana L. Pobiner, James S. Oliver, Laura C. Bishop, David R. Braun, Peter W. Ditchfield, John W. Seaman III, Katie M. Binetti, John W. Seaman Jr, Fritz Hertel, Richard Potts. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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A small bovid femur with numerous cut marks. From bed KS-2 of Kanjera. Joseph V. Ferraro, Thomas W. Plummer, Briana L. Pobiner, James S. Oliver, Laura C. Bishop, David R. Braun, Peter W. Ditchfield, John W. Seaman III, Katie M. Binetti, John W. Seaman Jr, Fritz Hertel, Richard Potts. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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A shaft fragment from an ungulate leg bone showing a single, deep stone tool cutmark and carnivore toothmarks. One toothmark overlays the cutmark, indicating that the hominins had stripped meat off the bone prior to carnivore gnawing. Photo credit: Tom Plummer. See The Hard Stuff of Culture: Oldowan Archaeology at Kanjera South, Kenya, by Tom Plummer, Popular Archaeology, May 30, 2016.

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Retiming the Horizon at Nyayanga

While the discoveries and implications of Kanjera South were remarkable enough, Plummer and his colleagues soon found that there was much more to add to the story when they turned their attention to other sites west and south of Kanjera. Those efforts included a site known as Nyayanga (named after a nearby beach), located in the foothills of Mount Homa, a few hundred meters from the Lake Victoria shoreline. 

It came on a personal referral. “Peter Onyango, one of the excavators working with us [at Kanjera South], told us that there were tools and fossils like we were finding at Kanjera near his home at a place called Nyayanga,” said Plummer. “So he showed us the place, and we began to research the exposures there.”

Plummer knew he faced a few given complications with the site location. “Because the area is densely populated with people and livestock, trampling can damage and disperse bones and stone tools as they erode out of the outcrop,” he explained. “Also, heavy rain during the wet season(s) can rapidly erode sediments of interest and wash away important fossils and artifacts.”

With these challenges, excavations began in earnest in 2015. Digging in 1 meter squares, they recorded and mapped all objects and fossils measuring greater than 2 centimeters with a laser theodolite. “All of the artifacts from the most ancient sediments at Nyayanga (Nyayanga Beds 1-4) were Oldowan tools,” said Plummer. The team recovered a total of 330 identifiable Oldowan artifacts, 195 from the surface and 135 in situ within the stratigraphic context. Although the assemblage was generally similar to those found at other locations, this one was distinctly characterized with a high frequency (20.6 %) of cores and a comparatively larger percentage of artifacts showing signs of percussive activity. The tools were manufactured from a variety of different raw materials, including quartz, quartzite and rhyolite. 

A total of 1,776 bones were recovered and recorded, combined from two excavations (excavations 3 and 5). A large percentage of the bone remains were attributed to hippopotamids (hippos) at 57.1% and 61.9 %, respectively. Most significantly, Plummer’s team detected clear evidence of butchery among these large fauna. At least two hippos were recovered from excavation 3, the bones of one individual hippo associated with as many as 42 stone tools, including several in direct physical contact with the bones. One rib fragment featured a clear cut-mark with characteristics typically made by a stone tool, and three stone flakes exhibited use-wear patterns identifiable to butchery activity. In excavation 5, another array of bones attributable to a single individual hippo were recovered in association with 14 stone tool artifacts. Faunal remains of other animals were also found showing clear damage attributable to stone tools. Evidence pointed to hominin consumption of both meat and bone marrow. 

But stone tool use was not confined to butchery activity at the site. “Our team’s analyses of stone tool butchery marks on fossils, and microscopic wear formed on stone tools used to cut and pound things, indicate that a diverse array of plant and animal foods was acquired and processed by the Nyayanga toolmakers,” says Plummer. The hominins who occupied the site, in other words, did not subsist entirely on megafauna. They had a diverse diet. 

Moreover, analysis of soil carbonates, tooth enamel isotopes, and taxon in the area indicated that these hominins subsisted in a grassy woodland consisting of warm-season grasses along a stream channel and fresh-water springs within an overall savannah-like environment, a setting not unlike those found at other Oldowan sites such as Ledi-Geraru and Mille-Logya in Ethiopia. Such a habitat would have provided the hominins at this location with a diverse range of potable water, animal and plant food sources, and shelter.

What stood out most from the finds at Nyayanga, however, revolved around three eye-brow raising discoveries — the date range of the finds, the hominin fossil evidence, and the location of the finds… 

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Cover Image, Top Left: Examples of an Oldowan percussive tool, core and flakes from Nyayanga. T.W. Plummer, J.S. Oliver, and E. M. Finestone, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS—The 2024 Summer Olympics are in full swing. One of the marquee events is of course the marathon, a grueling test of fitness and athleticism. 

When it comes to endurance running, humans are among the very top mammals in their athletic prowess. While we may not be the best sprinters in the animal kingdom, we can run steadily for long distances, even in hot weather. Our locomotor muscles are dominated by slow-twitch, fatigue-resistant fibers and our unique ability to sweat allows our bodies to effectively dissipate heat.

Humans are so good at endurance running, it seems we were born to do it. But why?

A theory of endurance

In 1984, biologist David Carrier proposed the endurance pursuit hypothesis to explain why humans are such good long-distance runners. According to the theory, endurance running traits in humans evolved to allow us to run down large game animals through persistence hunting.

Twenty years later, Carrier’s theory was expanded upon by scientists Dennis Bramble and Daniel Lieberman, who highlighted the physiological traits conducive to endurance running. They proposed that such traits first appeared in the Homo genus nearly 2 million years ago and “may have been instrumental in the evolution of the human body form.”

The endurance pursuit hypothesis, however, isn’t without its skeptics.

“There are two reservations that have always clung to this hypothesis,” said Bruce Winterhalder, professor emeritus in the UC Davis Department of Anthropology and Graduate Group in Ecology. “One is that running is more costly than walking, so based on a simple cost-benefit analysis, it doesn’t look like an efficient way of hunting.”

“And then secondly, we have some examples of contemporary hunter-gatherers practicing endurance pursuits but probably less than a dozen cases,” he said. “For the skeptics, endurance pursuits can’t have been that important to hunting evolution in the Paleolithic if it’s not that important to hunter-gatherers now.”

But in a recent study* appearing in Nature Human Behaviour, Winterhalder and paleoanthropologist Eugène Morin, of Trent University, combine mathematical modeling and a multi-year, ethnohistoric investigation of first-hand accounts of endurance pursuits to bolster support for Carrier’s hypothesis.

Sifting through history

According to Winterhalder, the recent availability of thousands of digitized accounts written by explorers, missionaries and officials combined with analytical software capable of sifting through them was key to uncovering examples of endurance pursuits throughout history.

“We have software that allows us to search for information that dwarfs what we could do if we were trying to read through all the possible sources ourselves,” Winterhalder said.

Thanks to this technology, Winterhalder and Morin uncovered 391 descriptions of hunts, dating from 1527 through the early 20th century, that matched endurance pursuit tactics. Accounts originated from 272 locations around the world, which suggests that endurance pursuit hunting was widely practiced and occurred in diverse environments.

Analyzing the data

Across the historical data, endurance pursuits followed a similar trajectory: hunters encounter a prey animal; a pursuit occurs (with the prey animal rapidly outdistancing the hunters); the prey animal pauses to recuperate after exhausting themselves (allowing the slower-paced hunters to catch up); the prey animal flees again; and the cycle repeats until the animal is completely exhausted and overtaken.

Within that common pattern, tactics differed.   

“There are a fair number of cases in which these pursuits are done by teams, by relay. We also have cases where there’s an individual who will climb a hill nearby and use hand signals to indicate where the animal is going, so the person following can take shortcuts and save energy,” Winterhalder said.

This cooperation during endurance pursuit hunting hints at a social element related to running in humans. According to Winterhalder, exhibiting such athletic prowess could have been a way for males to showcase their value among the community, elevating their social status or chances of finding mates.  

In a follow-up study, Winterhalder and Morin plan to further examine female participation in endurance running. While instances of female participation only occurred in about 3-4% of the accounts in the study’s dataset, Winterhalder said that doesn’t necessarily mean females were not good runners.

“In a fair number of cases, we did find that there are festivals, feasts and ritual events that involve running contests,” Winterhalder said. “In cases where we find mentions of rituals or games, the participants generally are women, men and children.”   

It also doesn’t mean that women weren’t involved in hunts as recent research shows “evidence that early women were also hunting.”  

Backing it up with math

Since his graduate student days at Cornell University, Winterhalder has specialized in adapting mathematical models devised by biologists for calculating the value of pursuing game versus the time and energy costs.

For this latest study, Winterhalder and Morin used the models to account for increasing velocity during game pursuits. He and Morin then compared return rates from endurance pursuit hunts to other common foraging methods.

“We found that in contexts like high heat or a substrate that impedes the animal, such as crusted snow, the net return rate of food acquisition from endurance pursuits can match or exceed that of other methods of prey acquisition. The chance of pursuit failure appears to diminish, and exhausted prey are safer to approach. For early humans without ballistic weaponry, these are significant advantages,” Winterhalder said.

Winterhalder hopes the research will generate more interest in the scientific community about the origins of our running gait and, possibly, why some people find the activity to be incredibly satisfying, à la the proverbial “runner’s high.”

“To run long distances, to have an evolved gait that’s uniquely imbued with stamina is unusual in the animal world,” Winterhalder said. “If that inspires you to go for a run, great.”

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS news release.

*Ethnography and ethnohistory support the efficiency of hunting through endurance running in humans, Nature Human Behaviour, 13-May-2024. 10.1038/s41562-024-01876-x 

Cover Image, Top Left: Pixabay

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The iconography of the Maya tombstone in the Temple of the Inscriptions has raised more questions than well-founded answers. A close look at the tombstone, its setting and history, may help understand the Maya timeless message about life and death. The Temple is the final resting place of K’inich Janahb’ Pakal Ahaw, Lord of the B’aakal kingdom at Lakamha’, near today’s Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, where he was born on March 13, 603. From the end of the fifth to the late ninth century, Lakamha’ was an important metropolis and a major regional player in politics, trade, and architecture. Pakal ruled the kingdom from 615 to 682, making him one of the longest-reigning Maya monarchs in history………..

As holy lord of the B’aakal kingdom, Pakal was supreme in secular and religious matters, superseding the high priest and priestess, for the prefix K’inich means Lord, while Ahaw connotes Holy. The Maya called their kings ch’ul ahaw or “lords of the life force,” for the universal power vested in them by the gods. He, and he alone, was anointed by the gods of the unifying forces of light of the Otherworld and those of darkness of the Underworld. In the Maya cosmology, these “worlds” were understood as “complementary opposites” for, paradoxically, both were in turn friendly and hostile over humans and nature. For these reasons, they needed to be pacified through rituals at dedicated times such as, among others, planting and harvesting and important communal milestones. 

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Temple of the Inscriptions  @georgefery.com

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In the last decade of his life, Pakal and his architects worked on his funerary monument, the Temple of the Inscriptions, facing the ancient city’s central plaza.

The temple is the most remarkable sanctuary ever built in Mesoamerica. The eight-level funerary pyramid, and the temple at its summit making up its ninth level, was designed by Pakal and his architects, who started its construction around 675, when Pakal was seventy-two years old. The structure was completed about five years before his death on August 8, 683. The temple at its top was dedicated on December 23, 688, by his son and heir, K’inich K’an B’ahlam (635-702), in time for his father’s funeral. The stepped pyramid’s foundations reach over ten feet below the central plaza’s grounds. The structure was originally covered with plaster that may have been painted red, for remains of pigment were found; of note is the absence of carvings on its stones. The name Temple of the Inscriptions comes from three large limestone panels found on the walls of the temple’s front corridor. In the past, the stepped pyramid was known as “Temple of the Laws” because on those panels are 617-glyphs that narrate Pakal’s achievements and proclaim his place in eternity. 

The six piers atop the pyramid are adorned with stucco scenes. As noted by scholars, “we may never know what Pakal intended to display on the piers, for K’an B’ahlam, who completed the temple after his father’s death, took this public location to show the rituals in which he became heir to the throne and proved his divine nature.” In ancient Maya cosmology “the pyramid replicates the“First-True-Mountain of the World Rising out of the Primordial Waters of Creation” (Schele, Matthews, 1993, 1998). The crypt, located in the deepest recess of the pyramid, is associated with caves perceived as portals to the water world, for water is integral to the belief in the beginning of life in Maya cosmology, where the “Otherworld” points to a mythic world “above” the human plane, abode of the sun, beneficent gods, and life. Its opposite, the “Underworld” or world “below” is associated with sunset, the moon, malevolent gods, and death. The world of the living, between these two man-made worlds, is the “Middle World.” As Bassie-Sweet point out, “One of the most important structuring principles in Maya worldview was complementary or contrasting opposites, such as male/female, right/left, east/west, day/night, up/down or north/south” (2008). 

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Temple of the Inscriptions, Cutaway  @pueblosoriginarios.com

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To build the pyramid, not only did architects, master stonemasons and carvers answer Pakal’s architectural requirements, they also followed a sacred allegorical pattern that was beyond their professional expertise, helped in their tasks by calendar priests, knowledge keepers and wizards. For the burial ceremony, Pakal and his chu’lel – his “divine life force” or “blessed substance of the living universe” – were first brought from the palace up the pyramid’s front stairs. The stairs of the pyramid follow, as does the pyramid’s architecture, the four sacred directions of the Maya equilateral cross, the wacah chan or “world tree.” Each arm of the cross is associated with colors, deities, and functions. The pyramid faces northward onto Palenque’s main plaza. Climbing the stairway up to the temple, Pakal and his retinue faced South>yellow-Nohol (K’an Xib’Chac, germ of life, origin of the winds). After prayers, rituals, and invocations in the temple, Pakal’s body and his chu’lel’ were carried down the three sets of the intramural stairways leading down to the crypt. The first flight of stairs followed the path of the Sun, so Pakal and his retinue walked down heading East>red–Lakin (Chac Xib’Chac, sunrise, dawn). At mid-level, the second set of stairs sharply turns West>black-Ek (Ek Xib’Chac, sunset, dusk). Pakal’s last short five steps stairway into the crypt led him North>white–Xaman (Zac Xib’Chac, the resting place of the winds). 

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First Flight of Stairs  @georgefery.com

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When Pakal was placed in his coffin, his head pointing north, he transitioned from a divine king to a celestial ancestor. As the last rituals and invocations were completed, the crypt’s massive triangular stone door was closed. In his coffin, however, Pakal was never far from the living and, for this purpose, had a narrow conduit called the Tz’at Na Kan, or “Serpent of the Wise Ones,” built to fit the stairwells. It was called a psychoduct by the renowned Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier (1906-1979), who discovered the stairwells in 1950 and the crypt in 1952. The serpent’s head is made of a mix of limestone plaster and was attached to the bottom of the sarcophagus which connected with the “psychoduct,” a rectangular limestone molding outside the door, matching each stair with a hollow round tubelike center that ended below the floor of the temple. It was the Tzat Na Kan, through which Pakal and the priests established soul-to-soul contact, not soul-to-mind, at dedicated times. This feature is found in other structures at Palenque such as in Temples XIII and XVIII, albeit not so elaborate. They each have a tube-like conduit that runs vertically from the crypt to below the temple floor, and a small hole on the sarcophagus lid was drilled at the level of the face to let the ch’ulel’ pass. These funnels bolstered the belief that the individual in the grave was still socially alive after death, with prerogatives attached to his spiritual powers, for ch’ulel’ never dies. It was then accepted, as it is today in most beliefs and religions, that a person has a body, and a soul. It was, however, the deified chu’lel’ that was the object of veneration. Upon death, while the body’s soft tissues decayed, its chu’lel remained within the skeletal bones for the duration of the person’s past life and was then reunited with the ancestors to be assigned to another life. 

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Cover Image, Top Left: Pakal.  Jebulon, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, Wikimedia Commons

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* finds favorable climate and grain conditions at the dawn of agriculture in western Europe. The spread of agriculture throughout early civilizations is a landmark event in human history, but the details of early agricultural conditions and practices remain unclear. José L. Araus and colleagues examined the La Draga archaeological site in Girona, Spain; the site represents early agriculture between 5300 and 4800 BC. Carbon isotope analysis of oak samples from the site suggested relatively wet climate conditions. The authors also analyzed the carbon and nitrogen isotopes, as well as the reconstructed weight, of wheat and barley grains. Next, the authors compared the findings on the La Draga grains with those from multiple other Neolithic sites from the western Mediterranean region. The analysis suggested that the inhabitants of La Draga operated extensive agricultural operations, rather than small gardens, under a wet climate and with moderate use of manure as fertilizer. Analysis of grain size and spike morphology suggested that the ancient plant characteristics were likely similar to those of modern-day crops. According to the authors, the favorable climate conditions, along with the well-developed crop traits, suggest that agriculture was likely consolidated when it arrived in western Europe.

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Pictured are sickles, digging sticks, and an adze recovered from La Draga (Banyoles, Spain). Salvador Comalat, Archaeological Museum of Banyoles

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Pictured is the excavation process at La Draga (Banyoles, Spain). Antonio Palomo

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Isotope and morphometrical evidence reveals the technological package associated with agriculture adoption in western Europe,” by José L. Araus et al., https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2401065121

Cover Image, Top Left: The early grain/crops evidenced at the site were similar to that of today. Nickype, Pixabay

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UNIVERSITY OF EXETER—Rock art explored by archaeologists in the Colombian Amazon has provided an insight into the complex relationship between the earliest settlers on the continent and the animals they encountered.

Spectacular ochre paintings of a wide variety of animal species, including depictions of animals and humans transforming into one another, indicate the rich mythology that guided generations of indigenous Amazonians.

And while the images found adorning the rocky outcrop of Cerro Azul in the Serranía de la Lindosa have yet to be accurately dated, associated evidence of human activity suggests they are likely to have served as galleries for thousands of years, as far back as 10,500BC.

The research, led by an international team from the University of Exeter, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, integrated zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains recovered from nearby excavations with analysis of the artistic depictions. The animal remains revealed a diverse diet, including fish, a range of small to large mammals, and reptiles, including turtle, snake, and crocodile. However, the proportions of animal bones do not match the proportional representation of animals, suggesting the artists did not just paint what they ate. 

“These rock art sites include the earliest evidence of humans in western Amazonia, dating back 12,500 years ago,” says Dr Mark Robinson, Associate Professor of Archaeology in Exeter’s Department of Archaeology and History. “As such, the art is an amazing insight into how these first settlers understood their place in the world and how they formed relationships with animals. The context demonstrates the complexity of Amazonian relationships with animals, both as a food source but also as revered beings, which had supernatural connections and demanded complex negotiations from ritual specialists.” 

Archaeologists have documented several significant rock art sites in the region since a peace agreement between the Colombian government and FARC in 2016 paved the way for a safe resumption of scientific investigations. Cerro Azul, a free-standing table-top hill located close to the Guayabero River in the northwest of the Department of Guaviare, was among them. There, 16 ‘panels’ of ochre drawings were found, several of which could only be accessed via strenuous climbing and the use of ropes.

The research team, which included academics from the UK, Colombia, and Germany, chose to focus on six panels in detail. These ranged from the 40m-by-10m El Más Largo, which contained more than 1,000 images, to the much smaller, 10m-by-6m panel called Principal, many of whose 244 images are extremely well-preserved in vibrant red. 

A total of 3,223 images were catalogued using drone photogrammetry and traditional photography. The images were categorised by their form, with figurative images being the most commonly occurring, contributing 58% of the total. More than half of these related to animals. At least 22 different animals were identified, including deer, birds, peccary, lizards, turtles, and tapir. 

Although fish remains are abundant in the archaeological remains, their appearance in the art is limited to just two panels, in what appear to be fishing scenes. Notable by their absence were big cats, despite their position as apex predators and the evidence of artwork at other Colombian sites. The researchers speculate that the artists were potentially restricted from depicting powerful beasts, such as the jaguar. While images of figures combining human and animal characteristics reveal a complex mythology of transformation between animal and human states that is still present within modern Amazonian communities. 

The diverse array of animals represented in the art and the archaeological remains demonstrates a broad understanding and exploitation of a multitude of environments in the region, including savannah, flooded forests and rivers. 

“The Indigenous people of Cerro Azul and the surrounding lands hunted and depicted a diverse array of animals from different ecologies – from aquatic fish to arboreal monkeys; terrestrial deer to aerial birds, both nocturnal and diurnal,” says Dr Javier Aceituno, of Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín. “They had intimate knowledge of the various habitats in the region and possessed the relevant skills to track and hunt animals and harvest plants from each, as part of a broad subsistence strategy.”

“Our approach reveals differences between what indigenous communities exploited for food and what is conceptually important to represent – and not represent – in art,” concludes Professor Jose Iriarte, also of Exeter. “Though we cannot be certain what meaning these images have, they certainly do offer greater nuance to our understanding of the power of myths in indigenous communities. They are particularly revealing when it comes to more cosmological aspects of Amazonian life, such as what is considered taboo, where power resides, and how negotiations with the supernatural were conducted.” 

Animals of the Serranía de la Lindosa: Exploring representation and categorisation in the rock art and zooarchaeological remains of the Colombian Amazon, has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101613 

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Cerro Azul with the location of the rock art panels and the excavation site analyzed in this study. University of Exeter

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Images of potential a) fishing; b, c, e) hunting; d) monkey leaping/transforming sequence; f) and an unknown animal with circular feet and curved head elements. University of Exeter

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Potential therianthropic images, as suggested by Indigenous informants: a) avian/human at Las Dantas, b) lizard with round, human-like head at Currunchos, c) bird/plant/human with penis at Principal, d) sloth/human at Demoledores, e) Unknown quadruped with tail and penis at Reserva, f) Deer/human at Principal. University of Exeter

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Principal – one of the panels studied as part of the project. University of Exeter

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER news release.

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Proboscidean species – animals including modern elephants and extinct wooly mammoths – experienced a five-fold increase in extinction rates when early humans appeared, according to a new model-based study* involving fossil data. The work also ties the subsequent rise of modern Homo sapiens with a 17-fold increase in proboscidean extinction rates. Fossil records hold clues about how speciation and extinction have influenced ecosystem turnover throughout millennia. Yet, these impacts have proven hard to model. Most attempts to do so have only incorporated single predictors, such as one environmental change or the acquisition of a single trait, which does not reflect the multi-faceted nature of evolution. Here, Torsten Hauffe and colleagues present a new neural network-based statistical approach that can use fossil records to yield a more nuanced portrayal of species diversification. They fed the model pre-existing information about 2,118 fossils belonging to 175 proboscidean species that lived from 35 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. The neural network assessed 17 environmental and morphological factors, such as tusk characteristics and body size, and incorporated data about relevant paleotemperatures and paleo-environments. It also considered human interactions, including the arrival of early humans in the Pleistocene roughly 1.8 million years ago and the emergence of modern humans around 129,000 years ago. The findings pointed towards dietary adaptation and flexibility as a driver of speciation, particularly at the end of the Neogene a little under 3 million years ago. Most notably, results showed that proboscidean extinctions were very strongly affected by human activity and secondarily influenced by geographic distribution and dental morphologies. “We found that while humans exhibit the greatest impact in the past ca. 120,000 years, our results also point to a weaker yet significant influence of the human lineage at earlier times, thus supporting other studies suggesting a long-lasting detrimental anthropogenic effect on biodiversity,” the authors conclude.

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Many scientists suggest that the wooly mammoth went extinct at least in part due to overhunting by prehistoric humans. Kyraxys, Pixabay

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Article Source: AAAS news release.

*Trait-mediated speciation and human-driven extinctions in proboscideans revealed by unsupervised Bayesian neural networks, Science Advances, 24-Jul-2024. 10.1126/sciadv.adl2643 

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FRONTIERS—It’s hard to know what Neanderthals ate: food preparation, especially when it comes to smaller items like birds, can leave few archaeological traces. But understanding their diets is critical to understanding these incredibly adaptable hominins, who thrived for hundreds of thousands of years in wildly varied environments. To learn what food preparation could look like in the archaeological record, scientists tried cooking like Neanderthals.

“Using a flint flake for butchering required significant precision and effort, which we had not fully valued before this experiment,” said Dr Mariana Nabais of the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social in Spain, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. “The flakes were sharper than we initially thought, requiring careful handling to make precise cuts without injuring our own fingers. These hands-on experiments emphasized the practical challenges involved in Neanderthal food processing and cooking, providing a tangible connection to their daily life and survival strategies.”

You are what you eat

Although the big game hunting practiced by Neanderthals is well known, we know less about the birds that some Neanderthals hunted. But recent discoveries and new techniques allow us to investigate this more deeply. By testing food preparation methods that Neanderthals could have used, to see what traces these might leave on bones and how those traces compare to damage caused by natural processes or the actions of other animals, the scientists created an experimental database that can be compared to real archaeological sites.

The scientists collected five wild birds that had died of natural causes from the Wildlife Ecology, Rehabilitation and Surveillance Centre (CERVAS) in Gouveia, Portugal. They chose two carrion crows, two collared doves, and a wood pigeon, which are similar to species that Neanderthals ate, and selected cooking methods using archaeological evidence and ethnographic data.

All the birds were de-feathered by hand. A carrion crow and a collared dove were then butchered raw, using a flint flake. The remaining three were roasted over hot coals until cooked, then butchered, which the scientists found much easier than butchering the raw birds.

“Roasting the birds over the coals required maintaining a consistent temperature and carefully monitoring the cooking duration to avoid overcooking the meat,” said Nabais. “Maybe because we de-feathered the birds before cooking, the roasting process was much quicker than we anticipated. In fact, we spent more time preparing the coals than on the actual cooking, which took less than ten minutes.”

Putting flesh on prehistoric bones

The scientists cleaned and dried the bones, then examined them microscopically for cutmarks, breaks, and burns. They also examined the flint flake they had used for evidence of wear and tear. Although they had used their hands for most of the butchery, the raw birds required considerable use of the flint flake, which now had small half-moon scars on the edge. While the cuts used to remove meat from the raw birds did not leave traces on the bones, the cuts aimed at tendons left marks similar to those on birds found at archaeological sites.

The bones from the roasted birds were more brittle: some had shattered and couldn’t be recovered. Nearly all of them had brown or black burns consistent with controlled exposure to heat. Black stains inside some bones suggested that the contents of the inner cavity had also burned. This evidence sheds light not just on how Neanderthal food preparation could have worked, but also how visible that preparation might be in the archaeological record. Although roasting makes it easier to access meat, the increased fragility of the bones means the leftovers might not be found by archaeologists.

However, the scientists cautioned that this research should be expanded to gain a fuller understanding of Neanderthal diets. Future studies should include more species of small prey, as well as processing birds for non-food products, like talons or feathers.

“The sample size is relatively small, consisting of only five bird specimens, which may not fully represent the diversity of bird species that Neanderthals might have used,” noted Nabais. “Secondly, the experimental conditions, although carefully controlled, cannot completely replicate the exact environmental and cultural contexts of Neanderthal life. Further research with larger samples, varied species, and more diverse experimental conditions is necessary to expand upon these results.”

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A scientist defeathers one of the birds. Image by Dr Mariana Nabais. Dr Mariana Nabais.

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Bones recovered from the birds. Image by Dr Mariana Nabais. Dr Mariana Nabais.

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Usewear on the flake used for butchery. Image by Dr Marina Igreja. Dr Marina Igreja.

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Article Source: Frontiers news release.

*“Experimental replication of early human behaviour in bird preparation: A pilot-study focusing on bone surface modification and breakage patterns,” Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, 24-Jul-2024  10.3389/fearc.2024.1411853 

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UNIVERSITY OF YORK—Archaeological evidence from the world-famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire has shown that hunter-gatherers likely kept an orderly home by creating ‘zones’ for particular domestic activities.

The research team from the University of York and the University of Newcastle, looked at microscopic evidence from the use of stone tools found inside three structures – potentially cone-like in shape or domed –  dating to over 11,000 years ago at the Star Carr site.

They found that there was a range of activities that were likely to have taken place inside the ‘home’, including wood, bone, antler, plant, hide, meat and fish related work.  The researchers then plotted out spatial patterns for these activities to pin-point where within the dwelling these activities might have occurred.

Dr Jess Bates, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology said: “We found that there were distinct areas for different types of activity, so the messy activity involving butchery, for example, was done in what appears to be a designated space, and separate to the ‘cleaner’ tasks such as crafting bone and wooden objects, tools or jewellery.

“This was surprising as hunter-gatherers are known for being very mobile, as they would have to travel out to find food, and yet they have a very organised approach to creating not just a house but a sense of home.

“This new work, on these very early forms of houses suggests, that these dwellings didn’t just serve a practical purpose in the sense of having a shelter from the elements, but that certain social norms of a home were observed that are not massively dissimilar to how we organise our homes today.”

Previous work has also shown that there is evidence that hunter-gatherers kept their dwellings clean, as well as orderly, with indications that sweeping of the inside of the structure took place.

Star Carr provides the earliest known evidence of British dwellings and some of the earliest forms of architecture. One of the structures found was believed to be shaped like a cone and was constructed out of wood from felled trees, as well as coverings possibly made from plants, like reeds, or animal hides. There is still very little known about why hunter-gatherers would build such structures and continued to throughout the Mesolithic period.

Dr Bates said: “Not only do we now know that hunter-gatherers were constructing these dwellings, but they had a shared group understanding of how to organise tasks within them.

“In modern society we are very attached to our homes both physically and emotionally, but in the deep past communities were highly mobile so it is fascinating to see that despite this there is still this concept of keeping an orderly home space.

“This study shows that micro-scale analysis can be a really exciting way of getting at the details of these homes and what these spaces meant to those who lived there.”

The research is published in the journal PLOS One.

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A reconstruction of what a dwelling for a hunter-gatherer could have looked like. University of York, YEAR Centre

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Article Source: University of York news release.

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Editor’s Note: Here, Dr. Zahi Hawass, arguably Egypt’s most famous and celebrated archaeologist and egyptologist, recounts his recent discoveries at Gisr el-Mudir, also known as the Great Enclosure, one of the oldest stone structures known to date in Egypt, located at Saqqara and only a few hundred meters west of the Step Pyramid. Leading an excavation team, he uncovered evidence of  a large cemetery consisting of tombs dated to the 5th and 6th Dynasties of Egypt’s Old Kingdom. What follows is his narrative in his own words:

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Our recent excavation at Gisr el-Mudir in the shadow of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, Saqqara, has revealed many amazing new discoveries, including:  The recovery of nine beautiful statues of Messi, three statues and a false door of Fetek, another triad statue, a sealed sarcophagus containing a mummy covered with gold, and two more false doors and two additional tombs dated to the Old Kingdom.

A History of Discovery

The most important archaeologist who worked at this site was Zakaria Ghoniem, who discovered the pyramid complex of Skhem-Khet of the 3rd dynasty. This pyramid complex has been dated back to about 4800 years ago. While investigating in 1954, he explored the burial chamber of the pyramid, and found a completely sealed sarcophagus made of calcite alabaster. This was contemporaneous with a discovery made at Giza by Kamal El-Mallakh south of the great pyramid of Khufu — solar boats, found in two sealed pits with intact wood. (Kamal El-Mallakh was the architect who worked at Giza before he moved to work as a reporter in akhbar newspaper.) One of the boats was restored by the famous restorer, Hag Ahmed Youssef.  Egypt’s then president Gamal Abdel-Nasser came to see the discovery of the boat based on a request from the famous writer and newspaper editor Mohamed Hussanien Heikal. Then, the delegation requested Nasser to go to Gisr El-Modier at Saqqara for the opening of the sarcophagus live in front of the press. Upon opening the sarcophagus, they found it empty. 

This incident taught me a good lesson that I employed at Abousir. Here, Mirsolque Verner of the Czech Republic found an intact tomb of iuf-aa, who was anciently the director of the palace at the site, dated back to about 500 B.C. I called the Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and told him about the discovery. He said that he would come with the press to open it live. I went to Verner and we brought the workmen and moved the tomb’s first sarcophagus, which weighed about 20 tons, and found under it another inscribed sarcophagus weighing about 10 tons. After moving the second one we found the third one, weighing 5 tons, which was inscribed, and then moved it, finding a beautiful mummy covered in green beads within a coffin. Then we placed everything back and asked the minister to come with the press and we officially opened all the sarcophagi, never having told him that we had already opened all the sarcophagi previously. 

I began excavations at Gisr el-Mudir and found many Old Kingdom tombs, the most important of which was the tomb of the physician Qar. This tomb was small but beautifully decorated.  Inside we found a group of surgical tools and outside about 30 Late Period statues, one of them belonging to Imhotep and the others for gods and goddesses. All of these objects are now inside the Imhotep museum in Saqqara. We stopped the excavation in 2011.  

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Excavations west of the Step Pyramid in Saqarra are revealing remarkable new finds. Pinzino, Pixabay

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Map of the location of Gisr el-Mudir, the Great Enclosure, relative to the other major structures at Saqarra. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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New Excavations

The most recent excavations began with funding from Clovis Rossillon, who hails from a wealthy french family. Beginning in 2021 until January 2023, important major new discoveries were made. The first was a cache of nine beautiful statues, found southeast of Mastaba 4. 

All images courtesy Zahi Hawass, unless otherwise noted.

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Anyang, located in China’s great North Plain, is a modern industrial city of almost 5.5 million people. It is known economically for the production of iron and steel, coal coking, and clothing production. But long before the modern city arose, the city landscape hosted an ancient urban presence that in time ranked among the world’s great Bronze Age centers. Clues to its remains first began to emerge over a hundred years ago….. 

Written on Bone

For hundreds of years, farmers dug them up in their fields near the village of Xiaotun, a small village near Anyang and about 500 kilometers south of Beijing. They were fragments of ox scapula and turtle shell. The farmers sold them to apothecaries, where they were ground into powder for use as tonics or medicines for curing malaria and treating wounds.

But there was another peculiar thing about these bone fragments.

Many of them featured mysterious inscribed markings. In 1899, several of them fell into the hands of Wang Yirong, who was the chancellor of the Imperial Academy in Beijing at the time. Wang collected Chinese bronzes, some of which were Zhou dynasty bronzes inscribed with what he believed to be ancient Chinese writing. The markings on the bone fragments were tantalizingly similar. So similar, in fact, that it wasn’t long before the bone artifacts hit the antiquities trade with a storm and eventually came to the attention of James Mellon Menzies, who conducted the first scientific excavations of the bones, including decipherment. He published the first scientific study of the bones in 1917, which included 2,369 drawings and inscriptions, and eventually amassed a collection of as many as 35,000 objects related to what became known as the “oracle bones”. 

Excavation and Discovery of the Lost City

More important than the oracle bones was the drive to find answers to the questions of who made them and why. Scholars were keen to know their context, so in 1928 an excavation team led by Li Ji of China’s Academia Sinica began work near the village of Xiaotun close to modern Anyang, with the initial financial backing and support of the Freer Gallery of Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Excavations under Li Ji’s directorship continued with seasons over a 9-year period, recovering more oracle bone artifacts, the decipherment of which showed that the bone inscriptions represented divinations performed by an ancient royal household. Further excavation revealed the remains of a major Bronze Age city, eventually identified by archaeologists as Yinxu, the last capital city of the Shang Dynasty. It was a remarkable discovery, as before the excavation, even the very existence of the Shang Dynasty was in question. Clues to the Shang Dynasty were known only through historical documents. This dynasty was more than a myth.

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FRONTIERS—Almost 2,000 years ago, Pliny the Younger wrote letters describing a shaking ground as Vesuvius erupted. Now, a collaborative study* led by researchers from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) and Pompeii Archaeological Park has shed light on the effects of seismicity associated with the 79CE eruption.

The study is the first to tackle the complex task of reporting on the effects of co-occurring earthquakes. This is tricky due to the possibility of volcanic and seismic effects happening concurrently or in quick succession, meaning volcanic effects can overshadow effects caused by earthquakes and vice versa.

“These complexities are like a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces must fit together to unravel the complete picture,” said Dr Domenico Sparice, a volcanologist at INGV-Osservatorio Vesuviano and first author of the Frontiers in Earth Science study. “We proved that seismicity during the eruption played a significant role in the destruction of Pompeii and, possibly, influenced the choices of the Pompeiians who faced an inevitable death.”

Clues to a deadly collapse

“Correctly recognizing the cause-effect relationship is essential to reconstruct the interplay between volcanic and seismic phenomena, and their effects on buildings and humans,” added co-author Dr Fabrizio Galadini, a geologist and senior researcher at INGV.

During excavations in the ‘Casa dei Pittori al Lavoro’, the researchers noticed something off about the collapsed buildings. “We found peculiar characteristics that were inconsistent with the effects of volcanic phenomena described in the volcanological literature devoted to Pompeii. There had to be a different explanation,” said co-author Dr Mauro Di Vito, a volcanologist and director of INGV-Osservatorio Vesuviano.

When the researchers found two skeletons with severe fracture and trauma injuries, they were even more motivated to figure out the reason.

Painters at work

The eruption caught Pompeiians in the midst of daily life. For about 18 hours, pumice lapilli – small rock and ash particles– fell on the city, causing people to seek shelter. When the eruption paused, inhabitants who’d survived may have thought themselves safe – until strong earthquakes started.

“The people who did not flee their shelters were possibly overwhelmed by earthquake-induced collapses of already overburdened buildings. This was the fate of the two individuals we recovered,” said co-author Dr Valeria Amoretti, an anthropologist who heads the Applied Research Laboratory of Pompeii Archaeological Park.

The researchers found two male skeletons, both around 50 years of age. Their positioning suggests that ‘individual 1’ was suddenly crushed by the collapse of a large wall fragment, resulting in severe traumas causing immediate death. ‘Individual 2’, however, may have been aware of the danger and tried to protect himself with a round wooden object of which the researchers found faint traces in the volcanic deposits.

There are several hints that these individuals did not die from inhaling ash or extreme heat, such as their positioning on the pumice lapilli, rather than under it. This suggests both survived to first phase of the eruption and then were overwhelmed by collapsing walls during the temporary decline of the eruptive phenomena and before the arrival of the pyroclastic currents, the researchers said.

Difficult choices

While not everybody could make it into temporary safety, the numbers of victims recovered in the ash deposits makes people fleeing to the outside a plausible, albeit hopeless, scenario, the researchers said. There are no reliable estimations about how many people died from volcanic-related causes or due to damage caused by earthquakes.

“New insight into the destruction of Pompeii gets us very close to the experience of the people who lived here 2,000 years ago. The choices they made as well as the dynamics of the events, which remain a focus of our research, decided over life and death in the last hours of the city’s existence,” concluded co-author Dr Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park.

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Scientists discovered two skeletons in the ruins of a Pompeii building and concluded that their deaths must have been caused by wall collapses triggered by earthquakes. Image: Pompeii Archaeological Park.

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Location of the excavated rooms where the skeletons were found in Pompeii. Image: Pompeii Archaeological Park.

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Location of the skeletons found in room A. Image: Pompeii Archaeological Park.

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Skeleton of ‘individual 1’, a male aged around 50 years. The positioning suggests he was suddenly crushed by the collapse of a large wall fragment, resulting in severe traumas causing immediate death. Image: Pompeii Archaeological Park.

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Skeleton of ‘individual 2’, a male aged around 50 years, who may have been aware of the danger and tried to protect himself with a round wooden object. The researchers found faint traces of it in the volcanic deposits. Image: Pompeii Archaeological Park.

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Article Source: Frontiers news release.

*“A novel view of the destruction of Pompeii during the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius: syn-eruptive earthquakes as an additional cause of building collapse and deaths”: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2024.1386960/full

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Our past is at risk. Its tangible remains are fragile, a non-renewable resource that, globally, is disappearing daily at the hands of urban development, natural disasters, climate change, and illicit trade in antiquities.

The risk to our past makes preservation work all the more critical. That’s why AlUla is proud to have documented 30,000 archaeological sites in the region, including Hegra, the Nabataean’s ancient southern capital in modern-day Saudi Arabia. The archaeological wonder sits among AlUla’s breathtaking landscape, rich history, and local hospitality, making it an attractive destination for visitors. But the importance of preservation means that, in reality, beyond Hegra, only seven of those 30,000 sites are open to the public. Protecting our past means we must keep a laser focus on balancing visitor accessibility with preservation.

My life’s work is dedicated to archaeological preservation of sites like Hegra because protecting our past is the key to securing our shared future. Only by understanding the past— by understanding who we are and where we came from —and applying this knowledge to our present——can we effectively shape our future.

The continued relevance of archaeology was a prominent theme at the inaugural AlUla World Archaeology in September 2023. The global archaeological community agrees that we must, with urgency and focus, re-double our efforts to ensure the preservation of our past and, thereby, secure our shared future. The question is: How?

Local communities are the answer. Local communities are the frontlines of preserving the past and the most critical factor in determining the sustainable success of an archaeological site. As Vice President of Culture at the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), it is my privilege to work toward the RCU’s top priority: that the people of AlUla—those who first created and now preserve its rich cultural heritage—remain at the heart of AlUla’s development. If any archaeology project in AlUla is not oriented towards the local community, it is not a project for us.

With local community empowerment and development as our North Star, three supporting principles drive AlUla’s approach to archaeology.

First, we will not undertake any projects without the participation of Saudi archaeological students. In Saudi Arabia, archaeology is still an emerging field. At Dadan, for example, one of the earliest kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, we have excavated only 6% of the entire site because we lack the human resources to move forward at a faster pace while ensuring proper preservation. We need to train a new generation of Saudi archaeologists to manage excavations—a task only accomplished by giving them hands-on experience with ongoing work. With greater local expertise, we will be able to discover the depths of the rich cultural heritage of AlUla and beyond.

Second, we facilitate local students to visit the sites. Students ranging from 6 to 12 years old come from local schools to learn about the history of their land. With that comes heightened self-understanding and a deepened sense of pride. These students carry themselves differently when they leave. But we also have greater hopes for our students in AlUla: We want to expose them to the field of archaeology. As they watch the excavations, learn about their history, and experience the richness of the landscape, we hope to inspire the next generation of archaeological students.

Finally, we prioritize training and working with local guides—or Rawis, as we call them. The Rawi, or storyteller, has a special place in Arabic culture. Historically, Rawis were entrusted with preserving the past through oral traditions—recounting history, poems, and literature—that were passed down over generations. Today, AlUla is working with local Rawis—tapping into their cultural expertise as guides, translators, and cultural ambassadors for visitors to AlUla—to ensure that the local people remain in control of their own narrative as they pass on the history of their community.

We work closely with Rawis each season to update their site knowledge based on the latest discoveries and to enhance their skills—from communication, planning, and logistics to actual archaeological preservation—all while further equipping them for intercultural dialogue with visitors from around the world. As our local Rawis gain a deeper understanding of the archaeological process, local ownership of the site increases exponentially, driving sustainable preservation efforts by and for the local community. 

What happens ultimately when we successfully integrate the local community and these three principles into every dimension of our work? Our local communities gain much more than jobs. While economic opportunity is important, our people also gain an awareness of the historic value of their land and culture; they swell with pride about the people they come from and those they’ve become; and they develop a sense of ownership in their cultural assets. They become the frontline advocates of archaeology, the first protectors of their history.

The people of AlUla themselves are those who guarantee that the rich cultural heritage of AlUla will be around to the thousandth generation. They have served as guardians of their cultural heritage already for millennia, and the RCU remains committed to ensuring that the people of AlUla remain at the heart of its preservation. After all, the past doesn’t belong to academics, historians, or archaeologists. It belongs instead to the people whose past it is—and to their children’s children. Only by engaging them in the past and entrusting them in the present can we ensure the preservation of their heritage into the future.

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Khaybar is a major oasis in northwest Arabia, characterised by fertile spring-fed wadis, filled with date gardens, cutting through the basalt geology, with ongoing archaeological investigations of its Islamic past. Credit Royal Commission for AlUla

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Laser Graffiti Removal Workshop programme training for Royal Commission for AlUla personnel at Hegra, in collaboration with Centro Conservazione e Restauro La Ventaria Reale. Credit Royal Commission for AlUla

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School children visit the active archaeological site at Dadan, the ancient Kingdom of the Lihyanite and Dadanite civilisations. Credit Royal Commission for AlUla

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The largest tomb at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra, the monolithic Tomb of Lihyan Son of Kuza. Credit Royal Commission for AlUla

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Dadan is one of the most active archaeological sites in AlUla, with excavations ongoing in several key areas. Credit Royal Commission for AlUla

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Student award ceremony for completion of the Conservation Science Workshops programme run by the Centro Conservazione e Restauro La Ventaria Reale in collaboration with the Royal Commission for AlUla. Credit Royal Commission for AlUla

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Article Source: Royal Commission for AlUla news release

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PLOS—Cut marks on fossils could be evidence of humans exploiting large mammals in Argentina more than 20,000 years ago, according to a study* published July 17, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mariano Del Papa of National University of La Plata, Argentina and colleagues.

The timing of early human occupation of South America is a topic of intense debate, highly relevant to a study of early human dispersal across the Americas and of humans’ potential role in the extinction of large mammals at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. This discussion is hampered by a general scarcity of direct archaeological evidence of early human presence and human-animal interactions.

In this study, researchers present evidence of butchery on Pleistocene mammal fossils from the banks of the Reconquista River, northeast of the Pampean region in Argentina. The fossils are those of a glyptodont, a giant relative of armadillos, named Neosclerocalyptus. Statistical analysis finds that cut marks on parts of the pelvis, tail, and body armor are consistent with known marks made by stone tools, and the placement of these marks is consistent with a butchering sequence targeting areas of dense flesh. Radiocarbon dating indicates these fossils are around 21,000 years old, nearly six thousand years older than other known archaeological evidence in southern South America.

These results fit with other recent findings that indicate early human presence in the Americas over 20,000 years ago. These fossils are also among the oldest evidence of human interaction with large mammals shortly before many of those mammals became extinct. The authors suggest that these findings might be further supported by additional excavation at this site, further analysis of the cut marks, and more extensive radiocarbon dating of the fossils.

Miguel Delgado, the corresponding author, adds: “The study’s evidence puts into question the time frame for the first human peopling of the Americas 16,000 years ago”

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3D rendering of the probable butchery event according to a paleoartistic reconstruction. The illustration was made by modeling three-dimensional meshes, 3D digital scanning, and texturing by projection, based on the proportions of the excavated fossil materials and the results obtained in the study. Damián Voglino, Museo de Ciencias Naturales A. Scasso (Colegio Don Bosco), San Nicolás de los Arroyos, Provincia de Buenos Aires, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Drawing of a Neosclerocalyptus skeleton highlighting cut-marked skeletal elements in light blue found at the CRS-10 specimen. Del Papa et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Del Papa M, De Los Reyes M, Poiré DG, Rascovan N, Jofré G, Delgado M (2024) Anthropic cut marks in extinct megafauna bones from the Pampean region (Argentina) at the last glacial maximum. PLoS ONE 19(7): e0304956. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304956

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For most people, the Turkana Basin in northwestern Kenya is a fiercely inhospitable place. It is hot and dry — an arid, desert-like scrubland. At its center lies Lake Turkana, an enormous, expansive, alkaline body of water that has gained the apt description as the world’s largest permanent desert lake. There are no major resorts along its shores. Though rich as a source of fishing for the local economy, it’s flats team with Nile crocodiles and its shores are abundant with scorpions and carpet vipers. But this lake lies front-and-center within a region the geology of which has yielded one of the world’s great treasure-house landscapes of exposed beds teaming with fossils extending as far back as the Cretaceous period. The unforgiving environment was thus no barrier to the teams of paleontologists, geologists and paleoanthropologists that found their way here over the decades to explore and survey the landscape. And it was along the dried up Nariokotome river bed not far from the lake when, in 1984, eagle-eyed goat herder and fossil hunter, Kamoya Kimeu, spied a peculiar skull fragment. Kamoya honed his skills and reputation over the years in the employ of the renowned fossil hunting paleoanthropologist team of Mary and Richard Leakey. Kimeu knew what he was doing.

In time, through survey and careful excavation, the skull fragment turned out to be just one of 107 other bones, all members of the skeletal remains of a single individual animal….

A hominin.

Turkana Boy

The remains represented an almost complete skeleton. Once pieced together, it revealed what for its time was a startling new hominin discovery. The cranium was small, indicating a brain that was only two thirds the capacity of modern humans. The interior of the cranium featured asymmetry of a longer left brain over the right, suggesting the possible beginnings of the physiological capacity for speech.

Full Turkana Boy skeleton, as exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. Mike Peel , CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

The post-cranial skeletal features featured shoulders, arms, torso with a barrel-shaped chest, a tucked-in pelvis, and legs that more closely resembled those of modern humans, as opposed to modern apes, though the feet were missing. Assembled and stretched lengthwise, the body frame and skull measured about 5’3”, with a breadth that suggested about 103 pounds at the time the individual was alive. Analysis of the bones indicated that this was a male youth around 8 or 9 years old. Perhaps most significant about the boy was that he likely moved with an erect gate — he was fully bipedal. The body structure and full bipedality contrasted sharply with most hominin fossil discoveries previously discovered, such as the famous ‘Lucy’ australopithecine fossil skeleton unearthed at Hadar, Ethiopia by Donald Johnson 10 years earlier in 1974. The discovery team named him, for ease of popular reference, Nariokotome Boy, after the location of the discovery. Alternatively, he was nicknamed Turkana Boy, and this has been the name most used by the popular media.

The Significance of the Discovery

All in all, it was a remarkable discovery. Now scientists had unearthed an almost complete individual (the most complete early human skeleton ever found) that was clearly not like the more ape-like front-page-making australopithecine discoveries recovered previously from various sites in East Africa and South Africa. This was, according to the discoverers, a member of the genus Homo, and more specifically, a Homo erectus — a hominin species generally thought to exhibit characteristics more closely resembling those of, and suggesting a functionality more like, Homo sapiens.

Perhaps most significant was the date of the find. At 1.5 millions ago, it was among the oldest Homo erectus discoveries. Moreover, this was important in developing paradigms for human evolution because Lucy, as a partially complete specimen discovered at Hadar, Ethiopia and dated to 3.2 million years ago, was an australopithecine ( a different and more ancient genus) that exhibited a starkly different morphology. Though much smaller than Turkana Boy, she sported longer (relative to the body) arms, curved fingers, suggesting the adaptation to climbing trees like other primates, and a funnel-shaped chest much like a chimpanzee’s. However, her feet, knees, hips, and the position of her head upon her neck were, like Turkana Boy, adapted for at least some bipedal movement. In contrast to Turkana Boy, her brain case was only one-third the size of the modern human brain.

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Turkana Boy skull. BAHN, Paul G, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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View of Lake Turkana. wfeiden, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The landscape around Lake Turkana at the time of Turkana Boy was much wetter than it is today. A larger ancient paleolake existed instead of the current lake, surrounded by a savannah-like landscape of grasslands and scattered trees. Many scientists suggest that it was the transition from an environment thick with vegetation to that of a savannah that presented new challenges and impacted, in part, the course of human evolution, from the more ape-like ancestral predecessors to the bipedal, tool-making-and-using hominins that adopted a more varied diet of meat-eating, selective plant foraging, and more sophisticated scavenging and hunting strategies.

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Other Finds

Astonishing as the Turkana Boy discovery was, it was certainly not the only Homo erectus fossil find emerging from East Africa. Most notable historically among the discoveries were three specimens; one, a nearly complete cranium designated with catalogue number KNM ER 3733; another, a partially complete cranium, designated KNM ER 3883, and the third, KNM ER 42700, also a partial cranium.  KNM ER 3733 was discovered in 1975 at Koobi Fora, just east of Lake Turkana by Richard Leakey and his field worker Bernard Ngeneo. This cranium, dated to 1.78–1.48 million years ago, was determined to be an adult female based on the comparatively less robustness, the extensive teeth-wear, the presence of third molars, and fused cranial sutures — all tell-tale signs of adulthood. The KNM ER 3733 cranium is considered among the oldest Homo erectus fossils ever found. KNM ER 3883, discovered in 1976 also by Richard Leakey at Koobi Fora, has been dated to 1.6 million years ago. Larger and more robust than KNMR 3773, it is thought to represent an adult male. Notably, it shows a cranial capacity greater than 804 ml, suggesting a brain comparatively larger than most Homo erectus finds. Finally, KNM ER 42700, a cranium of a young adult individual, was discovered in northern Kenya, notably not far from where fossils of late-dated Homo habilis were found. Dated to about 1.55 million years ago, this fossil find has shifted thinking about hominins among scientists, suggesting that individuals or groups of Homo erectus and Homo habilis coexisted or overlapped in the same region at the same time.

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KNM-ER 3733 discovered by Bernard Ngeneo in 1975. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Homo erectus KNM-ER 3883 (replica, Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany). Gerbil, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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KNM-ER 42700. Cast exhibited at the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Ryan Somma, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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East Africa has long been thought to be the exclusive African domain for the earliest emergence of Homo erectus. But a remarkable discovery made in 2016 suggested otherwise….

[See the full article with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology.]

Cover Image, Top Left: Facial reconstruction of Homo erectus. Werner Ustorf, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA—One of the most important controversies about human evolution and expansion is when and by what route the first hominids arrived in Europe from the African continent. Now, geological dating techniques at the Orce sites (Baza basin, Granada, Spain) place the human remains found in this area as the oldest in Europe, at approximately 1.3 million years old. These results reinforce the hypothesis that humans arrived in Europe through the south of the Iberian Peninsula, through the Strait of Gibraltar, instead of returning to the Mediterranean via the Asian route. The study*, led by Lluís Gibert, researcher and lecturer at the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Earth Sciences, has involved the participation of researchers from the Berkeley Geochronology Centre and Murray State University (United States).

Analysis of a new sampling area

The new dating has been based on the analysis of the paleomagnetism of an area of the Orce region, which has never been sampled before and which has been protected from the erosion that this basin has suffered over the years. This technique is a relative dating method based on the study of the inversion of the magnetic poles of the planet due to the internal dynamics of the Earth. These changes do not have a specific periodicity, but they are recorded in the minerals and make it possible to establish time periods from the different magnetic events.

These new data are very precise thanks to the long sedimentary sequence that outcrops in Orce. “The uniqueness of these sites is that they are stratified and within a very long sedimentary sequence, more than eighty metres long. Normally, the sites are found in caves or within very short stratigraphic sequences, which do not allow you to develop long palaeomagnetic sequences in which you can find different magnetic reversals”, says Lluís Gibert.

The researchers have been able to identify a magnetic polarity sequence “with five magnetic events that allow them to place the three Orce sites with human presence between the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchron, that is, between 1.77 and 1.07 million years ago (Ma)”, says the researcher. Subsequently, they have applied a statistical age model to accurately refine the chronology of the different stratigraphic levels with a margin of error of only 70,000 years. The result of this innovative methodology is that the oldest site with human presence in Europe would be Venta Micena with an age of 1.32 Ma, followed by Barranco León, with an age of 1.28 and finally Fuente Nueva 3, with an age of 1.23 Ma. “With these data, the other major site on the peninsula, the Sima del Elefante in Atapuerca, would be relegated to second place, far behind Orce, between 0.2 and 0.4 Ma more modern”, adds the researcher.

Fauna underpins the antiquity of the site

To complete the dating, the study has also analyzed the fauna found at the different sites in Orce, as this is different depending on the period, and compared it with that found at other Early Pleistocene sites in other parts of Europe.

In this sense, the paper presents a detailed analysis of the micromammals and large mammals from all the Orce sites, carried out by the expert Robert Martin, based on the palaeontological collections stored at the Museum of the Catalan Institute of Palaeontology Miguel Crusafont (IPS) in Sabadell. “The results indicate that the small and large fauna of Orce is more primitive than, for example, that of the Sima del Elefante, where the evidence shows that the rodent Allophaiomys lavocati is more evolved than the Allophaiomys recovered from the Orce sites”, Gibert explains.

Another relevant indicator of the age of the Orce sites is the absence of the ancestors of the pigs. “These animals are considered to be Asian immigrants and have not been found in any European site between 1 and 1.5 Ma, while they have been found in the Sima del Elefante, supporting that the Orce fauna is older”, explains the researcher.

Evidence pointing to passage through Gibraltar

This new dating would be added, according to the researcher, to other evidence that would tip the balance in favor of the colonization of Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar, rather than the alternative route: the return to the Mediterranean via Asia, such as “the existence of a lithic industry with similarities to that found in the north of the African continent and also the presence of remains of African fauna in the south of the peninsula, such as those of Hippopotamus, found in the sites of Orce, and those of Theropithecus oswaldi, an African primate similar to a baboon, found in the Victoria cave, a site near Cartagena (Murcia), non-existent anywhere else in Europe”.

“We also defend the hypothesis — adds the researcher — that they arrived from Gibraltar because no older evidence has been found at any other site along the alternative route”.

These new data are very precise thanks to the long sedimentary sequence that outcrops in Orce.

Similarity with hominids from the island of Flores

With these results, the researchers point to a “diachronism” between the oldest occupation of Asia, measuring 1.8 Ma, and the oldest occupation of Europe, which would be 1.3 Ma ago, so that African hominids would have arrived in southwestern Europe more than 0.5 Ma after leaving Africa for the first time about 2 Ma ago. “These differences in human expansion can be explained by the fact that Europe is isolated from Asia and Africa by biogeographical barriers that are difficult to overcome, both to the east (Bosphorus Strait, Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara) and to the west (Strait of Gibraltar). Humanity arrived in Europe when it had the necessary technology to cross maritime barriers, as happened before a million years ago on the island of Flores (Indonesia)”, says Gibert. In this sense, the researcher adds that the Gibraltar route currently requires crossing up to fourteen kilometers of sea route, but “perhaps in the past this distance was shorter at certain times due to the high tectonic activity in this region and the fluctuations in sea level that favored migrations”.

“As cited in the paper [he adds], we have identified other migrations of African fauna through Gibraltar at earlier times, 6.2 and 5.5 Ma ago when the Strait of Gibraltar was very narrow”.

Human remains in Orce

A total of five human remains were found at the Orce sites since excavations began in 1982 by the palaeoanthropologist Josep Gibert. Firstly, two fragments of humerus bitten by hyenas were found at Venta Micena, as well as parts of a cranial fragment consisting of two parietals and an occipital, associated with an abundant Early Pleistocene fauna. The human provenance of these remains generated great controversy for years, although independent palaeoproteomic studies by the universities of Granada and San Francisco identified human proteins in the remains.

The subsequent discovery at the nearby sites of Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 of two human molar teeth and thousands of Olduvayan lithic tools — one of the first human lithic industries — as well as cut marks on bones “served to consolidate the evidence of the presence of hominids in the Early Pleistocene at Orce”, concludes Lluís Gibert.

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Image of the last excavation carried out in the site of Venta Micena 3 in Orce (Granada, Spain), where the first human remains were discovered. LLUÍS GIBERT – UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

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This new dating would be added to other evidence that would tip the balance in favour of the colonization of Europe through the Strait of Gibraltar. Earth-Science Reviews

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA news release.

*Magnetostratigraphic dating of earliest hominin sites in Europe, Earth-Science Reviews, 2-Jul-2024. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282522400182X?via%3Dihub

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