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PLOS—The archaeological site of ‘Ein Qashish in northern Israel was a place of repeated Neanderthal occupation and use during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a study* released June 26, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ravid Ekshtain of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and colleagues.

In the Levant region of the Middle East, the main source of information on Middle Paleolithic human occupation comes from cave sites. Compared to open air settlements, sheltered sites like caves were easily recognized and often visited, and therefore are more likely to record long periods of occupation. The open-air site of ‘Ein Qashish in northern Israel, however, is unusual in having been inhabited over an extended prehistoric time period. This site provides a unique opportunity to explore an open-air locality across a large landscape and over a long period ranging between 71,000 and 54,000 years ago.

In a joint collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority Ekshtain and colleagues identified human skeletal remains in ‘Ein Qashish as Neanderthal and observed more than 12,000 artifacts from four different depositional units in the same location on the landscape. These units represent different instances of occupation during changing environmental conditions.

From modification of artifacts and animal bones at the site, the authors infer that the occupants were knapping tools, provisioning resources, and consuming animals on-site.

Whereas many open-air settlements are thought to be short-lived and chosen for specialized tasks, ‘Ein Qashish appears to be the site of repeated occupations each of which hosted a range of general activities, indicating a stable and consistent settlement system. The authors suggest that within a complex settlement system, open-air sites may have been more important for prehistoric humans than previously thought.

Ekshtain adds: “Ein Qashish is a 70-60 thousand years open-air site, with a series of stratified human occupations in a dynamic flood plain environment. The site stands out in the extensive excavated area and some unique finds for an open-air context, from which we deduce the diversity of human activities on the landscape. In contrast to other known open-air sites, the locality was not used for task-specific activities but rather served time and again as a habitation location. The stratigraphy, dates and finds from the site allow a reconstruction of a robust settlement system of the late Neanderthals in northern Israel slightly before their disappearance from the regional record, raising questions about the reasons for their disappearance and about their interactions with contemporaneous modern humans.”

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The archaeological site of ‘Ein Qashish in northern Israel was a place of repeated Neanderthal occupation and use during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a study released June 26, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ravid Ekshtain of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and colleagues. Ekshtain, 2019

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Article Source: PLOS One news release

*Ekshtain R, Malinsky-Buller A, Greenbaum N, Mitki N, Stahlschmidt MC, Shahack-Gross R, et al. (2019) Persistent Neanderthal occupation of the open-air site of ‘Ein Qashish, Israel. PLoS ONE 14(6): e0215668. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215668

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See, first-hand, the original fossils. See original artifacts. See the actual sites. Talk with the famous scientists. Join us on this unique specialized study tour.

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Science Advances—After managing to obtain DNA from two 120,000-year-old European Neanderthals, researchers report that these specimens are more genetically similar to Neanderthals that lived in Europe 80,000 year later than they are to a Neanderthal of similar age found in Siberia. The findings, which reveal a stable, 80,000-year ancestry for European Neanderthals, also suggest that this group may have migrated east and replaced some Siberian Neanderthal populations. The work begins to unravel the early history of Neanderthals, which has otherwise been inaccessible since DNA predating 100,000 years ago was lacking. Bone samples and genetic evidence indicate that Neanderthals lived in Europe and Central Asia until about 40,000 years ago. Recent studies have shown that those last Neanderthals all belonged to a single group, descended from a common ancestor who lived 97,000 years ago. However, a Neanderthal dated to 90,000 years ago found in Denisova Cave in modern day Siberia appears to be more closely related to those late Neanderthals than to the so-called Altai Neanderthal found in the same cave, but dated to 120,000 years ago. This suggests that there had been an early Neanderthal migration into Siberia, followed by a later migration from Europe that replaced the earlier population. To clarify how this happened, Stéphane Peyrégne and colleagues obtained nuclear DNA samples from Western European Neanderthals who lived about 120,000 years ago — one from Scladina Cave in Belgium (called Scladina), and the other from Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany (HST). Using advanced techniques to account for microbial and present-day human DNA contamination, the study authors found that Scladina and HST were members of a population in Western Europe that gave rise to all currently identified Neanderthals except the Altai Neanderthal. This suggests that the population to which the Scladina and HST belonged lived in Western Europe contemporaneously with the Altai population in Siberia and later migrated east to replace them. Surprisingly, the researchers also found highly divergent mitochondrial DNA in HST, indicating an even more complex history that warrants further investigation.

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The Scladina Juvenile Neanderthal, mandible and fragmentary maxilla. J. Eloy, AWEM, © Archéologie andennaise

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Femur of the Hohlenstein-Stadel Neanderthal. O. Kuchar © Museum Ulm

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Fragmentary right maxilla of the Scladina juvenile. J. Eloy, AWEM, © Archéologie andennaise

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Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave. K. Wehrberger © Museum Ulm

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Scladina Cave. D. Bonjean, © Archéologie andennaise

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

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See, first-hand, the original fossils. See original artifacts. See the actual sites. Talk with the famous scientists. Join us on this unique specialized study tour.

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IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON—Nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains, Peru’s coastal region relies on surface water from the Andes for drinking water, industry, and animal and crop farming.

The region, which includes Peru’s capital city Lima, is often overwhelmed with rain in the wet season – but by the time the dry season comes, water is scarce.

These factors, together with Lima’s rapidly growing population, mean the city struggles to supply water to its 12 million residents during the dry months of May to October.

Now, Imperial researchers and their colleagues at the Regional Initiative for Hydrological Monitoring of Andean Ecosystems in South America, have outlined how reviving ancient water systems could help save wet season water for the dry season, where it is desperately needed.

To do so, they studied a water system in Huamantanga, Peru – one of the last of its kind.

Coastal Peru’s continuously stressed systems struggle to cope with increasing demand and are fragile – a landslide, for example, could easily cut off Lima’s water supply.

Senior author Dr Wouter Buytaert, of Imperial’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said: “The people of Lima live with one of the world’s most unstable water situations. There’s too much water in the wet seasons, and too little in the dry ones.

“The indigenous peoples of Peru knew how to get around this, so we’re looking to them for answers.”

Ancient Peruvian civilizations in 600 AD created systems within mountains to divert excess rainwater from source streams onto mountain slopes and through rocks.

The water would take some months to trickle through the system and resurface downstream – just in time for the dry season.

To study this, the researchers looked at one such system in Huamantanga. They used dye tracers and hydrological monitoring to study the system from the wet to dry seasons of 2014-2015 and 2015-2016. Social scientists involved also worked with Huamantanga’s local people to understand the practice and help map the landscape.

They found the water took between two weeks and eight months to re-emerge, with an average time of 45 days. From these time scales, they calculated that, if governments upscale the systems to cater to today’s population size, they could reroute and delay 35 per cent of wet season water, equivalent to 99 million cubic metres per year of water through Lima’s natural terrain.

This could increase the water available in the dry season by up to 33 per cent in the early months, and an average of 7.5 per cent for the remaining months. The method could essentially extend the wet season, providing more drinking water and longer crop-growing periods for local farmers.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, is the first to examine the pre-Inca system in this much detail to find answers to modern problems. The authors say their research shows how indigenous systems could complement modern engineering solutions for water security in coastal Peru.

Lead author Dr Boris Ochoa-Tocachi, also from Imperial’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said: “With the advent of modern science, you’d be forgiven for wondering how ancient methods could apply to modern day problems. However, it turns out that we have lots to learn from our ancestors’ creative problem-solving skills.”

Dr Buytaert said: “Like many tropical cities, Lima’s population is growing fast – too fast for water reserves to keep up during dry seasons.

“Upscaling existing pre-Inca systems could help relieve Peru’s wet months of water and quench its dry ones.”

The seasonal variability typical of coastal Peru is worsened by human impacts – particularly by melting glaciers caused by global warming. Humans also contribute to soil erosion, which renders soil too weak to support dams big enough to hold all the water.

Climate change also makes wet seasons wetter, and dry seasons drier – making the need for effective water storage in Peru even more urgent.

In addition, the uncertainty of our climate’s future makes it difficult to design and build systems that are intended to last for decades into the future.

The authors say combining pre-Inca systems with classic structures, such as smaller dams, could spread the workload across methods and increase adaptability in an unpredictable climate.

Dr Buytaert explained: “Because we can’t rely fully on one method, we must be open-minded and creative – but our study shows we have lots to learn from the way Peru’s indigenous population intelligently managed their landscape 1,400 years ago.”

The researchers looked only at one system, so the results of similar work will likely differ throughout Peru’s coastal areas. However, they say their work presents a strong argument for using nature-based solutions to improve water security, which currently tops water agendas both locally and globally.

They continue to study the area to learn more about how indigenous knowledge, practices, and systems can help supply water to large urban populations in water-unstable, dry environments. In doing so, they hope to improve coastal Peru’s water security and resilience to a changing and unpredictable climate.

Dr Ochoa-Tocachi concluded: “This is a fascinating example of ingenuity within local communities and shows the enormous potential of indigenous knowledge to complement modern science.

“Beyond this fascinating example of ingenious problem-solving, our research shows the enormous potential for indigenous knowledge and rural science to complement modern science”.

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Conceptual representation of how the pre-Inca infiltration system works. Water is diverted during the wet season using canals that transport surplus water during the wet season to high permeability zones. Water penetrates the soil and emerges in downstream springs after weeks or even months, which provides water during the dry season. Ochoa-Tocachi et al., Nat. Sustain., 2019.

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Above and below: A diversion canal as part of the pre-Inca infiltration system during the dry season. Canals like this divert water during the wet season allowing infiltration in the permeable bottom. Water is stored in the soils and becomes available during the dry season. Musuq Briceño, CONDESAN, 2012.

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A water pond as part of the pre-Inca infiltration system during the dry season. Ponds like this store water when it emerges downstream after it was infiltrated in the highlands. Water in the pond is used by the local community for agriculture and livestock grazing, and is also infiltrated further in the soils. Sam Grainger, Imperial College London, 2015.

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Article Source: Imperial College London news release

If you are interested in reading about another ancient practice that can inform solutions to problems related to climate change, see The Milpa Way in the spring 2019 issue of Popular Archaeology.

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY—New insights into how people first arrived in Australia have been revealed by a group of experts brought together to investigate the continent’s deep history.

They used sophisticated modelling to determine not only the likely routes travelled by Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago, but also the sizes of groups required for the population to survive in harsh conditions.

The research, published today in two companion papers (one in Scientific Reports and the other in Nature Ecology and Evolution), confirms the theory that people arrived in several large and deliberate migrations by island-hopping to reach New Guinea more than 50,000 years ago.

While many Aboriginal cultures believe people have always been here, others have strong oral histories of ancestral beings arriving from the north.

“We know that Aboriginal people have lived here for more than 50,000 years. This research offers a greater understanding of how migration events took place and further evidence of the marine and navigation capabilities used to make these deliberate journeys,” said Professor Michael Bird, from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) and James Cook University.

The team of multidisciplinary researchers from CABAH and the CSRIO set out to establish the most likely route travelled to reach the ancient mega-continent, known as Sahul (New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania joined at times of low sea level).

“We developed demographic models to determine which island-hopping route ancient people most likely took,” said CABAH’s Professor Corey Bradshaw, from Flinders University.

“A northern route connecting the islands of Mangoli, Buru, and Seram into West Papua New Guinea would probably have been easiest to navigate and survive. This route was easiest when compared to the southern route from Timor that leads to the now-drowned Sahul Shelf in the modern-day Kimberley region.”

The researchers also used complex mathematical modelling—considering factors including fertility, longevity, past climate conditions, and other ecological principles—to calculate the numbers of people required for the population as a whole to survive.

The simulations indicate that at least 1300 people arrived in either a single migration event or smaller, successive waves averaging at least 130 people every 70 years or so, over the course of about 700 years.

“This suggests planned and well-organised maritime migration, rather than accidental arrival” Professor Bradshaw added.

The studies confirm the ancestors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people possessed sophisticated technology and knowledge to build watercraft. This research also showcases the remarkable ability at that time to plan, navigate, and make multiple complicated, open-ocean voyages to directly transport large numbers of people.

“Both studies are unique because they relied on past environmental information and did not use any genetic data. We are very excited to see how further archaeological and genetics studies in CABAH can contribute to this story,” says Dr Laura Weyrich, a CABAH investigator at the University of Adelaide.

The papers Early human settlement of Sahul was not an accident and Minimum founding populations for the first peopling of Sahul, were co-authored by scientists from around Australia, including Flinders University, James Cook University, University of Wollongong, University of New South Wales, University of Adelaide, Australian National University, and the CSIRO.

CABAH brings together expertise from diverse academic disciplines to answer fundamental questions about the natural and human history of our region, including how and when people first came to Australia.

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Arrival of First Australians infographic. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH)

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Article Source: Flinders University news release

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY—LSU College of the Coast & Environment Distinguished Professor Emeritus John Day has collaborated with archeologists on a new analysis of societal development. They report that over the past 10,000 years, humanity has experienced a number of foundational transitions, or “bottlenecks.” During these periods of transition, the advance or decline of societies was related to energy availability in the form of a benign climate and other factors.

“Studying the factors that led to the advancement and contraction of past societies provides insight into how our globalized society might become more or less sustainable,” Day said.

Day’s collaborators include Joel Gunn of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, William Folan of the Universidad Autonoma de Campeche in Mexico and Matthew Moerschbaecher of the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office. Gunn and Folan are Mayan archeologists and Moerschbaecher is a graduate of LSU’s oceanography program.

With the human population having exceeded the capacity of Earth’s resources, this analysis suggests that a transition toward sustainability for the current energy-dense, globalized industrial society will be very difficult if not impossible without dramatic changes.

The authors say that these past transitions were caused by a combination of social, astronomical and biogeophysical events such as volcanic eruptions, changes in solar emissions, sea-level rise and ice volume, biogeochemical and ecological changes, and major social and technological innovations. One example is the worldwide crisis that began in 536 AD, which was caused by three major volcanic eruptions within a decade. This event led to the destruction of half the population of Europe via the Black Death plague, starvation and wars. In China and the Mayan region, it led to crop failures, famine and plagues.

They found that when energy was abundant, societies expanded and prospered. Conversely, when energy sources declined, there was societal contraction and collapse. The previous example implies that changes are more likely to transpire due to planetary-scale disturbances and constraints, whether societal or environmental, and will likely lead to strong societal disruptions.

However, in the past, major changes sometimes moved toward a more sustainable social organization. For example, after one disruption, the ancient Maya switched to a more efficient use of energy and marine transportation and, at the time of European contact, they were leading a sustainable lifestyle.

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Volcanic eruptions impacted ancient civilizations beyond the general destruction that occurred. Wikimedia Commons

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Source: Louisiana State University news release

If you liked this article, you may like The Milpa Way, an article about how the ancient Maya achieved a sustainable living.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS—Geneticists exploring the dark heart of the human genome have discovered big chunks of Neanderthal and other ancient DNA. The results open new ways to study both how chromosomes behave during cell division and how they have changed during human evolution.

Centromeres sit in the middle of chromosomes, the pinched-in “waist” in the image of a chromosome from a biology textbook. The centromere anchors the fibers that pull chromosomes apart when cells divide, which means they are really important for understanding what happens when cell division goes wrong, leading to cancer or genetic defects.

But the DNA of centromeres contains lots of repeating sequences, and scientists have been unable to properly map this region.

“It’s the heart of darkness of the genome, we warn students not to go there,” said Charles Langley, professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis. Langley is senior author on a paper describing the work published June 18 in the journal eLife.

Langley and colleagues Sasha Langley and Gary Karpen at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Karen Miga at UC Santa Cruz reasoned that there could be haplotypes—groups of genes that are inherited together in human evolution — that stretch over vast portions of our genomes, and even across the centromere.

That’s because the centromere does not participate in the “crossover” process that occurs when cells divide to form sperm or eggs. During crossover, paired chromosomes line up next to each other and their limbs cross, sometimes cutting and splicing DNA between them so that genes can be shuffled. But crossovers drop to zero near centromeres. Without that shuffling in every generation, centromeres might preserve very ancient stretches of DNA intact.

The researchers looked for inherited single nucleotide polymorphisms — inherited changes in a single letter of DNA—that would allow them to map haplotypes in the centromere.

They first showed that they could identify centromeric haplotypes, or “cenhaps,” in Drosophila fruit flies.

That finding has two implications, Langley said. Firstly, if researchers can distinguish chromosomes from each other by their centromeres, they can start to carry out functional tests to see if these differences have an impact on which piece of DNA is inherited. For example, during egg formation, four chromatids are formed from two chromosomes, but only one makes it into the egg. So scientists want to know: Are certain centromere haplotypes transmitted more often? And are some haplotypes more likely to be involved in errors?

Secondly, researchers can use centromeres to look at ancestry and evolutionary descent.

Turning to human DNA, the researchers looked at centromere sequences from the 1000 Genomes Project, a public catalog of human variation. They discovered haplotypes spanning the centromeres in all the human chromosomes.

Haplotypes from half a million years ago

In the X chromosome in these genome sequences, they found several major centromeric haplotypes representing lineages stretching back a half a million years. In the genome as a whole, most of the diversity is seen among African genomes consistent with the more recent spread of humans out of the African continent. One of the oldest centromere haplotype lineages was not carried by those early emigrants.

In chromosome 11, they found highly diverged haplotypes of Neanderthal DNA in non-African genomes. These haplotypes diverged between 700,000 to a million years ago, around the time the ancestors of Neanderthals split from other human ancestors. The centromere of chromosome 12 also contains an even more ancient, archaic haplotype that appears to be derived from an unknown relative.

This Neanderthal DNA on chromosome 11 could be influencing differences in our sense of smell to this day. The cells that respond to taste and smell carry odorant receptors triggered by specific chemical signatures. Humans have about 400 different genes for odorant receptors. Thirty-four of these genes reside within the chromosome 11 centromere haplotype. The Neanderthal centromeric haplotypes and a second ancient haplotype account for about half of the variation in these odorant receptor proteins.

It’s known from work by others that genetic variation in odorant receptors can influence sense of taste and smell, but the functional effects of the variation found in this study are yet to be discovered and their impact on taste and smell analyzed.

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The central area of chromosomes, the centromere, contains DNA that has survived largely unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years, researchers at UC Davis and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have found. Some of this DNA comes from Neanderthals or other relatives or ancestors of humans from before modern humans migrated out of Africa. Charles and Sasha Langley

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Source: University of California, Davis news release

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, COLUMBUS, Ohio – Some 9,000 years ago, residents of one of the world’s first large farming communities were also among the first humans to experience some of the perils of modern urban living.

Scientists studying the ancient ruins of Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey, found that its inhabitants – 3,500 to 8,000 people at its peak – experienced overcrowding, infectious diseases, violence and environmental problems.

In a paper published June 17, 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of bioarchaeologists report new findings built on 25 years of study of human remains unearthed at Çatalhöyük.

The results paint a picture of what it was like for humans to move from a nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle to a more sedentary life built around agriculture, said Clark Spencer Larsen, lead author of the study, and professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University.

“Çatalhöyük was one of the first proto-urban communities in the world and the residents experienced what happens when you put many people together in a small area for an extended time,” Larsen said.

“It set the stage for where we are today and the challenges we face in urban living.”

Çatalhöyük, in what is now south-central Turkey, was inhabited from about 7100 to 5950 B.C. First excavated in 1958, the site measures 13 hectares (about 32 acres) with nearly 21 meters of deposits spanning 1,150 years of continuous occupation.

Larsen, who began fieldwork at the site in 2004, was one of the leaders of the team that studied human remains as part of the larger Çatalhöyük Research Project, directed by Ian Hodder of Stanford University. A co-author of the PNAS paper, Christopher Knüsel of Université de Bordeaux in France, was co-leader of the bioarchaeology team with Larsen.

Fieldwork at Çatalhöyük ended in 2017 and the PNAS paper represents the culmination of the bioarchaeology work at the site, Larsen said.

Çatalhöyük began as a small settlement about 7100 B.C., likely consisting of a few mud-brick houses in what researchers call the Early period. It grew to its peak in the Middle period of 6700 to 6500 B.C., before the population declined rapidly in the Late period. Çatalhöyük was abandoned about 5950 BC.

Farming was always a major part of life in the community. The researchers analyzed a chemical signature in the bones – called stable carbon isotope ratios – to determine that residents ate a diet heavy on wheat, barley and rye, along with a range of non-domesticated plants.

Stable nitrogen isotope ratios were used to document protein in their diets, which came from sheep, goats and non-domesticated animals. Domesticated cattle were introduced in the Late period, but sheep were always the most important domesticated animal in their diets.

“They were farming and keeping animals as soon as they set up the community, but they were intensifying their efforts as the population expanded,” Larsen said.

The grain-heavy diet meant that some residents soon developed tooth decay – one of the so-called “diseases of civilization,” Larsen said. Results showed that about 10 to 13 percent of teeth of adults found at the site showed evidence of dental cavities.

Changes over time in the shape of leg bone cross-sections showed that community members in the Late period of Çatalhöyük walked significantly more than early residents. That suggests residents had to move farming and grazing further from the community as time went on, Larsen said.

“We believe that environmental degradation and climate change forced community members to move further away from the settlement to farm and to find supplies like firewood,” he said. “That contributed to the ultimate demise of Çatalhöyük.”

Other research suggests that the climate in the Middle East became drier during the course of Çatalhöyük’s history, which made farming more difficult.

Findings from the new study suggest that residents suffered from a high infection rate, most likely due to crowding and poor hygiene. Up to one-third of remains from the Early period show evidence of infections on their bones.

During its peak in population, houses were built like apartments with no space between them – residents came and left through ladders to the roofs of the houses.

Excavations showed that interior walls and floors were re-plastered many times with clay. And while the residents kept their floors mostly debris-free, analysis of house walls and floors showed traces of animal and human fecal matter.

“They are living in very crowded conditions, with trash pits and animal pens right next to some of their homes. So there is a whole host of sanitation issues that could contribute to the spread of infectious diseases,” Larsen said.

The crowded conditions in Çatalhöyük may have also contributed to high levels of violence between residents, according to the researchers.

In a sample of 93 skulls from Çatalhöyük, more than one-fourth – 25 individuals – showed evidence of healed fractures. And 12 of them had been victimized more than once, with two to five injuries over a period of time. The shape of the lesions suggested that blows to the head from hard, round objects caused them – and clay balls of the right size and shape were also found at the site.

More than half of the victims were women (13 women, 10 men). And most of the injuries were on the top or back of their heads, suggesting the victims were not facing their assailants when struck.

“We found an increase in cranial injuries during the Middle period, when the population was largest and most dense,” Larsen said.

“An argument could be made that overcrowding led to elevated stress and conflict within the community.”

Most people were buried in pits that had been dug into the floors of houses, and researchers believe they were interred under the homes in which they lived. That led to an unexpected finding: Most members of a household were not biologically related.

Researchers discovered this when they found that the teeth of individuals buried under the same house weren’t as similar as would be expected if they were kin.

“The morphology of teeth are highly genetically controlled,” Larsen said. “People who are related show similar variations in the crowns of their teeth and we didn’t find that in people buried in the same houses.”

More research is needed to determine the relations of people who lived together in Çatalhöyük, he said. “It is still kind of a mystery.”

Overall, Larsen said the significance of Çatalhöyük is that it was one of the first Neolithic “mega-sites” in the world built around agriculture.

“We can learn about the immediate origins of our lives today, how we are organized into communities. Many of the challenges we have today are the same ones they had in Çatalhöyük – only magnified.”

Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu

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Neolithic burial from Çatalhöyük, Turkey, is represented by a headless young adult female with a fetal skeleton (arrow). Skull removal was a burial custom practiced in number of instances at this locality. Çatalhöyük Research Project/Jason Quinlan

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Çatal Hüyük excavations. Stipich Béla. Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Ohio State University and PNAS news releases (image from PNAS news release).

If you liked this article, you may like Before Kings and Palaces, a free Popular Archaeology premium article .

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Portus Romae was established in the middle of the first century AD and for well over 400 years was Rome’s gateway to the Mediterranean. The port played a key role in funneling imports – e.g. foodstuffs, wild animals, marble and luxury goods – from across the Mediterranean and beyond to the citizens of Rome and was vital to the pre-eminence of the city in the Roman Mediterranean.

But, what of the people who lived, worked and died there?

In a study published today in Antiquity, an international team of researchers present the results of the analysis of plant, animal and human remains, reconstructing both the diets and geographic origins of the Portus inhabitants. The findings suggest that the political upheaval following the Vandal sack of Rome in AD 455 and the 6th century wars between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines may have had a direct impact on the food resources and diet of those working at Portus Romae.

Lead author, Dr Tamsin O’Connell of the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge said, “The human remains from the excavations at Portus belong to a local population involved in heavy, manual labour, perhaps the saccarii (porters) who unloaded cargoes from incoming ships. When looking isotopically at the individuals dating to between the early second to mid fifth centuries AD, we see that they have a fairly similar diet to the rich and middle-class people buried at the Isola Sacra cemetery just down the road. It is interesting that although there are differences in social status between these burial populations, they both have access to similar food resources. This contradicts what we see elsewhere in the Roman world at this time. But, later on, something changes.”

Dr O’Connell continues, “Towards the end of the mid fifth century we see a shift in the diet of the local populations away from one rich in animal protein and imported wheat, olive oil, fish sauce and wine from North Africa, to something more akin to a ‘peasant diet’, made up of mainly plant proteins in things like potages and stews. They’re doing the same kind of manual labour and hard work, but were sustained by beans and lentils”

“This is the time period after the sack of the Vandals in AD 455. We’re seeing clear shifts in imported foods and diet over time that tie-in with commercial and political changes following the breakdown of Roman control of the Mediterranean. We are able to observe political effects playing out in supply networks. The politics and the resources both shift at the same time.”

Director of the University of Southampton’s Portus Project, Professor Simon Keay explained, “Our excavations at the centre of the port provide the first archaeological evidence of the diet of the inhabitants of Portus at a critical period in the history of Imperial Rome. They tell us that by the middle of the 5th century AD, the outer harbor basin was silting up, all of the buildings were enclosed within substantial defensive walls, that the warehouses were used for the burial of the dead rather than for storage, and that the volume of trade that passed through the port en route to Rome had contracted dramatically.”

“These developments may have been in some way related to the destruction wrought upon Portus and Rome by invading Vandals led by Gaiseric in AD 455, but may also be related to decreasing demand by the City of Rome, whose population had shrunk significantly by this date. These conclusions help us better understand major changes in patterns of production and trade across the Mediterranean that have been detected in recent years.”

Dr O’Connell concludes, “Are food resources and diets shaped by political ruptures? In the case of Portus, we see that when Rome was rich everybody, from the local elite to the dockworkers, was doing fine nutritionally. Then this big political rupture happens and wheat and other foodstuffs have to come from somewhere else. When Rome is on the decline, the manual laborers, at least, are not doing as well as previously.”

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Aerial photo of the Portus Project excavations in 2009. Portus Project

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Digital reconstruction of Portus Romae. Portus Project/Artas Media

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1,700-year-old charred wheat grains from Portus Romae. L. Bonner

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Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE—Researchers from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Seville have studied the archaeological evidence of prehistoric societies in the Neolithic Period in the Iberian Peninsula from the perspective of gender. According to the results of their work, which address the analysis from the point of view of bioarchaeology and funerary archaeology, it was in the Neolithic that gender differences first appeared which meant male domination in later periods of history.

To arrive at these conclusions, the researchers have analyzed two groups of indicators. On the one hand, life conditions and demographic aspects; and, on the other, funerary practices. In the first group, they studied factors like the sexual ratio (the demographic proportion of men to women), diet, genetic data, movement, the most common diseases and the detected stress markers. In the second, they considered data like the type of burial, the primary or secondary character of the deposit, if it was individual or collective burial, the spatial organization of the site, the position and orientation of the bodies, the funerary goods that were placed in the tomb or the “funerary movements” (signs of manipulation of the bodies, pigmentation or alteration caused by the heat).

The study concluded that inequality between men and women was not generally consolidated or widely spread in Iberia during the Neolithic. However, situations progressively appeared that indicate dominance of men over women. The authors point to four important lines in which inequality between men and women can be investigated through successive historical periods: their access to funeral rites, the material conditions of their existence, the appearance of specific social roles for each of the genders and the growing association of men with violence.

It is precisely this last aspect that is most evident in this study. The arrow wounds on male bodies, the depositing of projectiles in their tombs or the pictorial representations (cave paintings) of men hunting and fighting have no equivalent parallel in women. Therefore, the authors point to the birth of an ideology that connected men with the exercise of force. In this sense, they highlight that the creation of different roles according to gender and other forms of gender inequality played a fundamental role in the growth of social complexity, a factor that has not always been well understood in previous research projects.

The study, which stems from the University of Seville doctoral thesis of Marta Cintas Peña, was carried out by the teacher Leonardo García Sanjuán, and it is the first time that this period has been dealt with from the perspective of gender and considering multiple variables. The study’s conclusions mean the archaeological confirmation of the proposal of anthropologist Gerda Lerner, who in the book The Creation of Patriarchy proposed the hypothesis that it was the Neolithic societies that saw the beginning of inequality between men and women.

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Reconstruction of a neolithic “lime kiln tomb” before being burnt. Ambrona Valley, Soria, Spain. Friera, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: University of Seville news release.

UNIVERSITY OF YORK—A grape variety still used in wine production in France today can be traced back 900 years to just one ancestral plant, scientists have discovered.

With the help of an extensive genetic database of modern grapevines, researchers were able to test and compare 28 archaeological seeds from French sites dating back to the Iron Age, Roman era, and medieval period.

Utilising similar ancient DNA methods used in tracing human ancestors, a team of researchers from the UK, Denmark, France, Spain, and Germany, drew genetic connections between seeds from different archaeological sites, as well as links to modern-day grape varieties.

It has long been suspected that some grape varieties grown today, particularly well-known types like Pinot Noir, have an exact genetic match with plants grown 2,000 years ago or more, but until now there has been no way of genetically testing an uninterrupted genetic lineage of that age.

Dr Nathan Wales, from the University of York, said: “From our sample of grape seeds we found 18 distinct genetic signatures, including one set of genetically identical seeds from two Roman sites separated by more than 600km, and dating back 2,000 years ago.

“These genetic links, which included a ‘sister’ relationship with varieties grown in the Alpine regions today, demonstrate winemakers’ proficiencies across history in managing their vineyards with modern techniques, such as asexual reproduction through taking plant cuttings.”

One archaeological grape seed excavated from a medieval site in Orléans in central France was genetically identical to Savagnin Blanc. This means the variety has grown for at least 900 years as cuttings from just one ancestral plant.

This variety (not to be confused with Sauvignon Blanc), is thought to have been popular for a number of centuries, but is not as commonly consumed as a wine today outside of its local region.

The grape can still be found growing in the Jura region of France, where it is used to produce expensive bottles of Vin Jaune, as well as in parts of Central Europe, where it often goes by the name Traminer.

Although this grape is not so well known today, 900 years of a genetically identical plant suggests that this wine was special – special enough for grape-growers to stick with it across centuries of changing political regimes and agricultural advancements.

Dr Jazmín Ramos-Madrigal, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Copenhagen, said: “We suspect the majority of these archaeological seeds come from domesticated berries that were potentially used for winemaking based on their strong genetic links to wine grapevines.

“Berries from varieties used for wine are small, thick-skinned, full of seeds, and packed with sugar and other compounds such as acids, phenols, and aromas – great for making wine but not quite as good for eating straight from the vine. These ancient seeds did not have a strong genetic link to modern table grapes.

“Based on writings by the Roman author and naturalist, Pliny the Elder, and others, we know the Romans had advanced knowledge of winemaking and designated specific names to different grape varieties, but it has so far been impossible to link their Latin names to modern varieties.

“Now we have the opportunity to use genetics to know exactly what the Romans were growing in their vineyards.”

Of the Roman seeds, the researchers could not find an identical genetic match with modern-day seeds, but they did find a very close relationships with two important grape families used to produce high quality wine.

These include the Syrah-Mondeuse Blanche family – Syrah is one of the most planted grapes in the world today – and the Mondeuse Blanche, which produces a high quality AOC (protected regional product) wine in Savoy, as well as the Pinot-Savagnin family – Pinot Noir being the “king of wine grapes”.

Dr Wales said: “It is rather unconventional to trace an uninterrupted genetic lineage for hundreds of years into the past. Instead of exploring broad patterns in genetic ancestry, as in most ancient DNA projects, we had to think like forensics scientists and find a perfect match in the database.

“Large databases of genetic data from modern crops and optimized palaeogenomic methods have vastly improved our ability to analyze the history of this and other important fruits.

“For the wine industry today, these results could shed new light on the value of some grape varieties; even if we don’t see them in popular use in wines today, they were once highly valued by past wine lovers and so are perhaps worth a closer look.”

The researchers now hope to find more archaeological evidence that could send them further back in time and reveal more grape wine varieties.

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Archaeological excavation of Roman farm at Mont Ferrier site in Tourbes, France. Grape seeds closely related to Pinot Noir and Savagnin Blanc were excavated from a well dating to the first century CE. M. Compan, Inrap

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A vineyard by Pic Saint Loup Mountain in southern France. S. Ivorra CNRS/ISEM

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Article Source: University of York news release

Like being there……..

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY—ANU and Uni of Melbourne Archaeologists have discovered 15 new sites in Laos containing more than one hundred 1000-year-old massive stone jars possibly used for the dead.

The jars of Laos are one of archaeology’s enduring mysteries. Experts believe they were related to disposal of the dead, but nothing is known about the jars’ original purpose and the people who brought them there.

The new finds show the distribution of the jars was more widespread than previously thought and could unlock the secrets surrounding their origin.

The sites, deep in remote and mountainous forest and containing 137 jars, were identified by ANU PhD student Nicholas Skopal with officials from the Lao government.

“These new sites have really only been visited by the occasional tiger hunter. Now we’ve rediscovered them, we’re hoping to build a clear picture about this culture and how it disposed of its dead,” said Mr Skopal.

ANU archaeologist Dr Dougald O’Reilly and Dr Louise Shewan from the University of Melbourne co-led the team that made the discovery. Dr O’Reilly said the new sites show the ancient burial practices involving the jars was “more widespread than previously thought”.

“It’s apparent the jars, some weighing several tonnes, were carved in quarries, and somehow transported, often several kilometers to their present locations,” Dr O’Reilly.

“But why these sites were chosen as the final resting place for the jars is still a mystery. On top of that we’ve got no evidence of occupation in this region.”

This year’s excavations revealed beautifully carved discs which are most likely burial markers placed around the jars. Curiously, the decorated side of each disc has been buried face down.

Dr O’Reilly said the imagery on the discs found so far included concentric circles, pommels, human figures and creatures.

“Decorative carving is relatively rare at the jar sites and we don’t know why some discs have animal imagery and others have geometric designs,” Dr O’Reilly said.

Among typical iron-age artifacts found with the burials – decorative ceramics, glass beads, iron tools, discs worn in the ears and spindle whorls for cloth making – one particular find piqued the researchers’ interest.

“Curiously we also found many miniature jars, which look just like the giant jars themselves but made of clay, so we’d love to know why these people represented the same jars in which they placed their dead, in miniature to be buried with their dead,” Dr O’Reilly said.

“We’ve seen similar megalithic jars in Assam in India and in Sulawesi in Indonesia so we’d like to investigate possible connections in prehistory between these disparate regions.”

Dr O’Reilly and his co-research Director on the project, Dr Louise Shewan, from the University of Melbourne would like to acknowledge Dr Thonglith Luangkoth of the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism without whose kind hospitality none of our research would be possible.

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Sandstone megalithic jars in Xiengkhouang Province, Laos. ANU

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Disc decorated with concentric rings. ANU

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Article Source: Australian National University news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The first humans in North America arrived from Asia some time before 14,500 years ago. The next major stream of gene flow came about 5,000 years ago, and is known to archaeologists as Paleo-Eskimos. About 800 years ago, the ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup’ik people replaced this population across the Arctic. By about 700 years ago, the archaeological evidence for the Paleo-Eskimo culture disappeared. Their genetic legacy in living populations has been contentious, with several genetic studies arguing that they made little contribution to later North Americans.

In the current study, researchers generated genome-wide data from 48 ancient individuals and 93 modern individuals from Siberia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Canada, and compared this with previously published data. The researchers used novel analysis methods to create a comprehensive model of population history that included many ancient and modern groups to determine how they might be related to each other. “Our study is unique, not only in that it greatly expands the number of ancient genomes from this region, but because it is the first study to comprehensively describe all of these populations in one single coherent model,” states Stephan Schiffels of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Paleo-Eskimos left a lasting legacy that extends across North America

The researchers were able to show that a substantial proportion of the genetic heritage of all ancient and modern American Arctic and Chukotkan populations comes from Paleo-Eskimos. This includes people speaking Eskimo-Aleut languages, such as the Yup’ik, Inuit and Aleuts, and groups speaking Na-Dene languages, such as Athabaskan and Tlingit speakers, in Canada, Alaska, and the lower 48 states of the United States.

Based on the researchers’ analysis, Paleo-Eskimos interbred with people with ancestry similar to more southern Native peoples shortly after their arrival to Alaska, between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago. The ancestors of Aleutian Islanders and Athabaskans derive their genetic heritage directly from the ancient mixture between these two groups. The researchers also found that the ancestors of the Inuit and Yup’ik people crossed the Bering Strait at least three times: first as Paleo-Eskimos to Alaska, second as predecessors of the Old Bering Sea archaeological culture back to Chukotka, and third to Alaska again as bearers of the Thule culture. During their stay in Chukotka that likely lasted for more than 1000 years, Yupik and Inuit ancestors also admixed with local groups related to present-day Chukchi and local peoples from Kamchatka.

Paleo-Eskimo ancestry is particularly widespread today in Na-Dene language speakers, which includes Athabaskan and Tlingit communities from Alaska and northern Canada, the West Coast of the United States, and the southwest United States.

“For the last seven years, there has been a debate about whether Paleo-Eskimos contributed genetically to people living in North America today; our study resolves this debate and furthermore supports the theory that Paleo-Eskimos spread Na-Dene languages,” explains David Reich of Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “One of the most striking case examples from our study is the ancient DNA we generated from the ancient Athabaskan site of Tochak McGrath in interior Alaska, where we worked in consultation with the local community to obtain data from three approximately seven hundred year old individuals. We found that these individuals, who lived after the time when the Paleo-Eskimo archaeological culture disappeared across North America, are well modeled as a mixture of the same two ancestry components as those found in Athabaskans today, and derived more than 40% of their ancestry from Paleo-Eskimos.

A case example for how genetics can be combined with archaeology to shed new light on the past

The researchers hope that the paper will provide an example of the value of genetic data, in the context of archaeological knowledge, to resolve long-standing questions.

“Determining what happened to this population was not possible from the archaeological record alone,” explains Pavel Flegontov of the University of Ostrava. “By analyzing genetic data in concert with the archaeological data, we can meaningfully improve our understanding of the prehistory of peoples of this region. We faced challenging analytical problems due to the complex sequence of gene flows that have shaped ancestries of peoples on both sides of the Bering Strait. Reconstructing this sequence of events required new modeling approaches that we hope may be useful for solving similar problems in other regions of the world.”

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The excavation of the Middle Dorset individual, one of the subjects sampled in the research, from the Buchanan site on southeastern Victoria Island, Nunavut, Central Canadian Arctic. T. Max Friesen

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An ancient population of Arctic hunter-gatherers, known as Paleo-Eskimos, made a significant genetic contribution to populations living in Arctic North America today. Illustration by Kerttu Majander, Design by Michelle O’Reilly

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

ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Two children’s milk teeth buried deep in a remote archaeological site in north eastern Siberia have revealed a previously unknown group of people lived there during the last Ice Age.

The finding was part of a wider study which also discovered 10,000 year-old human remains in another site in Siberia are genetically related to Native Americans – the first time such close genetic links have been discovered outside of the US.

The international team of scientists, led by Professor Eske Willerslev who holds positions at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and is director of The Lundbeck Foundation Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, have named the new people group the ‘Ancient North Siberians’ and described their existence as ‘a significant part of human history’.

The DNA was recovered from the only human remains discovered from the era – two tiny milk teeth – that were found in a large archaeological site found in Russia near the Yana River. The site, known as Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site (RHS), was found in 2001 and features more than 2,500 artifacts of animal bones and ivory along with stone tools and evidence of human habitation.

The discovery is published today (June 5 2019) as part of a wider study in Nature and shows the Ancient North Siberians endured extreme conditions in the region 31,000 years ago and survived by hunting woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and bison.

Professor Willerslev said: “These people were a significant part of human history, they diversified almost at the same time as the ancestors of modern day Asians and Europeans and it’s likely that at one point they occupied large regions of the northern hemisphere.”

Dr Martin Sikora, of The Lundbeck Foundation Centre for GeoGenetics and first author of the study, added: “They adapted to extreme environments very quickly, and were highly mobile. These findings have changed a lot of what we thought we knew about the population history of north eastern Siberia but also what we know about the history of human migration as a whole.”

Researchers estimate that the population numbers at the site would have been around 40 people with a wider population of around 500. Genetic analysis of the milk teeth revealed the two individuals sequenced showed no evidence of inbreeding which was occurring in the declining Neanderthal populations at the time.

The complex population dynamics during this period and genetic comparisons to other people groups, both ancient and recent, are documented as part of the wider study which analyzed 34 samples of human genomes found in ancient archaeological sites across northern Siberia and central Russia.

Professor Laurent Excoffier from the University of Bern, Switzerland, said: “Remarkably, the Ancient North Siberians people are more closely related to Europeans than Asians and seem to have migrated all the way from Western Eurasia soon after the divergence between Europeans and Asians.”

Scientists found the Ancient North Siberians generated the mosaic genetic make-up of contemporary people who inhabit a vast area across northern Eurasia and the Americas – providing the ‘missing link’ of understanding the genetics of Native American ancestry.

It is widely accepted that humans first made their way to the Americas from Siberia into Alaska via a land bridge spanning the Bering Strait which was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age. The researchers were able to pinpoint some of these ancestors as Asian people groups who mixed with the Ancient North Siberians.

Professor David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, one of the paper’s authors, explained: “We gained important insight into population isolation and admixture that took place during the depths of the Last Glacial Maximum – the coldest and harshest time of the Ice Age – and ultimately the ancestry of the peoples who would emerge from that time as the ancestors of the indigenous people of the Americas.”

This discovery was based on the DNA analysis of a 10,000 year-old male remains found at a site near the Kolyma River in Siberia. The individual derives his ancestry from a mixture of Ancient North Siberian DNA and East Asian DNA, which is very similar to that found in Native Americans. It is the first time human remains this closely related to the Native American populations have been discovered outside of the US.

Professor Willerslev added: “The remains are genetically very close to the ancestors of Paleo-Siberian speakers and close to the ancestors of Native Americans. It is an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the ancestry of Native Americans as you can see the Kolyma signature in the Native Americans and Paleo-Siberians. This individual is the missing link of Native American ancestry.”

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The two 31,000-year-old milk teeth found at the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site in Russia which led to the discovery of a new group of ancient Siberians. Photo credit: Russian Academy of Sciences.

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Above and below: The archaeological site near the Yana River. Alla Mashezerskaya maps the artifacts in the area where two 31,000-year-old milk teeth were found. Photo credit: Elena Pavlova

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A 31,000-year-old milk tooth was discovered in this small area among ancient remnants of tools and animal bones. Photo credit: Elena Pavlova

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A fragment of a decorative ivory hair ornament or head band discovered at the excavation site. Photo credit: Elena Pavlova

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The 10,000-year-old skull from the archaeological site near the Kolyma River. Photo credit: Elena Pavlova

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A map showing the movement of different people groups in north eastern Siberia over the last 30,000 years. Image credit: Martin Sikora

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Article Source: ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE news release

If you liked this, you may like The First Siberians, a Popular Archaeology premium article in the Spring 2019 issue.

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY—A new archaeological site discovered by an international and local team of scientists working in Ethiopia shows that the origins of stone tool production are older than 2.58 million years ago. Previously, the oldest evidence for systematic stone tool production and use was 2.58 to 2.55 million years ago.

Analysis by the researchers of early stone age sites, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that stone tools may have been invented many times in many ways before becoming an essential part of the human lineage.

The excavation site, known as Bokol Dora 1 or BD 1, is close to the 2013 discovery of the oldest fossil attributed to our genus Homo discovered at Ledi-Geraru in the Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia. The fossil, a jaw bone, dates to about 2.78 million years ago, some 200,000 years before the then oldest flaked stone tools. The Ledi-Geraru team has been working for the last five years to find out if there is a connection between the origins of our genus and the origins of systematic stone tool manufacture.

A significant step forward in this search was uncovered when Arizona State University geologist Christopher Campisano saw sharp-edged stone tools sticking out of the sediments on a steep, eroded slope.

“At first we found several artifacts lying on the surface, but we didn’t know what sediments they were coming from,” says Campisano. “But when I peered over the edge of a small cliff, I saw rocks sticking out from the mudstone face. I scaled up from the bottom using my rock hammer and found two nice stone tools starting to weather out.”

It took several years to excavate through meters of sediments by hand before exposing an archaeological layer of animal bones and hundreds of small pieces of chipped stone representing the earliest evidence of our direct ancestors making and using stone knives. The site records a wealth of information about how and when humans began to use stone tools.

Preservation of the artifacts comes from originally being buried close to a water source.

“Looking at the sediments under a microscope, we could see that the site was exposed only for a very short time. These tools were dropped by early humans at the edge of a water source and then quickly buried. The site then stayed that way for millions of years,” noted geoarchaeologist Vera Aldeias of the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Behavioral Evolution at the University of Algarve, Portugal.

Kaye Reed, who studies the site’s ecology, is director of the Ledi-Geraru Research Project and a research associate with Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins along with Campisano, notes that the animals found with these tools were similar to those found only a few kilometers away with the earliest Homo fossils.

“The early humans that made these stone tools lived in a totally different habitat than ‘Lucy’ did,” says Reed. “Lucy” is the nickname for an older species of hominin known as Australopithecus afarensis, which was discovered at the site of Hadar, Ethiopia, about 45 kilometers southwest of the new BD 1 site. “The habitat changed from one of shrubland with occasional trees and riverine forests to open grasslands with few trees. Even the fossil giraffes were eating grass!”

In addition to dating a volcanic ash several meters below the site, project geologists analyzed the magnetic signature of the site’s sediments. Over the Earth’s history, its magnetic polarity has reversed at intervals that can be identified. Other earlier archaeological sites near the age of BD 1 are in “reversed” polarity sediments. The BD 1 site is in “normal” polarity sediments. The reversal from “normal” to “reversed” happened at about 2.58 million years ago, so geologists knew that BD 1 was older than all the previously known sites.

The recent discovery of older hammering or “percussive” stone tools in Kenya dated to 3.3 million years ago, described as “Lomekwian,” and butchered bones in Ethiopia shows the deep history of our ancestors making and using tools. However, recent discoveries of tools made by chimpanzees and monkeys have challenged “technological ape” ideas of human origins.

Archaeologists working at the BD 1 site wondered how their new stone tool discovery fit into this increasingly complex picture. What they found was that not only were these new tools the oldest artifacts yet ascribed to the “Oldowan,” a technology originally named after finds from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, but also were distinct from tools made by chimpanzees, monkeys or even earlier human ancestors.

“We expected to see some indication of an evolution from the Lomekwian to these earliest Oldowan tools. Yet when we looked closely at the patterns, there was very little connection to what is known from older archaeological sites or to the tools modern primates are making,” said Will Archer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Cape Town.

The major differences appear to be the ability for our ancestors to systematically chip off smaller sharp-edged tools from larger nodules of stone. Chimpanzees and monkeys generally use tools for percussive activities, to hammer and bash food items like nuts and shellfish, which seems to have been the case with the 3.3 million year old Lomekwian tools as well.

Something changed by 2.6 million years ago, and our ancestors became more accurate and skilled at striking the edge of stones to make tools. The BD 1 artifacts captures this shift.

It appears that this shift in tool making occurred around the same time that our ancestor’s teeth began to change. This can be seen in the Homo jaw from Ledi-Geraru. As our ancestors began to process food prior to eating using stone tools, we start to see a reduction in the size of their teeth. Our technology and biology were intimately intertwined even as early as 2.6 million years ago.

The lack of clear connections with earlier stone tool technology suggests that tool use was invented multiple times in the past.

David Braun, an archaeologist with George Washington University and the lead author on the paper, noted, “Given that primate species throughout the world routinely use stone hammers to forage for new resources, it seems very possible that throughout Africa many different human ancestors found new ways of using stone artifacts to extract resources from their environment. If our hypothesis is correct then we would expect to find some type of continuity in artifact form after 2.6 million years ago, but not prior to this time period. We need to find more sites.”

By 2.6 million years ago, there appears to be a long-term investment in tool use as part of the human condition.

Continued field investigations at the Ledi-Geraru project area are already producing more insights into the patterns of behavior in our earliest ancestors. New sites have already been found, and the Ledi-Geraru team will begin excavating them this year.

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A large green artifact found in situ at the Bokol Dora site. Right: Image of the same artifact and a three dimensional model of the same artifact. David R. Braun

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Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute, and the Ethiopian Authority for Research and the Conservation of Cultural Heritage as well as geologists from University of Algarve study the sediments at the Bokol Dora site. Stones were placed on the contact surface during the excavation to preserve the fragile stratigraphic contacts. Erin DiMaggio

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Blade Engda of the University of Poitiers lifts an artifact from 2.6 million year old sediment exposing an imprint of the artifact on the ancient surface below. David R. Braun

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*”Earliest known Oldowan artifacts at >2.58 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia, highlight early technological diversity,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Article Source: ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY news release

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See, first-hand, the original fossils. See original artifacts. See the actual sites. Talk with the famous scientists. Join us on this unique specialized study tour.

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—New research published today in the journal Antiquity reveals that ancient feces from the prehistoric village of Çatalhöyük have provided the earliest archaeological evidence for intestinal parasite infection in the mainland Near East.

People first gave up hunting and gathering and turned to farming in the Near East, around 10,000 years ago. The settlement of Çatalhöyük is famous for being an incredibly well preserved early village founded around 7,100 BC. The population of Çatalhöyük were early farmers, growing crops such as wheat and barley, and herding sheep and goats.

“It has been suggested that this change in lifestyle resulted in a similar change in the types of diseases that affected them. As the village is one of the largest and most densely populated of its time, this study at Çatalhöyük helps us to understand that process better,” says study lead Dr Piers Mitchell of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

The toilet was first invented in the 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia, 3000 years later than when Çatalhöyük flourished. It is thought the people living at Çatalhöyük either went to the rubbish tip (midden) to open their bowels, or carried their feces from their houses to the midden in a vessel or basket to dispose of them.

“We would expect this to have put the population at risk of diseases spread by contact with human faeces, and explains why they were vulnerable to contracting whipworm,” says the study first author Marissa Ledger.

“As writing was only invented 3000 years after the time of Çatalhöyük, the people were unable to record what happened to them during their lives. This research enables us for the first time to imagine the symptoms felt by some of the prehistoric people living at Çatalhöyük who were infected by this parasite.”

To look for the eggs of intestinal parasites, Cambridge researchers Mitchell, Ledger and Evilena Anastasiou used microscopy to study preserved pieces of human feces (coprolites) from a rubbish tip, and soil formed from decomposed feces recovered from the pelvic region of burials. The samples dated from 7,100-6150 BC.

To determine whether the coprolites excavated from the midden were from human or animal feces, they were analyzed for sterols and bile acids at the University of Bristol Mass Spectrometry Facility by Helen Mackay, Lisa Marie Shillito, and Ian Bull. This analysis demonstrated that the coprolites were of human origin.

Further microscopic analysis showed that eggs of whipworm were present in two of the coprolites, demonstrating that people from the prehistoric village were infected by this intestinal parasite.

“It was a special moment to identify parasite eggs over 8000 years old,” said study co-author Evilena Anastasiou.

Whipworms are 3-5cm in length, and live on the lining of the intestines of the large bowel. Adult worms can live for 5 years. Male and female worms mate and their eggs are mixed in with the feces. Whipworm is spread by the contamination of food or drink from human feces that contain the worm eggs. A heavy infection with whipworm can lead to anaemia, diarrhoea, stunted growth and reduced intelligence in children.

“Now we need to find ancient fecal material from prehistoric hunter gathers in the Near East, to help us understand how this change in lifestyle affected their diseases.” added Mitchell.

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Çatalhoyük excavations. Stipich Béla, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

The Cambridge team worked on this project with bioarchaeologists Scott Haddow (Department of Archaeology and Art History, Koç University, Turkey) and Christopher Knüsel, (PACEA, University of Bordeaux, France) from the Human Remains Laboratory of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, led by Professor Ian Hodder (Stanford University).

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—A new Tel Aviv University study finds that prehistoric humans “recycled” discarded or broken flint tools 400,000 years ago to create small, sharp utensils with specific functions. These recycled tools were then used with great precision and accuracy to perform specific tasks involved in the processing of animal products and vegetal materials.

The site of Qesem Cave, located just outside Tel Aviv, was discovered during a road construction project in 2000. It has since offered up countless insights into life in the region hundreds of thousands of years ago.

In collaboration with Prof. Cristina Lemorini of Sapienza University of Rome, the research was led jointly by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Flavia Venditti in collaboration with Profs. Ran Barkai and Avi Gopher. All three are members of TAU’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. It was published on April 11 in the Journal of Human Evolution.

In recent years, archaeologists working in caves in Spain and North Africa and digs in Italy and Israel have unearthed evidence that prehistoric people recycled objects they used in daily life. Just as we recycle materials such as paper and plastic to manufacture new items today, early hominids collected discarded or broken tools made of flint to create new utensils for specific purposes hundreds of thousands of years ago.

“Recycling was a way of life for these people,” Prof. Barkai says. “It has long been a part of human evolution and culture. Now, for the first time, we are discovering the specific uses of the recycled ‘tool kit’ at Qesem Cave.”

Exceptional conditions in the cave allowed for the immaculate preservation of the materials, including micro residue on the surface of the flint tools.

“We used microscopic and chemical analyses to discover that these small and sharp recycled tools were specifically produced to process animal resources like meat, hide, fat and bones,” Venditti explains. “We also found evidence of plant and tuber processing, which demonstrated that they were also part of the hominids’ diet and subsistence strategies.”

According to the study, signs of use were found on the outer edges of the tiny objects, indicating targeted cutting activities related to the consumption of food: butchery activities and tuber, hide and bone processing. The researchers used two different and independent spectroscopic chemical techniques: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX).

“The meticulous analysis we conducted allowed us to demonstrate that the small recycled flakes were used in tandem with other types of utensils. They therefore constituted a larger, more diversified tool kit in which each tool was designed for specific objectives,” Venditti says.

She adds, “The research also demonstrates that the Qesem inhabitants practiced various activities in different parts of the cave: The fireplace and the area surrounding it were eventually a central area of activity devoted to the consumption of the hunted animal and collected vegetal resources, while the so-called ‘shelf area’ was used to process animal and vegetal materials to obtain different by-products.”

“This research highlights two debated topics in the field of Paleolithic archaeology: the meaning of recycling and the functional role of small tools,” Prof. Barkai observes. “The data from the unique, well-preserved and investigated Qesem Cave serve to enrich the discussion of these phenomena in the scientific community.”

“Our data shows that lithic recycling at Qesem Cave was not occasional and not provoked by the scarcity of flint,” Venditti concludes. “On the contrary, it was a conscious behavior which allowed early humans to quickly obtain tiny sharp tools to be used in tasks where precision and accuracy were essential.”

The researchers are continuing to investigate prehistoric recycling by applying their analysis to other sites in Africa, Europe and Asia.

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Experimental activity of cutting tubers with a small recycled flake and a close-up of its prehension (inset). Flavia Venditti/AFTAU.

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Article Source: AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY news release

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