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UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT—The reason that humans shifted away from hunting and gathering, and to agriculture—a much more labor-intensive process—has always been a riddle. It is only more confusing because the shift happened independently in about a dozen areas across the globe.

“A lot of evidence suggests domestication and agriculture doesn’t make much sense,” says Elic Weitzel, a Ph.D. student in UConn’s department of anthropology. “Hunter-gatherers are sometimes working fewer hours a day, their health is better, and their diets are more varied, so why would anyone switch over and start farming?”

Weitzel sought to get to the root of the shift in his new paper in American Antiquity, by looking at one area of the world, the Eastern United States.In a nutshell, he looked for evidence to support either of two popular theories.

One theory posits that in times of plenty there may have been more time to start dabbling in the domestication of plants like squash and sunflowers, the latter of which were domesticated by the native peoples of Tennessee around 4,500 years ago.

The other theory argues that domestication may have happened out of need to supplement diets when times were not as good. As the human population grew, perhaps resources shifted due to reasons such as over-exploitation of resources or a changing climate. “Was there some imbalance between resources and the human populations that lead to domestication?”

Weitzel tested both hypotheses. He did this by analyzing animal bones from the last 13,000 years and taken from a half-dozen archeological sites in northern Alabama and the Tennessee River valley, where human settlements and their detritus give clues about how they lived, including what they ate.He coupled the findings with pollen data taken from sediment cores collected from lakes and wetlands, cores that serve as a record about the types of plants present at different points in time.The findings are … mixed.

Weitzel found pollen from oak and hickory, leading to the conclusion that forests composed of those species began to dominate the region as the climate warmed, but also led to decreasing water levels in lakes and wetlands. Along with the decreasing lakes, the bone records showed a shift from diets rich in water fowl and large fishes to subsistence on smaller shellfish.

Taken together, that data provides evidence for the second hypothesis: There was some kind of imbalance between the growing human population and their resource base, effected perhaps by exploitation and also by climate change.

But Weitzel also saw support for the first hypothesis in that an abundance of oak and hickory forest supported an equally prevalent game species population. “That is what we see in the animal bone data,” says Weitzel.”Fundamentally, when times are good and there are lots of animals present, you’d expect people to hunt the prey that is most efficient,” says Weitzel. “Deer are much more efficient than squirrels for example, which are smaller, with less meat, and more difficult to catch.”

A single deer or goose can feed several people, but if over-hunted, or if the landscape changes to one less favorable for the animal population, humans must subsist on other smaller, less efficient food sources. Agriculture, despite being hard work, may have become a necessary option to supplement diet when imbalances like these occurred.

Despite the mixed results, the findings supporting domestication happening in times when there was less than an ideal amount of food is significant, says Weitzel.

“I think that the existence of declining efficiency in even one habitat type is enough to show that … domestication happening in times of plenty isn’t the best way to understand initial domestication.”The broader context of this research is important, says Weitzel, because looking to the past and seeing how these populations coped and adapted to change can help inform what we should do as today’s climate warms in the coming decades.

“Having an archaeological voice backed by this deep-time perspective in policy making is very important.”

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Wheat Field. Myrabella, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: University of Connecticut news release

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER—Artifacts such as bows and arrows do not necessarily prove our ancestors had sophisticated reasoning and understanding of how these tools worked, new research suggests.

Instead, such items could have emerged from an “accumulation of improvements made across generations” – with each generation understanding no more than the last.

The new study, by the University of Exeter and the Catholic University of Lille, does not question humanity’s capacity for “enhanced causal reasoning” – but argues this did not necessarily drive the development of technologies such as bows, boats and houses.

Researchers used “chains” of volunteers to tackle an engineering problem, with each volunteer able to learn from the last. Solutions improved with each “generation” – but those at the end of the chain had no more understanding of key concepts than their predecessors.

“We tend to explain the existence of complex technologies by saying humans have big brains and superior causal reasoning abilities,” said Dr Maxime Derex, of the University of Exeter and the Catholic University of Lille.

“But – as our study shows – you don’t have to understand how something works in order to improve it.

“Artifacts from hundreds or thousands of years ago do not necessarily show that their makers had a plan or a theory about how something would work.”

The study used 14 chains of five French university students, each aiming to optimize a wheel that rolled down a track – moving faster or slower depending on the adjustment of moveable weights on its four spokes.

Each participant had five attempts to minimize the time it took for the wheel to reach the end of the track, and all but the first participant in each chain got details of the last two configurations used by the previous person.

Afterwards, researchers tested each participant’s understanding by asking them to predict which of two wheels would cover the distance faster.

The study found: “The average wheel speed increased across generations while participants’ understanding did not.”

A further 14 chains of students completed the same process, but this time they could write down a theory to pass to the next participant.

Wheel speed rose at a similar rate as that seen in groups who passed on no written instructions, but once again understanding “barely changed across generations”.

The researchers said: “Most participants actually produced incorrect or incomplete theories despite the relative simplicity of the physical system.”

The findings prove the power of “cultural transmission, without the need for an accurate causal understanding of the system”, they said.

“Our experiment indicates that one should be cautious when interpreting complex archaeological materials as evidence for sophisticated cognitive abilities such as reasoning, problem solving or planning, since these abilities are not the sole driver of technological sophistication,” said Dr Alex Mesoudi, of the University of Exeter.

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Above and below: Artifacts such as bows and arrows do not necessarily prove our ancestors had sophisticated reasoning and understanding of how these tools worked, new research suggests. University of Exeter

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Article Source: University of Exeter news release

The project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant.

The paper, published in Nature Human Behaviour, is entitled: “Causal understanding is not necessary for the improvement of culturally evolving technology.”

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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI—Archaeologists with the University of Cincinnati used the latest technology to find evidence suggesting ancient Maya people grew surplus crops to support an active trade with neighbors up and down the Yucatan Peninsula.

They will present their findings at the annual American Association of Geographers conference in Washington, D.C.

The Mayan civilization stretched across portions of Mesoamerica, a region spanning Mexico and Central America. The oldest evidence of Maya civilization dates back to 1800 B.C., but most cities flourished between 250 and 900 A.D. By the time Spanish ships arrived in the 1500s, some of the biggest cities were deserted. Researchers at UC are trying to piece together the life history of the Maya before the Spanish conquest.

Nicholas Dunning, a professor of geography in UC’s McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, was part of a research team that found evidence of cultivation along irregular-shaped fields in Mexico that followed the paths of canals and natural water channels at a place called Laguna de Terminos on the Gulf of Mexico. The archaeologists expect to find evidence of habitation when they begin excavations.

The extensive croplands suggest the ancient Maya could grow surplus crops, especially the cotton responsible for the renowned textiles that were traded throughout Mesoamerica.

“It was a much more complex market economy than the Maya are often given credit for,” Dunning said.

Local workers brought the Laguna de Terminos site to the attention of researchers about seven years ago.

“A forester working in the area said there seemed to be a network of ancient fields,” Dunning said. “I looked on Google Earth and was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was an area in the Maya Lowlands that I’d never paid any attention to. And obviously not a lot of other people had, either, from the perspective of looking at ancient agriculture.”

Satellite images revealed a patchwork quilt of blocks along drainage ditches that suggested they were built. Archaeologist also studied imagery NASA created of the region using a tool called Light Detection and Ranging, or LIDAR, that can depict the contours of the ground beneath the leafy canopy of trees and vegetation. Their review confirmed Dunning’s suspicions: the area was covered in ancient farm fields.

“It appears they developed fairly simply from modifications of existing drainage along the eastern edge of the wetlands,” Dunning said. “They probably deepened and straightened some channels or connected them in places, but then further expanded the fields with more sophisticated hydro-engineering.”

LIDAR gives scientists a never-before-seen picture of the Earth’s surface even after centuries of unchecked jungle growth conceals the remains of ancient structures. Researchers look for telltale signs of human activity: squares and rectangles indicating old foundations and circular pits from man-made reservoirs and quarries where the chert used in stone tools was mined. On the LIDAR maps, any hidden structures pop out, including ancient roads and former villages.

“That’s the magic of LIDAR,” UC assistant research professor Christopher Carr said. Carr spent a career practicing engineering before returning to UC to study and eventually teach in the geography department. He approaches questions about the ancient Maya from an engineer’s perspective.

Carr pointed to a map of Yaxnohcah, Mexico, showing a small reservoir the ancient Maya apparently dug in a wetland far from cultivated fields or known settlements.

“What were my ancient counterparts thinking when they built that water reservoir? What did they want to accomplish?” he asked.

Carr also used the LIDAR imagery in the project to follow an ancient Maya road that perhaps hasn’t been traveled in more than 1,000 years. The road is perfectly visible on the LIDAR map but is virtually impossible to discern when you are standing right on it, Carr said.

“There’s vegetation everywhere. But when you’ve been doing this for a while, you notice little things,” Carr said. “I’ll have a LIDAR image on my smartphone that shows me where I am, but I don’t see anything but rainforest. You just walk back and forth until you can feel something underfoot and follow it.”

Identifying possible roads is important for another interest of the UC researchers: ancient Maya marketplaces. Dunning and Carr are working at Yaxnohcah with researchers such as Kathryn Reese-Taylor from the University of Calgary and Armando Anaya Hernandez from Universidad Autónoma de Campeche to unlock the mysteries of the ancient Maya economy. Additionally, they and graduate student Thomas Ruhl have been analyzing NASA’s LIDAR imagery across the Yucatan Peninsula to identify more ancient marketplaces.

Unlike pyramids or even many homes, marketplaces had no foundations or permanent structures, researchers said. They were built on low platforms or cleared areas, perhaps like a seasonal fair or flea market. But they were an important part of life in Maya culture

Dunning said the presence of roads between Maya cities would lend credence to the value the ancient Maya placed on trade with their neighbors. He thinks some of the larger squares identified on the LIDAR maps represent these open markets.

“In some areas, they have this very distinct physical signature,” Dunning said. “So far, we’ve identified several possible marketplaces. We don’t know for sure that they’re marketplaces, but they have an architectural layout that is suggestive of one.”

Soil analysis at other locations identified evidence of ancient butcher shops and stone masons. Dunning solicited the help of UC’s botanists who are conducting analyses that might shed light on his marketplace hypothesis. But the LIDAR maps themselves are instructive.

“I look at spatial patterns. If you look at these big structures and small pyramids, you can tell they’re important structures,” Carr said. “And then you have this ‘lightweight’ thing next to it. That’s what a marketplace looks like to me.”

Dunning said the ancient Maya likely sold perishable goods such as maize and a starchy tuber called manioc. And they traded “mantas,” or bolts of the ornate and richly patterned textiles made from the cotton they grew. These were prized by the Spaniards who arrived in the 1600s.

“We don’t have direct evidence of what the textiles look like in this area. But if you look at ancient paintings and sculptures, people were wearing very elaborate garments,” Dunning said.

Dunning first explored the historic sites of the Yucatan Peninsula at age 14 when he and his older brother drove down to Mexico from Illinois.

“We took a train to the Yucatan and used public transportation to get around to the sites,” Dunning said.

He applied to the University of Chicago partly because it offered a Mayan language class. Dunning returned to Mexico while in college to conduct his first field research. He’s been back many times since.

“My interest in archaeology is in human-environment interactions, including agriculture,” Dunning said.

Dunning is learning more about how ancient Maya people shaped their world to overcome challenges and take advantage of natural opportunities. Dunning’s work also took him to a place called Acalan near the Gulf of Mexico.

“Roughly translated, Acalan means ‘place of canoes’ because it’s very watery,” Dunning said. “And getting around by water is far easier than any other means in that area.”

Then as now the region is covered in thick tropical rainforest. Researchers have to be wary of cheeky monkeys that will throw fruit or worse from the treetops. Carr said one encounter left him sore for days.

“There was this aggressive spider monkey. He’d seen me a couple days earlier. And he’s back shaking the trees,” Carr said. “And all of a sudden, I’m lying flat on the ground. A branch hit me in the shoulder and knocked me to the ground.”

Visiting archaeologists at Yaxnohcah stay at a former Army outpost that was converted into a staffed research station.

“Living conditions are actually luxurious by camping standards. You’re in the field all day and you’re dirty and tired. But you can take a shower. And when you’re finished, someone has cooked you a meal,” Carr said.

At Laguna de Terminos, UC researchers are working to collect clues about the ancient Maya before they are lost to development. Many of the wetlands are being drained or plowed up for grazing pasture.

Dunning said ironically these low-yield pastures provide far less economic value to today’s farmers than the seeming bounty of crops the ancient Maya derived from them more than 1,000 years ago. Their study warns the land-use practices are causing environmental damage to some of these valuable wetlands.

“It’s a shame because the grazing isn’t particularly good. The economic production from that land use is minuscule compared to what was produced by the Maya,” Dunning said.

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UC assistant professor Christopher Carr examines an ancient quarry in Yaxnohcah, Mexico. Nicholas Dunning/UC

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University of Cincinnati student Jeff Brewer stands above UC geography professor Nicholas Dunning at an archaeological site in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Nicholas Dunning/UC

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Article Source: University of Cincinnati news release

RAS Institute of Archaeology—Researchers from the RAS Institute of Archaeology have found a burial site from 4,500 years ago, just 80 kilometers from Moscow. The find was made during building work for a new private school. Experts identified rare items such as battle-axes, spear-tips, arrows and knife blades, alongside ceramic burial vessels. Scientists believe the site had been a settlement of Fatyanovo culture, as evidenced by the eastern origins of the battle-axes and corded-ware ceramics. The find is a significant event for Russian archaeology, since no similar site has been uncovered for the past quarter-century.

“What’s special about these finds are their extreme rarity” said Dr Asya Engovatova, Deputy Director of the RAS Institute of Archaeology. “We could never hope to predict such finds. The last time a site of this kind was uncovered was twenty-five years ago – a huge interval, in scientific terms. Over the intervening period new research technologies have become available – meaning that we can analyze these artifacts at an entirely new level.”

The Fatyanovo culture is identified by archaeologists as a period of the Middle Bronze Age, whose sites are widely spread over the modern-day area of Western Russia, Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, Poland, Belarus. snd Germany. It takes its name from excavations at the village of Fatyanovo, conducted in 1873 by archaeologist Alexei Uvarov — who found the first such cemetery.

Fatyanovo sites are characterized by finds of ceramics with ‘corded’ ornamentation, and of weaponry such as battle-axes. It seems to have been a funeral tradition to inter a battle-axe in men’s burials. During the mid-3rd millenium BC, tribes of this ‘battle-axe’ culture began migrating eastwards along river valleys – either conflicting, or living peaceably with local tribes – hunters, fishermen, and gatherers – who had lived there previously, such as tribes of the Volovo culture. The Fatyanovo people were the first to first to raise cattle in the forest zones of the Russian plains, and to practice slash-and-burn agriculture, or to engage in metal-working with copper and bronze. Later, three millennia ago, the Fatyanovo people disappeared – dispersed among the tribes of the Volga & Oka intersection.

The Fatyanovo people had their own distinctive burial traditions, which depended on the gender of the deceased. Men were buried with their bodies curled on their right side, and their heads facing west – whereas women were placed on their left side, with their heads facing east. The funeral pit was strengthened with wooden planking or birch bark, or intertwisted sticks. Above, the pit was sealed with

timber planks. The burial site in Moscow County Region contained the typical funerary attributes which the Fatyanovo people chose to accompany them in the ‘afterlife’. A wedge-shaped axe of polished flint – not merely a funerary ornament, but a working tool that had practical applications. Flint arrowheads were also found in the grave, along with long sharp flint blades, apparently for use as knives. The deceased were seen off into the afterlife with ornamental vessels, decorated with the characteristic cord-pattern ornamentation of the Fatyanovo people. These vessels were not cleaned during the excavation – in case some traces of food had been left inside them.

The battle-axes found at the Moscow County Region site are fashioned from Diorite stone (Greenstone), and are a representation of bronze axes – they have the protruding rib, which, on metal blades, would be their point of contact with the mold. This kind of axe was used in battle, mostly for splitting heads – a blow from such a weapon would have been a fatal wound.

The finds retrieved from this Fatyanovo culture cemetery will form the basis for a study of the sources of this culture. “We do not have a full picture of who the Fatyanovo people were”, said Dr Asya Engovatova. “In Russia, their DNA has never been analyzed. This means that every new Fatyanovo site uncovered is a unique opportunity for researchers. If we could only recover some bone material, we could use modern DNA-extraction techniques, to find out what their origins had been”.

As the scientists carrying out the excavations admitted, the problem with researching Fatyanovo culture burials is that they are most often found in sandy soil – an environment in which bone material is poorly preserved. From the dozens of fresh samples of decayed wood and coal from the roof of the funeral chamber, radiocarbon analysis may be able to put an accurate date, for the first time, on a Fatyanovo burial site. This will bring new scientific data into play, and such a dating would enable comparisons to be made with similar Cordware Culture sites in other locations in Europe – and make a reliable basis for determining the locations of the Fatyanovo people in this wider community.

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Stone Battle-Axe, Fatyanov Culture,Bronze Age (one of the Battle-Axe and Corded Ceramics cultures), Material from a burial site at Pavlovskaya Sloboda, Moscow County Region. 535 grams. length 16 cm, made from diorite. RAS Institute of Archaeology

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Flint Spear-Heads. Lengths: 9, 9,5 cm and 13 cm. Fatyanov Culture,Bronze Age (one of the Battle-Axe and Corded Ceramics cultures), Material from a burial site at Pavlovskaya Sloboda, Moscow County Region. RAS Institute of Archaeology

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Flint Axe-Heads. Lengths: 11,14cm and 14,5cm. The taper on these axe-heads shows that they saw significant practical use. Fatyanov Culture,Bronze Age (one of the Battle-Axe and Corded Ceramics cultures), Material from a burial site at Pavlovskaya Sloboda, Moscow County Region. RAS Institute of Archaeology

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Flint Arrow-Heads, Lengths from 3.5cm to 6.7cm. It’s interesting to note the range of different kinds of arrow-head found at a single burial site. Fatyanov Culture,Bronze Age (one of the Battle-Axe and Corded Ceramics cultures), Material from a burial site at Pavlovskaya Sloboda, Moscow County Region. RAS Institute of Archaeology

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Article Source: RAS Institute of Archaeology news release

UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD—Researchers from the University of Huddersfield, with colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University of Minho in Braga, have been using a genetic approach to tackle one of the most intractable questions of all – how and when we became truly human.

Modern Homo sapiens first arose in Africa more than 300,000 years ago, but there is great controversy amongst scholars about whether the earliest such people would have been ‘just like us’ in their mental capacities – in the sense that, if they were brought up in a family from Yorkshire today, for example, would they be indistinguishable from the rest of the population? Nevertheless, archaeologists believe that people very like us were living in small communities in an Ice Age refuge on the South African coast by at least 100,000 years ago.

Between around 100,000 and 70,000 years ago, these people left plentiful evidence that they were thinking and behaving like modern humans – evidence for symbolism, such as the use of pigments (probably for body painting), drawings and engravings, shell beads, and tiny stone tools called microliths that might have been part of bows and arrows. Some of this evidence for what some archaeologists call “modern human behaviour” goes back even further, to more than 150,000 years.

But if these achievements somehow made these people special, suggesting a direct line to the people of today, the genetics of their modern “Khoi-San” descendants in southern Africa doesn’t seem to bear this out. Our genomes imply that almost all modern non-Africans from all over the world – and indeed most Africans too – are derived from a small group of people living not in South Africa but in East Africa, around 60,000-70,000 years ago. There’s been no sign so far that southern Africans contributed to the huge expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa and across the world that took place around that time.

That is, until now. The Huddersfield-Minho team of geneticists, led by Professor Martin Richards at Huddersfield and Dr Pedro Soares in Braga, along with the eminent Cambridge archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, have studied the maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA from Africans in unprecedented detail, and have identified a clear signal of a small-scale migration from South Africa to East Africa that took place at just that time, around 65,000 years ago. The signal is only evident today in the mitochondrial DNA. In the rest of the genome, it seems to have been eroded away to nothing by recombination – the reshuffling of chromosomal genes between parents every generation, which doesn’t affect the mitochondrial DNA – in the intervening millennia.

The migration signal makes good sense in terms of climate. For most of the last few hundred years, different parts of Africa have been out of step with each other in terms of the aridity of the climate. Only for a brief period at 60,000-70,000 years ago was there a window during which the continent as a whole experienced sufficient moisture to open up a corridor between the south and the east. And intriguingly, it was around 65,000 years ago that some of the signs of symbolism and technological complexity seen earlier in South Africa start to appear in the east.

The identification of this signal opens up the possibility that a migration of a small group of people from South Africa towards the east around 65,000 years ago transmitted aspects of their sophisticated modern human culture to people in East Africa. Those East African people were biologically little different from the South Africans – they were all modern Homo sapiens, their brains were just as advanced and they were undoubtedly cognitively ready to receive the benefits of the new ideas and upgrade. But the way it happened might not have been so very different from a modern isolated stone-age culture encountering and embracing western civilization today.

In any case, it looks as if something happened when the groups from the South encountered the East, with the upshot being the greatest diaspora of Homo sapiens ever known – both throughout Africa and out of Africa to settle much of Eurasia and as far as Australia within the space of only a few thousand years.

Professor Mellars commented: “This work shows that the combination of genetics and archaeology working together can lead to significant advances in our understanding of the origins of Homo sapiens.”

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Map showing early African archaeological sites with evidence for symbolic material and microlithic stone tools. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli

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Article Source: University of Huddersfield news release

* The article, A dispersal of Homo sapiens from southern to eastern Africa immediately preceded the out-of-Africa migration, can be found online in Scientific Reports.

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PLOS—People from North Africa are likely the main group that founded the indigenous population on the Canary Islands, arriving by 1000 CE, reports a new study by Rosa Fregel of Stanford University, USA and Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, and colleagues, published March 20, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Numerous studies of the culture and genetics of indigenous people living in the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Morocco, point to North African Berbers as the founders, but more recent human activities – such as the Spanish conquest, the start of sugarcane plantations and the slave trade – have changed the indigenous population’s genetic makeup. To shed light on who first colonized the archipelago, researchers analyzed 48 ancient mitochondrial genomes from 25 archaeological sites across the seven main islands. They selected mitochondrial genomes because, since they are inherited directly from the mother, they are especially consistent and useful for tracking human migrations.

The researchers discovered lineages that have only been observed in Central North Africa, and others that have a wider distribution including both West and Central North Africa, and, in some cases, Europe and the Near East. They also identified four new lineages specific to the Canary Islands, which, when analyzed together, are consistent with radiocarbon dating evidence showing that people reached the islands by 1000 CE. Additionally, the researchers found that the distribution of the different lineages on each island varies depending on the island’s distance from the continent, which supports previous studies finding that the islands experienced at least two distinct early migration events.

The Canary Islands lineages discovered in this study fit into a larger pattern of Mediterranean migration through North Africa, as part of the Neolithic expansion of humans from the Middle East to Europe and Africa. The presence of these Mediterranean lineages suggests that the Berbers had already mixed with Mediterranean groups at the time that they colonized the islands.

The authors add: “Using next-generation techniques, we have been able to obtain ancient DNA of the indigenous population of all the seven Canary Islands for the first time. Our results indicate that mitochondrial DNA diversity is variable within the archipelago, suggesting that the colonization of the islands was a heterogeneous process and that the different islands had different evolutionary histories.”

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Guanche mummy of a woman (830 AD). Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Wofgang Sauber

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Fregel R, Ordóñez AC, Santana-Cabrera J, Cabrera VM, Velasco-Vázquez J, Alberto V, et al. (2019) Mitogenomes illuminate the origin and migration patterns of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0209125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209125

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (March 19, 2019) – This winter the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation launches a multi-year archaeological investigation at the site of John Custis IV’s city home and gardens, known as Custis Square, promising new findings about the life of the eccentric politician, planter and first father-in-law to Martha Washington, the enslaved people living on the site, and early 18th-century horticulture.

The Custis Square project is expected to create 10 multi-year archaeology positions in the foundation. A generous lead gift from the Jacqueline Badger Mars Landmark Investments 8, LLC Charitable Lead Trust is helping to make the Custis archaeology project possible.

“More than 90 years after its establishment, Colonial Williamsburg continues to pursue a fuller understanding of 18th-century America, its people and their culture in order to tell our shared American story more fully,” said Colonial Williamsburg President and CEO Mitchell B. Reiss. “We are enormously grateful for the generous gift that has launched the Custis Square project, and we look forward to sharing both our work and our findings with visitors of all ages.”

Custis lived from 1678 until 1749, leading a prosperous family that first settled on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in the mid-17th century. After his turbulent marriage to Frances Parke Custis ended with her death of smallpox in 1715, he moved to the colony’s capital of Williamsburg. There, he served as a member of the royal Governor’s Council, immersed himself in horticulture and constructed an elaborate garden on his four-acre property. Custis Square was maintained by some of his enslaved laborers, who at the time of his death numbered nearly 200, most of whom worked on his four plantations outside the city.

“The shared history we interpret at Colonial Williamsburg is not static. It grows daily, enhanced by the research of our team and our peers,” said Colonial Williamsburg Director of Archaeology Jack Gary. “Our new investigation of Custis Square is thrilling both in scale and subject matter, given all we stand to learn about the people who lived and worked on this ground early in an era of political and scientific enlightenment.”

As a young man, John Custis IV studied trade in England and likely observed formal gardens that fostered his hobby. Back in Virginia, records show that he ordered a range of plants through agents in England and corresponded with prominent naturalists including Peter Collinson, Mark Catesby and Jon Bartram, who placed his garden among the finest in the colony.

Frances Parke and John Custis IV’s son, Daniel Parke Custis, married Martha Dandridge in 1750 and died suddenly in 1757. Martha Dandridge Custis may have lived at the family’s Williamsburg home after his death and until her remarriage in 1759 to George Washington.

Like other prominent Virginians, John Custis IV lamented slavery but did not free his own enslaved. With one of them, Alice, as a 61-year-old widower he fathered a son named John whom he affectionately called “my boy Jack.” John Custis IV successfully petitioned the colony’s governor and council for Jack’s freedom, deeded him land in York County and enslaved persons including his own mother and her other children, and willed him construction of a furnished home. Jack, however, died in 1751 just two years after his father.

Often combative, John Custis IV fell out with Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood after Spotswood cut down trees on his property to enhance his view from the new Governor’s Palace. John Custis IV’s volatile relationship with his wife – and his personality – are memorialized on his Eastern Shore grave, which reads, “Yet lived but Seven years which was the Space of time he kept a Batchelors House at Arlington on the Eastern Shoar of Virginia.”

In the decades immediately following John Custis IV’s death, Custis Square housed residential and trade tenants. The structure that stands on the site, though known as the “Custis Kitchen,” was built in the early 19th century during the property’s ownership by Dr. James McClurg. The property was purchased in 1851 and partially built upon by the current Eastern State Hospital, later used as a park and purchased by Colonial Williamsburg in 1966.

Partial site excavation in 1964. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Partial excavations in the 1960s uncovered the foundations of the property’s residence, which is believed to have been a six-chimney building in the Jacobean style of Bacon’s Castle in Surry County, as well as an older kitchen, a smokehouse, a brick drain, two wells and a road extending south from the structures. The new investigation is broader in scope and will benefit from advancements in methodology and technology, including remote sensing and materials analysis.

The Custis Square project’s areas of investigation include:

• The flora and aesthetic of John Custis IV’s gardens
• Evidence of residential structures that housed the enslaved
• Identification of John Custis IV’s enslaved and their descendants
• The appearance of John Custis IV’s residence
• Evidence of pre-historic occupation
• Activity on the site through the 20th century

Custis Square on Francis Street between S. Nassau Street and the Colonial Parkway with investigation area highlighted in red. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

The project’s phases include:

• Site mapping and surveying; excavation of the McClurg Kitchen (2019)
• Open excavation of garden areas, materials analysis and research of John Custis IV’s enslaved to identify potential descendants (2020-21)
• Open excavation of outbuildings focused on the lives and work of the enslaved (2022-23)
• Cataloging and reporting (2024-25)

Custis Square currently serves as a grazing pasture for Colonial Williamsburg Coach and Livestock Department animals, opposite S. Nassau Street from the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, which remain open during a $41.7-million expansion scheduled for completion in spring 2020 with a new, dedicated entrance on S. Nassau Street. Colonial Williamsburg also plans construction of a new, public archaeological collections building to house the more than 60 million archaeological artifacts in its collection – a project possible thanks to a generous gift by Mars’ late brother, Forrest Mars Jr.

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John Custis IV, attributed to Charles Bridges, oil on canvas, ca. 1740. Courtesy of Washington and Lee University, University Collections of Art and History, Lexington, Virginia

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Article Source: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation news release

Colonial Williamsburg will share updates and findings on its Making History blog at colonialwilliamsburg.com/archaeology. Information is also available by following Colonial Williamsburg on Facebook and @colonialwmsburg on Twitter and Instagram.

Admission tickets and additional information about Colonial Williamsburg sites and programming are available atcolonialwilliamsburg.com or by calling 855-296-6627 toll-free. Information is also available via the free Colonial Williamsburg Explorer app, which can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK—Guinness World Records have independently certified an astrolabe excavated from the wreck site of a Portuguese Armada Ship that was part of Vasco da Gama’s second voyage to India in 1502-1503 as the oldest in the world, and have separately certified a ship’s bell (dated 1498) recovered from the same wreck site also as the oldest in the world.

The scientific process of verifying the disc as an astrolabe by laser imaging is described in a paper* published today by Mearns and Jason Warnett and Mark Williams of WMG at the University of Warwick in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

The Sodré astrolabe has made it into the Guinness Book of world records and is believed to have been made between 1496 and 1501, unique in comparison to all other mariner’s astrolabes.

Mariner’s Astrolabes were used for navigating at sea by early explorers, most notably the Portuguese and Spanish.

They are considered to be the rarest and most prized of artifacts to be found on ancient shipwrecks and only 104 examples are known to exist in the world.

They were first used at sea on a Portuguese voyages down the west coast of Africa in 1481. Thereafter, astrolabes were relied on for navigation during the most important explorations of the late 15th century, including those led by Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama.

It is the only solid disk type astrolabe with a verifiable provenance and the only specimen decorated with a national symbol: the royal coat of arms of Portugal.

As the earliest verifiable mariner’s astrolabe it fills a chronological gap in the development of these iconic instruments and is believed to be a transitional instrument between the classic planispheric astrolabe and the open-wheel type astrolabe that came into use sometime before 1517.

The thin 175 mm diameter disk weighing 344 grams was analyzed by a team from WMG who travelled to Muscat, Oman in November 2016 to collect laser scans of a selection of the most important artifacts recovered from the wreck site.

Using a portable 7-axis Nikon laser scanner, capable of collecting over 50,000 points per second at an accuracy of 60 microns, a 3D virtual model of the artifact was created.

Analysis of the results revealed a series of 18 scale marks spaced at uniform intervals along the limb of the disk.

Further analysis by WMG engineers showed that the spacing of the scale marks was equivalent to 5-degree intervals. This was critical evidence that allowed independent experts at Texas A&M University to include the disk in their global inventory as the earliest known mariner’s astrolabe discovered to date.

Prof Mark Williams from WMG, University of Warwick comments:

“Using this 3D scanning technology has enabled us to confirm the identity of the earliest known astrolabe, from this historians and scientists can determine more about history and how ships navigated.

Technology like this betters our understanding of how the disc would have worked back in the 15th century. Using technology normally applied within engineering projects to help shed insight into such a valuable artifact was a real privilege”

David Mearns of Blue Water Recoveries Ltd comments:

“Without the laser scanning work performed by WMG we would never have known that the scale marks, which were invisible to the naked eye, existed. Their analysis proved beyond doubt that the disk was a mariner’s astrolabe. This has allowed us to confidently place the Sodré astrolabe in its correct chronological position and propose it to be an important transitional instrument.”

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Guinness World Records have independently certified an astrolabe excavated from the wreck site of a Portuguese Armada Ship that was part of Vasco da Gama’s second voyage to India in 1502-1503 as the oldest in the world, and have separately certified a ship’s bell (dated 1498) recovered from the same wreck site also as the oldest in the world. David Mearns

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The astrolabe in situ. David Mearns

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Image produced from laser scans of the astrolabe. David Mearns & The University of Warwick

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Article Source: University of Warwick news release

*David L. Mearns  Jason M. Warnett,  Mark A. Williams, An Early Portuguese Mariner’s Astrolabe from the Sodré Wreck‐site, Al Hallaniyah, Oman

Using ancient DNA recovered from over 270 Iberians representing an unprecedented timespan, researchers including David Reich have pieced together an 8,000-year-long genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula. In addition to revealing key events that shaped Iberia’s ancient populations, the study also demonstrates the potential for high-resolution ancient DNA records that extend from prehistoric to the present to provide detailed information about the formation of a region’s contemporary populations. The study of ancient DNA provides a glimpse into the movements and migrations of ancient peoples as evidenced by the genetic legacies left behind. The Iberian Peninsula, the region encompassing what is now Spain and Portugal, is situated between North Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean. With its long history of interaction with surrounding regions, Iberia provides an ideal opportunity to study the genetic impact of migrations into the European continent from the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, according to the authors. Iñigo Olalde and colleagues assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, from locations throughout Spain, to create a comprehensive chronology of gene flow into and throughout the region spanning nearly 8,000 years. Olalde et al.extracted the ancient DNA from archaeological human remains previously recovered from a variety of contexts – including a pair of brothers interred together in a mountain-side cave nearly 7,000 years ago. According to the results of their various analyses, the population structure of the region’s Mesolithic hunter-gatherers was much more complex than previously thought. The authors also unexpectedly identified early, albeit limited, interaction with North Africa by approximately 2,500 BCE. The results further revealed the tremendous impact of immigrations of people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to the east; by about 2,000 BCE, nearly 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of the local male population was replaced by people with Steppe ancestry. Interestingly, genetic data combined with linguistics reveal that present-day Basques, who show a large amount of Steppe ancestry, lack evidence of the later admixture events that shaped the rest of Iberia. In a related Perspective, Marc Vander Linden discusses the contentious role of genetics-based methodologies in archaeological research and offers transdisciplinary suggestions on how it can be best implemented. “Like any other revolution, ancient DNA’s legacy will not only be measured in light of technological developments, but by its ability to generate meaningful results, including but not limited to admixture events as those documented by Olalde et al.,” writes Linden. 

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La Braña 1 and 2 Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (Leon, Spain), found to be brothers. Julio Manuel Vidal Encinas

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Cariguela Mesolithic mandible, arguably the oldest remain with DNA from Southern Iberia. Archivo fotografico Museo Arqueol6gico de Granada

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A burial (male with steppe ancestry and female without) illustrating the Bronze Age turnover. Luis Benitez de Lugo Enrich – Jose Luis Fuentes Sanchez (Oppida)

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A site from Ciudad Real with contemporaneous people with and without steppe ancestry. Luis Benitez de Lugo Enrich – Jose Luis Fuentes Sanchez (Oppida)

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Some of the Iberian individuals studied come from heads being nailed to house fronts. Credit: Archivo Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya

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Grave good in a Visigothic burial with Eastern European affinities and Asian mtDNA lineage. Universitat de Girona

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lslamic burials from Valencia; the bodies are facing South, where Mecca was supposed to be. Guillermo Pascual Berlanga

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Copper Age male (I4246) from Camino de las Yeseras (Madrid, Spain) with North African origin. Miguel Rodriguez Cifuentes

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This research appears in the 15 March 2019 issue of Science.

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

Contradicting the theory that the range of human sounds has remained fixed throughout human history, a new study reports that sounds such as “f” and “v”, both common in many modern languages, are a relatively recent development – one brought about by diet-induced changes in the human bite. These changes resulted in new sounds in languages all over the world, the study reports. The researchers say their work reveals how the influence of biological conditions on the development of sounds has been underestimated. Human speech is incredibly diverse, ranging from ubiquitous sounds like “m” and “a” to the rare click consonants in some languages of Southern Africa. However, this range of sounds is generally thought to have been established with the emergence of the Homo sapiensaround 300,000 years ago – independent of any changes in human biology after that time. Inspired by an observation made by linguist Charles Hockett in 1985, that languages that foster sounds like “f” and “v” are often found in societies with access to softer foods, Damian Blasi and colleagues undertook a detailed interdisciplinary investigation of how speech sounds were shaped by changes in human bite as diet changed, particularly as humans transitioned away from hunting and gathering. Through efforts including detailed biomechanical simulations of different human orofacial structures, Blasi and colleagues showed that a shift in adult tooth structure that kept adult’s upper teeth slightly more in front as compared to the lower teeth – a shift that correlated with the rise of food processing technology such as industrial milling – led to the rise of a new class of speech sounds. This class of sounds, now found in half of the world’s languages, is known as labiodentals – or sounds made by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth, for example when pronouncing the letter “f”. Use of labiodentals increased dramatically only in recent millennia, the authors say, following the development of agriculture. The researchers say their findings suggest language is shaped by culturally-induced changes in human biology to a previously underrecognized extent. 

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The difference between a Paleolithic edge-to-edge bite (left) and a modern overbite/overjet bite (right).
Tímea Bodogán

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Biomechanical model of producing an “f” sound with an overbite/overjet (left) vs an edge-to-edge bit
(right). Scott Moisik

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Increasing probability of labiodentals in the Indo-European language family. Balthasar Bickel

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This research appears in the 15 March 2019 issue of Science.

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

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY—Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of the earliest large-scale celebrations in Britain – with people and animals traveling hundreds of miles for prehistoric feasting rituals.

The study, led by Dr Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University, is the most comprehensive to date and examined the bones of 131 pigs, the prime feasting animals, from four Late Neolithic (c. 2800-2400BC) complexes. Serving the world-famous monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, the four sites – Durrington Walls, Marden, Mount Pleasant and West Kennet Palisade Enclosures – hosted the very first pan-British events, feasts that drew people and animals from across Britain.

The results show pig bones excavated from these sites were from animals raised as far away as Scotland, North East England and West Wales, as well as numerous other locations across the British Isles. The researchers believe it may have been important for those attending to contribute animals raised locally at their homes.

Before now, the origins of people that took part in rituals at these megalithic monuments and the extent of the population’s movements at the time have been long-standing enigmas in British prehistory.

Dr Richard Madgwick, of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: “This study demonstrates a scale of movement and level of social complexity not previously appreciated.”

“These gatherings could be seen as the first united cultural events of our island, with people from all corners of Britain descending on the areas around Stonehenge to feast on food that had been specially reared and transported from their homes.”

Representing great feats of engineering and labour mobilization, the Neolithic henge complexes of southern Britain were the focal point for great gatherings in the third millennium BC. Pigs were the prime animal used in feasting and they provide the best indication of where the people who feasted at these sites came from as almost no human remains have been recovered.

Using isotope analysis, which identifies chemical signals from the food and water that animals have consumed, the researchers were able to determine geographical areas where the pigs were raised. The study offers the most detailed picture yet of the degree of mobility across Britain at the time of Stonehenge.

Dr Madgwick said: “Arguably the most startling finding is the efforts that participants invested in contributing pigs that they themselves had raised. Procuring them in the vicinity of the feasting sites would have been relatively easy.

“Pigs are not nearly as well-suited to movement over distance as cattle and transporting them, either slaughtered or on the hoof, over hundreds or even tens of kilometers, would have required a monumental effort.

“This suggests that prescribed contributions were required and that rules dictated that offered pigs must be raised by the feasting participants, accompanying them on their journey, rather than being acquired locally.”

Dr Madgwick conducted the research in collaboration with colleagues at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University, along with scientists from the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory at the British Geological Survey, University of Sheffield and University College London. The project was funded by the British Academy as part of a post-doctoral fellowship and was supported by a NERC Isotope Geosciences Facility Steering Committee grant.

The study, ‘Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain’, funded by the British Academy and NERC is published in Science Advances.

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Weighing collagen from Neolithic pigs for isotope analysis. Cardiff University

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Article Source: Cardiff University and ScienceAdvances news release

EMORY HEALTH SCIENCES—Anthropologists have long made the case that tool-making is one of the key behaviors that separated our human ancestors from other primates. A new paper, however, argues that it was not tool-making that set hominins apart—it was the miniaturization of tools.

Just as tiny transistors transformed telecommunications a few decades ago, and scientists are now challenged to make them even smaller, our Stone Age ancestors felt the urge to make tiny tools. “It’s a need that we’ve been perennially faced with and driven by,” says Justin Pargeter, an anthropologist at Emory University and lead author of the paper. “Miniaturization is the thing that we do.”

The journal Evolutionary Anthropology is publishing the paper —the first comprehensive overview of prehistoric tool miniaturization. It proposes that miniaturization is a central tendency in hominin technologies going back at least 2.6 million years.

“When other apes used stone tools, they chose to go big and stayed in the forests where they evolved,” says co-author John Shea, professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University. “Hominins chose to go small, went everywhere, and transformed otherwise hostile habitats to suit our changing needs.”

The paper reviews how stone flakes less than an inch in length—used for piercing, cutting and scraping—pop up in the archeological record at sites on every continent, going back to some of the earliest known stone tool assemblages. These small stone flakes, Pargeter says, were like the disposable razor blades or paperclips of today—pervasive, easy to make and easily replaced.

He identifies three inflection points for miniaturization in hominin evolution. The first spike occurred around two million years ago, driven by our ancestors’ increasing dependence on stone flakes in place of nails and teeth for cutting, slicing and piercing tasks. A second spike occurred sometime after 100,000 years ago with the development of high-speed weaponry, such as the bow and arrow, which required light-weight stone inserts. A third spike in miniaturization occurred about 17,000 years ago. The last Ice Age was ending, forcing some humans to adapt to rapid climate change, rising sea levels and increased population densities. These changes increased the need to conserve resources, including the rocks and minerals needed to make tools.

A native of South Africa, Pargeter co-directs field work in that country along its rugged and remote Indian Ocean coastline and nearby inland mountains. He is also a post-doctoral fellow in Emory University’s Center for Mind, Brain and Culture and the Department of Anthropology’s Paleolithic Technology Laboratory. The lab members actually make stone tools to better understand how our ancestors learned these skills, and how that process shaped our evolution. The lab’s director, Dietrich Stout, focuses on hand axes, dating back more than 500,000 years. These larger tools are considered a turning point in human biological and cognitive evolution, due to the complexity involved in making them.

Pargeter’s work on tiny tools adds another facet to the investigation of human evolution. “He’s exploring what may have led to the compulsion to produce these tiny instruments—essentially the relationship between the tools and the human body, brain and the probable uses of the tools,” Stout says.

When looking for a PhD thesis topic, Pargeter first focused on collections of larger implements, considered typical of the Stone Age tool kit. He pored over artifacts from a South African site called Boomplaas that were being held in storage at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town. As he rummaged through a bag labelled as waste—containing small flakes thought to be left over from making larger tools—something caught his eye. A sliver of crystal quartz looked like it had been shaped using a highly technical method called pressure flaking.

“It was diminutive, about the size of a small raisin, and weighed less than half a penny,” he recalls. “You could literally blow it off your finger.”

Pargeter examined the flake under a magnifying glass. He noticed it had a distinctive, stair-step fracture on its tip that previous experimental research showed to be associated with damage caused in hunting.

“It suddenly occurred to me that archeologists may have missed a major component of our stone tool record,” Pargeter says. “In our desire to make ‘big’ discoveries we may have overlooked tiny, but important, details. A whole technology could lay hidden behind our methods, relegated to bags considered waste material.”

So how to interpret the use of a tool so tiny that you could easily blow it off your finger?

Pargeter began thinking of this question in terms of the age of the flake—about 17,000 years ago—and the environment at the time. The last Ice Age was ending and massive melting of ice at the poles caused the global sea-level to rise. In parts of South Africa, the rising oceans swallowed an area the size of Ireland. As the coastal marshes and grasslands disappeared—along with much of the game and aquatic life—the hunter-gatherers living there fled inland to sites like Boomplaas, currently located about 80 kilometers inland. The mountains around Boomplaas provided permanent springs and other dependable freshwater sources.

The climate, however, was less predictable, with sudden shifts in temperature and rainfall. Vegetation was shifting dramatically, temperatures were rising and large mammals were increasingly scarce. Archaeology from Boomplaas shows that people ate small game like hares and tortoises. These small animals would have been easy to catch, but they provided limited nutritional packages.

“These are low-reward food sources, indicating a foraging stress signal,” Pargeter says. “Boomplaas might have even served as a type of refugee camp, with groups of hunter-gatherers moving away from the coast, trying to survive in marginal environments as resources rapidly depleted and climate change ratcheted up.”

Arrow points a little less than an inch across were already in the archaeological literature, but the Boomplaas crystal quartz flake was half that size. In order to bring down an animal, Pargeter hypothesized, the Boomplaas flake would need poison on its tip—derived either from plants or insects—and a high-speed delivery system, such as a bow and arrow.

Pargeter used his own extensive knowledge of prehistoric tool-making and archaeology to hypothesize that the tiny flake could have been hafted, using a plant-based resin, onto a link shaft, also likely made of a plant-based material, such as a reed. That link shaft, about the length of a finger, would in turn fit onto a light arrow shaft.

“The link shaft goes into the animal, sacrificing the small blade, but the arrow shaft pops out so you can retain this more costly component,” he says. “Our ancestors were masters of aerodynamics and acted like engineers, rather than what we think of as ‘cave people.’ They built redundancy into their technological systems, allowing them to easily repair their tools and to reduce the impact of errors.”

Our ancestors were also connoisseurs of the type of fine-grained rocks needed for tool-making.

Supplies of such vital toolmaking raw materials, however, were likely diminished as the rising oceans consumed land and people became more crowded together, driving them to more carefully conserve what they could find on the landscape.

As paleoanthropologists are faced with more than three million years of hominin “stuff,” one of the perennial questions they keep seeking to answer is, what makes us humans unique? “We’ve typically said that tool use makes us human, but that’s kind of buckled under,” Pargeter says, as evidence of tool use by other animals accumulates.

Macaques, for example, use rocks to smash apart oysters. Chimpanzees use rocks as hammers and anvils to crack nuts and they modify sticks to dig and fish for termites. These tools, however, are large. “The hands of other primates are not evolved for repeated fine manipulation in high-force tasks,” Pargeter says. “We’ve evolved a unique precision grip that ratchets up our ability for miniaturized technology.”

Humans are also the masters of dispersing into novel environments, unlike other primates that remained in the landscapes of their ancestors. “Smaller tools are the choice of technology for a mobile, dispersing population,” Pargeter says. “When Homo sapiens left Africa they weren’t carrying bulky hand axes, but bows and arrows and smaller stone implements.”

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The iconic, tear-drop shaped hand axe, which filled a human palm, required a large toolkit to produce (left), in contrast to a toolkit for tiny flakes. Emory University

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The tiny crystal flake, from a site in South Africa called Boomplaas, that sparked Justin Pargeter to investigate Stone Age miniaturization. Justin Pargeter

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Article Source: Emory Health Sciences 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 BARCELONA—It is not very common to find representations of scenes instead of individual figures in Palaeolithic art, but it is even harder for these figures to be birds instead of mammals such as goats, deer or horses. So far, historians have only found three scenes of Palaeolithic art featuring humans and birds in Europe.

Now, an article published in the journal L’Anthropologie tells how University of Barcelona researchers found -in the site of Hort de la Bequera (Margalef de Montsant, Priorat)-, an artistic piece from 12,500 years ago in which humans and birds try to interact in a pictorial scene with exceptional traits: figures seem to star a narration on hunting and motherhood. Regarding the Catalan context in particular, this is an important finding regarding the few pieces of Palaeolithic art in Catalonia and it places this territory within the stream of artistic production of the upper Palaeolithic in the Mediterranean.

The piece they found is a 30-centimeter long limestone which shows two human figures and two birds, which the researchers identified as cranes. Since they found the piece in 2011, they underwent all cleaning, restoration and 3D copying procedures to study it in detail. Those figures were engraved in the stone board with a flint tool so that they created an organized composition compared to the other pieces of the same period.

“This is one of the few found scenes so far which suggest the birth of a narrative art in Europe, and this theme is unique, since it combines an image of hunting and a motherhood one: a birth with its young one”, says the first signer of the article, ICREA researcher and lecturer at the UB Inés Domingo. “In the represented scene the birds catch the attention, they are copied or chased by two human figures”, continues Domingo. “We do not know the meaning of the scene for prehistoric peoples, but what it says is that not only they were regarded as preys but also as a symbol for European Palaeolithic societies”, she continues.

“We do not doubt this is an exceptional milestone in European Palaeolithic rock art due its singularity, its excellent conservation and the chances to study it within a general context of excavation”, say the authors of the article; members of the Prehistoric Studies and Research Seminar (SERP). Apart from Domingo, other signers are the UB lecturers of Prehistory Pilar García Argüelles, Jordi Nadal, directors of the excavation in Host de la Boquera, Professor Josep Maria Fullola, director of SERP, and José L. Lerma and the researcher Miriam Cabrelles, from Universitat Politècnica de València, who worked on the 3D reproduction of this piece.

Palaeolithic art in Montsant valley

The other sites in Europe researchers had found so far with human and bird figures are rock paintings in the site of Lascauz, a perforated baton in Abri Mege (Teyjat, Dordogne), and the Great Hunter plaque in the site of Gönnersdorf (Germany).

SERP researchers have been excavating in the valley of Montsant since 1979, an exceptional area regarding findings of this period of the late upper Palaeolithic. In particular, excavations have taken place in Host de la Boquera since 1998 and it provided a great amount of flint tools and structure such as rooms for a fireplace.

The director of the excavation, Pilar García Argüelles notes that “the findings of the engraved scene are exceptional, and proves the importance of the site and the area regarding Palaeolithic art in the peninsular north-east area; where we can find nearby the only Palaeolithic cave engraving in Catalonia, the deer in the cave of Taverna (Margalef de Montsant), and about 40 kilometres away there is Molí del Salt (Vimbodí), with an interesting series of stone blocks with engraved animals and a representation of huts”.

The first to identify the engraving was the co-director of the excavation, Jordi Nadal, who remembers that moment with excitement: “Since the first moment I was aware of the importance of this finding, of its uniqueness; these things do not happen very often, this is seeing a figure that has been forgotten and buried for 12,500 years”.

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Image of the findings with a tracing of the engraved figures on the piece. UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

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Article Source: University of Barcelona news release

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Chimpanzees exhibit exceptionally high levels of behavioral diversity compared to all other non-human species. This diversity has been documented in a variety of contexts, including the extraction of food resources, communication and thermoregulation. Many of these behaviors are assumed to be socially learned and group-specific, supporting the existence of chimpanzee cultures. As all other great apes, chimpanzees have come under enormous pressure by human activities, leading to a change of the natural environment. Their prime habitat, tropical rainforests and savanna woodlands, are increasingly converted to agricultural farmland, plantations and settlements, or otherwise degraded by the extraction of natural resources and infrastructure development.

Much of the empirical work and resulting debate on the loss of wildlife biodiversity has been conducted in the context of species decline or loss of genetic diversity and ecosystem functions. However, behavioral diversity is also a facet of biodiversity. Due to limited empirical data, until now it had been unclear whether behavioral diversity would similarly be negatively affected by human impact.

Data from 15 countries

An international research team, led by Hjalmar Kühl and Ammie Kalan of the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), compiled an unprecedented dataset on 31 chimpanzee behaviors across 144 social groups or communities, located throughout the entire geographic range of wild chimpanzees. Whereas part of this information was already available in the scientific literature, the international research team also conducted extensive field work at 46 locations, as part of the Pan African Programme, across 15 chimpanzee range countries over the last nine years. The particular set of behaviors considered in this study included the extraction and consumption of termites, ants, algae, nuts and honey; the use of tools for hunting or digging for tubers, and the use of stones, pools and caves among several others.

The occurrence of behaviors at a given site was investigated with respect to an aggregate measure of human impact. This measure integrates multiple levels of human impact, including human population density, roads, rivers and forest cover, all indicators for the level of disturbance and the degree of land cover change found in chimpanzee habitats. “The analysis revealed a strong and robust pattern: chimpanzees had reduced behavioral diversity at sites where human impact was high”, explains Kalan, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “This pattern was consistent, independent of the grouping or categorization of behaviors. On average, chimpanzee behavioral diversity was reduced by 88 percent when human impact was highest compared to locations with the least human impact.”

Potential mechanisms for loss of behaviors

As is known for humans, population size plays a major role in maintaining cultural traits and a similar mechanism may function in chimpanzees. Chimpanzees may also avoid conspicuous behaviors that inform hunters about their presence, such as nut cracking. Habitat degradation and resource depletion may also reduce opportunities for social learning and thus prevent the transfer of local traditions from one generation to the next. Lastly, climate change may also be important, as it may influence the production of important food resources and make their availability unpredictable. Very likely a combination of these potential mechanisms has caused the observed reduction in chimpanzee behavioral diversity.

“Our findings suggest that strategies for the conservation of biodiversity should be extended to include the protection of animal behavioral diversity as well”, says Kühl, an ecologist at the iDiv research center and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. “Locations with exceptional sets of behaviors may be protected as ‘Chimpanzee cultural heritage sites’ and this concept can be extended to other species with high degree of cultural variability as well, including orangutans, capuchin monkeys or whales.” These propositions are in accordance with existing biodiversity conservation efforts, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, of the United Nations Environment Programme, which calls for the protection of biological diversity in its entirety, including behavioral diversity of culturally rich wildlife.

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Male chimpanzees of the Rekambo community groom one another at Loango National Parl, Gabon. © Tobias Deschner/Loango Chimpanzee Project

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Chimpanzees in the Taï forest of Côte d’Ivoire crack nuts with a stone hammer. © Liran Samuni/Taï Chimpanzee Project

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release

Popular Archaeology will be hosting a group visit to a chimpanzee sanctuary in Kenya in July of 2020. This will be part of a broader trip to visit human origins sites. See below for more information.

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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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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—By re-dating giant ground sloth remains found in the Argentinian Pampas region using more advanced technology, scientists say they have provided evidence that humans hunted and butchered this animal near a swamp during the end of the Pleistocene. Based on their radiocarbon dates of this specimen, the authors say that their report challenges the popular hypothesis that mega-mammals from South America survived well into the Holocene in the Pampas, instead suggesting they took their last breaths in the Pleistocene. Loss of up to 90% of large animal species on ice-free continents occurred during the end of the Pleistocene, and many megafauna went extinct. To date, studies have suggested that humans and/or climate-driven events could be to blame for megafauna loss, but the causes and dynamics of megafauna extinction are hard to determine, and direct evidence of human predation on megafauna is scarce. The Argentinian archeological site Campo Laborde has produced many megafauna fossils, but accurate radiocarbon dating has been difficult on these bones because the fossils have very little collagen, making it hard to extract. Dating is also challenging because the collagen is heavily contaminated with sedimentary organic matter. To overcome this contamination, Gustavo G. Politis and colleagues thought to apply XAD purification chemistry, which can isolate the amino acids in a bone’s collagen, resulting in a more accurate radiocarbon date, they say. Only one bone from a giant ground sloth found at Campo Laborde contained collagen. This specimen was first dated in 2007 as being around 9,730 years of age (pegging it to the Holocene, which began around 11,650 years ago). Using accelerator mass spectrometry to radiocarbon date the amino acids of the specimen, Politis determined that the giant ground sloth bone better dated to around 10,570 years of age, plus or minus 170 years. According to the authors, contaminated collagen was the reason for the previous “younger” (Holocene) dates. In addition to the previously discovered lithic artifacts that were found around the giant ground slot and dated to around 11,800 and 10,000 years before present, this study “solidly dates” the killing and exploitation of the giant ground sloth to the late Pleistocene and does not support extinct mega-mammals surviving into the Holocene at Campo Laborde, the authors say.

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Lithic tool associated with giant ground sloth bones. Gustavo Politis and Pablo Messineo

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Article Source: AAAS news release

By examining new collections of fossilized leporids – a family of animals that include rabbits and hares – at various sites in the northwestern Mediterranean, scientists have provided some of the earliest evidence for human exploitation of small, fast game in Europe. According to the authors, their data* indicates that leporid exploitation in the Mediterranean region occurred in the Late Middle Pleistocene, earlier than previously assumed. And although ungulates – generally considered to have been the mainstay of the human diet at the time – may still have been the main source of the archaic hominin diet, these findings suggest archaic Homo groups had a broader diet during this period than previously thought. It is generally assumed that, before the Upper Paleolithic in Western Europe, archaic hominin diets consisted almost entirely of ungulates and not small fast game, which have lower return rates – in terms of calories offered for time spent hunting – compared to ungulates. Here, Eugene Morin and colleagues restudied this hypothesis by examining 21 new fossil assemblages from eight sites in the northwestern Mediterranean. All but one of the assemblages featured large numbers of leporid remains. Additionally, 17 out of the 21 (81%) assemblages showed some evidence of cutmarks (evidence of human hunting) and many of the marks were observed on meat-bearing bones like the humerus and femur. Notably, the majority of the assemblages lacked evidence of carnivore and raptor activity, further indicating the bones were processed not by animals, but by humans. Morin et al. also compared their new leporid collections to previously published assemblages and discovered that their new ones showed fewer cutmarks, which could suggest a change in site occupation and/or food preparation methods, the authors say. The evidence of leporid exploitation presented in this study raises questions about archaic Homo foraging behavior, Morin and colleagues say.

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Rabbit long bone tubes from the cave site of La Crouzade, southern France. The ends from these bones were probably snapped off by humans in order to extract marrow from the shaft cavity. EPCC-CERPTAUTAVEL

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Article Source: Science Advances news release

*“New evidence of broader diets for archaic Homopopulations in the northwestern Mediterranean,“ by E. Morin; J. Conolly at Trent University in Peterborough, ON, Canada; E. Morin; D. Cochard at Université de Bordeaux in Pessac, France; J. Meier at University of North Florida in Jacksonville, FL; K. El Guennouni at Laboratoire de Préhistoire Nice Côte d’Azur in Nice, France; A.-M. Moigne; L. Lebreton at CNRS in Paris, France; A.-M. Moigne; L. Lebreton at Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France; L. Rusch at Université de Perpignan in Tautavel, France; P. Valensi at CNRS in Tourrette-Levens, France; P. Valensi at Musée de Préhistoire in Tourrette-Levens, France.

PLOS—A mass sacrifice at a 15th century archaeological site in Peru saw the ritual killing of over 140 children and over 200 llamas, according to a study* released March 6, 2019 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gabriel Prieto of the National University of Trujillo, Peru and colleagues. This is the largest known mass sacrifice of children – and of llamas – in the New World.

Human and animal sacrifices are known from a variety of ancient cultures, often performed as part of funerary, architectural, or spiritual rituals. Very little evidence of this practice is known from the northern coast of Peru, however. The Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site was part of the Chimú state, which was a dominant culture along the Peruvian coast in the 15th century.

This study reports the findings of excavations between 2011 and 2016 that revealed hundreds of bodies buried in an area of approximately 700 square meters. The human remains were almost entirely children, and the animal remains, all juvenile, were identified as most likely llamas, but possibly alpacas. Anatomical and genetic evidence indicates the children included boys and girls between 5 and 14 years old. Cut marks transecting the sternums and displaced ribs suggest both the children and llamas may have had their chests cut open, possibly during ritual removal of the heart.

The remains were radiocarbon dated to around 1450 AD, during the height of the Chimú state. A thick layer of mud overlaying the burial sediments indicates that this mass killing was preceded, and perhaps inspired, by a major rainstorm or flood. The authors note that this sacrifice was clearly a large investment of resources for the Chimú culture. Through future study, they hope to better understand the ritual through its victims, by analyzing the life histories and cultural origins of the sacrificed children.

Author Verano adds: “This archaeological discovery was a surprise to all of us—we had not seen anything like this before, and there was no suggestion from ethnohistoric sources or historic accounts of child or camelid sacrifices being made on such a scale in northern coastal Peru. We were fortunate to be able to completely excavate the site and to have a multidisciplinary field and laboratory team to do the excavation and preliminary analysis of the material. This site opens a new chapter on the practice of child sacrifice in the ancient world.”

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Above and below: Mummified children. John Verano (2019)

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Article Source: A PLOS news release

*Prieto G, Verano JW, Goepfert N, Kennett D, Quilter J, LeBlanc S, et al. (2019) A mass sacrifice of children and camelids at the Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site, Moche Valley, Peru. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0211691.

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY—The oldest distinguishing feature between humans and our ape cousins is our ability to walk on two legs – a trait known as bipedalism. New research led by a Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine professor of anatomy provides evidence for greater reliance on terrestrial bipedalism by a human ancestor than previously suggested in the ancient fossil record.

Scott W. Simpson, PhD, led an analysis of a 4.5 million-year-old fragmentary female skeleton of the human ancestor Ardipithecus ramidus that was discovered in the Gona Project study area in the Afar Regional State of Ethiopia.

The newly analyzed fossils document a greater, but far from perfect, adaptation to bipedalism in the Ar. ramidus ankle and hallux (big toe) than previously recognized. “Our research shows that while Ardipithecus was a lousy biped, she was somewhat better than we thought before,” said Simpson.

Fossils of this age are rare and represent a poorly known period of human evolution. By documenting more fully the function of the hip, ankle, and foot in Ardipithecus locomotion, Simpson’s analysis helps illuminate current understanding of the timing, context, and anatomical details of ancient upright walking.

Previous studies of other Ardipithecus fossils showed that it was capable of terrestrial bipedalism as well as being able to clamber in trees, but lacked the anatomical specializations seen in the Gona fossil examined by Simpson. The new analysis, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, thus points to a diversity of adaptations during the transition to how modern humans walk today. “The fact that Ardipithecus could both walk upright, albeit imperfectly, and scurry in trees marks it out as a pivotal transitional figure in our human lineage,” said Simpson.

Key to the adaptation of bipedality are changes in the lower limbs. For example, unlike monkeys and [non-human] apes, the human big toe is parallel with the other toes, allowing the foot to function as a propulsive lever when walking. While Ardipithecus had an offset grasping big toe useful for climbing in trees, Simpson’s analysis shows that it also used its big toe to help propel it forward, demonstrating a mixed, transitional adaptation to terrestrial bipedalism.

Specifically, Simpson looked at the area of the joints between the arch of the foot and the big toe, enabling him to reconstruct the range of motion of the foot. While joint cartilage no longer remains for the Ardipithecus fossil, the surface of the bone has a characteristic texture which shows that it had once been covered by cartilage. “This evidence for cartilage shows that the big toe was used in a more human-like manner to push off,” said Simpson. “It is a foot in transition, one that shows primitive, tree-climbing physical characteristics but one that also features a more human-like use of the foot for upright walking.” Additionally, when chimpanzees stand, their knees are “outside” the ankle, i.e., they are bow-legged. When humans stand, the knees are directly above the ankle – which Simpson found was also true for the Ardipithecus fossil.

The Gona Project has conducted continuous field research since 1999. The study area is located in the Afar Depression portion of the eastern Africa rift and its fossil-rich deposits span the last 6.3 million years. Gona is best known as documenting the earliest evidence of the Oldowan stone tool technology. The first Ardipithecus ramidus fossils at Gona were discovered in 1999 and described in the journal Nature in 2005. Gona has also documented one of the earliest known human fossil ancestors – dated to 6.3 million years ago. The Gona Project is co-directed by Sileshi Semaw, PhD, a research scientist with the CENIEH research center in Burgos, Spain, and Michael Rogers, PhD, of Southern Connecticut State University. The geological and contextual research for the current research was led by Naomi Levin, PhD, of the University of Michigan, and Jay Quade, PhD, of the University of Arizona.

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This is a fossil hominin talus from site GWM67 (2005) at the time of its discovery. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

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This research was made possible by use of the human and ape skeletal collections housed at the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology, Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Major financial support was provided by the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, Spain’s Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad, Marie Curie EU Integration Grant, U.S. National Science Foundation, Case Western Reserve University, the National Geographic Society, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

*Simpson, S., et al. “Ardipithecus ramidus postcrania from the Gona Project area, Afar Regional State, Ethiopia.” Journal of Human Evolution. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2018.12.005

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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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