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CELL PRESS—Researchers have successfully sequenced the first genome of an individual from the Harappan civilization, also called the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC). The DNA, which belongs to an individual who lived four to five millennia ago, suggests that modern people in India are likely to be largely descended from people of this ancient culture. It also offers a surprising insight into how farming began in South Asia, showing that it was not brought by large-scale movement of people from the Fertile Crescent where farming first arose. Instead, farming started in South Asia through local hunter-gatherers adopting farming. The findings appear September 5 in the journal Cell*.

“The Harappans were one of the earliest civilizations of the ancient world and a major source of Indian culture and traditions, and yet it has been a mystery how they related both to later people as well as to their contemporaries,” says Vasant Shinde, an archaeologist at Deccan College, Deemed University in Pune, India, and the chief excavator of the site of Rakhigarhi, who is first author of the study.

The IVC, which at its height from 2600 to 1900 BCE covered a large swath of northwestern South Asia, was one of the world’s first large-scale urban societies. Roughly contemporary to ancient Egypt and the ancient civilizations of China and Mesopotamia, it traded across long distances and developed systematic town planning, elaborate drainage systems, granaries, and standardization of weights and measures.

Hot, fluctuating climates like those found in many parts of lowland South Asia are detrimental to the preservation of DNA. So despite the importance of the IVC, it has been impossible until now to sequence DNA of individuals recovered in archaeological sites located in the region. “Even though there has been success with ancient DNA from many other places, the difficult preservation conditions mean that studies in South Asia have been a challenge,” says senior author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Answering questions about the ancient people of the Indus Valley was in fact the primary reason Reich founded his own ancient DNA laboratory in 2013.

In this study, Reich, post-doctoral scientist Vagheesh Narasimhan, and Niraj Rai, who established a new ancient DNA laboratory at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, India, and led the preparation of the samples, screened 61 skeletal samples from a site in Rakhigarhi, the largest city of the IVC. A single sample showed promise: it contained a very small amount of authentic ancient DNA. The team made over 100 attempts to sequence the sample. Reich says: “While each of the individual datasets did not produce enough DNA, pooling them resulted in sufficient genetic data to learn about population history.”

There were many theories about the genetic origins of the people of the IVC. “They could resemble Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers or they could resemble Iranians, or they could even resemble Steppe pastoralists–all were plausible prior to the ancient DNA findings,” he says.

The individual sequenced here fits with a set of 11 individuals from sites across Iran and Central Asia known to be in cultural contact with the IVC, discovered in a manuscript being published simultaneously (also led by Reich and Narasimhan) in the journal Science. Those individuals were genetic outliers among the people at the sites in which they were found. They represent a unique mixture of ancestry related to ancient Iranians and ancestry related to Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers. Their genetic similarity to the Rakhigarhi individual makes it likely that these were migrants from the IVC.

It’s a mix of ancestry that is also present in modern South Asians, leading the researchers to believe that people from the IVC like the Rakhigarhi individuals were the single largest source population for the modern-day people of India. “Ancestry like that in the IVC individuals is the primary ancestry source in South Asia today,” says Reich. “This finding ties people in South Asia today directly to the Indus Valley Civilization.”

The findings also offer a surprising insight into how agriculture reached South Asia. A mainstream view in archaeology has been that people from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East–home to the earliest evidence of farming–spread across the Iranian plateau and from there into South Asia, bringing with them a new and transformative economic system.

Genetic studies to date seemed to add weight to this theory by showing that Iranian-related ancestry was the single biggest contributor to the ancestry in South Asians.

But this new study shows that the lineage of Iranian-related ancestry in modern South Asians split from ancient Iranian farmers, herders, and hunter-gatherers before they separated from each other–that is, even before the invention of farming in the Fertile Crescent. Thus, farming was either reinvented locally in South Asia or reached it through the cultural transmission of ideas rather than through substantial movement of western Iranian farmers.

For Reich, Shinde, and their team, these findings are just the beginning. “The Harappans built a complex and cosmopolitan ancient civilization, and there was undoubtedly variation in it that we cannot detect by analyzing a single individual,” Shinde says. “The insights that emerge from just this single individual demonstrate the enormous promise of ancient DNA studies of South Asia. They make it clear that future studies of much larger numbers of individuals from a variety of archaeological sites and locations have the potential to transform our understanding of the deep history of the subcontinent.”

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Map depicting the geographical span of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), showing the location of Rakhigarhi (blue), other significant IVC sites (red), and sites to the north and west from other archaeological cultures (other colors). The yellow labels indicate two sites where a minority of buried individuals yielded ancient DNA matched that of the Rakhigarhi individuals. Vasant Shinde / Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute

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Photograph of the skeleton analyzed in this study, shown associated with typical Indus Valley Civilization grave goods and illustrating the typical North-South orientation of IVC burials. Vasant Shinde / Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute

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Photograph of a red slipped ware globular pot placed near the head of the skeleton that yielded ancient DNA. There are lines as well as indentations on the upper right side, just below the rim. The indentations on the body of the pot could be examples of ancient graffiti and/or “Indus script”. Vasant Shinde / Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute

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Article Source: Cell Press news release

*“An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers” https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30967-5

CNRS—The genomic sequencing of exceptionally well preserved DNA in a phalangeal fragment from Denisova Cave (Siberia) in 2010 revealed it belonged to the member of a previously unknown human population, the Denisovans, who were closely related to the Neanderthals. However, because few Denisovan bones have been found, the morphology of these hominins remains uncertain. Now a team of scientists from the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS / Université de Paris) has measured and photographed another fragment found in Denisova Cave. Genomic analysis reveals it is the missing piece of the same phalanx whose proximal fragment enabled initial sequencing of the Denisovan genome. Together with colleagues from the PACEA laboratory (CNRS / University of Bordeaux / French Ministry of Culture) and the University of Toronto (Canada), the scientists compared the new fragment to the phalanges of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. Their analysis indicates it is very close to the latter, and less like the former. Yet this structural similarity does not extend to the molars and mandible found on the Tibetan plateau, which feature more archaic characteristics. The researchers are intrigued by the Denisovan morphological mosaic and are seeking new skeletal remains to better characterize this “third” human group. Their findings* are published in Science Advances (4 September 2019).

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Virtual reconstruction of fifth distal phalanx from Denisova Cave. © Photo of distal fragment of phalanx: Eva-Maria Geigl, Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS / Université de Paris). Micro-CT scan and virtual reconstruction: Bence Viola, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto (Canada).

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Denisova Cave, where the phalangeal fragment was found. Демин Алексей Барнаул, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: CNRS press release

*Morphology of the Denisovan phalanx closer to modern humans than to Neandertals. E. Andrew Bennett, Isabelle Crevecoeur, Bence Viola, Anatoly P. Derevianko, Michael V. Shunkov, Thierry Grange, Bruno Maureille, and Eva-Maria Geigl. Science Advances, September 4, 2019.

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH—The DNA of Scottish people still contains signs of the country’s ancient kingdoms, with many apparently living in the same areas as their ancestors did more than a millennium ago, a study shows.

Experts have constructed Scotland’s first comprehensive genetic map, which reveals that the country is divided into six main clusters of genetically similar individuals: the Borders, the south-west, the north-east, the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland.

These groupings are in similar locations to Dark Age kingdoms such as Strathclyde in the south-west, Pictland in the north-east, and Gododdin in the south-east. The Dark Ages are widely considered to be from the end of the Roman Empire in 476 AD to around 1000 AD.

In addition to showcasing Scotland’s genetic continuity, experts believe this type of population analysis could aid the discovery of rare DNA differences that might play major roles in human disease.

The new data from Scotland means this is the first time the genetic map of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland can be seen in its entirety, researchers say.

The study also discovered that some of the founders of Iceland may have originated from north-west Scotland and Ireland and that the Isle of Man is genetically predominantly Scottish.

The study looked at the genetic makeup of more than 2500 people from Britain and Ireland – including almost 1000 from Scotland – whose grandparents or great grandparents were born within 50 miles of each other.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) then compared this with the DNA of people who lived thousands of years ago.

Experts found that Orkney and Shetland had the highest levels of Norwegian ancestry outside Scandinavia and that many islands within the archipelagos had their own unique genetic identity.

The islands also contained subtle, but notable genetic differences between people living only a few miles apart, with no obvious physical barriers.

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Executive and Science Foundation Ireland.

It is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Jim Wilson, from the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute and MRC Human Genetics Unit, said: “It is remarkable how long the shadows of Scotland’s Dark Age kingdoms are, given the massive increase in movement from the industrial revolution to the modern era. We believe this is largely due to the majority of people marrying locally and preserving their genetic identity.”

Dr Edmund Gilbert, from RCSI, added: “This work is important not only from the historical perspective, but also for helping understand the role of genetic variation in human disease. Understanding the fine-scale genetic structure of a population helps researchers better separate disease-causing genetic variation from that which occurs naturally in the British and Irish populations, but has little or no impact on disease risk.”

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Genetic map of the British Isles, based on work by Professor Jim Wilson from the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute and MRC Human Genetics Unit. The University of Edinburgh

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Article Source: University of Edinburgh news release

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY—Humans’ dramatic transformation of Earth’s landscape is no recent phenomenon, according to a new study from Science.

The research, which assessed global land use from 10,000 to 170 years ago, reveals that hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists had made significant alterations to the planet by 4,000 years ago, much earlier than indicated by Earth scientists’ previous land-use reconstructions.

“Understanding how humans interact with the environment over the long-term past is one of the best things we can do to help us understand how people will deal with this in the future,” says Michael Barton, co-author and a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change. “We’re not starting from zero. We’re starting from a long history.”

Researchers can look for evidence of whether ancient peoples’ actions benefited or harmed biodiversity and allowed them to reside sustainably or not in an area for a long amount of time. Studying their environmental successes and failures can give a better idea of how to create positive change as humans continue to reshape the planet.

The study also has implications for the Earth system models used to predict future human environmental impact. Accurate predictions rely on comparing the present to the past — and the data currently representing Earth’s past that is used for those models underestimates human impact.

Suspecting this, the authors set out to gather richer, globalized data from those who know humanity’s past best — archaeologists. They began a crowdsourcing effort, called the ArchaeoGLOBE Project, by sending a massive survey to scholars whose expertise covered areas all over the world. 255 respondents filled out over 700 regional questionnaires, which provided the information for the study.

“Many people have realized for some time now that the study of long-term human-environment interactions must include archaeological knowledge, but our research and dataset really open the door to this sort of collaboration at global scale for the first time,” says Lucas Stephens, lead author of the paper and recent doctoral graduate from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Our aggregate knowledge paints a surprisingly clear, globally coherent picture,” says Nicolas Gauthier, co-author and recent doctoral graduate from Arizona State University.

That picture shows that shifting cultivation and pastoralism had affected over 40% of Earth’s land area by 4,000 years ago. It also reveals that continuous cultivation was common to widespread over most of the planet by 2,000 years ago, over 1,000 years earlier than indicated by today’s most widely referenced land-use study, the History Database of the Global Environment, known as HYDE.

Archaeologists reported on some regions more than others for the ArchaeoGLOBE Project, reflecting the intensity of research in different areas. But by highlighting these gaps, the study helps scientists prioritize their data gathering and provides a starting point for them to continue investigating land use over time.

“Our hope is that it will push the field forward in a way that would not have been possible had everyone worked in isolation,” Gauthier says.

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A) Onsets represent the earliest time step assessed at the “common” prevalence level (1-20% land area) for extensive agriculture, intensive agriculture, and pastoralism; the earliest time step assessed as “present” for urbanism. B) Decline represents the latest time step assessed at the “common” prevalence level for foraging. Reprinted with permission from: ArchaeoGLOBE Project, SCIENCE, August 30 2019 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aax1192)

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A) Generalized additive mixed model trends for the extent of each land-use type across all regions, with 95% confidence intervals. B) Cumulative summary of regions per land-use category based on consensus assessments (Common > 1% to 20% regional land area; Widespread > 20% regional land area), with presence or absence of urban centers. Categories are non-exclusive, resulting in plot values >100% of all regions. Reprinted with permission from: ArchaeoGLOBE Project, SCIENCE, August 30 2019 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aax1192)

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Article Source: Arizona State University news release

American Association for the Advancement of Science and Oregon State University—Archaeological discoveries from the Cooper’s Ferry site in western Idaho indicate that humans migrated to and occupied the region by nearly 16,500 years ago. The findings expand the timing of human settlement in the Americas to a period predating the appearance of an ice-free corridor linking Beringia and the rest of North America and support the growing notion that the very first Americans likely landed upon the shores of the Pacific coast. How and when human populations first arrived and settled in the Americas remains debated. A longstanding and influential hypothesis proposes that travelers initially entered North America and parts beyond from eastern Beringia, by way of a deglaciated ice-free corridor that separated the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets approximately 14,800 years ago. However, a small but growing body of research has shown that human populations were present and likely well-established south of the Late Pleistocene ice sheets long before such a passage; its proponents hypothesize a Pacific coastal migration route. Loren Davis and colleagues present new findings from Cooper’s Ferry that provide evidence of repeated occupation beginning between 16,560 to 15,280 years ago. Artifacts recovered from the site’s earliest contexts indicate the use of unfluted and stemmed stone projectile point technologies before the use of fluted, broad-based points of the widespread Clovis Paleoindian Tradition. According to Davis et al., the age, design and manufacture of Cooper’s Ferry’s distinctive stemmed points closely resemble features of artifacts found in Late Pleistocene archeological sites in northeastern Asia. 

“The Cooper’s Ferry site is located along the Salmon River, which is a tributary of the larger Columbia River basin. Early peoples moving south along the Pacific coast would have encountered the Columbia River as the first place below the glaciers where they could easily walk and paddle in to North America,” Davis said. “Essentially, the Columbia River corridor was the first off-ramp of a Pacific coast migration route.

“The timing and position of the Cooper’s Ferry site is consistent with and most easily explained as the result of an early Pacific coastal migration.”

Cooper’s Ferry, located at the confluence of Rock Creek and the lower Salmon River, is known by the Nez Perce Tribe as an ancient village site named Nipéhe. Today the site is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The site includes two dig areas; the published findings are about artifacts found in area A. In the lower part of that area, researchers uncovered several hundred artifacts, including stone tools; charcoal; fire-cracked rock; and bone fragments likely from medium- to large-bodied animals, Davis said. They also found evidence of a fire hearth, a food processing station and other pits created as part of domestic activities at the site.

Over the last two summers, the team of students and researchers reached the lower layers of the site, which, as expected, contained some of the oldest artifacts uncovered, Davis said. He worked with a team of researchers at Oxford University, who were able to successfully radiocarbon date a number of the animal bone fragments.

The results showed many artifacts from the lowest layers are associated with dates in the range of 15,000 to 16,000 years old.

“Prior to getting these radiocarbon ages, the oldest things we’d found dated mostly in the 13,000-year range, and the earliest evidence of people in the Americas had been dated to just before 14,000 years old in a handful of other sites,” Davis said. “When I first saw that the lower archaeological layer contained radiocarbon ages older than 14,000 years, I was stunned but skeptical and needed to see those numbers repeated over and over just to be sure they’re right. So we ran more radiocarbon dates, and the lower layer consistently dated between 14,000-16,000 years old.”

The dates from the oldest artifacts challenge the long-held “Clovis First” theory of early migration to the Americas, which suggested that people crossed from Siberia into North America and traveled down through an opening in the ice sheet near the present-day Dakotas. The ice-free corridor is hypothesized to have opened as early as 14,800 years ago, well after the date of the oldest artifacts found at Cooper’s Ferry, Davis said.

“Now we have good evidence that people were in Idaho before that corridor opened,” he said. “This evidence leads us to conclude that early peoples moved south of continental ice sheets along the Pacific coast.”

Davis’s team also found tooth fragments from an extinct form of horse known to have lived in North America at the end of the last glacial period. These tooth fragments, along with the radiocarbon dating, show that Cooper’s Ferry is the oldest radiocarbon-dated site in North America that includes artifacts associated with the bones of extinct animals, Davis said.

The oldest artifacts uncovered at Cooper’s Ferry also are very similar in form to older artifacts found in northeastern Asia, and particularly, Japan, Davis said. He is now collaborating with Japanese researchers to do further comparisons of artifacts from Japan, Russia and Cooper’s Ferry. He is also awaiting carbon-dating information from artifacts from a second dig location at the Cooper’s Ferry site.

“We have 10 years’ worth of excavated artifacts and samples to analyze,” Davis said. “We anticipate we’ll make other exciting discoveries as we continue to study the artifacts and samples from our excavations.”

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Coopers Ferry site, left center, view east. Loren Davis, Oregon State University

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Cooper’s Ferry project camp 2014. Loren Davis, Oregon State University

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Cooper’s Ferry Site 2013 Area A looking east. Loren Davis, Oregon State University

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Cooper’s Ferry site Area A excavations at work 2018. Loren Davis, Oregon State University

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Cooper’s Ferry site Area A overview Aug 2018. Loren Davis, Oregon State University

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Article Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science and Oregon State University news releases.

PLOS—Elaborate burial sites can provide insight to the development of socio-political hierarchies in early human communities, according to a study* released August 28, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by an international team of archaeologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists of the Ba’ja Neolithic Project hosted at the Free University of Berlin in cooperation with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. The interdisciplinary investigations on the 9000-year-old extraordinary grave studied here gives new evidence on emerging leadership in the first farming villages of the Near East.

As early farming communities gave rise to larger, more complex sedentary societies, new social hierarchies arose, presenting opportunities for individual people to achieve positions of importance. The authors cite two archetypal “pathways to power” such individuals might follow: one self-aggrandizing and often autocratic, and the other more group-oriented and egalitarian. But how these “pathways” were expressed in early cultures remains unclear.

This study focused on a single burial in the Ba’ja settlement of southern Jordan, dating between 7,500-6,900 BC, during the Late Pre-Pottery B Period. The elaborate construction of this grave and sophistication of associated symbolic objects suggest the deceased was a person of importance in the ancient society. The authors suggest that the presence of exotic items in the grave indicate a person who achieved individual prestige by access to trade networks, while the proximity of the grave to other less elaborate graves indicates that they were nonetheless considered close in status to the broader community, not neatly fitting either archetype of a powerful individual.

The authors propose that this sort of data can provide insights into cultural views toward leadership and social hierarchy in early cultures. They also suggest that further investigations of this body and others in Ba’ja, including ancient DNA analysis to illuminate familial relationships, may combine with grave information to create a more refined picture of early community social structures.

The authors add: “We suggest that leadership can be understood only by studying the social contexts and the pathways to power (not only the burials of extraordinary individuals). In fact, studying rich tombs to interpret social structures has been done before, but our new approach emphasizes the social environments of leadership. The key study of the elaborate burial of the late PPNB site of Ba’ja lets us surmise that access to leadership was possible through corporate leadership-type of primus inter pares than by autocratic coercive power.”

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Reconstructed virtual E-W-cut through the burial Loc. C10:408, facing south. Benz et al., 2018

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Article Source: PLOS ONE news release  The paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221171

*Benz M, Gresky J, Štefanisko D, Alarashi H, Knipper C, Purschwitz C, et al. (2019) Burying power: New insights into incipient leadership in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic from an outstanding burial at Ba?ja, southern Jordan. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0221171. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221171

Science Advances, AAAS—Using calcium isotopes present in the enamel of fossilized teeth as a proxy for breast milk intake, scientists report* that early Homo infants nursed longer and their mothers experienced greater intervals between births compared to other South African hominins. The authors say their method offers a potential way to further explore the weaning behaviors during the evolution of hominid and mammals more broadly. Hominin nursing behavior has proven difficult to study, with researchers relying on deductions about body size and dental development from fossil records. However, observations that low calcium isotopes in modern human breastmilk are mirrored in infant enamel composition suggest scientists can turn to high resolution analysis of isotopes in ancient teeth for answers. Here, Théo Tacail et al. measured calcium isotope in teeth from 12 Australopithecus africanus, 18 Paranthropus robustus and seven early Homo specimens. They also analyzed teeth of mammals that coexisted with the hominins, including seven browsers, seven carnivores and 10 grazers, as well as four modern gorilla teeth for comparison. Tacail and colleagues found no clear relationship between calcium isotope value and dental age in A. africanus and only a slight correlation in P. robustus. In contrast, they found that calcium isotope levels in early Homo infants increased substantially with dental age, suggesting early Homo infants relied on milk from their mothers while infants from the other two hominin species consumed solid adult food and some breast milk. The researchers caution that it is difficult to draw conclusions about A. africanus and P. robustus, because the calcium isotope values in their breast milk are unknown.

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Tooth morphology is obviously distinctive between early Homo (right) and Paranthropus robustus (left) but differences also exist in the calcium stable isotope compositions that reveal specific nursing behaviors. Vincent Balter, CNRS

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Article Source: Science Advances – A publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

*“Calcium isotopic patterns in enamel reflect different nursing behaviors among South African early hominins ,” by T. Tacail; J.E. Martin; F. Arnaud-Godet; V. Balter at CNRS in Lyon, France; T. Tacail; J.E. Martin; F. Arnaud-Godet; V. Balter at LGLTPE in Lyon, France; T. Tacail; J.E. Martin; F. Arnaud-Godet; V. Balter at Univ. Lyon in Lyon, France; T. Tacail at University of Bristol in Bristol, UK; J.F. Thackeray; J. Braga at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa; T.E. Cerling at University of Utah in Salt Lake, UT; J. Braga at CNRS in Toulouse, France; J. Braga at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY and CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY—Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Aug 28)—Cleveland Museum of Natural History Curator and Case Western Reserve University Adjunct Professor Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team of researchers have discovered a “remarkably complete” cranium of a 3.8-million-year-old early human ancestor from the Woranso-Mille paleontological site, located in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Working for the past 15 years at the site, the team discovered the cranium (MRD-VP-1/1), here referred to as “MRD,” in February 2016. In the years following their discovery, paleoanthropologists of the project conducted extensive analyses of MRD, while project geologists worked on determining the age and context of the specimen. The results of the team’s findings are published online in two papers in the international scientific journal Nature.

The 3.8 million-year-old fossil cranium represents a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago, when A. anamensisgave rise to A. afarensis. Researchers used morphological features of the cranium to identify which species the fossil represents. “Features of the upper jaw and canine tooth were fundamental in determining that MRD was attributable to A. anamensis“, said Melillo. “It is good to finally be able to put a face to the name.” The MRD cranium, together with other fossils previously known from the Afar, show that A. anamensis and A. afarensis co-existed for approximately 100,000 years. This temporal overlap challenges the widely-accepted idea of a linear transition between these two early human ancestors. Haile-Selassie said: “This is a game changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene.”

Discovery of the cranium

The Woranso-Mille project has been conducting field research in the central Afar region of Ethiopia since 2004. The project has collected more than 12,600 fossil specimens representing about 85 mammalian species. The fossil collection includes about 230 fossil hominin specimens dating to between more than 3.8 and about 3.0 million years ago. The first piece of MRD, the upper jaw, was found by Ali Bereino (a local Afar worker) on February 10, 2016 at a locality known as Miro Dora, Mille district of the Afar Regional State. The specimen was exposed on the surface and further investigation of the area resulted in the recovery of the rest of the cranium. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted the rest of the cranium. It was a eureka moment and a dream come true”, said Haile-Selassie.

Geology and age determination

In a companion paper published in the same issue of Nature, Beverly Saylor of Case Western Reserve University and her colleagues determined the age of the fossil as 3.8 million years by dating minerals in layers of volcanic rocks nearby. They mapped the dated levels to the fossil site using field observations and the chemistry and magnetic properties of rock layers. Saylor and her colleagues combined the field observations with analysis of microscopic biological remains to reconstruct the landscape, vegetation and hydrology where MRD died.

MRD was found in the sandy deposits of a delta where a river entered a lake. The river likely originated in the highlands of the Ethiopian plateau while the lake developed at lower elevations where rift activity caused the Earth surface to stretch and thin, creating the lowlands of the Afar region. Fossil pollen grains and chemical remains of fossil plant and algae that are preserved in the lake and delta sediments provide clues about the ancient environmental conditions. Specifically they indicate that the watershed of the lake was mostly dry but that there were also forested areas on the shores of the delta or along the side the river that fed the delta and lake system. “MRD lived near a large lake in a region that was dry. We’re eager to conduct more work in these deposits to understand the environment of the MRD specimen, the relationship to climate change and how it affected human evolution, if at all”, said Naomi Levin, a co-author on the study from University of Michigan.

A new face in the crowd

Australopithecus anamensis is the oldest known member of the genus Australopithecus. Due to the cranium’s rare near-complete state, the researchers identified never-before-seen facial features in the species. “MRD has a mix of primitive and derived facial and cranial features that I didn’t expect to see on a single individual”, Haile-Selassie said. Some characteristics were shared with later species, while others had more in common with those of even older and more primitive early human ancestor groups such as Ardipithecus and Sahelanthropus. “Until now, we had a big gap between the earliest-known human ancestors, which are about 6 million years old, and species like ‘Lucy’, which are two to three million years old. One of the most exciting aspects of this discovery is how it bridges the morphological space between these two groups”, said Melillo.

Branching out

Among the most important findings was the team’s conclusion that A. anamensis and its descendant species, the well-known A. afarensis, coexisted for a period of at least 100,000 years. This finding contradicts the long-held notion of an anagenetic relationship between these two taxa, instead supporting a branching pattern of evolution. Melillo explains: “We used to think that A. anamensis gradually turned into A. afarensis over time. We still think that these two species had an ancestor-descendent relationship, but this new discovery suggests that the two species were actually living together in the Afar for quite some time. It changes our understanding of the evolutionary process and brings up new questions – were these animals competing for food or space?”

This conclusion is based on the assignment of the 3.8-million-year-old MRD to A. anamensis and the 3.9-million-year-old hominin cranial fragment commonly known as the Belohdelie frontal, to A. afarensis. The Belohdelie frontal was discovered in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia by a team of paleontologists in 1981, but its taxonomic status has been questioned in the intervening years.

The new MRD cranium enabled the researchers to characterize frontal morphology in A. anamensis for the first time and to recognize that these features differed from the morphology common to the Belohdelie frontal and to other cranial specimens already known for Lucy’s species. As a result, the new study confirms that the Belohdelie frontal belonged to an individual of Lucy’s species. This identification extends the earliest record of A. afarensisback to 3.9 million years ago, while the discovery of MRD nudges the last appearance date of A. anamensis forward to 3.8 million years – indicating the overlap period of at least 100,000 years.

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The cranium was discovered in 2016 at Miro Dora, Mille district of the Afar Regional State in Ethiopia. © Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

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The 3.8 million-year-old cranium of Australopithecus anamensis is remarkably complete. © Dale Omori, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

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The 3.8 million-year-old cranium of the ‘MRD’ specimen of Australopithecus anamensis. Photograph by Dale Omori, courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Natural History

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A reconstruction of the facial morphology of the 3.8 million-year-old ‘MRD’ specimen of Australopithecus anamensis. Photograph by Matt Crow, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Facial reconstruction by John Gurche made possible through generous contribution by Susan and George Klein.

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A composite of the 3.8 million-year-old cranium of Australopithecus anamensis and its facial morphology reconstruction. Human ancestor photomontage by Jennifer Taylor, courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Facial reconstruction by John Gurche, made possible through a generous contribution by Susan and George Klein.

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Summary of the Significance of the Discovery

1. Among the most important findings was the team’s conclusion that Australopithecus anamensis and its descendant species, the well-known Australopithecus afarensis, coexisted for a period of at least 100,000 years. This finding contradicts the long-held notion of an anagenetic relationship between these two taxa, whereby one species disappears only by giving rise to a new species in a linear fashion.

2. Australopithecus anamensis is the oldest known member of the genus Australopithecus. The species was previously only known through teeth and jaw fragments, all dated to between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago. The similarities between the preserved dentition of the 3.8-million-year-old MRD and the previously known teeth and jaw fragments of A. anamensis led to a positive identification of MRD as a member of A. anamensis. Additionally, due to the cranium’s rare near-complete state, the researchers identified never-before-seen facial features in the species. “MRD has a mix of primitive and derived facial and cranial features that I didn’t expect to see on a single individual,” Haile-Selassie said. Dr. Stephanie Melillo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, co-author of the papers, further said, “A. anamensis was already a species that we knew quite a bit about, but this is the first cranium of the species ever discovered. It is good to finally be able to put a face to the name.”

Some characteristics were shared with its descendant species, Australopithecus afarensis, while others differed significantly and had more in common with those of even older and more primitive early human ancestor groups, such as Ardipithecus and Sahelanthropus.

3. The distinct differences between the 3.8-million-year-old MRD specimen and a previously unassigned 3.9-million-year-old hominin cranium fragment–commonly known as the Belohdelie frontal and discovered in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia by a team of paleontologists in 1981–also proved significant. The preserved features of the Belohdelie frontal differed from those of MRD but were significantly similar to those of the known cranial specimens of Lucy’s species. As a result, the new study confirms that the Belohdelie frontal belonged to an individual of Lucy’s species. This identification extends the earliest record of Australopithecus afarensis back to 3.9 million years ago, indicating a period of at least 100,000 years’ overlap with its ancestor, Australopithecus anamensis.

4. The 3.8-million-year-old MRD specimen was buried in a river delta on the margin of a lake that formed in an actively rifted landscape with steep hillsides and volcanic eruptions that blanketed the land surface with ash and lava. There were forested areas on the shores of the delta or along the edges of the river that flowed into the delta and lake system, but the watershed that fed the river, delta and lake system was mostly dry with few trees.

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY and CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY news releases

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UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN—People in England were using balance weights and scales to measure the value of materials as early as the late second and early first millennia BC. This is what Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf, scientist at the University of Göttingen and project manager of the ERC “Weight and Value” project, has discovered. He compared Middle and Late Bronze Age gold objects from the British Isles and Northern France and found that they were based on the same unit of weight. This confirmed the hypothesis of the research team of the project that there was already expertise in using standard weights and measures in many regions of Europe at that time. The results were published in the journal Antiquity.

Until now, it had often been assumed that trade during the Bronze Age in northwestern Europe was primarily socially embedded – for example as in the exchange of gifts. The existence of precise units of measurement, however, enabled people even at that time to compare exact ratios of material values of different goods such as metals, possibly also wool and grain. They were also able to calculate profits, to create currencies and to save up measurable quantities of metal. “Obviously, the exchange was already based on the economic interests of trading partners,” explains Rahmstorf, director of the Institute for Prehistory and Early History at the University of Göttingen. “So it is clear we are talking about real trade.”

What is surprising about the statistical analysis of the unit of weight that has been identified, is that it is very nicely compatible and possibly even identical with the dominant East Mediterranean weight of that time. This would be an indication that knowledge about standard weights and measures has been widely disseminated and possibly passed on through traveling traders. It was already known that people in the technologically advanced, literate cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia – for example Greece, Egypt or Mesopotamia – used such weights and scales as an aid. However, these findings now indicate that such value measurement systems already existed in many if not all parts of prehistoric Bronze Age Europe. “The results of our research show that we have so far underestimated the complexity of the early commercial transactions during the Bronze Age in Europe,” said Rahmstorf. Further information on the “Weight and Value” project can be found at http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/572018.html.

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Gold flange twisted spiral torc (around 15cm long; 367.1 g) from Castlemount, Dover, Kent, England. British Museum

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Rectangular bronze weight (around 4.8 cm long; 29.8 g) from Salcombe, Devon, England. British Museum

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Fragment (around 1.5 cm long) of a balance beam of bone with a bronze suspension loop from Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent, England, identified by Jörn Schuster. Wessex Archaeology

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Article Source: University of Göttingen news release

*Lorenz Rahmstorf. Scales, weights and weight-regulated artefacts in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain. Antiquity 2019. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.257.

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—Used as a propaganda tool by the Nazis and Soviets during the Second World War and Cold War, the remains of a 10th century male, unearthed beneath Prague Castle in 1928, have been the subject of continued debate and archaeological manipulation.

The mysterious skeleton and associated grave goods, including a sword and two knives, were identified as Viking by the Nazis, as a Slavonic warrior by the Soviets and became part of the Czech independence movement in more recent years.

Writing in the journal Antiquity, a team of archaeologists, including two emeritus professors from the University of Bristol, unravel the complex story of the discovery of the remains, which were kept out of public view until 2004, and attempt to answer the decades-long question of who this man actually was.

The remains were discovered under the courtyard of Prague Castle in July 1928 as part of an excavation project by the National Museum of the newly established Czechoslovakia to discover the earliest phases of the castle.

The body was located on the edge of an old burial ground from when a hill fort was built on the site, likely dating to AD 800-950/1000.

It was discovered by Ivan Borkovský, a Ukrainian who fought for both the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians in the early 20th century, before escaping to Czechoslovakia in 1920 but he did not immediately publicize or publish anything about the remains or the artifacts.

In 1939, the German army invaded Czechoslovakia and immediately accused Borkovský of not publishing because he was part of a Czech conspiracy to hide the truth—that the remains were German, rather than Slavic (or maybe Viking).

As a German ancestor, the remains supported the German propagandist efforts to argue for a German heritage that ‘extended over national borders and reached deep into the past’.

Under the Nazi regime, the remains became ‘proof’ for the Germanic, rather than Slavic, origin of Prague Castle.

When Borkovský published a book identifying the oldest Slavic pottery in central Europe, the Nazi’s condemned the text and he was forced to withdraw it under threat of imprisonment in a concentration camp. When he published the Prague Castle remains a year later, it was overt in its ‘Nazi-influenced Nordic interpretation’.

After the war, Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Soviets and in 1945, Borkovský narrowly escaped being sent to a Siberian Gulag because of former anti-Communist activities.

He explained that he had been forced into the pro-Nazi interpretation of the remains and published a second article in 1946 which interpreted the burial ‘as that of an important person who was related to the early Western Slav Przemyslid dynasty’.

Lead author Professor Nicholas Saunders, from Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, said: “A number of studies have recently begun to re-interpret the remains and ours provides a new analysis.

“The goods found with the remains are a mix of foreign (non-Czech) items, such as the sword, axe and fire striker (a common piece of Viking equipment), and domestic objects, such as the bucket and the knives.

“The sword is especially unique as it is the only one discovered in 1,500 early medieval graves so far found in Prague Castle.

“Perhaps he was a Slav from a neighboring region, who had mastered Old Norse as well as Slavonic, or perhaps he regarded himself as a genuine Viking.

“Identities were complex in the medieval period, and the story of Borkovský and the Prague Castle warrior grave reminds us that the identities of such past people frequently fuel modern political conflicts.”

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Photograph of grave IIIN199, shortly after excavation in 1928. Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague Castle Excavations

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL news release

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY—It has long been thought that the brain size of anthropoid primates—a diverse group of modern and extinct monkeys, humans, and their nearest kin—progressively increased over time. New research on one of the oldest and most complete fossil primate skulls from South America shows instead that the pattern of brain evolution in this group was far more checkered. The study, published today in the journal Science Advances and led by researchers from the American Museum of Natural History, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of California Santa Barbara, suggests that the brain enlarged repeatedly and independently over the course of anthropoid history, and was more complex in some early members of the group than previously recognized.

“Human beings have exceptionally enlarged brains, but we know very little about how far back this key trait started to develop,” said lead author Xijun Ni, a research associate at the Museum and a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “This is in part because of the scarcity of well-preserved fossil skulls of much more ancient relatives.”

As part of a long-term collaboration with John Flynn, the Museum’s Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals, Ni spearheaded a detailed study of an exceptional 20-million-year-old anthropoid fossil discovered high in the Andes mountains of Chile, the skull and only known specimen of Chilecebus carrascoensis.

“Through more than three decades of partnership and close collaboration with the National Museum of Chile, we have recovered many remarkable new fossils from unexpected places in the rugged volcanic terrain of the Andes,” Flynn said. “Chilecebus is one of those rare and truly spectacular fossils, revealing new insights and surprising conclusions every time new analytical methods are applied to studying it.”

Previous research by Flynn, Ni, and their colleagues on Chilecebus provided a rough idea of the animal’s encephalization, or the brain size relative to body size. A high encephalization quotient (EQ) signifies a large brain for an animal of a given body size. Most primates have high EQs relative to other mammals, although some primates—especially humans and their closest relatives—have even higher EQs than others. The latest study takes this understanding one step further, illustrating the patterns across the broader anthropoid family tree. The resulting “PEQ”—or phylogenetic encephalization quotient, to correct for the effects of close evolutionary relationships—for Chilecebus is relatively small, at 0.79. Most living monkeys, by comparison, have PEQs ranging from 0.86 to 3.39, with humans coming in at an extraordinary 13.46 and having expanded brain sizes dramatically even compared to nearest relatives. With this new framework, the researchers confirmed that cerebral enlargement occurred repeatedly and independently in anthropoid evolution, in both New and Old World lineages, with occasional decreases in size.

High-resolution x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning and 3D digital reconstruction of the inside of Chilecebus‘ skull gave the research team new insights into the anatomy of its brain. In modern primates, the size of the visual and olfactory centers in the brain are negatively correlated, reflecting a potential evolutionary “trade-off,” meaning that visually acute primates typically have weaker senses of smell. Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that a small olfactory bulb in Chilecebus was not counterbalanced by an amplified visual system. This finding indicates that in primate evolution the visual and olfactory systems were far less tightly coupled than was widely assumed.

Other findings: The size of the opening for the optic nerve suggests that Chilecebus was diurnal. Also, the infolding (sulcus) pattern of the brain of Chilecebus, although far simpler than in most modern anthropoids, possesses at least seven pairs of sulcal grooves and is surprisingly complex for such an ancient primate.

“During his epic voyage on the Beagle, Charles Darwin explored the mouth of the canyon where Chilecebus was discovered 160 years later. Shut out of the higher cordillera by winter snow, Darwin was inspired by ‘scenes of the highest interest’ his vista presented. This exquisite fossil, found just a few kilometers east of where Darwin stood, would have thrilled him,” said co-author André Wyss from the University of California Santa Barbara.

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An exceptional fossil skull of Chilecebus carrascoensis, a 20-million-year-old primate from the Andes mountains of Chile. © AMNH/N. Wong and M. Ellison

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This illustration compares the brain sizes of a variety of primates, including humans (top left) and the fossil Chilecebus (bottom middle), based on a new method (phylogenetic encephalization quotient, or PEQ) that takes into account both the body size and the evolutionary relationships of the species. The size of each primate species reflects its PEQ value (large head equals high PEQ, small head equals low PEQ), not its actual brain size or body/head size. For example, a high PEQ (larger heads in this image) signifies a larger than expected brain for an animal of a given body size. © Xiaocong Guo/Xijun Ni

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Article Source: AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY news release

PLOS—Migration patterns in present-day Denmark shifted at the beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age, according to a study published August 21, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Karin Frei of the National Museum of Denmark and colleagues. Migrants appear to have come from varied and potentially distant locations during a period of unprecedented economic growth in southern Scandinavia in the 2nd millennium BC.

The 2nd and 3rd millennia BC are known to have been a period of significant migrations in western Europe, including the movement of steppe populations into more temperate regions. Starting around 1600 BC, southern Scandinavia became closely linked to long-distance metal trade elsewhere in Europe, which gave rise to a Nordic Bronze Age and a period of significant wealth in the region of present-day Denmark.

In this study, Frei and colleagues investigated whether patterns of migration changed during this Nordic Bronze Age. They examined skeletal remains of 88 individuals from 37 localities across present-day Denmark. Since strontium isotopes in tooth enamel can record geographic signatures from an early age, analysis of such isotopes was used to determine individuals’ regions of provenance. Radiocarbon dating was used to determine the age of each skeleton and physical anthropological analyses were also conducted to add information on sex, age and potential injuries or illness.

From c. 1600 BC onwards, around the beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age, the geographic signal of migrants became more varied, an indication that this period of economic growth attracted migrants from a wide variety of foreign locales, possibly including more distant regions. The authors suggest this might reflect the establishment of new cultural alliances as southern Scandinavia flourished economically. They propose that further study using ancient DNA may further elucidate such social dynamics at large scales.

Co-author Kristian Kristiansen notes: “Around 1600 BC, the amount of metal coming into southern Scandinavia increased dramatically, arriving mostly from the Italian Alps, whereas tin came from Cornwall in south England. Our results support the development of highly international trade, a forerunner for the Viking Age period.”

Karin Frei adds: “Our data indicates a clear shift in human mobility at the breakthrough point of the Nordic Bronze Age, when an unprecedented rich period in southern Scandinavia emerged. This suggests to us that these aspects might have been closely related.

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Teeth from male individual from the site of Gjerrild (Rise 73a). Marie Louise Jørkov

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Karin Frei at the lab just before taking an enamel sample from one of the many Bronze Age individuals. Cristina Jensen

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Article Source: PLOS ONE news release

*Frei KM, Bergerbrant S, Sjögren K-G, Jørkov ML, Lynnerup N, Harvig L, et al. (2019) Mapping human mobility during the third and second millennia BC in present-day Denmark. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0219850. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219850

NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE, UK—The Maritime Archaeological Trust has discovered a new 8,000 year old structure next to what is believed to be the oldest boat building site in the world on the Isle of Wight.

Director of the Maritime Archaeological Trust, Garry Momber, said “This new discovery is particularly important as the wooden platform is part of a site that doubles the amount of worked wood found in the UK from a period that lasted 5,500 years.”

The site lies east of Yarmouth, and the new platform is the most intact, wooden Middle Stone Age structure ever found in the UK. The site is now 11 meters below sea level and during the period there was human activity on the site, it was dry land with lush vegetation. Importantly, it was at a time before the North Sea was fully formed and the Isle of Wight was still connected to mainland Europe.

The site was first discovered in 2005 and contains an arrangement of trimmed timbers that could be platforms, walkways or collapsed structures. However, these were difficult to interpret until the Maritime Archaeological Trust used state of the art photogrammetry techniques to record the remains. During the late spring the new structure was spotted eroding from within the drowned forest. The first task was to create a 3D digital model of the landscape so it could be experienced by non-divers. It was then excavated by the Maritime Archaeological Trust during the summer and has revealed a cohesive platform consisting of split timbers, several layers thick, resting on horizontally laid round-wood foundations.

Garry continued “The site contains a wealth of evidence for technological skills that were not thought to have been developed for a further couple of thousand years, such as advanced wood working. This site shows the value of marine archaeology for understanding the development of civilization.

Yet, being underwater, there are no regulations that can protect it. Therefore, it is down to our charity, with the help of our donors, to save it before it is lost forever.”

The Maritime Archaeological Trust is working with the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) to record and study, reconstruct and display the collection of timbers. Many of the wooden artifacts are being stored in the British Ocean Sediment Core Research facility (BOSCORF), operated by the National Oceanography Centre.

As with sediment cores, ancient wood will degrade more quickly if it is not kept in a dark, wet and cold setting. While being kept cold, dark and wet, the aim is to remove salt from within wood cells of the timber, allowing it to be analyzed and recorded. This is important because archaeological information, such as cut marks or engravings, are most often found on the surface of the wood and are lost quickly when timber degrades. Once the timbers have been recorded and have desalinated, the wood can be conserved for display.

Dr Suzanne Maclachlan, the curator at BOSCORF, said “It has been really exciting for us to assist the Trust’s work with such unique and historically important artifacts. This is a great example of how the BOSCORF repository is able to support the delivery of a wide range of marine science.”

When diving on the submerged landscape Dan Snow, the history broadcaster and host of History Hit, one of the world’s biggest history podcasts, commented that he was both awestruck by the incredible remains and shocked by the rate of erosion.

This material, coupled with advanced wood working skills and finely crafted tools suggests a European, Neolithic (New Stone Age) influence. The problem is that it is all being lost. As the Solent evolves, sections of the ancient land surface are being eroded by up to half a meter per year and the archaeological evidence is disappearing.

Research in 2019 was funded by the Scorpion Trust, the Butley Research Group, the Edward Fort Foundation and the Maritime Archaeology Trust. Work was conducted with the help of volunteers and many individuals who gave their time and often money, to ensure the material was recovered successfully.

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Historian Dan Snow inspecting the site. Maritime Archaeological Trust

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Oblique view of site from the north showing eroding edge of the peat platform. Maritime Archaeological Trust

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The structure following reconstruction. Maritime Archaeological Trust

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Article Source: NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHY CENTRE, UK news release

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS—Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed.

The site also points to a new location for where modern humans may have first encountered their mysterious cousins, the now extinct Denisovans, said Nicolas Zwyns, an associate professor of anthropology and lead author of the study.

Zwyns led excavations from 2011 to 2016 at the Tolbor-16 site along the Tolbor River in the Northern Hangai Mountains between Siberia and northern Mongolia.

The excavations yielded thousands of stone artifacts, with 826 stone artifacts associated with the oldest human occupation at the site. With long and regular blades, the tools resemble those found at other sites in Siberia and Northwest China—indicating a large-scale dispersal of humans across the region, Zwyns said.

“These objects existed before, in Siberia, but not to such a degree of standardization,” Zwyns said. “The most intriguing (aspect) is that they are produced in a complicated yet systematic way—and that seems to be the signature of a human group that shares a common technical and cultural background.”

That technology, known in the region as the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, led the researchers to rule out Neanderthals or Denisovans as the site’s occupants. “Although we found no human remains at the site, the dates we obtained match the age of the earliest Homo sapiens found in Siberia,” Zwyns said. “After carefully considering other options, we suggest that this change in technology illustrates movements of Homo sapiens in the region.”

Their findings were published online in an article in Scientific Reports.

The age of the site—determined by luminescence dating on the sediment and radiocarbon dating of animal bones found near the tools—is about 10,000 years earlier than the fossil of a human skullcap from Mongolia, and roughly 15,000 years after modern humans left Africa.

Evidence of soil development (grass and other organic matter) associated with the stone tools suggests that the climate for a period became warmer and wetter, making the normally cold and dry region more hospitable to grazing animals and humans.

Preliminary analysis identifies bone fragments at the site as large (wild cattle or bison) and medium size bovids (wild sheep, goat) and horses, which frequented the open steppe, forests and tundra during the Pleistocene—another sign of human occupation at the site.

The dates for the stone tools also match the age estimates obtained from genetic data for the earliest encounter between Homo sapiens and the Denisovans.

“Although we don’t know yet where the meeting happened, it seems that the Denisovans passed along genes that will later help Homo sapiens settling down in high altitude and to survive hypoxia on the Tibetan Plateau,” Zwyns said. “From this point of view, the site of Tolbor-16 is an important archaeological link connecting Siberia with Northwest China on a route where Homo sapiens had multiple possibilities to meet local populations such as the Denisovans.”

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Ancient tools were found in a site in the western flank of the Tolbor Valley. (Courtesy photo)

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A sampling of stone tools uncovered at the Tolbor-16 site in Mongolia, with examples of long triangular (bottom row, left) and double-edged blades (bottom row, middle) that resemble those found at other sites in Siberia and Northwest China. The discovery suggests a dispersal through the region of early modern humans who shared a cultural and technological background. The shorter blades, top row, are examples of tool technology known before to researchers. (Courtesy photo)

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Article Source: University of California, Davis news release

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—New research published today in the journal Parasitology shows how the prehistoric inhabitants of a settlement in the freshwater marshes of eastern England were infected by intestinal worms caught from foraging for food in the lakes and waterways around their homes.

The Bronze Age settlement at Must Farm, located near what is now the fenland city of Peterborough, consisted of wooden houses built on stilts above the water. Wooden causeways connected islands in the marsh, and dugout canoes were used to travel along water channels.

The village burnt down in a catastrophic fire around 3,000 years ago, with artifacts from the houses preserved in mud below the waterline, including food, cloth, and jewelry. The site has been called “Britain’s Pompeii”.

Also preserved in the surrounding mud were waterlogged “coprolites” – pieces of human feces – that have now been collected and analyzed by archaeologists at the University of Cambridge. They used microscopy techniques to detect ancient parasite eggs within the feces and surrounding sediment.

Very little is known about the intestinal diseases of Bronze Age Britain. The one previous study, of a farming village in Somerset, found evidence of roundworm and whipworm: parasites spread through contamination of food by human feces.

The ancient excrement of the Anglian marshes tells a different story. “We have found the earliest evidence for fish tapeworm, Echinostoma worm, and giant kidney worm in Britain,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

“These parasites are spread by eating raw aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and molluscs. Living over slow-moving water may have protected the inhabitants from some parasites, but put them at risk of others if they ate fish or frogs.”

Disposal of human and animal waste into the water around the settlement likely prevented direct fecal pollution of the fenlanders’ food, and so prevented infection from roundworm – the eggs of which have been found at Bronze Age sites across Europe.

However, water in the fens would have been quite stagnant, due in part to thick reed beds, leaving waste accumulating in the surrounding channels. Researchers say this likely provided fertile ground for other parasites to infect local wildlife, which – if eaten raw or poorly cooked – then spread to village residents.

“The dumping of excrement into the freshwater channel in which the settlement was built, and consumption of aquatic organisms from the surrounding area, created an ideal nexus for infection with various species of intestinal parasite,” said study first author Marissa Ledger, also from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

Fish tapeworms can reach 10m in length, and live coiled up in the intestines. Heavy infection can lead to anaemia. Giant kidney worms can reach up to a meter in length. They gradually destroy the organ as they become larger, leading to kidney failure. Echinostoma worms are much smaller, up to 1cm in length. Heavy infection can lead to inflammation of the intestinal lining.

“As writing was only introduced to Britain centuries later with the Romans, these people were unable to record what happened to them during their lives. This research enables us for the first time to clearly understand the infectious diseases experienced by prehistoric people living in the Fens,” said Ledger.

The Cambridge team worked with colleagues at the University of Bristol’s Organic Chemistry Unit to determine whether coprolites excavated from around the houses were human or animal. While some were human, others were from dogs.

“Both humans and dogs were infected by similar parasitic worms, which suggests the humans were sharing their food or leftovers with their dogs,” said Ledger.

Other parasites that infect animals were also found at the site, including pig whipworm and Capillaria worm. It is thought that they originated from the butchery and consumption of the intestines of farmed or hunted animals, but probably did not cause humans any harm.

The researchers compared their latest data with previous studies on ancient parasites from both the Bronze Age and Neolithic. Must Farm tallies with the trend of fewer parasite species found at Bronze Age compared with Neolithic sites.

“Our study fits with the broader pattern of a shrinking of the parasite ecosystem through time,” said Mitchell. “Changes in diet, sanitation and human-animal relationships over millennia have affected rates of parasitic infection.” Although he points out that infections from the fish tapeworm found at Must Farm have seen a recent resurgence due to the popularity of sushi, smoked salmon and ceviche.

“We now need to study other sites in prehistoric Britain where people lived different lifestyles, to help us understand how our ancestors’ way of life affected their risk of developing infectious diseases,” added Mitchell.

The Must Farm site is an exceptionally well-preserved settlement dating to 900-800 BC (the Late Bronze Age). The site was first discovered in 1999. The Cambridge Archaeological Unit carried out a major excavation between 2015 and 2016, funded by Historic England and Forterra Building Products Ltd.

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Microscopic eggs of fish tapeworm (left), giant kidney worm (centre), and Echinostoma worm (right) from the Must Farm excavation. Black scale bar represents 20 micrometers. Marissa Ledger

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Excavation of the Must Farm pile-dwelling settlement, showing the main body of the collapsed settlement in its river silt matrix. D. Webb, Cambridge Archaeological Unit

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Illustrated reconstruction of Must Farm stilt houses. V. Herring, Cambridge Archaeological Unit

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Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

PLOS—Abnormal bony growths in the ear canal were surprisingly common in Neanderthals, according to a study published August 14, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University and colleagues.

External auditory exostoses are dense bony growths that protrude into the ear canal. In modern humans, this condition is commonly called “swimmer’s ear” and is known to be correlated with habitual exposure to cold water or chilly air, though there is also a potential genetic predisposition for the condition. Such exostoses have been noted in ancient humans, but little research has examined how the condition might inform our understanding of past human lifestyles.

In this study, Trinkaus and colleagues examined well-preserved ear canals in the remains of 77 ancient humans, including Neanderthals and early modern humans from the Middle to Late Pleistocene Epoch of western Eurasia. While the early modern human samples exhibited similar frequencies of exostoses to modern human samples, the condition was exceptionally common in Neanderthals. Approximately half of the 23 Neanderthal remains examined exhibited mild to severe exostoses, at least twice the frequency seen in almost any other population studied.

The authors suggest that the most likely explanation for this pattern is that these Neanderthals spent a significant amount of time collecting resources in aquatic settings. However, the geographic distribution of exostoses seen in Neanderthals does not exhibit a definitive correlation with proximity to ancient water sources nor to cooler climates as would be expected. The authors propose that multiple factors were probably involved in this high abundance of exostoses, probably including environmental factors as well as genetic predispositions.

Trinkaus adds: “An exceptionally high frequency of external auditory exostoses (bony growths in the ear canal; “swimmer’s ear”) among the Neanderthals, and a more modest level among high latitude earlier Upper Paleolithic modern humans, indicate a higher frequency of aquatic resource exploitation among both groups of humans than is suggested by the archeological record. In particular, it reinforces the foraging abilities and resource diversity of the Neanderthals.”

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Above: The La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal skull, with the external auditory exostoses (“swimmer’s ear” growths) in the left canal indicated. Erik Trinkaus

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Article Source: PLOS ONE news release

*Trinkaus E, Samsel M, Villotte S (2019) External auditory exostoses among western Eurasian late Middle and Late Pleistocene humans. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0220464. 

Cover photo: Neandertal skull from La Chapelle aux Saints. PLoS, Wikimedia Commons

Much of what we know about the account of the infamous destruction of ancient Jerusalem by the military campaign of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century B.C.E. derives from well-known written documents, particularly the Bible. It attests to a protracted siege of the city, followed finally by a successful breach that led to King Zedekiah’s (the king of Jerusalem) capture and a violent end to the city:

“Now in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem.

And he burnt the house of the LORD, and the king’s house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man’s house, burnt he with fire.

And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls of Jerusalem round about.

And the residue of the people that were left in the city, and those that fell away, that fell to the king of Babylon, and the residue of the multitude, did Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carry away captive.”*

Jerusalem’s king, Zedekiah, was seized by pursuing Babylonian forces during his flight from the city. Carried away to the king of Babylon, his sons were killed before his eyes, after which he was blinded and taken to Babylon in fetters. 

It makes for a gruesome and sad story. But after 2,600 years, little remains outside the written account to verify the reality of the event.

In 2019, however, archaeologists in two separate excavations uncovered tantalizing new finds that point to a massive destruction that took place in Jerusalem, likely coinciding, they say, with the time assigned to the Babylonian destruction……….

The City of David Excavations

Arguably one of the largest excavations in Jerusalem, known popularly as the “City of David Excavations” in the Givati Parking Lot in the Tyropoeon Valley, has turned up some fascinating finds bearing on the history of the ancient city. Perhaps best known here were the excavations conducted by Doron Ben-Ami of Hebrew University and Yana Tchekhanovets of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who, since 2007, unearthed the basement of a large residential building dated to the Second Temple period — possibly the royal residence of Queen Helene, the queen who converted to Judaism; a large Roman period residential building wherein was found a gold earring inlaid with pearls and precious stones and a Roman boxer figurine weight; a Byzantine period building that yielded 264 gold coins; and evidence of later Muslim occupation, among many other finds. But it was during more recent excavations into the more ancient, Iron Age layers of the site where archaeologists Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University and Yiftah Shalev of the Israel Antiquities Authority and their team discovered the remains of what was interpreted as a large public building, showing evidence of a fiery destruction in the sixth century BCE – likely, they suggest, from the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. They uncovered stone debris, burnt wooden beams, and charred pottery shards. It had to have been a very important building, they maintain, as it featured finely cut ashlar stones and other architectural elements typical of such buildings, including a polished plaster floor. But even more intriguing was the finding of two small artifacts — a clay bulla (seal impression) and a stamp-seal featuring names in ancient Hebrew characters in a script style consistent with the 6th century BCE. During this time period, administrative officials used bullae, or small pieces of wet clay, on which to impress personal seals as official signatures for correspondence and other documents of parchment. The parchment is eventually destroyed by events or time but the clay bullae survive to be recovered by archaeologists and others in modern times. The stamp-seals, such as the incised bluish agate stone seal discovered in this excavation, were used to make bullae impressions.

According to Gadot and Shalev, “The discovery of a public building such as this, on the western slope of the City of David, provides a lot of information about the city’s structure during this period and the size of its administrative area. The destruction of this building in the fire, apparently during the Babylonian conquest of the city in 586 BCE, strengthens our understanding of the intensity of the destruction in the city.”**

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Above and below: Views of the Givati Parking Lot excavations. Deror Avi, Wikimedia Commons

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The Mount Zion Excavations

Not far from the Givati Parking Lot excavations, in an area adjacent to and below the southern Old City wall of Jerusalem, a team led by UNC Charlotte professor of history Shimon Gibson, Rafi Lewis of the Ashkelon Academic College, and James Tabor, UNC Charlotte professor of religious studies, have since 2007 conducted excavations that have revealed a layer-cake account of Jerusalem’s history revealed by artifacts and a sequence of structural remains dating back 3,000 years, from Medieval times back to the period of the Judahite monarchies hundreds of years before the time of Jesus. This excavation, in no small measure, has produced a number of remarkable finds relating to all of these time periods, including vaulted basement remains of aristocratic residential dwellings of the time of Herod the Great, a Byzantine street, and a defense ditch that was part of the fortifications encountered by the Crusaders’ campaign against Jerusalem in 1099 CE. Smaller finds included a white limestone cup dating from the first century CE, bearing an incised inscription; a first century CE plastered bathtub; and a 30-foot deep oval-shaped first century CE cistern that contained cooking pots, charcoal, evidence of burn marks, storage jars, and remains of an oven.

Most recently, however, the Mount Zion team uncovered evidence the excavation leadership suggest are evidentiary markers of the 587/586 BCE destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. The evidence includes ash deposits, arrowheads of the type used by the ancient Babylonian forces of the period, Iron Age potsherds, oil lamps typical of the period, and a gold and silver tassel or earring. They have also detected signs of “a significant Iron Age structure in the associated area”.*** Full excavation of that building, however, must await future seasons, as it still underlies remains associated with later time periods. 

But even before excavation of the building, Gibson believes the current finds are telling.

“For archaeologists, an ashen layer can mean a number of different things,” said Gibson in a report about the finds in the UNC Charlotte article, published on August 11. “It could be ashy deposits removed from ovens; or it could be localized burning of garbage. However, in this case, the combination of an ashy layer full of artifacts, mixed with arrowheads, and a very special ornament indicates some kind of devastation and destruction. Nobody abandons golden jewelry and nobody has arrowheads in their domestic refuse.”

“The arrowheads are known as ‘Scythian arrowheads’ and have been found at other archaeological conflict sites from the 7th and 6th centuries BCE,” Gibson continues. “They are known at sites outside of Israel as well. They were fairly commonplace in this period and are known to be used by the Babylonian warriors. Together, this evidence points to the historical conquest of the city by Babylon because the only major destruction we have in Jerusalem for this period is the conquest of 587/586 BCE.”***

Gibson and his colleagues hope to excavate into the associated Iron Age structure remains in a future season, shedding additional light on the time period and the event that occurred at the location.

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Overhead view of the Mount Zion excavation site. UNC Charlotte and Mt Zion Archaeological Expedition

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One of the Scythian type arrowheads found in the destruction layer from 587/586 BCE. Mt Zion Archaeological Expedition/Virginia Withers

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Earring or tassle ornament made of gold and silver from the destruction layer of 587/586 BCE. Mt Zion Archaeological Expedition/Rafi Lewis

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*2 Kings 25: 8 — 11

**Rare seal bearing biblical name found in City of David excavation, 31 Mar 2019, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/IsraelExperience/History/Pages/Rare-seal-bearing-biblical-name-found-in-City-of-David-excavation-31-March-2019.aspx#)

***Evidence of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem found in Mount Zion excavation, University of North Carolina at Charlotte news release, 11 Aug 2019.

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If you liked this article, you may like Digging into First Century Jerusalem’s Rich and Famous, an in-depth feature article about the Mount Zion excavations published previously in Popular Archaeology.

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY—The first Americans – humans who crossed onto the North American continent and then dispersed throughout Central and South America – all share common ancestry. But as they settled different areas, the populations diverged and became distinct. A new study from North Carolina State University shows that facial differences resulting from this divergence were due to the complex interaction of environment and evolution on these populations and sheds light on how human diversification occurred after settlement of the New World.

“If we want to understand variation in modern populations in Central and South America specifically, then we need to examine variation in prehistoric American populations during the formative period after they settled the continent but prior to European contact,” says Ann Ross, professor of biological sciences at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work.

In the first craniofacial variation study to look at the continent as a whole – a study 20 years in the making – Ross and co-author Douglas Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution examined skulls from across Mesoamerica and Central and South America. The skulls dated from 730 – 1630 A.D., and came from environments ranging from arid to alpine to coastal. Using a 3D digitizer, the researchers recorded standard anatomical landmarks on the skulls in order to get a consensus configuration for each population group. They compared the group configurations to determine the types of variation associated with each group.

“There’s a lot of debate as to what models modern cranial variation,” Ross says. “Mutations would insert the most variation, but they’re very rare. Adaptation to environment is another possibility, but many researchers believe variation is largely due to a neutral process such as genetic drift, which occurs when populations separate and stop exchanging genes.”

Ross and Ubelaker found that highland populations from across the region were similar to each other, as were lowland populations. But comparing highland with lowland populations showed higher variation between the two groups.

“That makes sense,” Ross says. “You probably wouldn’t travel from the mountains to the beach in order to find a mate. And we know that these groups were exchanging more than just pots.”

While those results could be attributed in part to genetic drift, the researchers also found that other factors – such as adaptations to climate and altitude – also played a role in craniofacial differentiation between populations. Ross hopes that the work can serve as a baseline for future studies.

“Population divergence is a multifactorial process, a complex interplay of factors,” Ross says. “If you want to find out why these populations diverge you have to look at multiple factors, not just genetics or DNA.”

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Cranio-facial features varied across North and South America.

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Article Source: North Carolina State University news release