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CNRS—At the foot of the hill on which sits the ancient city of Cumae, in the region of Naples, Priscilla Munzi, CNRS researcher at the Jean Bérard Centre (CNRS-EFR), and Jean-Pierre Brun, professor at the Collège de France, are exploring a Roman-era necropolis. They now reveal the latest discovery to surface in the archaeological dig they have led since 2001: a painted tomb from the 2nd century B.C. In excellent condition, the tomb depicts a banquet scene, fixed by pigments.

Twice the size of Pompeii, the ancient city of Cumae is located 25 km west of Naples on the Tyrrhenian Sea facing the island of Ischia, at the Campi Flegrei Archaeological Park. Ancient historians considered Cumae the oldest Ancient Greek settlement in the western world. Founded in the latter half of the 8th century B.C. by Greeks from Euboea, the settlement grew quickly and prospered over time. 

In recent years, French researchers have focused on an area where a Greek sanctuary, roads and a necropolis were found. Among the hundreds of ancient sepulchers unearthed since 2001, they have discovered a series of vaulted burial chambers made of tuff, a volcanic stone found in the area. People entered the tomb through a door in the façade sealed with a large stone block. The space inside was generally composed of a chamber with three vaults or funerary beds. The tombs were raided in the 19th century, but recovered remains and traces of funerary furnishings, which archaeologists have used to date the tombs to the second century B.C., indicate the high social status of those buried within. 

Until now, only tombs painted red or white had been found, but in June 2018 researchers discovered a room with exceptionally executed figure painting. A naked servant carrying a jug of wine and a vase is still visible; the banquet’s guests are thought to have been painted on the side walls. Other elements of the banquet can also be distinguished. In addition to the excellent state of conservation of the remaining plaster and pigments, such a décor in a tomb built in that period is rare; its “unfashionable” subject matter was in vogue one or two centuries earlier. This discovery is also an opportunity to trace artistic activity over time at the site.

To preserve the fresco, archaeologists removed it, along with fragments found on the ground, in order to re-assemble the décor like a puzzle. 

The digs were carried out with financial support from the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Ecole française de Rome and the Fondation du Collège de France. This research is part of a concession granted by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Assets and Activities in partnership with the Phlegraen Fields archaeological site.

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Painted burial chamber (from 2nd century B.C.) excavated in 2018. Burial chamber interior and scenes depicting figures, preserved on the entrance wall and half of the side walls. The entrance wall right of the door depicts a naked servant, standing and holding a silver-plated jug and vase for wine. To his left, a krater (vase) on a stand is visible. To the left of the door are a silver-plated situla, a type of bucket-shaped vessel, a wooden table and a wine amphora on a stand. On the side walls are what appear to be landscape scenes. © E. Lupoli, Jean Bérard Centre (CNRS/École française de Rome)

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Preserved paintings on the right side of the entrance wall (detail).  © E. Lupoli, Jean Bérard Centre (CNRS/École française de Rome)

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Article Source: A CNRS news release

SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE—Buried alive.  Butchered.  Decapitated.  Hacked.  Mutilated.  Killed.  Archaeologist Samuel K. Lothrop did not obfuscate when describing what he thought had happened to the 220 bodies his expedition excavated from Panama’s Playa Venado site in 1951. The only problem is that Lothrop likely got it wrong. A new evaluation of the site’s remains by Smithsonian archaeologists revealed no signs of trauma at or near time of death. The burial site likely tells a more culturally nuanced story.

The “long-overdue” reexamination of the Playa Venado site, which dates to 500-900 A.D. and is located near the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, revealed no evidence of ritual killing, said Nicole E. Smith-Guzmán, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Lothrop’s misinterpretations are likely due to the era of “romantic archaeology,” underdeveloped methods for mortuary studies and literal readings of Spanish accounts of indigenous peoples after European contact.

“We now realize that many of these Spanish chroniclers were motivated to show the indigenous populations they encountered as ‘uncivilized’ and in need of conquering,” said Smith-Guzmán, adding that many accounts of sacrifice and cannibalism have not been confirmed by the archaeological record. “Rather than an example of violent death and careless deposition, Playa Venado presents an example of how pre-Columbian societies in the Isthmo-Colombian area showed respect and care for their kin after death.”

The article*, co-authored by STRI staff archaeologist Richard Cooke, was published in Latin American Antiquity. But Lothrop’s 1954 paper, “Suicide, sacrifice and mutilations in burials at Venado Beach, Panama,” left its mark on the annals of Panamanian archaeology. It has been cited more than 35 times as evidence of violence, cannibalism or trophy decapitation. Some authors have used the paper to suggest Playa Venado is a mass burial site or a manifestation of conflict.

In defense of Lothrop, who was an archaeologist with Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Enthnology, bioarchaeology (the study of human remains from archaeological contexts) did not exist as a sub-discipline until two decades after his work concluded at Playa Venado. Today’s practitioners also benefit from methods developed in the 1980s and 1990s.

Lothrop’s careful documentation and preservation of remains made reevaluation possible. Remains from more than 70 individuals from Playa Venado are at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, sent there by Lothrop for osteological evaluation.

Upon examination, Smith-Guzmán found only wounds that showed signs of healing well before the individuals died, including blows to the head and a dislocated thumb. Various broken bones and disarticulated remains discovered by Lothrop are more likely explained by normal processes of decomposition and secondary burial of remains, which is believed to have a common ancestor-veneration practice in pre-Colombian Panama.

Evidence suggests certain people’s remains were preserved for long periods of time before being buried in ritual contexts. “At Playa Venado, we see a lot of evidence of adults being buried next to urns containing children, multiple burials including one primary and one secondary burial, and disturbance of previously laid graves in order to inter another individual in association,” said Smith-Guzmán.

“The uniform burial positioning and the absence of perimortem (around the time of death) trauma stands in contradiction to Lothrop’s interpretation of violent death at the site,” said Smith-Guzmán, who also used evidence from other archaeological sites around Panama about burial rites as part of the investigation. “There are low rates of trauma in general, and the open mouths of skeletons Lothrop noted are more easily explained by normal muscle relaxation after death and decay.”

Smith-Guzmán and Cooke’s reassessment of the Playa Venado burials suggests that ideas about widespread violence in pre-Columbian Panama need to be reconsidered. The research is part of a larger, interdisciplinary site reanalysis that will be published by the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C..

Smith-Guzmán’s previous discovery of the first case of bone cancer in Latin America is featured on this month’s Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast.

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One of two cases of healed blows to the cranium from the Playa Venado excavations. Most of the evidence of violence was interpreted by Harvard archaeologist, Samuel Lothrop based on body positioning in graves at the site. Smithsonian post-doctoral fellow, Nicole Smith-Guzmán, found no examples of trauma that occurred near the time of death among the skeletons in the collection. Nicole Smith-Guzmán, STRI

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A female skeleton in situ with a ceramic pedestal bowl in the shape of a turtle at her head. Amateur archaeologist Kenneth Vinton kept this ceramic artifact and there were several photos of it on display in his classroom in Panama. Credit: Courtesy of Ripon College, Kenneth Vinton estate. Courtesy of Ripon College, Kenneth Vinton estate

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Bioarchaeologist Nicole Smith-Guzmán looks for clues that might explain the cause of death of individuals from ancient Panamanian gravesites. Sean Mattson, STRI

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The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City, Panama, is a part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Institute furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. 

Article Source: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute news release

*Smith-Guzmán, N.E., Cooke, R.G. 2018. Interpersonal Violence at Playa Venado (Venado Beach), Panama: A re-evaluation of the evidence. Latin American Antiquity

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY—Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have uncovered a previously unconfirmed population boom across South East Asia that occurred 4,000 years ago, thanks to a new method for measuring prehistoric population growth.

Using the new population measurement method, which utilizes human skeletal remains, they have been able to prove a significant rapid increase in growth across populations in Thailand, China and Vietnam during the Neolithic Period, and a second subsequent rise in the Iron Age.

Lead researcher Clare McFadden, a PhD Scholar with the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, said the population trend was consistent across samples taken from 15 locations.

“We saw huge population growth associated with the agricultural transition,” McFadden said.

“Up until about 4,000 years ago you have hunter gatherer type populations, then you have the introduction and intensification of agriculture.

“Agricultural transition has been widely studied around the world and we consistently see significant population growth as a result.”

The reason these population changes have never been quantified before is because the tools used to measure prehistoric populations were all designed for Europe and the Americas where archaeological conditions are different from that of Asia.

Ms McFadden said the difference comes down to how children are represented in population numbers.

“For skeletal remains in Europe and America we often see the complete absence of infants and children, they are very poorly represented,” she said.

“The preservation isn’t good – small bones don’t preserve well. Children are also thought to often be buried in a different cemetery to adults.

“So the method researchers used to measure populations excluded children because they didn’t have accurate representation.”

Ms McFadden said her new method for determining the rate of natural population increase takes into account the proportion of infants and children compared to the total population. This way researchers were able to bring population growth figures in line with other archaeological evidence in the region which suggested a rapid rise.

“In South East Asia and the Pacific, we actually have pretty good preservation of bones from children,” she said.

“The skeletal evidence was there, we were seeing populations with huge numbers of infants and children compared to the adult populations, which suggests it was a growing population at that time. But the existing tools weren’t detecting that growth.

“The trends the new tool found aligned perfectly with what researchers expect to see in response to agriculture.”

Article Source: Australian National University news release.

The study has been published in a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—The creation of a new division in the scale of geological time – the Meghalayan Age, a period beginning with a two-century megadrought in 2200 BCE that allegedly led to the collapse of several civilizations worldwide – was recently announced by the International Commission of Stratigraphy. In a Perspective*, Guy Middleton argues that the archaeological and historical evidence does not support the widespread collapse in which the Meghalayan is based. According to Middleton, this lack of evidence casts doubts on the utility of using 2200 BCE as a meaningful threshold of a new geologic age. Large amounts of paleoclimate data suggestive of the existence of a megadrought have been casually linked to the collapse of civilizations for decades. However, these environmentally deterministic interpretations often fail to account for specific historical circumstances or the power of human agency to translate environmental factors into cultural and socio-political contexts. For example, the ‘collapse’ of Egyptian civilization is often provided as evidence of the impact of the Meghalayan megadrought. According to Middleton, there was no great disruption to Egyptian society during this time, but rather a reorganization of political power. Furthermore, the ancient literary sources that have been cited as evidence of drought, famine and unrest during this time – were written far later and with a purpose of supporting the centralized power of a Pharaoh; they cannot be accepted at face value. Middleton suggests that archaeologists pursue more interdisciplinary collaborations and publish in journals so current understandings are visible to the wider discourse.

Article Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science news release

Cover Image, Top Left: The Gizah pyramids. Ricardo Liberato, Wikimedia Commons

*”Bang or whimper?” by G.D. Middleton at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic; G.D. Middleton at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA—Using energy consumption as a measure, a team of international scientists has found that ancient civilizations engaged in globalization more than previously believed, suggesting that an integrated global economy is nothing new and may have benefited societies for ages.

This archaeological research is the first of its kind, because instead of focusing on specific regions or cultures, it used radiocarbon dating to examine human societies on a broader and longer-term scale.

The findings are the result of a study co-authored by Jacopo A. Baggio, an assistant professor in the University of Central Florida political science department, and published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team included lead author Jacob Freeman, an assistant professor of archaeology at Utah State University, and Erick Robinson, a postdoctoral assistant research scientist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming

The researchers found that societies often experienced booms and busts simultaneously, a process known as synchrony.

They used radiocarbon dating and historical records to measure energy consumption through a period of history ranging from about 10,000 to 400 years ago, a time frame that encompasses a large portion of the current Holocene era.

The greater the energy consumption, the more likely a society was booming with population and political and economic activity.

Some of the areas examined included the western United States, the British Isles, Australia and northern Chile.

The radiocarbon dates came from preserved organic items such as seeds, animal bones and burned wood from ancient trash deposits at these sites. Radiocarbon dating measures the radioactive decay of the atom carbon-14 from organic matter to find the organic matter’s age.

The researchers’ findings suggest that early globalization was possibly a strategy for societies to grow through migration, trade and conflict with other, distant societies when a society’s carrying capacity began to be overloaded.

Baggio, who is also a member of UCF’s National Center for Integrated Coastal Research and the Sustainable Coastal System research cluster, said it is especially important to study societies’ resilience, or ability to recover from a disaster, over the long term, and radiocarbon dating is a useful tool for this assessment.

“Resilience is intrinsically dynamic,” Baggio said. “So, it becomes very hard to understand resilience in a short time span. Here we have the opportunity to look at these longer trends and really see how society has reacted and adapted and what were the booms and busts of these societies. Hopefully this can teach some lessons to be learned for modern day society.”

The researcher said the rise and fall of societies seems to be an inherent part of civilization.

“Our data stop at 400 years ago, and there has been a huge change from organic economies to fossil fuel economies,” Baggio said. “However, similar synchronization trends continue today even more given the interdependencies of our societies.”

Freeman said the new study suggests the process of societies creating connections and becoming interdependent, known as globalization, also played out among human society millennia ago.

“If every culture was unique, you would expect to see no synchrony, or harmony, across human records of energy consumption,” Freeman said.

Robinson said it is important to look at not only cultures at specific times, but also over the long term.

“We must move back and forth between different spatial and temporal scales in order to understand the whole picture,” Robinson said.

“When we take a broader perspective, we are still interdependent on others, no matter our cultural differences,”

Although interconnectedness has advantages for societies, there can be downfalls as well, Robinson said.

“The more tightly connected and interdependent we become, the more vulnerable we are to a major social or ecological crisis in another country spreading to our country,” he said. ‘The more we are synced, the more we put all our eggs in one basket, the less adaptive to unforeseen changes we become.”

“The financial crisis of 2007 to 2008 is a good recent example,” Robinson said.

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Professor Baggio co-authored a study that used energy consumption as a way to look at civilizations. The archaeological research is the first of its kind, because instead of focusing on specific regions or cultures, it used radiocarbon dating to examine human societies on a broader and longer-term scale. University of Central Florida, Karen Norum

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Article Source: University of Central Florida news release

Authors of the study also included David A. Byers and Judson Byrd Finley of Utah State University; Eugenia Gayo of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research and Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability in Santiago, Chile; Jack A. Meyer of the Far Western Anthropological Research Group Inc.; Robert Kelly of the University of Wyoming; and John M. Anderies of Arizona State University.

ELSEVIER—Amsterdam, September 12, 2018—A new study* published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports suggests beer brewing practices existed in the Eastern Mediterranean over five millennia before the earliest known evidence, discovered in northern China. In an archaeological collaboration project between Stanford University in the United States, and University of Haifa, Israel, archeologists analyzed three stone mortars from a 13,000-year old Natufian burial cave site in Israel. Their analysis confirmed that these mortars were used for brewing of wheat/barley, as well as for food storage.

“Alcohol making and food storage were among the major technological innovations that eventually led to the development of civilizations in the world, and archaeological science is a powerful means to help reveal their origins and decode their contents,” said Li Liu, PhD, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University, USA. “We are excited to have the opportunity to present our findings, which shed new light on a deeper history of human society.”

The earliest archaeological evidence for cereal-based beer brewing even before the advent of agriculture comes from the Natufians, semi-sedentary, foraging people, living in the Eastern Mediterranean between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods, following the last Ice Age. The Natufians at Raqefet Cave collected locally available plants, stored malted seeds, and made beer as a part of their rituals.

“The Natufian remains in Raqefet Cave never stop surprising us,” said Prof. Dani Nadel, Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel, who was also an excavator of the site. “We exposed a Natufian burial area with about 30 individuals; a wealth of small finds such as flint tools, animal bones and ground stone implements, and about 100 stone mortars and cupmarks. Some of the skeletons are well-preserved and provided direct dates and even human DNA, and we have evidence for flower burials and wakes by the graves.

“And now, with the production of beer, the Raqefet Cave remains provide a very vivid and colorful picture of Natufian lifeways, their technological capabilities and inventions.”

After five seasons of excavations and a wide range of studies, the current study employed experimental archaeology, contextual examination, use-wear and residue analyses. The results indicate that the Natufians exploited at least seven plant types associated with the mortars, including wheat or barley, oat, legumes and bast fibers (including flax). They packed plant-foods in fiber-made containers and stored them in boulder mortars. They used bedrock mortars for pounding and cooking plant-foods, and for brewing wheat/barley-based beer, likely served in ritual feasts 13,000 years ago.

The use-wear patterns and microbotanical assemblage suggest that two of the three examined boulder mortars were used as storage containers for plant foods – including wheat/barley malts. Likely, they were covered with lids, probably made of stone slabs and other materials. The foods are likely to have been placed in baskets made of bast fibers for easy handing. The deep narrow shafts may have provided cool conditions suitable for storing food, especially for keeping cereal malts.

Combining use-wear and residue data, the third mortar studied was interpreted as a multi-functional vessel for food preparation, which included pounding plant foods and brewing wheat/barley-based beer, probably with legumes and other plants as additive ingredients.

The evidence of beer brewing at Raqefet Cave 13,000 years ago provides yet another example of the complex Natufian social and ritual realms. Beer brewing may have been, at least in part, an underlying motivation to cultivate cereals in the southern Levant, supporting the beer hypothesis proposed by archaeologists more than 60 years ago.

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This is the site location and artifacts analyzed. (A) The location of Raqefet Cave and three additional Natufian sites in Mt. Carmel; (B) field photos of the studied boulder mortars (BM1,2) and the location of BM3 on the cave floor (scale bar and arrow: 20 cm); (C) a functional reconstruction of the mortars: a boulder mortar used to store plants in a basket with a stone slab on top, and a bedrock mortar used for pounding and cooking plants and brewing beer. Elsevier, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.  Photos: Dror Maayan;  Graphic design: Anat Regev-Gisis

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Article Source: Elsevier news release.

*”Fermented beverage and food storage in 13,000 y-old stone mortars at Raqefet Cave, Israel: Investigating Natufian ritual feasting,” by Li Liu, Jiajing Wang, Danny Rosenberg, Hao Zhao, György Lengyel, Dani Nadel (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.08.008). It appears in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, volume 21 (October 2018), published by Elsevier.

PLOS—New evidence from the Maya city of Copan, in Honduras, reveals that ancient Mesoamericans routinely captured and traded wild animals for symbolic and ritual purposes, according to a study* published September 12, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nawa Sugiyama from George Mason University, Virginia, USA, and colleagues.

Ancient Mesoamerican cultures used wild animals such as puma and jaguar for many purposes, including in symbolic displays of status and power, as subjects of ritual sacrifice, and as resources for processing into venison or craft products. Evidence of wild animal use in ancient Mesoamerica dates back to the Teotihuacan culture in what is now central Mexico (A.D. 1-550). Archaeological findings of indigenous Mesoamerican animal management strategies have traditionally been underemphasized, due to the paucity of large domesticated game in the New World in comparison to the devastating impact of European livestock introduced in the 1500s. In this study, the research team analyzed archaeological samples of wild animals excavated from five ritual sites in the Maya city of Copan (A.D. 426-822), in Honduras.

The team performed stable isotope analyses on bone and teeth from puma, jaguar and other unidentified felids along with deer, owl, spoonbill, and crocodile, to determine the diet and geographical origin of the animals. Some of the felid specimens tested, including puma and jaguar, had high levels of C4 intake indicative of an anthropogenic diet despite the absence of indicators of captive breeding. Oxygen isotope levels in deer and felid specimens suggest that some animals and derived craft products (e.g. pelts) used in ritual practices originated in distant regions of the Copan Valley.

These findings confirm previous research showing that Mesoamerican cultures kept wild animals in captivity for ritual purposes and reveal that animal trade networks across ancient Mesoamerica were more extensive than previously thought.

Sugiyama summarizes: “Encoded into the bones of jaguars and pumas at the Maya site of Copan was evidence of both captivity and of expansive trade networks trading ritualized carnivores across the dynamic Mesoamerican landscape.”

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Puma skull from the Motmot burial. N. Sugiyama

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Sugiyama N, Fash WL, France CAM (2018) Jaguar and puma captivity and trade among the Maya: Stable isotope data from Copan, Honduras. PLoS ONE 13(9): e0202958. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202958

If you liked this article, you might like The Rise and Fall of a Maya Polity, a Popular Archaeology premium article now made free to the public.

CNRS and the University of the Witwatersrand—The oldest known abstract drawing, made with ocher, has been found in South Africa’s Blombos Cave—on the face of a flake of siliceous rock retrieved from archaeological strata dated to 73,000 years before the present. It is a crosshatch of nine lines purposefully traced with a piece of ocher having a fine point and used as a pencil. The work is at least 30,000 years older than the earliest previously known abstract and figurative drawings executed using the same technique. This discovery is reported in Nature (September 12, 2018).* 

The drawing on the silcrete flake was a surprising find by archaeologist Dr Luca Pollarolo, an honorary research fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), while he painstakingly sifted through thousands of similar flakes that were excavated from Blombos Cave at the Wits University satellite laboratory in Cape Town.

Blombos Cave has been excavated by Professor Christopher Henshilwood and Dr Karen van Niekerk since 1991. It contains material dating from 100 000 – 70 000 years ago, a time period referred to as the Middle Stone Age, as well as younger, Later Stone Age material dating from 2000 – 300 years ago.

Realizing that the lines on the flake were unlike anything that the team had come across from the cave before, they set out to answer the questions it posed. Were these lines natural, or a part of the matrix of the rock? Were they, perhaps, made by humans living in Blombos Cave 73 000 years ago? If humans made the lines, how did they make them, and why?

Under the guidance of Professor Francesco d’Errico at the PACEA lab of the University of Bordeaux, France (the second author of the paper) the team examined and photographed the piece under a microscope to establish whether the lines were part of the stone or whether it was applied to it. To ensure their results, they also examined the piece by using RAMAN spectroscopy and an electron microscope. After confirming the lines were applied to the stone, the team experimented with various paint and drawing techniques and found that the drawings were made with an ocher crayon or pencil, with a tip of between 1 and 3 millimeters thick. Further, the abrupt termination of the lines at the edge of the flake also suggested that the pattern originally extended over a larger surface, and may have been more complex in its entirety.

“Before this discovery, Palaeolithic archaeologists have for a long time been convinced that unambiguous symbols first appeared when Homo sapiens entered Europe, about 40,000 years ago, and later replaced local Neanderthals,” says Henshilwood. “Recent archaeological discoveries in Africa, Europe and Asia, in which members of our team have often participated, support a much earlier emergence for the production and use of symbols.”

The earliest known engraving, a zig-zag pattern, incised on a fresh water shell from Trinil, Java, was found in layers dated to 540,000 years ago and a recent article has proposed that painted representations in three caves of the Iberian Peninsula were 64,000 years old and therefore produced by Neanderthals. This makes the drawing on the Blombos silcrete flake the oldest drawing by Homo sapiens ever found.

Although abstract and figurative representations are generally considered conclusive indicators of the use of symbols, assessing the symbolic dimension of the earliest possible graphisms is tricky.

Symbols are an inherent part of our humanity. They can be inscribed on our bodies in the form of tattoos and scarifications or cover them through the application of particular clothing, ornaments and the way we dress our hair.

Language, writing, mathematics, religion, laws could not possibly exist without the typically human capacity to master the creation and transmission of symbols and our ability to embody them in material culture. Substantial progress has been made in understanding how our brain perceives and processes different categories of symbols, but our knowledge on how and when symbols permanently permeated the culture of our ancestors is still imprecise and speculative.

The archaeological layer in which the Blombos drawing was found also yielded other indicators of symbolic thinking, such as shell beads covered with ocher, and, more importantly, pieces of ocher engraved with abstract patterns. Some of these engravings closely resemble the one drawn on the silcrete flake.

“This demonstrates that early Homo sapiens in the southern Cape used different techniques to produce similar signs on different media,” says Henshilwood. “This observation supports the hypothesis that these signs were symbolic in nature and represented an inherent aspect of the behaviorally modern world of these African Homo sapiens, the ancestors of all of us today.”

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This silcrete flake displays a drawing made up of nine lines traced on one of its faces with an ocher implement. D’Errico/Henshilwood/Nature

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An abstract pattern has been engraved on this piece of ocher found at Blombos Cave in the same archaeological stratum that yielded the silcrete flake. D’Errico/Henshilwood/Nature

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The outside of Blombos Cave in the southern Cape in South Africa. Magnus Haaland

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Professor Chris Henshilwood and his team working in Blombos Cave in South Africa’s southern Cape, where the drawing was found. Ole Frederik Unhammer

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If you liked this article, you might like the following premium articles published by Popular Archaeology: Exploring the Roots of Modern Humanity, which details an exclusive interview of Chris Henshilwood by Popular Archaeology, and Where Hominins Became Human.

Article Sources:  CNRS  and University of the Witwatersrand news releases.

*An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Christopher S. Henshilwood, Francesco D’Errico, Karen L. van Niekerk, Laure Dayet, Alain Queffelec & Luca Pollarolo. September 12th, 2018,Nature. DOI : 10.1038/s41586-018-0514-3

Cover Image, Top Left: Blombos drawing with ocher pencil on silcrete stone. Craig Foster

Analyzing carbonate deposits from a second century AD Roman watermill site – thought to be one of the first industrial complexes in human history – has revealed characteristics of the mill, including its nonuse for several months of the year. These findings suggest that the Barbegal mill site was not the Roman city of Arelate’s main flour supplier as hypothesized, but rather it was likely used to produce non-perishable “ship’s bread” for the many ancient ships that visited the major ports of Arles during certain times of the year. These findings shed light on the variable uses of ancient mills, as well as on their maintenance and on the destruction of the related sites, information that has otherwise been hard to decipher for these ancient formations. Over the past decades, the unearthing of Roman mill sites has offered proof of notable innovation during the Roman times, especially in the field of hydraulics. A key example of such a watermill is located at Barbegal, in southern France. However, since its discovery in 1937, little has been revealed about its unique history. Gül Sürmelihindi and colleagues sought to discern more about the mill’s use by analyzing 142 carbonate deposits from the complex. Formed on the now decayed wooden parts of the watermill that had been in contact with karst springs, these carbonates can preserve information of the environment of the complex. The fragment samples can be split into two groups: large carbonate slabs that formed in water channels that turned the wheel (millrun flumes) and deposits that had formed on the wooden part of the wheel. Stable isotope analyses of oxygen and carbon showed a distinct, cyclical pattern in the deposits, suggesting interruptions of the water flow during the late summer and autumn, a pattern of activity in accordance with Roman shipping activities, the authors say. Roman shipping usually halted in late autumn, meaning flour production to support shipping could have subsided then, too. Thus, they propose that the mill’s main use was not for widely consumed flour but specifically to produce non-perishable ship’s bread.

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East side of the Barbegal mill complex looking north. The buildings on the left are the millbuildings where the grain was milled, the higher walls and basins on the right are the waterbasins of the mill complex that housed the water wheels. Robert Fabre, Saint Etienne du Grès, France

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Overview of the Barbegal mill complex in 2018, seen from below, looking north. The two rows of buildings on the rocky slope are the actual mill buildings and mill basins, while the gap visible at the top is the rock cut through which the aqueduct water entered the mill complex. Robert Fabre, Saint Etienne du Grès, France

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Mill basin of the Barbegal mill with carbonate deposits.
Robert Fabre, Saint Etienne du Grès, France

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Cross-section of a layered carbonate deposit from the Barbegal mill complex. This carbonate formed layer-after-layer on a square piece of wood of the mill wheel, the impression of which can be seen below. The wood decayed, leaving the cast as a record of the mill’s history. Cees Passchier, Mainz, Germany

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Drawing of the Barbegal mill complex as it may have appeared in the 2nd century AD. Two rows of eight mill houses on each side contained the waterwheels and machinery (16 in total). One corner is shown opened to illustrate the position of the waterwheels and gutters. Cees Passchier, Mainz, Germany

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

Researchers studying human remains of high-ranked warriors recovered from an Early Medieval Germanic cemetery have finally gleaned insight into these individuals’ sex and kinship relationships. These findings offer a unique understanding of the Alemanni, a group of Germanic tribes that occupied a region spanning parts of present-day Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria. After the Alemanni were defeated by the Franks in 497 AD, the tribes’ burial practices changed, with households (familia) buried in richly furnished graves known as Adelsgrablege. An example of Alemannic Adelsgrablege can be seen in the 7^th century AD Alemannic burial site at Niederstotzingen in southern Germany, where, decades ago, the skeletal remains of 13 individuals, as well as collections of goods, were uncovered from 12 graves. Despite analysis on the site since its discovery in 1962, some questions remain: namely, the individuals’ genetic sex, kinship and genetic origin. Using ancient genome-wide analyses techniques – including 1240K – Niall O’Sullivan and colleagues sought to reconstruct familial relationships of the Niederstotzingen individuals, as well as to estimate their genetic sex. At least 11 of the individuals were likely male, they say, suggesting that burial rites were sex-biased. What’s more, in terms of origin, the site is divided into two groups, the authors say: Niederstotzingen North, comprised of six individuals genetically most like modern northern and eastern European populations, and Niederstotzingen South, two individuals most similar to modern-day Mediterraneans, but genetically unrelated. Of the Niederstotzingen North, five were second degree relatives. Finally, the strontium and oxygen isotope content of the individuals’ dental enamel in the northern burials indicated that they were born locally, while the southern burials were born in other regions. These findings suggest that other social processes, such as personal fealty to powerful families, might have also influenced the composition of these cemeteries.

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Excavated human remains at the burial site. Landesamt für Denkmalpflege im RP Stuttgart

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Above and below: Various grave goods were restored and displayed. Landesmuseum Württemberg, P. Frankenstein / H. Zwietasch

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

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Amber and other unusual materials such as jade, obsidian and rock crystal have attracted interest as raw materials for the manufacture of decorative items since Late Prehistory and, indeed, amber retains a high value in present-day jewelry.

‘Baltic’ amber from Scandinavia is often cited as a key material circulating in prehistoric Europe, but in a new study* published today in PLOS ONE researchers have found that amber from Sicily was traveling around the Western Mediterranean as early as the 4th Millennium BC—at least 2,000 years before the arrival of any Baltic amber in Iberia.

According to lead author Dr Mercedes Murillo-Barroso of the Universidad de Granada, “The new evidence presented in this study has allowed the most comprehensive review to date on the provision and exchange of amber in the Prehistory of Iberia. Thanks to this new work, we now have evidence of the arrival of Sicilian amber in Iberia from at least the 4th Millennium BC.”

“Interestingly, the first amber objects recovered in Sicily and identified as being made from the local amber there (known as simetite) also date from the 4th Millennium BC; however, there is no other evidence indicating direct contact between Sicily and Iberia at this time.”

“Instead, what we do know about are the links between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. It is plausible that Sicilian amber reached Iberia through exchanges with North Africa. This amber appears at southern Iberian sites and its distribution is similar to that of ivory objects, suggesting that both materials reached the Iberian Peninsula following the same or similar channels.”

Senior author Professor Marcos Martinón-Torres, of the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge adds, “It is only from the Late Bronze Age that we see Baltic amber at a large number of Iberian sites and it is likely that it arrived via the Mediterranean, rather than through direct trade with Scandinavia.”

“What’s peculiar is that this amber appears as associated with iron, silver and ceramics pointing to Mediterranean connections. This suggests that amber from the North may have moved South across Central Europe before being shipped to the West by Mediterranean sailors, challenging previous suggestions of direct trade between Scandinavia and Iberia.”

Murillo-Barroso concludes, “In this study, we’ve been able to overcome traditional challenges in attempts at assigning corroded amber to a geological source. These new analytical techniques can be used as a reference to identify Sicilian amber, even from highly deteriorated archaeological samples.”

“There are still unresolved issues to be investigated in the future—namely, exploring the presence of amber in North African contexts from the same time period and further researching the networks involved in the introduction and spread of Baltic amber in Iberia and the extent to which metals or other Iberian commodities were provided in return.”

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M. Murillo-Barroso and Alvaro Fernandez Flores

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A geological amber sample from Cuchía, analyzed as part of the study. M. Murillo-Barroso and Alvaro Fernandez Flores

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Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

*Amber in prehistoric Iberia: New data and a review is published in PLOS ONE.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY—Ants and humans live in large societies that allow for elaborate structures — nests, cities—filled with resources. Sometime in the distant past, individuals must have organized themselves into the first simple groups, precursors of these complex societies. But how?

A team of researchers from Princeton University and Rockefeller University tackled this question by combining sophisticated mathematical models with detailed empirical observations of the clonal raider ant (Ooceraea biroi)*.

“Our findings show that there are some very significant and unexpected benefits that emerge even in very small groups, which could provide the critical steppingstone to allow for larger, more complex societies,” said Christopher Tokita, a graduate student in Corina Tarnita’s lab in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB).

The scientists found that ant groups with as few as six individuals experienced significant benefits from group living, as measured by better-surviving and faster-growing babies. Their results appear in the journal Nature.

“It’s easy to see how individuals work together in more complex societies, such as those with queens and workers, because they have distinct roles,” said Rockefeller’s Daniel Kronauer. “But that’s not how insect societies started out.”

In fact, this is a general conundrum across biological systems, added Tarnita. “From multicellular organisms to insect groups to human societies, nature has a remarkable ability to construct complex groupings, but we have yet to fully understand what happened at the beginning to facilitate their emergence.”

Moreover, she said, “we are used to thinking of certain features, such as division of labor or cellular differentiation, as characteristic of large, complex groups, but are we right to think that way?”

The scientists used ants to try to understand what the earliest precursors of these complex groups might look like. Small insect groups are more successful than solitary individuals for two main reasons, said Tokita, a co-author on the Nature paper. “First, there are ‘more hands to do work,’ so to speak,” he said. “Important tasks don’t slip through the cracks, because chances are there’s always an individual to do the task.”

Second, and unexpectedly, “incipient division of labor emerges already in these tiny groups of nearly identical individuals,” added Tarnita.

The researchers studied ant groups ranging in size from one to 16 individuals. They chose this species because of its unusually simple social organization: colonies have no queens, just genetically identical workers that reproduce simultaneously.

“It was an ideal pairing of experiments and theory,” said Tokita. Researchers in Kronauer’s lab at Rockefeller observed ants in long-running experiments that informed and guided the mathematical models created by the Princeton team.

“With the model, we were able to ask questions that might not be possible to ask otherwise,” said Tokita. “For example, our model predicted that group needs, like hunger, were becoming more stable as groups got larger and division of labor emerged. This was the result of tasks, like foraging and nursing, being more consistently performed and less neglected. While the Kronauer Lab couldn’t measure hunger levels in their colonies, they were able to go back to their camera-tracking data and confirm that, as colonies grew larger, those tasks were indeed being more consistently performed. It was amazing! We had a prediction from our model that, when tested against the empirical data, actually held up really well.”

At the outset, the researchers had assumed that the incipient division of labor was the key to success in their larger groups, a common assumption among modern economists as well. They were surprised to find that this was not completely true. Division of labor contributed to but was not necessary to produce the observed increase in fitness with group size, said Tokita. “Instead, we showed theoretically that increases in group size alone, even in the absence of division of labor, could create benefits for these small colonies.”

In addition, their findings challenge a popular belief about group dynamics, that strong groups require strong leaders. “Complicated behaviors, like the division of labor, can self-organize,” Tokita said. “The ant species we used does not have a leader at all. Instead, all group members are workers and they each lay their own eggs.”

This “impressive collaboration between empirical and theoretical research” confirms predictions Tarnita made in 2010 with co-authors Martin Nowak and Edward Wilson, said Nowak, who was not involved in the current research. The earlier paper, also in Nature, argued that complex societies such as those of ants or bees could evolve only “if the benefits of staying together arise already for small group size,” which is exactly what this new collaboration determined, Nowak said.

“Experimentally confirming that ants satisfy this very strong requirement was impossible in 2010,” said Tarnita. It was only what Tarnita described as “a huge effort by the Kronauer Lab to turn ants into a lab model organism” that made this recently possible. “It’s been very exciting to empirically revisit these ideas and, not only find support, but also reveal such unexpectedly rich behavior in such small groups,” she said.

These findings have significant implications for understanding the evolution of social behavior. They show that “a lot can happen very early on and that what we think are hallmarks of complex societies could actually have originated in the simplest groups,” Tarnita said.

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Researchers at Princeton and Rockefeller Universities investigated ant colonies to look at the relationship between group size and social behaviors. They found that simply increasing group size, even if it doesn’t lead to division of labor, can benefit members of the group. Clonal raider ants, like those seen here, form a dense cluster in which ants care for the offspring while others sporadically leave the cluster to forage. Researchers in Daniel Kronauer’s lab at Rockefeller University marked the ants with individual paint tags for automated behavioral tracking. Daniel Kronauer, Rockefeller University

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Article Source: Princeton University news release

*”Fitness benefits and emergent division of labour at the onset of group living,” by Yuko Ulrich, Jonathan Saragosti, Christopher Tokita, Corina Tarnita and Daniel Kronauer, was supported by grant 1DP2GM105454-01 from the National Institutes of Health, a Searle Scholar Award, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, a Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, two fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PBEZP3-140156 and P300P3-147900), a Rockefeller University Women and Science fellowship, a Kravis Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE1656466).

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers report* that an absence of Neanderthal tools during Paleolithic European cold periods suggests that the cold periods influenced the decline of Neanderthals and the rise of modern humans. The transition from Neanderthal to modern human populations in Europe occurred during a period of recurring cold climate cycles, although the link between the climate cycles and the decline of Neanderthals has not been established. Michael Staubwasser and colleagues examined paleoclimate records from stalagmites in east-central Europe covering a period from 44,000 to 40,000 years ago, and compared the data to archaeological records of Neanderthal artifacts from across Europe. The authors found that archaeological layers devoid of Neanderthal tools occurred at around the same time as cold periods called stadials. Following the cold periods, Europe experienced periods of genetic turnover as modern humans expanded, and evidence suggests that the last interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals occurred four to six generations before the Neanderthals disappeared from the archeological record. The Neanderthals’ diet, which was more limited than that of humans, may explain their decline during cold periods. Under the ecological stress of a changing climate, the terrestrial meat sources on which the Neanderthals relied may have become scarce, whereas human diet was supplemented with plant and aquatic food sources, enabling them to survive. According to the authors, repeated population-depopulation cycles during stadials may have altered the genetic character of ancient Europe.

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Tausoare Cave in the East Carpathians, Romania. Crin Theodorescu

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Ascunsa Cave in the South Carpathians, Romania. PNAS

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe,” by Michael Staubwasser et al.

UNIVERSITY OF KENT—This research is the first to link a stone tool production technique known as ‘platform preparation’ to the biology of human hands. Demonstrating that without the ability to perform highly forceful precision grips, our ancestors would not have been able to produce advanced types of stone tool like spear points.

The technique involves preparing a striking area on a tool to remove specific stone flakes and shape the tool into a pre-conceived design.

Platform preparation is essential for making many different types of advanced prehistoric stone tools, with the earliest known occurrence observed at the 500,000-year-old site of Boxgrove in West Sussex (UK).

The study*, led by Dr Alastair Key, of the University’s School of Anthropology and Conservation, and funded by the British Academy, investigated how hands are used during the production of different types of early stone technology.

Using sensors attached to the hand of skilled flint knappers (stone tool producers), the researchers were able to identify that platform preparation behaviors required the hand to exert significantly more pressure through the fingers when compared to all other stone tool activities studied.

The research demonstrates that the Boxgrove hominins (early humans) would have needed significantly stronger grips compared to earlier populations who did not perform this behavior. It further suggests that highly modified and shaped stone tools, such as the handaxes discovered at Boxgrove and stone spear points found in later prehistory, may not have been possible to produce until humans evolved the ability to perform particularly forceful grips.

This discovery is particularly important because human hand bones rarely survive in the fossil record.

Dr Key said: “Hand bones from before 300,000 years ago are rare, particularly when compared to other human fossils such as teeth, so the fact we can study the manipulative capabilities of our early ancestors from the stone tools they produced is incredibly exciting.”

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Comparison between a Handaxe and a Clovis Point. Alastair Key and Metin Eren

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Article Source: University of Kent news release

*The findings Manual restrictions on Palaeolithic technological behaviours Key, A. and Dunmore, C.J. 2018 are published open access in PeerJ 6: e5399 and are freely available here.

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—An international team of researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Harvard University has discovered that waves of migration from Anatolia and the Zagros mountains (today’s Turkey and Iran) to the Levant helped develop the Chalcolithic culture that existed in Israel’s Upper Galilee region some 6,500 years ago.

The study is one of the largest ancient DNA studies ever conducted in Israel and for the first time sheds light on the origins of the Chalcolithic culture in the Levant, approximately 6,000-7,000 years ago.

Research for the study was led by Dr. Hila May and Prof. Israel Hershkovitz of the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine; Dr. Dina Shalem of the Institute for Galilean Archaeology at Kinneret College and the Israel Antiquities Authority; and Éadaoin Harney and Prof. David Reich of Harvard University. It was published today in Nature Communications.

In 1995, Zvi Gal, Dina Shalem and Howard Smithline of the Israel Antiquities Authority began excavating the Peqi’in Cave in northern Israel, which dates to the Chalcolithic Period in the Levant. The team unearthed dozens of burials in the natural stalactite cave that is 17 meters long and 5-8 meters wide.

The large number of unique ceramic ossuaries and the variety of burial offerings discovered in the cave suggest that it was once used as a mortuary center by the local Chalcolithic people.

“The uniqueness of the cave is evident in the number of people buried in it — more than 600 — and the variety of ossuaries and jars and the outstanding motifs on them, including geometric and anthropomorphic designs,” Dr. Shalem says. “Some of the findings in the cave are typical to the region, but others suggest cultural exchange with remote regions.

“The study resolves a long debate about the origin of the unique culture of the Chalcolithic people. Did the cultural change in the region follow waves of migration, the infiltration of ideas due to trade relations and/or cultural exchange, or local invention? We now know that the answer is migration.”

The researchers subjected 22 of the skeletons excavated at Peqi’in, dating to the Chalcolithic Period, to a whole genome analysis.

“This study of 22 individuals is one of the largest ancient DNA studies carried out from a single archaeological site, and by far the largest ever reported in the Near East,” Dr. May says.

“The genetic analysis provided an answer to the central question we set out to address,” says Prof. Reich. “It showed that the Peqi’in people had substantial ancestry from northerners — similar to those living in Iran and Turkey — that was not present in earlier Levantine farmers.”

“Certain characteristics, such as genetic mutations contributing to blue eye color, were not seen in the DNA test results of earlier Levantine human remains,” adds Dr. May. “The chances for the success of such a study seemed slim, since most of the ancient DNA studies carried out in Israel have failed due to difficult climatic conditions in the region that destroy DNA.”

“Fortunately, however, human DNA was preserved in the bones of the buried people in Peqi’in cave, likely due to the cool conditions within the cave and the limestone crust that covered the bones and preserved the DNA,” says Prof. Hershkovitz.

“We also find that the Peqi’in population experienced abrupt demographic change 6,000 years ago,” concludes Harney, who led the statistical analysis for the study.

“Indeed, these findings suggest that the rise and falls of the Chalcolithic culture are probably due to demographic changes in the region,” says Dr. May.

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Ossuaries from the Chalcolithic Period, excavated at Peqi’in Cave. Mariana Salzberger, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

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Article Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University news release

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—An international team, including researchers at Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, has found the earliest and largest monumental cemetery in eastern Africa. The Lothagam North Pillar Site was built 5,000 years ago by early pastoralists living around Lake Turkana, Kenya. This group is believed to have had an egalitarian society, without a stratified social hierarchy. Thus their construction of such a large public project contradicts long-standing narratives about early complex societies, which suggest that a stratified social structure is necessary to enable the construction of large public buildings or monuments. The study, led by Elisabeth Hildebrand, of Stony Brook University, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Lothagam North Pillar Site was a communal cemetery constructed and used over a period of several centuries, between about 5,000 and 4,300 years ago. Early herders built a platform approximately 30 meters in diameter and excavated a large cavity in the center to bury their dead. After the cavity was filled and capped with stones, the builders placed large, megalith pillars, some sourced from as much as a kilometer away, on top. Stone circles and cairns were added nearby. An estimated minimum of 580 individuals were densely buried within the central platform cavity of the site. Men, women, and children of different ages, from infants to the elderly, were all buried in the same area, without any particular burials being singled out with special treatment. Additionally, essentially all individuals were buried with personal ornaments and the distribution of ornaments was approximately equal throughout the cemetery. These factors indicate a relatively egalitarian society without strong social stratification.

Historically, archeologists have theorized that people built permanent monuments as reminders of shared history, ideals and culture, when they had established a settled, socially stratified agriculture society with abundant resources and strong leadership. It was believed that a political structure and the resources for specialization were prerequisites to engaging in monument building. Ancient monuments have thus previously been regarded as reliable indicators of complex societies with differentiated social classes. However, the Lothagam North cemetery was constructed by mobile pastoralists who show no evidence of a rigid social hierarchy. “This discovery challenges earlier ideas about monumentality,” explains Elizabeth Sawchuk of Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Absent other evidence, Lothagam North provides an example of monumentality that is not demonstrably linked to the emergence of hierarchy, forcing us to consider other narratives of social change.”

The discovery is consistent with similar examples elsewhere in Africa and on other continents in which large, monumental structures have been built by groups thought to be egalitarian in their social organization. This research has the potential to reshape global perspectives on how – and why – large groups of people come together to form complex societies. In this case, it appears that Lothagam North was built during a period of profound change. Pastoralism had just been introduced to the Turkana Basin and newcomers arriving with sheep, goats, and cattle would have encountered diverse groups of fisher-hunter-gatherers already living around the lake. Additionally, newcomers and locals faced a difficult environmental situation, as annual rainfall decreased during this period and Lake Turkana shrunk by as much as fifty percent. Early herders may have constructed the cemetery as a place for people to come together to form and maintain social networks to cope with major economic and environmental change.

“The monuments may have served as a place for people to congregate, renew social ties, and reinforce community identity,” states Anneke Janzen also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Information exchange and interaction through shared ritual may have helped mobile herders navigate a rapidly changing physical landscape.” After several centuries, pastoralism became entrenched and lake levels stabilized. It was around this time that the cemetery ceased to be used.

“The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the earliest known monumental site in eastern Africa, built by the region’s first herders,” states Hildebrand. “This finding makes us reconsider how we define social complexity, and the kinds of motives that lead groups of people to create public architecture.”

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View of Lothagam North Pillar Kenya, built by eastern Africa’s earliest herders ~5000-4300 years ago. Megaliths, stone circles, and cairns can be seen behind the 30-m platform mound; its mortuary cavity contains an estimated several hundred individuals, tightly arranged. Most burials had highly personalized ornaments. Lothagam North demonstrates monumentality may arise among dispersed, mobile groups without strong hierarchy. Katherine Grillo

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Stone palette with zoomorphic bovine carving from the communal cemetery of Lothagam North, Kenya, built by eastern Africa’s earliest herders ~5000-4300 years ago. Katherine Grillo

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Stone pendants and earrings from the communal cemetery of Lothagam North, Kenya, built by eastern Africa’s earliest herders ~5000-4300 years ago. Carla Klehm

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

MCGILL UNIVERSITY—Deforestation is suspected to have contributed to the mysterious collapse of Mayan civilization more than 1,000 years ago. A new study* shows that the forest-clearing also decimated carbon reservoirs in the tropical soils of the Yucatan peninsula region long after ancient cities were abandoned and the forests grew back.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, underscore how important soils and our treatment of them could be in determining future levels of greenhouse gases in the planet’s atmosphere.

The Maya began farming around 4,000 years ago, and the spread of agriculture and building of cities eventually led to widespread deforestation and soil erosion, previous research has shown. What’s most surprising in the new study is that the soils in the region haven’t fully recovered as carbon sinks in over a millennium of reforestation, says McGill University geochemist Peter Douglas, lead author of the new paper.

Ecosystem ‘fundamentally changed’

“When you go to this area today, much of it looks like dense, old-growth rainforest,” says Douglas, an Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at McGill. “But when you look at soil carbon storage, it seems the ecosystem was fundamentally changed and never returned to its original state.”

Soil is one of the largest storehouses of carbon on Earth, containing at least twice as much carbon as today’s atmosphere. Yet scientists have very little understanding of how soil carbon reservoirs change on timescales longer than a decade or so. The new study, along with other recently published research, suggests that these reservoirs can change dramatically on timescales spanning centuries or even millennia.

To investigate these long-term effects, Douglas and his co-authors examined sediment cores extracted from the bottom of three lakes in the Maya Lowlands of southern Mexico and Guatemala. The researchers used measurements of radiocarbon, an isotope that decays with time, to determine the age of molecules called plant waxes, which are usually stored in soils for a long time because they become attached to minerals. They then compared the age of wax molecules with that of plant fossils deposited with the sediments.

The team – which included scientists from Yale University, ETH Zurich, the University of Florida and the University of Wisconsin-Superior – found that once the ancient Maya began deforesting the landscape, the age difference between the fossils and the plant waxes went from being very large to very small. This implies that carbon was being stored in soils for much shorter periods of time.

The project stemmed from research that Douglas had done several years ago as a PhD student at Yale, using plant-wax molecules to trace past climate change affecting the ancient Maya. At the same time, work by other researchers was indicating that these molecules were a good tracer for changes in soil-carbon reservoirs. “Putting these things together, we realized there was an important data-set here relating ancient deforestation to changes in soil carbon reservoirs,” Douglas explains.

Protecting old-growth tropical forests

“This offers another reason – adding to a long list – to protect the remaining areas of old-growth tropical forests in the world,” Douglas says. “It could also have implications for how we design things like carbon offsets, which often involve reforestation but don’t fully account for the long-term storage of carbon.” (Carbon offsets enable companies or individuals to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions by purchasing credits from environmental projects, such as tree-planting.)

The technique used by the researchers has been developed only recently. In the years ahead, “it would be great to analyze tropical forests in other regions of the world to see if the same patterns emerge—and to see if past human deforestation and agriculture had an impact on soil carbon reservoirs globally,” Douglas says. “I’m also very interested in applying this technique to permafrost regions in Canada to see what happened to carbon stored in permafrost during previous periods of climate change.”

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Researchers sampling lake sediment in one of the three lakes in Guatemala studied in this paper. Mark Brenner

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The ruins of Cahal Pech, an ancient Maya city in Belize. Denis Barthel, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: McGill University news release

*”A long-term decrease in the persistence of soil carbon caused by ancient Maya land use”, Peter M. J. Douglas et al, Nature Geoscience, published Aug. 20, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0192-7