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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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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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GSSI, the world leading manufacturer of ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment, is continuing their partnership with the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. GSSI archaeologists Dan Welch and Peter Leach brought new GPR equipment to remotely sense what lies beneath Jamestown. Jamestown –known for being the first permanent English settlement in the New World – will be commemorating the 400^th-anniversary of the first representative government and arrival of the first Africans in 2019. To honor these two events, the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation is excavating two sites where these events took place in 1619.

Last spring, Dan and Peter joined Senior archaeologist Dave Givens to help define the landscape of the first Africans. The Angela site, named after one of the first Angolans to arrive in 1619, is located in the “town” portion of Jamestown, a 40-acre landscape that remains largely unexplored. Located on National Park Service (NPS) property, the site consists of seven acres of garden, domestic quarters and storehouses all belonging to Angela’s owner, wealthy Jamestonian Captain William Pierce. “Our goal is to define the lost, 17^th-century landscape in which Angela lived,” said Givens. Archaeologists from GSSI, NPS and Jamestown Rediscovery conducted a GPR survey in part of the town, which was a huge success. “We found more than could be expected of the town,” said Givens “it was a needle in a stack of needles.” The results of the survey not only clearly defined numerous buildings, boundary ditches, and post holes, but it also added critical information on how the town was laid out. 

Building on the success of the work on the first Africans, Dan and Peter returned to Jamestown this summer to help solve a new problem: the site of the first General Assembly in the New World. This site is located inside the Memorial Church, a brick structure built over the original foundation in 1906. Under the floor of the modern church were at least three iterations of churches, all built on top of an original timber-framed structure constructed in 1617. It was in this church that the democratic experiment of representative government first met in 1619. The goal of the archaeologists is to define the 1617 church and the location where the assembly met prior to the space being converted into a museum in the spring of 2019.

It was at the Church dig site that the GSSI and Jamestown Rediscovery team collaborated to answer some critical questions. “The inside of the Church has centuries of material and remains buried inside; essentially making it a time capsule,” Givens said, “We needed to know which (tile) floors were constructed first without digging away the delicate fabric of the structure.” Although the archaeologists are learning as much as they can through excavations, the goal is to preserve as much as possible for the future. “Non-invasive techniques, like GPR, are critical to allowing us to understand this cradle of democracy.” Givens added.

Dan and Peter brought a GPR system that isn’t normally used in archaeology – the StructureScan Mini XT with the Palm XT antenna. The Mini XT is often used in the remote sensing of rebar, post-tension cables and conduits. This high-frequency GPR system was suspected to be able to give higher resolution of local areas in the church to define activity spaces related to the first representative government in 1619.

A specific part of this survey included burials located in areas that denoted high status. Jamestown records indicate that one burial of interest may be the remains of Sir George Yeardly. The StructureScan Mini XT and Palm XT were used to create high-resolution imagery of the skeletal remains prior to excavation. “This is the first time that we have imaged a human skeleton in such detail with GPR. It’s a big deal because it’s not supposed to be possible. I’m excited to see where this type of survey can be used in the archaeology and forensic fields.” Leach stated.

Following excavation of the remains, the FBI and Professor Turi King will conduct DNA tests on the teeth and skeletal remains. Jamestown Rediscovery will continue their research and archaeological dig of the site.

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Above and below: Archaeologists apply new GPR technology to reveal what lies beneath at Jamestown.

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For more information on GSSI, visit www.geophysical.com. Also for more information on the initial media coverage of the church dig, visit https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/jamestown-skeleton-unearthed-only-timeand-sciencewill-reveal-his-true-identity-180969748/ or https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44944073?SThisFB.

About GSSI

Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc. is the world leader in the development, manufacture, and sale of ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment, primarily for the concrete inspection, utility mapping and locating, road and bridge deck evaluation, geophysics, and archaeology markets. Our equipment is used all over the world to explore the subsurface of the earth and to inspect infrastructure systems non-destructively. GSSI created the first commercial GPR system over 45 years ago and continues to provide the widest range and highest quality GPR equipment available today.

If you liked this article, you may like Digging the Roots of American Slavery, a premium article about the archaeology of the roots of American slavery at Jamestown, published at Popular Archaeology.

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH—Neanderthals are often depicted as having straight spines and poor posture. However, these prehistoric humans were more similar to us than many assume. University of Zurich researchers have shown that Neanderthals walked upright just like modern humans – thanks to a virtual reconstruction of the pelvis and spine of a very well-preserved Neanderthal skeleton found in France.

An upright, well-balanced posture is one of the defining features of Homo sapiens. In contrast, the first reconstructions of Neanderthals made in the early 20th century depicted them as only walking partially upright. These reconstructions were based on the largely preserved skeleton of an elderly male Neanderthal unearthed in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.

Changing perspectives

Since the 1950s, scientists have known that the image of the Neanderthal as a hunched over caveman is not an accurate one. Their similarities to ourselves – both in evolutionary and behavioral terms – have also long been known, but in recent years the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. “Focusing on the differences is back in fashion,” says Martin Haeusler, UZH specialist in evolutionary medicine. For instance, recent studies have used a few isolated vertebrae to conclude that Neanderthals did not yet possess a well-developed double S-shaped spine.

However, a virtual reconstruction of the skeleton from La Chapelle-aux-Saints has now delivered evidence to the contrary. This computer-generated anatomical model was created by the research group led by Martin Haeusler from the University of Zurich and included Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers were able to show that both the individual in question as well as Neanderthals in general had a curved lumbar region and neck – just like the humans of today.

Sacrum, vertebrae and signs of wear as evidence

When reconstructing the pelvis, the researchers discovered that the sacrum was positioned in the same way as in modern humans. This led them to conclude that Neanderthals possessed a lumbar region with a well-developed curvature. By putting together the individual lumbar and cervical vertebrae, they were able to discern that the spinal curvature was even more pronounced. The very close contact between the spinous processes – the bony projections off the back of each vertebra – became clear, as did the prominent wear marks that were in part caused by the curvature of the spine.

Recognizing similarities

Wear marks in the hip joint of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton also pointed to the Neanderthals having an upright posture similar to that of modern humans. “The stress on the hip joint and the position of the pelvis is no different than ours,” says Haeusler. This finding is also supported by analyses of other Neanderthal skeletons with sufficient remnants of vertebrae and pelvic bones. “On the whole, there is hardly any evidence that would point to Neanderthals having a fundamentally different anatomy,” explains Haeusler. “Now is the time to recognize the basic similarities between Neanderthals and modern humans and to switch the focus to the subtle biological and behavioral changes that occurred in humans in the late Pleistocene.”

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Virtual reconstruction of the skeleton found in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, based on high-resolution 3D surface scans of the spine and pelvis. Martin Häusler, UZH

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Article Source: University of Zurich news release

AKSON RUSSIAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION—Russian scientists studied the Zhokhov site of ancient people, which is located in the high-latitude Arctic, and described in detail the way of life of the ancient people who had lived there. It turned out that, despite the sparsely populated area, the ancient people had communicated with representatives of other territories and had even exchanged various objects with them through some kind of the fairs.

The Arctic is the coldest part of our planet, where there are no favorable conditions for life. The Arctic regions of the Earth are hardly populated by humans, although in some countries, including Russia, the United States and Norway, there are industrial zones. These zones increase the average population density to 0.35 people / km2 but basically it does not exceed 0.03-0.04 people / km2.

Zhokhov Island, located at 76º N in the New Siberian Islands, 440 kilometers north of the modern coast of the East Siberian Sea, belongs to the High Arctic. Here, the Zhokhov site was discovered, considered the earliest evidence for human habitation in the High Arctic. The settlement was daed to 9300-8600 years ago, where 25-50 people lived permanently. In the remote past, Zhokhov island was a part of a vast plain formed due to significant sea level drop during the Last Glacial Maximum. Because of the post-glacial sea-level rise, this plain was flooded and eroded. At present, the Zhokhov site is located in the south-western part of modern Zhokhov island, near the foot of a low (about 120 m) hill protecting it from the severe north-west wind. This place was very convenient for the ancient people. The hill served as an observation point, and because of the proximity to the coast, they always had a supply of wood, carried in by the sea.

The scientists conducted excavations in permafrost and have already investigated a significant part of the site – 571 square meters. In the course of work, many tools were found made of stone, bones, horns, tusks and wood. These are different tools, items of hunting weapons, details of sleds and diverse home utensils. Among the lithic artifacts there are many microprismatic blades, which served as blades for composite tools that served as spear/dart/arrow points and knives. Most of them had been produced of various silicious rocks of local origin, while some of them were made of exotic raw materials unusual for this part of the world, such as obsidian or volcanic glass. The researchers found 79 such items. The ancient people appreciated this material for the best splitting ability among other rocks and valued them for their extremely thin and sharp cutting edges. This material is also highly appreciated by the researchers because each deposit of obsidian has its own unique geochemical signature, which helps in locating the source of the material. With this, it is possible to determine how it moved spatially and thus we can learn more about the life of ancient people.

However, there is no obsidian source nearby Zhokhov Island. The closest area with such a source is near Krasnoye lake in the lower reaches of the Anadyr River in Chukotka, which is some 1,500 km away in a straight line, and the actual travel easily could be more than 2,000 km. It would seem that the ancient people could not travel such a distance physically.

The authors studied the unearthed obsidian objects by the X-ray Fluorescence method. This is a non-destructive examination method that allows one to determine the geochemical properties of the samples and thus determine source locations the using the unique signatures.

“We found that a particular obsidian type was coming to Zhokhov Island from the area of the Krasnoye Lake. This is a considerable distance, and it is hard to imagine that the ancient people could have possibly made such trips some 9000 years ago. Most likely, they met other people at the intermediate points and exchanged products made of obsidian, or enjoyed primitive trade,” said one of the authors of the article, Vladimir Pitulko, RSF project’s principal investigator, Ph.D. in history, senior researcher at the Paleolithic Department of the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Science Foundation.

The researchers also analyzed more than 54,000 faunal remains of hunting and reconstructed the yearly economic cycle of the inhabitants of the Zhokhov site. The occupants of the site were classic terrestrial hunters who practiced reindeer hunting. However, in the winter they hunted polar bears sleeping in bear lairs. For them, that was reliable and a stable way of obtaining a food supply, as bear dens were plentiful in this area.

Previously, scientists investigated the bones of medium-sized canids; these bones indicate the presence of a well-formed dog that lived together with the people of the Zhokhov site. In addition, these animals are similar in size and body weight to the modern breed of sled dogs. Findings of parts of sleds in the form of runners provide evidence that the inhabitants of these territories had a well developed transport system. Thanks to that system, the inhabitants of the Zhokhov site travelled to nearby territories, which were still part of the mainland at that time, and maintained relations with their inhabitants.

Vladimir Pitulko also noted that sites in the mouths of Kolyma and Indigirka rivers could serve as the intermediate points in that trade. In this case, the distance between the exchange points was about 700 km, which is quite possible to travel in the early spring by sled dogs.

Such “meetings” turned into fairs later on as the inhabitants of the north of Eastern Siberia organized them in the 18th-19th centuries, but not only for the exchange of goods. The exchange of information was considered to be of much more importance. In any case, the material evidence for this on Zhokhov island is presented with a minimum of findings. Probably an important result of such meetings was the marriage contacts necessary to secure biological stability of small groups of people who lead a rather isolated life.

“The results of our research* indicate a high level of sociocultural relations that existed among the ancient population of the Arctic in Eastern Siberia 9000 years ago, and about the engagement of people from the Zhokhov site. These people who lived on the edge of the earth were not isolated. On the contrary, contacts within these societies were much more developed than previously thought,” concluded Vladimir Pitulko.

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Products from obsidian found at the Zhokhov site. Vladimir V. Pitulko et al

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Skull of a dog found at the Zhokhov site. Vladimir V. Pitulko et al.

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Article Source: Edited from the AKSON RUSSIAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION news release

*The published study: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.2

If you liked this article, you may also like Pushing the Prehistoric Fringe, a free premium article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum—A new archaeological report hailed as the definitive full account of the excavations of Hadrian’s Wall at its eastern end has just been published.

Hadrian’s Wall at Wallsend is written by Paul Bidwell OBE, former Head of Archaeology at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM), and encapsulates the knowledge gleaned from 28 years of intermittent excavations around Segedunum Roman Fort, Wallsend in North Tyneside.  Taking place between 1988 and 2015, these digs culminated in the Treasury-funded project that saw the rediscovery of the fort’s baths as well as the public display of the full stretch of Wall remains.

The Hadrian’s Wall at Wallsend report represents an account of one of the most comprehensively excavated sections of Hadrian’s Wall anywhere along its 73 mile length.

Paul Bidwell, author, and President of The Arbeia Society said:

 “It has been a privilege to draw together the results of so many years work by so many people. The results are a great advance in our understanding of how Hadrian’s Wall was built and of its later history. They also show that the remains of the Wall in urban Tyneside are just as important as the better-preserved lengths in rural Northumberland.”

Paul Bidwell was Head of Archaeology at TWAM until retirement. He has led and published excavations in Exeter and along Hadrian’s Wall, including at South Shields, Vindolanda, Newcastle, Chesters and Willowford; and has been a contributor to many other publications on aspects of Roman Archaeology, including Roman ceramics.

The driving force behind one of the UK’s most ambitious and controversial reconstruction projects at Arbeia, South Shields Roman Fort, 31 years ago Paul Bidwell led the charge to recreate a fort gate house in its original foundations.

The report has been published by TWAM with The Arbeia Society, a registered charity established in 1992 to support research into and promotion of Roman archaeology in North East England.

North Tyneside’s Elected Mayor, Norma Redfearn CBE, said:

“We welcome the publication of this report. It’s a significant achievement by Paul and one that will help to enrich our knowledge and understanding of one of our most precious heritage sites.”

 Iain Watson, Director of TWAM said:

 “This is a very significant contribution to the body of knowledge of Hadrian’s Wallsend, a huge undertaking, bringing together and translating into contemporary context 28 years of archaeological findings. We congratulate Paul and look forward to the report’s reception.”

Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum is now a visitor attraction incorporating a museum and an extensively excavated Roman ‘archaeological park’ fort site, overlooked by a 35m viewing tower attracting around 50,000 visits a year.

1,900 years ago it was the edge of the Roman Empire, the very cusp of the eastern end of the Empire’s northern frontier. Segedunum – meaning ‘strong place’ – sat on a plateau overlooking the north bank of the River Tyne, the spot chosen strategically to command views east down the river to the coast at South Shields and two miles up the river toward Newcastle upon Tyne.

The 73 mile wall, now a World Heritage Site, was constructed on the orders of Emperor Hadrian in AD122 and originally ended at the River Tyne’s lowest bridgeable point – Newcastle upon Tyne – until two or three years later when it was extended to Wallsend.

Only 7% of the original wall is visible today and only about 0.5% of its entire length has been excavated using modern archaeological techniques, though much more can be seen of the forts, milecastles, turrets and bridges along its line.

The 80 meter stretch at Wallsend that has been scrutinized by archaeologists over the years lies 50 meters west of the Segedunum fort. Its first contemporary digs were led by the late Charles Daniels of Newcastle University in the mid-1970s. 

The Wall at Wallsend, 2.26m wide, was built without mortar but with carefully-laid courses of stone work. Separate groups of legionaries built lengths of 30 Roman feet (about 9m). They were also tasked with building an aqueduct which ran through the Wall and supplied the baths outside the fort. Markers for building plots running up to the back of the Wall were also found. They show that a settlement containing civilian and some military buildings was laid out at the same time that the Wall and the adjacent fort were built.

In the early third century the Wall at Segedunum was destroyed by a catastrophic flood which also washed away part of the baths and undermined the fort wall. The aqueduct was replaced and the Wall rebuilt, probably on the instructions of Septimius Severus in about AD 208; this emperor, rather than Hadrian, was credited by late-Roman writers as the original builder of the Wall. Shorter lengths of the Wall collapsed and were rebuilt on three subsequent occasions. One of these later reconstructions reused masonry from various buildings, including one of the fort gates, a temple possibly dedicated to Diana, and a bath house.

The volume also includes an account of the building of the replica section of Hadrian’s Wall at Segedunum, constructed in 1996.

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Wallsend Culvert taking aqueduct channel through the wall in 2000. Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum

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Article Source: Edited from Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum news release

FECYT – SPANISH FOUNDATION FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—In the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, between the third and second millennium BC, a widespread funeral practice consisted in burying humans with animals. Scientists have discovered that both foxes and dogs were domesticated, as their diet was similar to that of their owners.

The discovery of four foxes and a large number of dogs at the Can Roqueta (Barcelona) and Minferri (Lleida) sites stands out among the many examples of tombs in different parts of the north-eastern peninsula. These burials reveal a generalized funeral practice that proliferated in the Early to Middle Bronze Age: that of burying humans together with domestic animals.

What is most striking about these sites is the way of burying the dead in large silos, along with their dogs and a few foxes. “We discovered that in some cases the dogs received a special kind of food. We believe this is linked to their function as working dogs. Besides, one of the foxes shows signs of having already been a domestic animal in those times,” Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade, co-author of a study on the relationship between humans and dogs through their diet published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, has said to to Sinc.

By means of studying stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen, as well as archaeological, archaeobiological and anthropological studies, researchers have been able to compare the diets of buried animals with their owners´ diet. A total of 37 dogs, 19 domestic ungulates and 64 humans were analyzed. The results indicate that the dogs’ diet was similar to that of humans.

The isotopic study of the Minferri foxes shows a varied diet: in some cases it looks similar to that of the dogs at that site, and in another it looks more like that of a wild animal or one that had little contact with humans.

“The case of the Can Roqueta fox is very special, because it is an old animal, with a broken leg. The fracture is still in its healing process, and shows signs of having been immobilized (cured) by humans. The feeding of this animal is very unusual, as it is more akin to a puppy dog’s. We interpret it as a domestic animal that lived for a long time with humans,” explains Grandal.

Large dogs used for transporting loads

The study* points out that, in some particular cases in Can Roqueta, there was a specific cereal-rich food preparation for larger dogs probably used for carrying loads, and for at least one of the foxes.

“These specimens also show signs of disorders in the spinal column linked to the transport of heavy objects. Humans were probably looking for a high-carbohydrate diet because the animals developed a more active job, which required immediate calorie expenditure. It may seem strange that dogs were basically fed with cereals, but this was already recommended by the first-century Hispano-Roman agronomist Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella , in his work De re rustica”, says Silvia Albizuri Canadell, co-author of the work and archaeozoologist at the University of Barcelona.

Other animals, such as cows, sheep or goats are noted for an herbivorous diet. Their function was probably to provide milk, meat or wool rather than serve as a work force. “The horse was not yet widespread in those societies, no traces of it can be found until later times,” adds the scientist.

In general, humans and dogs show somewhat higher isotopic signals than ungulates, which indicates a certain (not very high) consumption of animal protein, “not necessarily much meat; they could be, for example, derived from milk,” explains Grandal. Archaeological objects included sieves that served as ‘cheese making devices’.

Moreover, men seem to have included more meat than women in their diet. As for dogs, their diet may have been mainly from leftovers of what humans ate, mostly more similar to that of women and children. “That’s why we thought they were more linked to these domestic environments,” says the researcher. There are many ethnographic parallels that indicate this relationship between women and dogs.

Feeding and treatment of foxes and dogs

The fundamental role of dogs during the Bronze Age, when livestock, along with agriculture, constituted the basis of the economy, was that of the surveillance and guidance of herds. They were also responsible for taking care of human settlements, given the risk posed by the frequent presence of dangerous animals such as wolves or bears.

“The characteristics of dogs include their great intelligence, easy trainability and, undoubtedly, their defensive behavior. As if that were not enough, this animal was used until the nineteenth century AD in North America, Canada and Europe for light transport on its back and for dragging carts and sleds. It also functioned as a pack animal on the Peninsula during the Bronze Age,” Albizuri Canadell claims.

Some archaeological specimens from North America show bone disorders that stem from the pulling of ‘travois’. There are also accounts by the first colonizers of the use of dogs in these tasks by Indian populations until the nineteenth century AD, although they had not been identified in Europe until a few years ago.

“It was the Can Roqueta specimens under study that triggered the alarm about the use of this animal for light loads since antiquity, and they’re an exceptional case in Europe,” says Albizuri Canadell.

Similar pathologies have also been recently identified in the vertebrae of Siberian Palaeolithic dogs, leading one to think that one of the first tasks since their early domestication was the pulling of sleds and travois, in addition to hunting.

Its role as a transport animal in the first migrations and human movements through glacial Europe could have been fundamental and much more important than believed until recently.

The reason for animal offerings

Exceptional findings, such as those of tomb #88 and #405 of the Minferri site (Lleida), show that during the Bronze Age there were already well-differentiated funeral treatments in human communities.

“In the two structures mentioned above, the remains of three individuals were found together with animal offerings. In tomb #88 there was the body of an old man with the remains of a whole cow and the legs of up to seven goats. The remains of a young woman with the offering of a whole goat, two foxes and a bovine horn were also found,” states Ariadna Nieto Espinet, an archaeologist from the University of Lleida and also the co-author of the study.

Structure #405 uncovered the body of an individual, possibly a woman, accompanied by the whole bodies of two bovines and two dogs. “We still don’t know why only a few people would have had the right or privilege to be buried with this type of offering, unlike what happens with the vast majority of burials,” the expert points out.

In Can Roqueta, clear differences have also been observed in the deposits of domestic animals within the tombs of adults, both men and women, which are even reflected in children’s tombs. From this we can infer the existence of an inheritance of social status from birth.

“It is tempting to think that if we understand domestic animals as a very important part of the agro- pastoral agro-shepherding economy of the Bronze Age and of the belongings of some people in life, these could be an indicator of the wealth of the deceased individual or of his clan or family,” argues Nieto Espinet.

“It seems that species such as bovines and dogs, two of the most recurring animals in funeral offerings, are those that might have played a fundamental role in the economy and work as well as in the symbolic world, becoming elements of ostentation, prestige and protection,” she concludes.

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Artistic representation of a woman of the Bronze Age accompanied by a dog and a fox. J. A. Peñas

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Article Source: FECYT – SPANISH FOUNDATION FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY news release

*Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade, Silvia Albizuri, Ariadna Nieto, Tona Majó, Bibiana Agustí, Natalia Alonso, Ferran Antolín, Joan B. López, Andreu Moya, Alba Rodríguez y Antoni Palomo. “Dogs and foxes in Early-Middle Bronze Age funerary structures in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: human control of canid diet at the sites of Can Roqueta (Barcelona) and Minferri (Lleida)” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS—Long before Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and even MySpace, early Mississippian Mound cultures in America’s southern Appalachian Mountains shared artistic trends and technologies across regional networks that functioned in similar ways as modern social media, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

“Just as we have our own networks of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, societies that existed in North America between 1,200 and 350 years ago had their own information sharing networks,” said Jacob Lulewicz, lecturer of archaeology in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

“Our study found a way to reconstruct these indigenous communication networks,” he said. “Our analysis shows how these networks laid the groundwork for Native American political systems that began developing as far back as 600 A.D.”

Embargoed for release Feb. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study utilizes sophisticated social network analysis to map social and political connections that helped unite friends and families in dozens of Native American villages well before the arrival of European explorers.

The findings are based on a messaging archive that is preserved not in bytes, but in bits of pottery sherds — fragments — unearthed over many years in archaeology digs at dozens of Mississippian culture sites scattered across southern Appalachia.

Focusing on subtle evolving changes in the technologies used to temper and strengthen pottery and the cultural symbols used to decorate them, the study provides a detailed chronological map of how new pottery techniques signified connections between these communities.

The ceramics database includes 276,626 sherds from 43 sites across eastern Tennessee, and 88,705 sherds from 41 sites across northern Georgia. The collection represents pottery created between 800 and 1650 A.D., a period that saw the gradual emergence and later decline of powerful chiefdoms that controlled wide networks of villages in the region.

The study focuses on villages clustered around the site of Etowah in Bartow County, Georgia, an important Mississippian community that included several low earthen mounds with large ceremonial buildings. It served as the regional seat of social, political, economic and religious power across the region — influence that reached its peak between 1050 to 1325 A.D.

These chiefdoms were still in place when the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became one of the first Europeans to visit the region in 1540 A.D.

De Soto’s accounts of autonomous villages loosely bound together under the influence of a single powerful chief, then residing at the town of Coosa in what is today northern Georgia, have long influenced how historians characterize the social and political structures of these and other early Eastern North American societies.

Lulewicz’ findings suggest that the ruling elites drew their power from social networks created by the masses.

The emergence of powerful Native American chiefdoms and the centralized leadership, elaborate religious movements and institutionalized inequality that came with them, he argues, were built upon foundations created by the wider, pre-existing social networks of common people — systems that proved to be more stable and durable than any interactions dictated by elite chiefs.

“What I show in the paper is that while we see things like the emergence of super powerful chiefs and the rise of major economic inequalities, the very foundations of society — especially relationships and networks of kinship and family and reciprocity — remained virtually unchanged over 1,000 years,” Lulewicz said. “That is, even though elite interests and political strategies waxed and waned and collapsed and flourished, very basic relationships and networks were some of the strongest, most durable aspects of society.”

His findings suggest that strong social connections between common people have always played an important role in helping societies guard themselves against the vagaries of unpredictable leaders and ruling classes.

Pointing to the role that digital social networks and social media play in contemporary revolutions, and how modern states are often quick to monitor, control or even shut down access to these virtual networks, shows that our connections continue to be valuable social instruments, he said.

“This is super interesting — at least to me as a social scientist — for understanding how political movements actually play out,” he said. “It doesn’t come down to any particular, innate attribute of leaders and elites. What is comes down to is how those individuals are able to leverage the networks in which they are embedded. Even though chiefs emerge at about 1000 A.D., over the next 650 years, chiefs actually shift their strategies of political and economic control. They tap into different parts of their networks, or leverage their connections in very different ways throughout time.”

“Because these very basic networks were so durable, they allowed these societies — especially common people — to buffer against and mediate the uncertainties associated with major political and economic change. They may have said, ‘You go live on top of that huge mound and do your sacred rituals, and we will go about life as usual for the most part.’ These communication networks served as a social constant for these people and allowed their cultures to persist for thousands of years even across transformations that could have been catastrophic.”

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A map of the southern Appalachian region, with the archaeological sites used in this study indicated. The sites are spread across both eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia and date to the period between AD 800 and 1650. Jacob Lulewicz

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Examples of the kinds of pottery produced by people living across southern Appalachia between AD 800 and 1650. The unique symbols were stamped onto the pottery when the clay was still wet using carved wooden paddles. These designs, along with the varying characteristics of the specific kinds of clay used to produce the pottery, were used to reconstruct social networks among these communities. Jacob Lulewicz

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Article Source: Washington University in St. Louis news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Neanderthals’ diets are highly debated: they are traditionally considered carnivores and hunters of large mammals, but this hypothesis has recently been challenged by numerous pieces of evidence of plant consumption. Ancient diets are often reconstructed using nitrogen isotope ratios, a tracer of the trophic level, the position an organism occupies in a food chain. Neanderthals are apparently occupying a high position in terrestrial food chains, exhibiting slightly higher ratios than carnivores (like hyenas, wolves or foxes) found at the same sites. It has been suggested that these slightly higher values were due to the consumption of mammoth or putrid meat. And we also know some examples of cannibalism for different Neanderthal sites.

Paleolithic modern humans, who arrived in France shortly after the Neanderthals had disappeared, exhibit even higher nitrogen isotope ratios than Neanderthals. This is classically interpreted as the signature of freshwater fish consumption. Fishing is supposed to be a typical modern human activity, but again, a debate exists whether or not Neanderthals were eating aquatic resources. When Klervia Jaouen, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and first author of the study, and collaborators discovered high nitrogen isotope ratios in the collagen of two Neanderthals falling in the range of modern humans, they wondered whether this could a signature of regular fish consumption.

The Neanderthals come from Les Cottés and Grotte du Renne, in France, two sites where no fish remains have been found. However, the measurements were performed on a tooth root, which recorded the diet between four to eight years of the individual’s life, and on a bone of a one-year-old baby. These high nitrogen isotope ratios could also indicate that the Neanderthals were not weaned at this age, contradicting in the case of the Les Cottés Neanderthal (the one whose tooth root was analyzed) former pieces of evidence of early weaning around one year of age. In other words, many explanations (e.g. freshwater fish consumption, putrid meat, late weaning or even cannibalism) could account for such high values, and identifying the factor involved could change our understanding of Neanderthals’ lifestyles.

Analysis of amino acids

In order to explain these exceptionally high nitrogen isotope ratios, Jaouen and collaborators decided to use a novel isotope technique. Compound-specific isotope analyses (CSIA) allow to separately analyze the amino acids contained in the collagen. Some of the amino acid isotope compositions are influenced by environmental factors and the isotope ratios of the food eaten. Other amino acid isotope ratios are in addition influenced by the trophic level. The combination of these amino acid isotope ratios allows to decipher the contribution of the environment and the trophic level to the final isotope composition of the collagen.

“Using this technique, we discovered that the Neanderthal of Les Cottés had a purely terrestrial carnivore diet: she was not a late weaned child or a regular fish eater, and her people seem to have mostly hunted reindeers and horses”, says Jaouen. “We also confirmed that the Grotte du Renne Neanderthal was a breastfeeding baby whose mother was a meat eater”. Interestingly, this conclusion matches with the observations of the zooarcheologists.

The study also illustrates the importance of this new isotope technique for future investigations into ancient human and Neanderthal diets. Using compound-specific isotope analysis allowed the researchers not to misinterpret the global nitrogen isotope ratio which was exceptionally high. Michael P. Richards of the Simon Fraser University in Canada comments: “Previous isotope results indicated a primarily carnivorous diet for Neanderthals, which matches the extensive archaeological record of animal remains found and deposited by Neanderthals. There has recently been some frankly bizarre interpretations of the bulk isotope data ranging from Neanderthals primarily subsisting on aquatic plants to eating each other, both in direct contrast to the archaeological evidence. These new compound-specific isotope measurements confirm earlier interpretations of Neanderthal diets as being composed of mainly large herbivores, although of course they also consumed other foods such as plants.”

Monotonous diet

In addition to confirming the Neanderthals as terrestrial carnivores, this work seems to indicate that these hominins had a very monotonous diet over time, even once they had started to change their material industry, possibly under the influence of modern humans. The baby Neanderthal of Grotte du Renne was indeed found associated to the Châtelperronian, a lithic technology similar to that of modern humans. Late Neanderthals were therefore very humanlike, painting caves and wearing necklaces, but unlike their sister species, did not seem to enjoy fishing.

Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, comments: “This study confirms that when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and met Neanderthals, they were in direct competition for the exploitation of large mammals”. “The systematic use of the combination of CSIA and radiocarbon dating will help to understand if the two species really had the same subsistence strategies during those crucial times”, concludes Sahra Talamo, a researcher at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute.

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Tooth of an adult Neanderthal from Les Cottés in France. Her diet consisted mainly of the meat of large herbivore mammals. © MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology/ A. Le Cabec

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Article Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—A multidisciplinary study has found evidence for humans hunting small mammals in the forests of Sri Lanka at least 45,000 years ago. The researchers discovered the remains of small mammals, including primates, with evidence of cut-marks and burning at the oldest archaeological site occupied by humans in Sri Lanka, alongside sophisticated bone and stone tools. The hunting of such animals is an example of the uniquely human adaptability that allowed H. sapiens to rapidly colonize a series of extreme environments apparently untouched by its hominin relatives.

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, an international team of scientists has revealed novel evidence for the unique adaptability of Homo sapiens. The study, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, alongside colleagues from Sri Lankan and other international institutions, shows that human populations were able to specialize in the hunting of small arboreal animals for tens of thousands of years. This is the oldest and longest record of sophisticated, active primate hunting by foragers. This work also highlights the distinctive ecological capacities of H. sapiens relative to its hominin ancestors and relatives.

Tropical rainforests: a unique challenge

Recent research has demonstrated that our species adapted to a diversity of extreme environments as they spread around the world, including deserts, high altitude settings, palaeoarctic conditions, and tropical forests. Previously, however, discussion of the migration of our species into Europe, the Middle East, and Asia has often focused on our increased efficiency in hunting, butchering, and consuming medium to large game in open ‘savanna’ settings. Alternatively, coastal settings have been seen as important sources of protein, stimulating human evolution and migration.

Tropical rainforests have been somewhat neglected in discussions of human migrations and dispersal. In public and academic perception, these environments are often seen as isolated barriers to human movement, with disease, dangerous animals, and limited resources all posing challenges. In particular, when compared to the large animals of open savannas, small, fast forest monkeys and squirrels are difficult to capture and provide smaller amounts of protein.

Small mammals and hunting complexity

The procurement of small mammals has long been considered a feature of technological and behavioral ‘complexity’ or ‘modernity’ unique to our species. Previous research in Europe and West Asia has linked increased capture and consumption of agile small mammals both to human population growth and to climatically-driven crises. Traditionally, these have been considered to be particularly extreme ~20,000 years ago.

However, the onset and behavioral context of small mammal hunting in other parts of the world, particularly Asia, has remained poorly studied. This is particularly the case outside of temperate environments. “Over the last two decades, research has highlighted human occupation of tropical rainforests in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Melanesia at least as early as 45,000 years ago, so the potential for human reliance on small mammals in these settings prior to 20,000 years ago seems likely,” says co-senior author Dr. Patrick Roberts of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

A Sri Lankan specialty

Sri Lanka has been a prominent part of discussions of early human adaptations to tropical rainforests, though there has been a general lack of systematic, detailed analysis of animal remains associated with archaeological sites on the island. For the current study, the researchers produced new chronological information, analysis of animal remains, and studies of lithic and bone tool assemblages from Fa-Hien Lena Cave, the site of the earliest fossil and archaeological evidence of H. sapiens in Sri Lanka.

“The results demonstrate specialized, sophisticated hunting of semi-arboreal and arboreal monkey and squirrel populations from 45,000 years ago in a tropical rainforest environment,” says Oshan Wedage, lead author of the study, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Co-author Dr. Noel Amano, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, adds, “This was complemented by sophisticated bone tool technologies which were, in turn, created from the bones of hunted monkeys.”

Fine-tuned adaptations, not ‘monkey business’

Together, the results of this new work demonstrate a highly tuned focus on monkey and other small mammal hunting over 45,000 years. A sustained focus on adult monkeys throughout this time period suggests that this strategy continued to be sustainable during this lengthy period and that the tropical rainforests were not over-taxed by human presence and practices.

“This ‘monkey menu’ was not a one-off, and the use of these difficult-to-catch resources is one more example of the behavioral and technological flexibility of H. sapiens,” says Prof. Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a senior author of the study. Further detailed analysis of the tools and animal remains left behind by early members of our species promises to yield more insights into the variety of strategies that enabled H. sapiens to colonize the world’s continents and left us the last hominin standing.

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Exterior view of the entrance of Fa-Hien Lena cave in Sri Lanka. O. Wedage

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Tools manufactured from monkey bones and teeth recovered from the Late Pleistocene layers of Fa Hien Cave, Sri Lanka. N. Amano

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Gray tufted langur (S. priam), one of the monkey species targeted by early humans that settled in Fa Hien Cave, Sri Lanka. O. Wedage

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Article Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History 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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