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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The study, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution and led by a multidisciplinary research team at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) together with researchers in France, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Vanuatu, reveals that migrations of people from the Bismarck Archipelago in Oceania to the previously settled islands of the Pacific began as early as 2,500 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. The Remote Oceanian island nation of Vanuatu is the gateway to the rest of the Pacific and understanding its demographic history is critical to uncovering that of the wider region. The earliest inhabitants of Vanuatu, arriving about 3,000 years ago, were the Lapita peoples who spoke a form of Austronesian language and who had largely East Asian genetic ancestry. But Vanuatu’s contemporary population has largely Near Oceanian heritage, showing that over time the genetic ancestry of the early inhabitants was mostly replaced by that of Bismarck Archipelago migrants, who began arriving very soon after initial settlement. Yet the original Austronesian language persisted and over 120 descendant languages continue to be spoken today, making Vanuatu the per capita most linguistically diverse place on Earth. Vanuatu therefore presents an unprecedented case, where a population’s genetic ancestry but not its languages were replaced. Through analyses of new ancient and modern genome-wide data, the researchers show that rather than occurring in one wave, the genetic replacement was long and complex, likely the result of a sustained long-distance contact between Near and Remote Oceania. This provides demographic support for a model from historical linguistics, in which the initial Austronesian language of Vanuatu survived by being continually adopted by incoming Papuan migrants.

The Austronesian Expansion, which began around 5,500 years ago likely in modern-day Taiwan, was the most geographically extensive dispersal of farming peoples in prehistory, ultimately carrying people as far west as Madagascar and all the way east to Rapa Nui. These seafaring Neolithic people initially expanded out across Island Southeast Asia, carrying farming technology and a major branch of the Austronesian language family, eventually reaching Near Oceania where they encountered the indigenous Papuan peoples of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. The initial settlement east beyond the Solomon Islands and out into Remote Oceania only began around 3,000 years ago, with Austronesian-speaking groups associated with the Lapita pottery culture rapidly expanding east out to Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and the islands of Western Polynesia. A previous ancient DNA study of Lapita burial sites has shown that these earliest inhabitants had East Asian ancestry with negligible evidence of Papuan genetic admixture. But the present-day genetic make-up of Remote Oceania suggests at least some degree of Papuan ancestry, meaning there must have been subsequent Papuan migration and admixture into the Pacific from Near Oceania.

In order to understand this previously undescribed migration, a multidisciplinary team of researchers brought together different lines of evidence from the fields of genetics, archaeology and linguistics. They generated genome-wide data from the bones and teeth of 19 ancient individuals from across Vanuatu, Tonga, French Polynesia and the Solomon Islands, a significant addition to the ancient DNA record in a region whose environmental conditions generally leads to poor ancient DNA preservation. As co-lead author Kathrin Nägele of the MPI-SHH says, “The identification of the petrous bone, which has recently been shown to provide fantastic aDNA preservation, has been a real game changer for such regions that were previously considered to be almost inaccessible.” The ancient DNA was complemented by new contemporary genome-wide data from 27 present-day inhabitants of Vanuatu, collected as part of a long-term linguistic and anthropological fieldwork project run by co-authors Professor Russell Gray and Dr. Heidi Colleran of the MPI-SHH.

The ancient DNA provided direct evidence that Papuan people began arriving in Vanuatu soon after initial settlement by Austronesians. “We found a genetically Papuan-related individual dating to around 2,500 years ago in Vanuatu, far earlier than had been previously estimated using only modern genetic data,” explains co-lead author Dr. Cosimo Posth, also of the MPI-SHH. The researchers were able to show that the ancestry of the initial Austronesian inhabitants of Vanuatu has been largely replaced by ancestry from Papuan peoples coming from the Bismarck Archipelago. But this genetic replacement was not straightforward, as Dr. Posth says, “Our analyses show that this replacement did not occur in a one-time mass migration event but rather happened incrementally over time, suggesting an enduring long-distance network between groups in Near and Remote Oceania.” The authors also directly described ancient individuals with sex-biased admixture, where Papuan males intermixed with Austronesian women, as long assumed based on analyses of the modern genetic make-up of the South Pacific.

Yet despite this genetic replacement, the people of present-day Vanuatu continue to speak languages descended from those spoken by the initial Austronesian inhabitants rather than any Papuan language of the incoming migrants. As Professor Gray, Director of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the MPI-SHH, says, “Population replacement with language continuity is extremely rare – if not unprecedented – in human history. The linguist Bob Blust has long argued for a model in which a separate Papuan expansion reaches Vanuatu soon after initial Austronesian settlement, with the initial, and likely undifferentiated, Austronesian language surviving as a lingua franca for diverse Papuan migrant groups.” Dr. Adam Powell, senior author of the study and also of the MPI-SHH, continues, “The demographic history suggested by our ancient DNA analyses provides really strong support for this historical linguistic model, with the early arrival and complex, incremental process of genetic replacement by people from the Bismarck Archipelago. This provides a compelling explanation for the continuity of Austronesian languages despite the almost complete replacement of the initial genetic ancestry of Vanuatu.”

The study in particular highlights the importance of interdisciplinary work and the value that multiple lines of evidence can have in deepening our understanding of human history. As Professor Johannes Krause, a senior author and Director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the MPI-SHH, explains, “This multidisciplinary work has begun to uncover the complex, localized demographic processes that drove the initial colonization of the wider South Pacific and formed the enduring cultural and linguistic spheres that continue to shape the Pacific today.” Ongoing engagement with local communities in Vanuatu, as well as with the Vanuatu Cultural Center, has been critical to this success. As Dr. Colleran points out, “One strength of this study is the degree to which we are collaborating with communities in Vanuatu who have a real stake in these results and who generously volunteered their data to help answer these questions. We will be back in the field very soon to share the results with those communities and to hear their thoughts on the whole process.” The progress of this continuing fieldwork can be followed on the Nature Ecology & Evolution Community website.

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Young men in canoes in Northwest Malakula, Vanuatu. Russell Gray & Heidi Colleran 

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Maps showing the migrations in the area, including, in the final map, the migrations revealed by the current study. Hans Sell, adapted from Skoglund et al., Genomic insights into the peopling of the Southwest Pacific. Nature (2016). 

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Dr. Frédérique Valentin excavating at Uripiv Island, Malakula, Vanuatu. Stuart Bedford 

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

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UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—With the help of airborne laser mapping technology, a team of archaeologists, led by University of Arizona professor Takeshi Inomata, is exploring on a larger scale than ever before the history and spread of settlement at the ancient Maya site of Ceibal in Guatemala.

In a new paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, Inomata and his colleagues explain how they commissioned the use of LiDAR, or light detection and ranging, technology to map a significantly larger area of Ceibal than ever before recorded.

LiDAR provides highly accurate, detailed 3-D maps of ground surface topography. Over the course of just a few days at Ceibal, a small airplane, equipped with lasers powerful enough to peer through the dense jungle canopy, soared above the site, mapping—with a less than 10-centimeter margin of error—the shape, size and location of ancient Maya pyramids, platforms, ceremonial centers, roads, water reservoirs and other structures previously undocumented by archaeologists.

The resulting map covers 470 square kilometers that would have been extremely challenging for archaeologists to reach on foot, and includes the locations of more than 15,000 ancient Maya architectural remains. Previously, archaeologists had information on only about 8 square kilometers and fewer than 1,000 structures in the area.

“This kind of understanding was really unthinkable some years ago, and now suddenly we can have all these data,” Inomata said. “The scale is completely different.”

Inomata and his colleagues used the LiDAR data to reconstruct a timeline of growth and change at Ceibal, building upon what they already knew from previous excavations about when different styles of structures appeared between about 1,000 B.C. and A.D. 950.

They outline their methods in detail in the PLOS ONE paper.

“What we tried to do here was to set up a systematic method of analyzing this LiDAR data over a wide area, and then translate it into an interpretation of temporal sequences and social change,” said Inomata, a professor and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice in the UA School of Anthropology.

Combining LiDAR and excavation data then allowed the archaeologists to reconstruct settlement patterns over a long period of time.

“Looking at the LiDAR image, you can see the specific types of architecture—pyramids, long structures—and we know from our excavations what time period they’re from. So just looking at the shape of the structures, we can see this network of communities and ceremonial centers from specific periods,” Inomata said.

Lasers Let Humans Explore Challenging Terrain

Mapping an archaeological site in a densely vegetated area such as the Guatemalan jungle is a daunting task—one traditionally done on foot. Because of the challenging terrain, only about 1.9 square kilometers of Ceibal had been completely mapped previously—by Harvard archaeologists in the 1960s—while about 6 more kilometers were surveyed with less detail.

It was in that small area that Inomata and his colleagues have been conducting archaeological excavations for the last 13 years.

Since joining the growing number of researchers who have used the LiDAR surveying method to help with interpretation of archaeological sites, Inomata and his team have gained access to data that would have been nearly impossible to obtain through on-foot surveys. The LiDAR survey, which was conducted by the University of Houston’s National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, even found a few things that the original on-the-ground mapping done in the 1960s missed.

“The maps that Harvard made were incredibly accurate, considering they were all ground survey, but with LiDAR we found a lot more buildings than were on the map previously, and their locations are very accurate,” said paper co-author Melissa Burham, a UA graduate student in anthropology.

As a growing number of researchers turn to the LiDAR surveying method to aid in the interpretation of archaeological sites, Inomata and his team hope their colleagues in the field may follow a similar process to what they used at Ceibal, which they plan to apply again in their regional survey in the state of Tabasco in Mexico, where they will begin work in February.

“In archaeology, excavation is always important, but you can’t excavate everything, so you look for patterns on a smaller scale that you can extrapolate over a larger region,” said Burham, who co-authored the paper along with Inomata, UA anthropology professor Daniela Triadan and researchers from Guatemala and Japan. “That’s really what this paper aims to do. This can help other people understand growth at other Maya centers and help with dating methods.”

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 On the left is an aerial image of an area of Ceibal. On the right is the same area, as mapped by LiDAR. Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona

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At the top is an aerial image of a reconstructed temple at Ceibal. At the bottom is the same area, mapped by thousands of individual laser points. Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona

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Article Source: University of Arizona news release

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HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE—Scientists once could reconstruct humanity’s distant past only from the mute testimony of ancient settlements, bones, and artifacts.

No longer. Now there’s a powerful new approach for illuminating the world before the dawn of written history – reading the actual genetic code of our ancient ancestors. Two papers* published in the journal Nature on February 21, 2018, more than double the number of ancient humans whose DNA has been analyzed and published to 1,336 individuals – up from just 10 in 2014.

The new flood of genetic information represents a “coming of age” for the nascent field of ancient DNA, says lead author David Reich, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Harvard Medical School – and it upends cherished archeological orthodoxy. “When we look at the data, we see surprises again and again and again,” says Reich.

Together with his lab’s previous work and that of other pioneers of ancient DNA, the Big Picture message is that our prehistoric ancestors were not nearly as homebound as once thought. “There was a view that migration is a very rare process in human evolution,” Reich explains. Not so, says the ancient DNA. Actually, Reich says, “the orthodoxy – the assumption that present-day people are directly descended from the people who always lived in that same area – is wrong almost everywhere.”

Instead, “the view that’s emerging – for which David is an eloquent advocate – is that human populations are moving and mixing all the time,” says John Novembre, a computational biologist at the University of Chicago.

Stonehenge’s Builders Largely Vanish

In one of the new papers, Reich and a cast of dozens of collaborators chart the spread of an ancient culture known by its stylized bell-shaped pots, the so-called Bell Beaker phenomenon. This culture first spread between Iberia and central Europe beginning about 4,700 years ago. By analyzing DNA from several hundred samples of human bones, Reich’s team shows that only the ideas – not the people who originated them – made the move initially. That’s because the genes of the Iberian population remain distinct from those of the central Europeans who adopted the characteristic pots and other artifacts.

But the story changes when the Bell Beaker culture expanded to Britain after 4,500 years ago. Then, it was brought by migrants who almost completely supplanted the island’s existing inhabitants – the mysterious people who had built Stonehenge – within a few hundred years. “There was a sudden change in the population of Britain,” says Reich. “It was an almost complete replacement.”

For archeologists, these and other findings from the study of ancient DNA are “absolutely sort of mind-blowing,” says archaeologist Barry Cunliffe, a professor emeritus at the University of Oxford. “They are going to upset people, but that is part of the excitement of it.”

Vast Migration from the Steppe

Consider the unexpected movement of people who originally lived on the steppes of Central Asia, north of the Black and Caspian seas. About 5,300 years ago, the local hunter-gatherer cultures were replaced in many places by nomadic herders, dubbed the Yamnaya, who were able to expand rapidly by exploiting horses and the new invention of the cart, and who left behind big, rich burial sites.

Archeologists have long known that some of the technologies used by the Yamnaya later spread to Europe. But the startling revelation from the ancient DNA was that the people moved, too – all the way to the Atlantic coast of Europe in the west to Mongolia in the east and India in the south. This vast migration helps explain the spread of Indo-European languages. And it significantly replaced the local hunter-gatherer genes across Europe with the indelible stamp of steppe DNA, as happened in Britain with the migration of the Bell Beaker people to the island.

“This whole phenomenon of the steppe expansion is an amazing example of what ancient DNA can show,” says Reich. And, adds Cunliffe, “no one, not even archeologists in their wildest dreams, had expected such a high steppe genetic content in the populations of northern Europe in the third millennium B.C.”

This ancient DNA finding also explains the “strange result” of a genetic connection that had been hinted at in the genomes of modern-day Europeans and Native Americans, adds Chicago’s Novembre. The link is evidence from people who lived in Siberia 24,000 years ago, whose telltale DNA is found both in Native Americans, and in the Yamnaya steppe populations and their European descendants.

New Insights from Southeastern Europe

Reich’s second new Nature paper, on the genomic history of southeastern Europe, reveals an additional migration as farming spread across Europe, based on data from 255 individuals who lived between 14,000 and 2,500 years ago. It also adds a fascinating new nugget – the first compelling evidence that the genetic mixing of populations in Europe was biased toward one sex.

Hunter-gatherer genes remaining in northern Europeans after the influx of migrating farmers came more from males than females, Reich’s team found. “Archaeological evidence shows that when farmers first spread into northern Europe, they stopped at a latitude where their crops didn’t grow well,” he says. “As a result, there were persistent boundaries between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers for a couple of thousand years.” This gave the hunter-gatherers and farmers a long time to interact. According to Reich, one speculative scenario is that during this long, drawn-out interaction, there was a social or power dynamic in which farmer women tended to be integrated into hunter-gatherer communities.

So far that’s only a guess, but the fact that ancient DNA provides clues about the different social roles and fates of men and women in ancient society “is another way, I think, that these data are so extraordinary,” says Reich.

Advanced Machines

These scientific leaps forward have been fueled by three key developments. One is the dramatic cost reduction (and speed increase) in gene sequencing made possible by advanced machines from Illumina and other companies. The second is a discovery spearheaded by Ron Pinhasi, an archaeologist at University College Dublin. His group showed that the petrous bone, containing the tiny inner ear, harbors 100 times more DNA than other ancient human remains, offering a huge increase in the amount of genetic material available for analysis. The third is a method implemented by Reich for reading the genetic codes of 1.2 million carefully chosen variable parts of DNA (known as single nucleotide polymorphisms) rather than having to sequence entire genomes. That speeds the analysis and reduces its cost even further.

The new field made a splash when Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, working with Reich and many other colleagues, used ancient DNA to prove that Neanderthals and humans interbred. Since then, the number of ancient humans whose DNA Reich has analyzed has risen exponentially. His lab has generated about three-quarters of the world’s published data and, including unpublished data, has now reached 3,700 genomes. “Every time we jump an order of magnitude in the number of individuals, we can answer questions that we couldn’t even have asked before,” says Reich.

Now, with hundreds of thousands of ancient skeletons (and their petrous bones) still to be analyzed, the field of ancient DNA is poised to both pin down current questions and tackle new ones. For example, Reich’s team is working with Cunliffe and others to study more than 1,000 samples from Britain to more accurately measure the replacement of the island’s existing gene pool by the steppe-related DNA from the Bell Beaker people. “The evidence we have for a 90 percent replacement is very, very suggestive, but we need to test it a bit more to see how much of the pre-Beaker population really survived,” explains Cunliffe.

Beyond that, ancient DNA offers the promise of studying not only the movements of our distant ancestors, but also the evolution of traits and susceptibilities to diseases. “This is a new scientific instrument that, like the microscope when it was invented in the seventeenth century, makes it possible to study aspects of biology that simply were not possible to examine before,” explains Reich. In one example, scientists at the University of Copenhagen found DNA from plague in the steppe populations. If the groups that migrated to Britain after 4,500 years ago brought the disease with them, that could help explain why the existing population shrank so quickly.

With the possibility of many such discoveries still ahead, “it is a very exciting time,” says Cunliffe. “Ancient DNA is going to revitalize archeology in a way that few of us could have guessed even ten years ago.”

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The use of stylized bell-shaped pots like this one from Sierentz, France spread across Europe beginning about 4,700 years ago. DNA analysis show that this so-called Bell Beaker culture was brought to Britain by people who largely replaced the island’s existing inhabitants. Anthony Denaire

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DNA from people from the Bell Beaker culture (illustration of one man shown) reveal that they descended from nomadic herders who migrated from the steppes of Central Asia. Manuel Rojo-Guerra/ Luis Pascual-Repiso

Article Source: Howard Hughes Medical Institute news release

*Iain Mathieson et al., “The genomic history of southeastern Europe.” Nature. Published online February 21, 2018. doi: 10.1038/nature25778

*Iñigo Olalde et al., “The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe.” Nature. Published online February 21, 2018. doi: 10.1038/nature25738

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ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—A thousand-year-old tooth has provided genetic evidence that the so-called “Taíno”, the first indigenous Americans to feel the full impact of European colonisation after Columbus arrived in the New World, still have living descendants in the Caribbean today.

Researchers were able to use the tooth of a woman found in a cave on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas to sequence the first complete ancient human genome from the Caribbean. The woman lived at some point between the 8th and 10th centuries, at least 500 years before Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas.

The results provide unprecedented insights into the genetic makeup of the Taíno – a label commonly used to describe the indigenous people of that region. This includes the first clear evidence that there has been some degree of continuity between the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and contemporary communities living in the region today.

Such a link had previously been suggested by other studies based on modern DNA. None of these, however, was able to draw on an ancient genome. The new research finally provides concrete proof that indigenous ancestry in the region has survived to the present day.

Comparing the ancient Bahamian genome to those of contemporary Puerto Ricans, the researchers found that they were more closely related to the ancient Taíno than any other indigenous group in the Americas. However, they argue that this characteristic is unlikely to be exclusive to Puerto Ricans alone and are convinced that future studies will reveal similar genetic legacies in other Caribbean communities.

The findings are likely to be especially significant for people in the Caribbean and elsewhere who have long claimed indigenous Taíno heritage, despite some historical narratives that inaccurately brand them “extinct”. Such misrepresentations have been heavily criticised by historians and archaeologists, as well as by descendant communities themselves, but until now they lacked clear genetic evidence to support their case.

The study was carried out by an international team of researchers led by Dr Hannes Schroeder and Professor Eske Willerslev within the framework of the ERC Synergy project NEXUS1492. The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Lead author Schroeder, from the University of Copenhagen who carried out the research as part of the NEXUS1492 project, said: “It’s a fascinating finding. Many history books will tell you that the indigenous population of the Caribbean was all but wiped out, but people who self-identify as Taíno have always argued for continuity. Now we know they were right all along: there has been some form of genetic continuity in the Caribbean.”

Willerslev, who has dual posts at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and the University of Copenhagen, said: “It has always been clear that people in the Caribbean have Native American ancestry, but because the region has such a complex history of migration, it was difficult to prove whether this was specifically indigenous to the Caribbean, until now.”

The researchers were also able to trace the genetic origins of the indigenous Caribbean islanders, showing that they were most closely related to Arawakan-speaking groups who live in parts of northern South America today. This suggests that the origins of at least some people who migrated to the Caribbean can be traced back to the Amazon and Orinoco Basins, where the Arawakan languages developed.

The Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas to be populated by humans starting around 8,000 years ago. By the time of European colonization, the islands were a complex patchwork of different societies and cultures. The “Taíno” culture was dominant in the Greater, and parts of the Lesser Antilles, as well as the Bahamas, where the people were known as Lucayans.

To trace the genetic origins of the Lucayans the researchers compared the ancient Bahamian genome with previously published genome-wide datasets for over 40 present-day indigenous groups from the Americas. In addition, they looked for traces of indigenous Caribbean ancestry in present-day populations by comparing the ancient genome with those of 104 contemporary Puerto Ricans included in the 1000 Genomes Project. The 10-15% of Native American ancestry in this group was shown to be closely related to the ancient Bahamian genome.

Jorge Estevez, a Taíno descendant who works at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and assisted the project team, said that as a boy growing up in the United States, he was told stories about his Taíno ancestors at home, but at school was taught that the same ancestors had died out. “I wish my grandmother were alive today so that I could confirm to her what she already knew,” he added. “It shows that the true story is one of assimilation, certainly, but not total extinction. I am genuinely grateful to the researchers. Although this may have been a matter of scientific inquiry for them, to us, the descendants, it is truly liberating and uplifting.”

Although indigenous Caribbean communities were island-based, the researchers found very little genomic evidence of isolation or inbreeding in the ancient genome. This reinforces earlier genetic research led by Willerslev, which suggests that early human communities developed surprisingly extensive social networks, long before the term had digital connotations. It also echoes ongoing work by researchers at the Faculty of Archaeology in Leiden and others indicating the connectedness of indigenous Caribbean communities.

Professor Corinne Hofman from Leiden University and PI of the NEXUS1492 project, said: “Archaeological evidence has always suggested that large numbers of people who settled the Caribbean originated in South America, and that they maintained social networks that extended far beyond the local scale. Historically, it has been difficult to back this up with ancient DNA because of poor preservation, but this study demonstrates that it is possible to obtain ancient genomes from the Caribbean and that opens up fascinating new possibilities for research.”

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Entrance of Preacher’s Cave where the tooth was found that was used to reconstruct the ancient genome (Image courtesy of Jane Day). 

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Archaeological excavations Preacher’s Cave in the Bahamas where the tooth was found that was used to reconstruct the ancient genome (Image courtesy of Jane Day).

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Mandible from Preacher’s Cave. (Image courtesy of Jane Day). 

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 First encounter. Columbus landing in the New World (Image courtesy of Library of Congress).

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Article Source: St. John’s College news release

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Recent news stories have directed the spotlight on the discovery of thousands of ancient Maya sites in the jungles of the Petén in Mesoamerica, still hidden under a tropical canopy. The knowledge of the likely existence of many such undiscovered sites in Mesoamerica is not new to archaeologists who specialize in the study of the ancient Maya, and the technology application known as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging, a remote sensing method using pulsed laser to “see” what cannot be seen by the naked eye on the ground) that was used to rediscover these sites is also not new. In fact, archaeologist Anabel Ford has been using the results of this technology application for years. The following video tells her story about the rediscovery and conservation of El Pilar, a large ancient Maya city that, for the most part, still lies enshrouded in its forest canopy. She describes the discovery of what she has dubbed the ‘citadel’, an ancient Maya structural complex that differs markedly from anything else revealed in the land of the ancient Maya. She also relates, on the ground, the unfolding tragedy of a Maya preserve and heritage that is under daily threat of destruction. More detail about her recent work on the mysterious Maya “citadel’ has been presented in the article, Uncovering the Citadel of El Pilar, published originally in the Spring 2016 issue of Popular Archaeology.  

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El Pilar: Preserving the Maya Legacy from UC Santa Barbara on Vimeo.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS—Neanderthals had large brains and made complex tools but never demonstrated the ability to draw recognizable images, unlike early modern humans who created vivid renderings of animals and other figures on rocks and cave walls. That artistic gap may be due to differences in the way they hunted, suggests a University of California, Davis, expert on predator-prey relations and their impacts on the evolution of behavior.

Neanderthals used thrusting spears to bring down tamer prey in Eurasia, while Homo sapiens, or modern humans, spent hundreds of thousands of years spear-hunting wary and dangerous game on the open grasslands of Africa.

Richard Coss, a professor emeritus of psychology, says the hand-eye coordination involved in both hunting with throwing spears and drawing representational art could be one factor explaining why modern humans became “smarter” than Neanderthals.

In an article recently published in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Coss examines archaeological evidence, genomics, neuroscience studies, animal behavior and prehistoric cave art.

New theory of evolution

From this, he proposes a new theory for the evolution of the human brain: Homo sapiens developed rounder skulls and grew bigger parietal cortexes—the region of the brain that integrates visual imagery and motor coordination—because of an evolutionary arms race with increasingly wary prey.

Early humans hunted with throwing spears in sub-Saharan Africa for more than 500,000 years—leading their increasingly watchful prey to develop better flight or fight survival strategies, Coss said.

Some anthropologists have suggested that throwing spears from a safe distance made hunting large game less dangerous, he said. But until now, “No explanation has been given for why large animals, such as hippos and Cape buffalo, are so dangerous to humans,” he said. “Other nonthreatening species foraging near these animals do not trigger alert or aggressive behavior like humans do.”

Drawn from earlier research on zebras

Coss’ paper grew out of a 2015 study in which he and a former graduate student reported that zebras living near human settlements could not be approached as closely before fleeing as wild horses when they saw a human approaching on foot—staying just outside the effective range of poisoned arrows used by African hunters for at least 24,000 years.

Neanderthals, whose ancestors left Africa for Eurasia before modern human ancestors, used thrusting spears at close range to kill horses, reindeer, bison, and other large game that had not developed an innate wariness of humans, he said.

Hunting relates to drawing

“Neanderthals could mentally visualize previously seen animals from working memory, but they were unable to translate those mental images effectively into the coordinated hand-movement patterns required for drawing,” Coss writes.

Coss, who taught drawing classes early in his academic career and whose previous research focused on art and human evolution, used photos and film to study the strokes of charcoal drawings and engravings of animals made by human artists 28,000 to 32,000 years ago in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France.

The visual imagery employed in drawing regulates arm movements in a manner similar to how hunters visualize the arc their spears must make to hit their animal targets, he concludes.

These drawings could have acted as teaching tools. “Since the act of drawing enhances observational skills, perhaps these drawings were useful for conceptualizing hunts, evaluating game attentiveness, selecting vulnerable body areas as targets, and fostering group cohesiveness via spiritual ceremonies,” he writes.

As a result, the advent of drawing may have set the stage for cultural changes, Coss said. “There are enormous social implications in this ability to share mental images with group members.”

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Replica of drawing of lions painted in the Chauvet Cave. Art in the cave has been identified as created by early modern humans.

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Article Source: University of California, Davis, news release

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Remotely detecting changes in landforms has long relied upon the interpretation of aerial and satellite images. Effective interpretation of these images, however, can be hindered by the environmental conditions at the time the photo was taken, the quality of the image and the lack of topographical information.

More recently, data produced by photogrammetry and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) models have become commonplace for those involved in geographical analysis – engineers, hydrologists, landscape architects and archaeologists.

In general, these techniques were designed to highlight small-scale ‘micro-topographies’ such as the expansive Mayan settlement network recently revealed in the dense jungles of Guatemala. But, how to connect the dots on a larger scale?

In new research published this week in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Cambridge archaeologists present a new algorithm, Multi-Scale Relief Model (MSRM), which is able to extract micro-topographic information at a variety of scales employing micro-, meso- and large-scale digital surface (DSM) and digital terrain (DTM) models.

Dr Hector Orengo, researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and lead author of the study, said, “We originally developed this algorithm to complement multitemporal remote-sensing using multispectral satellite images that are currently being applied to the reconstruction of the prehistoric river network in northwest India as part of the TwoRains project.”

The TwoRains multitemporal remote sensing approach has had an important impact as it was able to find and accurately trace more than 8,000km of relict water courses; the image of which has been selected as the cover image of this year’s Cambridge Science Festival (see image above).

However, the authors were conscious that many ancient rivers were not being found. Dr Orengo said, “It soon became clear that detecting and mapping topographic features such as levees, riverbeds, bluff lines and dune fields could help provide insight into how palaeorivers behaved and eventually disappeared.”

“The new MSRM algorithm has addressed this need and its application has significantly extended our knowledge of the palaeoriver network of north-western India with more than 10,000 new rivers detected.”

Understanding how the Indus civilisation accessed and managed their water resources is at the heart of the TwoRains Project.

Dr Cameron Petrie, director of the ERC-funded project and co-author on the study, commented, “We are investigating the nature of human adaptation to the ecological conditions created by the winter and summer rainfall systems of India. These systems are important for understanding the past and planning for the future due to their potential for direct impact on very current issues such as food security and the sustainability of human settlement in particular areas.”

“Humans can adapt their behaviour to a wide range of climatic and environmental conditions, so it is essential that we understand the degree to which human choices in the past, present and future are resilient and sustainable in the face of variable weather conditions, and when confronted with abrupt events of climate change. Reconstructing the prehistoric hydrographical network of the Sutlej-Yamuna interfluve in northwest India helps us to understand these adaptations more fully.”

Dr Orengo believes that the new method has many uses outside the realm of archaeology. He commented, “The application of MSRM can also be beneficial to all other research fields aiming to interpret small terrain differences. We have made the code open access in the paper with the hope that others will be able to use it for their own interests, and also evaluate and improve it.”

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A composite image of vegetation indices in Northwest India created from 1254 images reveals a complex palaeoriver network comprised of more than 8000km of palaeochannels. The new MSRM algorithm will contribute to mapping the complete ancient palaeoriver network of northwest India and to a better understanding of how the Indus Civilisation operated c. 2600-1900 BC. Hector A. Orengo 

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Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

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UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—The massive Toba volcanic eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago did not cause a six-year-long “volcanic winter” in East Africa and thereby cause the human population in the region to plummet, according to new University of Arizona-led research.

The new findings disagree with the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, which says the eruption and its aftermath caused drastic, multi-year cooling and severe ecological disruption in East Africa.

“This is the first research that provides direct evidence for the effects of the Toba eruption on vegetation just before and just after the eruption,” said lead author Chad L. Yost, a doctoral candidate in the UA Department of Geosciences. “The Toba eruption had no significant negative impact on vegetation growing in East Africa.”

Researchers can use ancient plant parts that wash into and accumulate on the bottoms of lakes to reconstruct a region’s past ecosystem. Yost and his colleagues studied microscopic bits of plants preserved in two sediment cores from Lake Malawi, which is approximately 570 kilometers (354 miles) long and is the southernmost of the East African Rift lakes.

Previous investigators found material from the Toba eruption in the Lake Malawi cores. That material pinpoints the time of the eruption and allowed Yost and colleagues to peer back in time 100 years before to 200 years after the Toba eruption. The team analyzed samples that represented, on average, every 8.5 years within that 300-year interval.

“It is surprising,” Yost said. “You would have expected severe cooling based on the size of the Toba eruption–yet that’s not what we see.”

Yost and his colleagues did not find marked changes in lower-elevation vegetation post-eruption. The team did find some die-off of mountain plants just after the eruption. Cooling from the eruption might have injured frost-intolerant plants, he said.

Had the region experienced the drastic, multi-year cooling post-Toba, the cores would have evidence of a massive die-off of the region’s vegetation at all elevations, Yost said.

Part of the Toba catastrophe hypothesis suggests the eruption caused human populations to shrink.

“We know anatomically modern humans were living within 50 kilometers of Lake Malawi,” Yost said. “People would have been able to travel to habitats and lower elevations that had little to no cooling effect from the Toba eruption.”

Most of the region’s known archaeological sites are from low elevations, not the mountains, he said.

Co-author Andrew S. Cohen, UA Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, said, “That a singular event in Earth history 75,000 years ago caused human populations in the cradle of humankind to drop is not a tenable idea.”

The team’s paper, “Subdecadal phytolith and charcoal records from Lake Malawi, East Africa imply minimal effects on human evolution from the ~74 ka Toba supereruption,” is published online this week in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Yost’s and Cohen’s co-authors are Lily J. Jackson of the University of Texas at Austin, and Jeffery R. Stone of Indiana State University, Terre Haute. The National Science Foundation and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program funded the research.

The Lake Malawi Drilling Project took the cores from the lake bottom in 2005, said Cohen, one of the principal investigators on the collaborative project. The lake is one of the deepest in the world. The material archived in the cores goes back more than one million years.

Plant and animal material washes into lakes and is deposited on the bottom in annual layers, so a sediment core contains a record of the past environments of a lake and of the surrounding land.

Yost studied two cores taken from the lake: one from the north end of the lake, which is closer to the mountains, and the other from the central part of the lake. Other researchers had pinpointed what layer in those cores had glass and crystals from the Toba eruption, Cohen said.

Yost took samples from the cores that straddled the eruption and analyzed the samples for charcoal and for silica-containing plant parts called phytoliths.

The work required hundreds of hours of peering through a microscope, said Yost, who is an expert in identifying the type of plant a particular phytolith came from.

If the Toba catastrophe hypothesis is true, the massive die-off of vegetation would have resulted in more wildfires and therefore more charcoal washing into the lake. However, he did not find an increase in charcoal outside the range of normal variability in the sediments deposited after the eruption.

“We determined that the Toba eruption had no significant negative impact on vegetation growing in East Africa,” Yost said. “We hope this will put the final nail in the coffin of the Toba catastrophe hypothesis.”

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Members of the Lake Malawi Drilling Project science team handle the corer—part of the equipment used to collect sediment cores from the bottom Lake Malawi. Note the sediment in the end of the metal tube. Courtesy of the Lake Malawi Drilling Project

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Microscopic plant remains, called phytoliths, from grasses, sedges, palms, forbs, and trees that lived near Lake Malawi in East Africa about 74,000 years ago. Chad L. Yost, University of Arizona Department of Geosciences  

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Article Source: University of Arizona news release

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* suggests that early Neanderthals in southern Tuscany may have used fire to manufacture wooden tools used for foraging. In 2012, excavations for constructing thermal baths at Poggetti Vecchi, nestled at the foot of a hill in Grosseto in southern Tuscany, turned up a trove of wooden implements and fossil bones of the straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. The site was radiometrically dated to the late Middle Pleistocene, around 171,000 years ago, when early Neanderthals inhabited the region. Biancamaria Aranguren and colleagues report that most of the wooden implements were hewn from boxwood branches and likely used as digging sticks. The ends of the 100 cm-long sticks were fashioned into blunt points and rounded handles useful for foraging; such digging sticks have been known to be used for gathering plants and hunting small game. Cut marks and striations on the sticks bear witness to the manufacturing process, and signs of superficial charring and microanalysis of blackened surfaces suggest the use of fire, in addition to stone tools, to scrape and shape the sticks. The choice of boxwood, among the hardiest and heaviest of European timbers, and the inferred use of fire buttress the technical mastery of toolmaking by early Neanderthals, and suggest the early use of pyrotechnology for fabricating wooden tools. According to the authors, the finds at Poggetti Vecchi furnish some of the earliest evidence of wood processing and fire use by Neanderthals.

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 Poggetti Vecchi, Grosseto (Italy). This is a general view of the excavation. PNAS

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 Poggetti Vecchi, Grosseto (Italy). The excavation of the tusk of a straight-tusked elephant. PNAS

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Detail of the handle of digging stick no. 2 on the paleosurface U2 of the Poggetti Vecchi site. PNAS 

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”Wooden tools and fire technology in the early Neanderthal site of Poggetti Vecchi (Italy),” by Biancamaria Aranguren et al.

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UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—A team of archaeologists, led by Cat Jarman from the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, has discovered that a mass grave uncovered in the 1980s dates to the Viking Age and may have been a burial site of the Viking Great Army war dead.

Although the remains were initially thought to be associated with the Vikings, radiocarbon dates seemed to suggest the grave consisted of bones collected over several centuries. New scientific research now shows that this was not the case and that the bones are all consistent with a date in the late 9th century. Historical records state that the Viking Great Army wintered in Repton, Derbyshire, in 873 A.D. and drove the Mercian king into exile.

Excavations led by archaeologists Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle at St Wystan’s Church in Repton in the 1970s and 1980s discovered several Viking graves and a charnel deposit of nearly 300 people underneath a shallow mound in the vicarage garden.

The mound appears to have been a burial monument linked to the Great Army.

An Anglo-Saxon building, possibly a royal mausoleum, was cut down and partially ruined, before being turned into a burial chamber.

One room was packed with the commingled remains of at least 264 people, around 20 percent of whom were women. Among the bones were Viking weapons and artifacts, including an axe, several knives, and five silver pennies dating to the period 872-875 A.D. 80 percent of the remains were men, mostly aged 18 to 45, with several showing signs of violent injury.

During the excavations, everything pointed to the burial’s association with the Viking Great Army, but confusingly, initial radiocarbon dates suggested otherwise. It seemed to contain a mix of bones of different ages, meaning that they could not all have been from the Viking Age.

Now, new dating* proves that they are all consistent with a single date in the 9th century and therefore with the Viking Great Army.

Cat Jarman said: “The previous radiocarbon dates from this site were all affected by something called marine reservoir effects, which is what made them seem too old.

“When we eat fish or other marine foods, we incorporate carbon into our bones that is much older than in terrestrial foods. This confuses radiocarbon dates from archaeological bone material and we need to correct for it by estimating how much seafood each individual ate.”

A double grave from the site – one of the only Viking weapon graves found in the country – was also dated, yielding a date range of 873-886 A.D.

The grave contained two men, the older of whom was buried with a Thor’s hammer pendant, a Viking sword, and several other artifacts.

He had received numerous fatal injuries around the time of death, including a large cut to his left femur. Intriguingly, a boar’s tusk had been placed between his legs, and it has been suggested that the injury may have severed his penis or testicles, and that the tusk was there to replace what he had lost in preparation for the after-world.

The new dates now show that these burials could be consistent with members of the Viking Great Army.

Outside the charnel mound another extraordinary grave can now be shown to likely relate to the Vikings in Repton as well.

Four juveniles, aged between eight and 18, were buried together in a single grave with a sheep jaw at their feet.

Next to them large stones may have held a marker, and the grave was placed near the entrance to the mass grave. At least two of the juveniles have signs of traumatic injury. The excavators suggested this may have been a ritual grave, paralleling accounts of sacrificial killings to accompany Viking dead from historical accounts elsewhere in the Viking world. The new radiocarbon dates can now place this burial into the time period of 872-885 A.D.

Cat Jarman added: “The date of the Repton charnel bones is important because we know very little about the first Viking raiders that went on to become part of a considerable Scandinavian settlement of England.

“Although these new radiocarbon dates don’t prove that these were Viking army members, it now seems very likely. It also shows how new techniques can be used to reassess and finally solve centuries old mysteries.”

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Overview of the charnel burial from the original excavations. Martin Biddle

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Bones from the Repton charnel during excavations. Mark Horton 

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One of the female skulls from the Repton charnel. Cat Jarman 

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Article Source: University of Bristol news release

*’The Viking Great Army in England: new dates from the Repton charnel‘ – by Catrine L. Jarman (1), Martin Biddle (2), Tom Higham (3) & Christopher Bronk Ramsey (3) in Antiquity. Volume 92, Issue 361, February 2018

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UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON—Archaeologists are a little like forensic investigators: They scour the remains of past societies, looking for clues in pottery, tools and bones about how people lived, and how they died.

And just as detectives might re-create the scene of a crime, University of Washington archaeologists have re-created the weapons used by hunter-gatherers in the post-Ice Age Arctic some 14,000 years ago. Looking for clues as to how those early people advanced their own technology, researchers also considered what that might tell us about human migration, ancient climates and the fate of some animal species.

In an article published Jan. 31 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Janice Wood, recent UW anthropology graduate, and Ben Fitzhugh, a UW professor of anthropology, show how they reconstructed prehistoric projectiles and points from ancient sites in what is now Alaska and studied the qualities that would make for a lethal hunting weapon.

The UW team chose to study hunting weapons from the time of the earliest archaeological record in Alaska (around 10,000 to 14,000 years ago), a time that is less understood archaeologically, and when different kinds of projectile points were in use. Team members designed a pair of experiments to test the effectiveness of the different point types. By examining and testing different points in this way, the team has come to a new understanding about the technological choices people made in ancient times.

“The hunter-gatherers of 12,000 years ago were more sophisticated than we give them credit for,” Fitzhugh said. “We haven’t thought of hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene as having that kind of sophistication, but they clearly did for the things that they had to manage in their daily lives, such as hunting game. They had a very comprehensive understanding of different tools, and the best tools for different prey and shot conditions.”

Prior research has focused on the flight ballistics of the hunting weapons in general, and no prior study has looked specifically at the ballistics of tools used in Siberia and the Arctic regions of North America just after the Ice Age. In addition to foraging for plants and berries (when available), nomadic groups hunted caribou, reindeer and other animals for food, typically with spears or darts (thrown from atlatl boards). Without preservation of the wood shafts, these tools are mainly differentiated in the archaeological record by their stone and bone points. But it was not known how effective different kinds of points were in causing lethal injury to prey.

Nor is it known, definitively, whether different types of points were associated with only certain groups of people, or whether with the same groups used certain point types to specialize on particular kinds of game or hunting practices. It is generally accepted that different point types were developed in Africa and Eurasia and brought to Alaska before the end of the Ice Age. These included rudimentary points made of sharpened bone, antler or ivory; more intricate, flaked stone tips popularly familiar as “arrowheads”; and a composite point made of bone or antler with razor blade-like stone microblades embedded around the edges.

The three likely were invented at separate times but remained in use during the same period because each presumably had its own advantages, Wood said. Learning how they functioned informs what we know about prehistoric hunters and the repercussions of their practices.

So Wood traveled to the area around Fairbanks, Alaska, and crafted 30 projectile points, 10 of each kind. She tried to stay as true to the original materials and manufacturing processes as possible, using poplar projectiles, and birch tar as an adhesive to affix the points to the tips of the projectiles. While ancient Alaskans used atlatls (a kind of throwing board), Wood used a maple recurve bow to shoot the arrows for greater control and precision.

• For the bone tip, modeled on a 12,000-year-old ivory point from an Alaskan archaeological site, Wood used a multipurpose tool to grind a commercially purchased cow bone;

   

• For the stone tip, she used a hammerstone to strike obsidian into flakes, then shaped them into points modeled on those found at another site in Alaska from 13,000 years ago;

   

• And for the composite microblade tip — modeled microblade technologies seen in Alaska since at least 13,000 years ago and a rare, preserved grooved antler point from a more recent Alaskan site used more than 8,000 years ago — Wood used a saw and sandpaper to grind a caribou antler to a point. She then used the multipurpose tool to gouge out a groove around its perimeter, into which she inserted obsidian microblades.

   

Wood then tested how well each point could penetrate and damage two different targets: blocks of ballistic gelatin (a clear synthetic gelatin meant to mimic animal muscle tissue) and a fresh reindeer carcass, purchased from a local farm. Wood conducted her trials over seven hours on a December day, with an average outdoor temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Wood’s field trial, the composite microblade points were more effective than simple stone or bone on smaller prey, showing the greatest versatility and ability to cause incapacitating damage no matter where they struck the animal’s body. But the stone and bone points had their own strengths: Bone points penetrated deeply but created narrower wounds, suggesting their potential for puncturing and stunning larger prey (such as bison or mammoth); the stone points could have cut wider wounds, especially on large prey (moose or bison), resulting in a quicker kill.

Wood said the findings show that hunters during this period were sophisticated enough to recognize the best point to use, and when. Hunters worked in groups; they needed to complete successful hunts, in the least amount of time, and avoid risk to themselves.

“We have shown how each point has its own performance strengths,” she said. Bone points punctured effectively, flaked stone created a greater incision, and the microblade was best for lacerated wounds. “It has to do with the animal itself; animals react differently to different wounds. And it would have been important to these nomadic hunters to bring the animal down efficiently. They were hunting for food.”

Weapon use can shed light on the movement of people and animals as humans spread across the globe and how ecosystems changed before, during and after the ice ages.

“The findings of our paper have relevance to the understanding of ballistic properties affecting hunting success anywhere in the world people lived during the 99 percent of human history that falls between the invention of stone tools more than 3 million years ago in Africa and the origins of agriculture,” Fitzhugh said.

It could also inform debates on whether human hunting practices directly led to the extinction of some species. The team’s findings and other research show that our ancestors were thinking about effectiveness and efficiency, Wood said, which may have influenced which animals they targeted. An animal that was easier to kill may have been targeted more often, which could, along with changing climates, explain why animals such as the horse disappeared from the Arctic. A shot to the lung was lethal for early equines, Wood said, but a caribou could keep going.

“I see this line of research as looking at the capacity of the human brain to come up with innovations that ultimately changed the course of human history,” she said. “This reveals the human capacity to invent in extreme circumstances, to figure out a need and a way to meet that need that made it easier to eat and minimized the risk.”

Upon completion of the experiment, the bones were sterilized for future study of projectile impact marks.

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University of Washington researchers re-created ancient projectile points to test their effectiveness. From left to right: stone, microblade and bone tips. Janice Wood

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Article Source: University of Washington news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, analyzed ancient human genomes from 38 northern Europeans dating from approximately 7,500 to 500 BCE. The study, published today in Nature Communications, found that Scandinavia was initially settled via a southern and a northern route and that the arrival of agriculture in northern Europe was facilitated by movements of farmers and pastoralists into the region.

Northern Europe could be considered a late bloomer in some aspects of human history: initial settlement by hunter-gatherers occurred only about 11,000 years ago, after the retreat of the lingering ice sheets from the Pleistocene, and while agriculture was already widespread in Central Europe 7,000 years ago, this development reached Southern Scandinavia and the Eastern Baltic only millennia later.

Several recent studies of ancient human genomes have dealt with the prehistoric population movements that brought new technology and subsistence strategies into Europe, but how they impacted the very north of the continent has still been poorly understood.

For this study, the research team, which included scientists from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and Sweden, assembled genomic data from 38 ancient northern Europeans, from mobile hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic (approximately 12,000 to 7,000 years ago) and the first Neolithic farmers in southern Sweden (approximately 6,000 to 5,300 years ago) to the metallurgists of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Baltic (approximately 1300 to 500 BCE). This allowed the researchers to uncover surprising aspects of the population dynamics of prehistoric northern Europe.

Two routes of settlement for Scandinavia

Previous analysis of ancient human genomes has revealed that two genetically differentiated groups of hunter-gatherers lived in Europe during the Mesolithic: the so-called Western Hunter-Gatherers excavated in locations from Iberia to Hungary, and the so-called Eastern Hunter-Gatherers excavated in Karelia in north-western Russia. Surprisingly, the results of the current study show that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Lithuania appear very similar to their Western neighbors, despite their geographic proximity to Russia. The ancestry of contemporary Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, on the other hand, was comprised from both Western and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers.

“Eastern Hunter-Gatherers were not present on the eastern Baltic coast, but a genetic component from them is present in Scandinavia. This suggests that the people carrying this genetic component took a northern route through Fennoscandia into the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula. There they genetically mixed with Western Hunter-Gatherers who came from the South, and together they formed the Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers,” explains Johannes Krause, Director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and senior author of the study.

Agriculture and animal herding – cultural imports by incoming people

Large-scale farming first started in southern Scandinavia around 6,000 years ago, about one millennium after it was already common in Central Europe. In the Eastern Baltic, the inhabitants relied solely on hunting, gathering and fishing for another 1000 years. Although some have argued that the use of the new subsistence strategy was a local development by foragers, possibly adopting the practices of their farming neighbors, the genetic evidence uncovered in the present study tells a different story.

The earliest farmers in Sweden are not descended from Mesolithic Scandinavians, but show a genetic profile similar to that of Central European agriculturalists. Thus it appears that Central Europeans migrated to Scandinavia and brought farming technology with them. These early Scandinavian farmers, like the Central European agriculturalists, inherited a substantial portion of their genes from Anatolian farmers, who first spread into Europe around 8,200 years ago and set in motion the cultural transition to agriculture known as the Neolithic Revolution.

Similarly, a near-total genetic turnover is seen in the Eastern Baltic with the advent of large-scale agro-pastoralism. While they did not mix genetically with Central European or Scandinavian farmers, beginning around 2,900 BCE the individuals in the Eastern Baltic derive large parts of their ancestry from nomadic pastoralists of the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

“Interestingly, we find an increase of local Eastern Baltic hunter-gatherer ancestry in this population at the onset of the Bronze Age,” states Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, lead author of the study. “The local population was not completely replaced but coexisted and eventually mixed with the newcomers.”

This study emphasizes the regional differences of cultural transitions and sets the stage for more in-depth studies of later periods in northern European prehistory, such as the Iron Age and Viking Age.

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Skull included in this study from Ölsund, Hälsingland, Sweden, dating to around 2,300 BCE, in the ancient DNA laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Alissa Mittnik 

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Map showing locations and timeline of the samples introduced in this study. Mittnik et al. The Genetic Prehistory of the Baltic Sea Region. Nature Communications (2018).

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

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UNIVERSITY OF YORK—Archaeologists say they may have discovered one of the earliest examples of a ‘crayon’ – possibly used by our ancestors 10,000 years ago for applying colour to their animal skins or for artwork.

The ochre crayon was discovered near an ancient lake, now blanketed in peat, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire. An ochre pebble was found at another site on the opposite side of the lake.

The pebble had a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder. The crayon measures 22mm long and 7mm wide.

Ochre is an important mineral pigment used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers across the globe. The latest finds suggest people collected ochre and processed it in different ways during the Mesolithic period.

The ochre objects were studied as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Departments of Archaeology and Physics at the University of York, using state-of-the-art techniques to establish their composition.

The artifacts were found at Seamer Carr and Flixton School House. Both sites are situated in a landscape rich in prehistory, including one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, Star Carr.

A pendant was discovered at Star Carr in 2015 and is the earliest known Mesolithic art in Britain. Here, more than 30 red deer antler headdresses were found which may have been used as a disguise in hunting, or during ritual performances by shamans when communicating with animal spirits.

Lead author, Dr Andy Needham from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said the latest discoveries helped further our understanding of Mesolithic life.

He commented: “Color was a very significant part of hunter-gatherer life and ochre gives you a very vibrant red color. It was very important in the Mesolithic period and seems to have been used in a number of ways. One of the latest objects we have found looks exactly like a crayon; the tip is faceted and has gone from a rounded end to a really sharpened end, suggesting it has been used. For me it is a very significant object and helps us build a bigger picture of what life was like in the area; it suggests it would have been a very colorful place.”

The research team say Flixton was a key location in the Mesolithic period and the two objects help paint a vibrant picture of how the people interacted with the local environment.

“The pebble and crayon were located in an area already rich in art. It is possible there could have been an artistic use for these objects, perhaps for colouring animal skins or for use in decorative artwork,” Dr Needham added.

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 The crayon revealed a sharpened end. Paul Shields/University of York

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Article Source: University of York news release

The study, which involved collaboration with the Universities of Chester and Manchester, is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

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CELL PRESS—Until recently, very little was known about the genetic relationship between modern humans of the Upper Paleolithic age (the period of time between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, also called the Late Stone age) and today’s populations. But with direct DNA sequencing, researchers are discovering unexpected genetic connections between individuals on opposing sides of Eurasia. These suggest a complex history that may represent early gene flow across Eurasia or an early population structure that eventually led to Europeans and Asians.

In a review* published in the journal Trends in Genetics on January 25, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing discuss what we know about the genetics of ancient individuals from Eurasia (Europe and Western Asia) between 45,000-7,500 years ago. The authors summarized work that investigated the genomes of more than 20 ancients in the Eurasian family tree, including the 45,000-year-old Ust’-Ishim individual from Central Siberia, for their paper.

“Aside from these individuals, it is a fact that sampling for the Eurasian region is sparse for all time periods except the present-day,” says co-author Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “But with the information from the several individuals available for ancient DNA sequencing we do have hints at interesting population structure, migration and interaction in East Asia.”

The researchers learned that in Eurasia between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago, at least four distinct populations were present. These were early Asian and Europeans, as well as populations with ancestry hardly found or not at all in modern populations. By 15,000-34,000 years ago, however, DNA sequencing showed that modern humans in Eurasia are similar to either Europeans or to Asians, suggesting that a genetic Asian-European separation likely occurred prior to 40,000 years ago. By 7,500-14,000 years ago, the populations across Eurasia shared genetic similarities, suggesting greater interactions between geographically distant populations.

These analyses also revealed at least two Neanderthal population mixing events, one approximately 50,000-60,000 years ago and a second more than 37,000 years ago. This Neanderthal ancestry gradually declined in archaic ancestry in Europeans dating from ~14,000-37,000 years ago.

“Genetic studies of ancient individuals have become more frequent in recent years because of technology,” says Fu. “As a result, we can now see the presence of multiple distinct subpopulations in Europe and in Asia, and these in turn contribute different amounts of ancestry to more recent subpopulations.”

“Right now is a great time to study human evolutionary genetics because the development of sequencing technology and computing resources minimizes destruction of samples and maximizes data generation and storage,” Fu says. “With large present-day genomic datasets and increased international collaboration to handle the many newly sequenced ancient datasets, there is huge potential to understand the biology of human prehistory in a way that has never been accessible before.”

Looking ahead, Fu and colleagues hope to extend this type of sequencing and analysis to learn more about the genetic prehistory of East Asia and other regions, including Oceania, Africa, and the Americas. “All of those areas have a rich human prehistory, particularly in Africa, so any ancient DNA from those continents will likely resolve some major questions on human migration,” she says.

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This is a schematic of populations in Eurasia and the Americas from 45,000 to 7,500 years ago. A summary of major events in each of the time periods is on the left. Melinda A.Yang and Qiaomei Fu

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Article Source: Cell Press news release

*Trends in Genetics, Yang MA and Fu Qiaomei: “Insights into Modern Human Prehistory Using Ancient Genomes“ 

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An international research team led by Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University has discovered a modern human fossil dated to between 177,000 and 194,000 years old, excavated from the Misliya Cave at Mount Carmel in northern Israel. The find pushes back the estimated time range as evidenced by the archaeological record for arrival of modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa by about 40,000 to 50,000 years. 

The fossil, an upper jaw bone designated ‘Misliya-1’, features some intact teeth and falls within the upper size range characteristic of modern human teeth. Scientists examining Misliya-1 maintain that the fossil shares some features but lacks other key features identifiable with Neandertals and other earlier hominin species, such as a low, broad tooth crown, and that it otherwise shares many features of teeth and jawbones typical of modern humans. They analyzed the fossil using microCT scans and 3D virtual models, then compared it to other hominin fossils from Africa, Europe and Asia. 

“While all of the anatomical details in the Misliya fossil are fully consistent with modern humans, some features are also found in Neandertals and other human groups,” said Rolf Quam, Binghamton University anthropology professor and a coauthor of the fossil study*. “One of the challenges in this study was identifying features in Misliya that are found only in modern humans. These are the features that provide the clearest signal of what species the Misliya fossil represents.”

Stone tools were also excavated near Misliya-1. The tools, said by the archaeologists to have been produced using the Levallois technique, may represent the earliest known association of the technique with modern humans in this region, suggesting that the emergence of this technology may have been due to the appearance of modern humans in the Levant. Levallois can be found in Middle Stone Age assemblages associated with Home sapiens in Africa.

The archaeological evidence from Misliya Cave thus far reveals that the inhabitants of the cave were capable hunters of large game species, controlled the production of fire and were associated with an Early Middle Paleolithic stone tool kit, similar to that found with the earliest modern humans in Africa.

While older fossils of modern humans have been found in Africa, the timing and routes of modern human migration out of Africa are key issues for understanding the evolution of our own species, said the researchers. The region of the Middle East represents a major corridor for hominin migrations during the Pleistocene and has been occupied at different times by both modern humans and Neandertals. This new discovery opens the door to demographic replacement or genetic admixture with local populations earlier than previously thought. Indeed, the evidence from Misliya is consistent with recent suggestions based on ancient DNA for an earlier migration, prior to 220,000 years ago, of modern humans out of Africa. Several recent archaeological and fossil discoveries in Asia are also pushing back the first appearance of modern humans in Eurasia and, by implication, the migration out of Africa.

For all of these reasons, “Misliya is an exciting discovery,” says Quam, “It also means that modern humans were potentially meeting and interacting during a longer period of time with other archaic human groups, providing more opportunity for cultural and biological exchanges.”

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A view of Misliya Cave when approached climbing from the coastal plain. The cave is located some 90 m above mean sea level (AMSL) and is part of a series of prominent prehistoric cave sites located along the western slopes of Mount Carmel, Israel. The cave had collapsed following the Early Middle Paleolithic human occupation, represented by rich lithic and faunal assemblages associated with the maxilla (Misliya-1) of a modern human. Strongly cemented archaeological sediments (breccias) that extend some 30 m west of the cliff indicate that the cave had once been very large. Mina Weinstein-Evron, Haifa University  

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The Misliya Cave Early Middle Paleolithic layers of the Upper Terrace of the cave, during excavation (viewed from the southeast). The layers here are some 1.5-2 m thick. Note the in-situ hearth, consisting of indurated dark ashy sediment, at the bottom central-right part of the picture. Hearths were repeatedly constructed during the long habitation of the cave. The habitual use of fire is also evident from abundant wood ash, as well as burnt animal bones, flint implements and phytoliths. Charred laminated vegetal tissues constitute the earliest evidence for bedding or matting to date. Mina Weinstein-Evron, Haifa University 

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The Misliya-1 left maxilla. All teeth are present except the central incisor. The shape and structure of the teeth and the dentine underneath yielded important data regarding the definition of this specimen as Homo sapiens. Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University  

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Close-up view of the of Misliya-1 dentition, showing details of the crown topography and dental features. Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna

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Virtual reconstruction of the left upper jaw of Misliya-1. The right (transparent) side is a mirror image of the preserved left side for visualization purposes. The dental arch is parabolic and the alignment of the anterior teeth appears very modern human like. Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna 

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Location of early modern human fossils in Africa and the Middle East. The fossils from Jebel Irhoud date to 315,000 years ago and are thus older than Misliya, while those from Omo Kibish (195,000) and Herto (160,000) are similar in age to Misliya (177,000-194,000). The 3D virtual reconstruction of the Misliya-1 maxilla and several Early Middle Paleolithic stone tools from Misliya Cave are also included. Similar stone tools have been found at Jebel Irhoud. Image modified from [http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?vev1id=11656 “Blue Marble”]. Rolf Quam, Binghamton University 

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For more about all of the astonishing new discoveries of early humans in the Levant, look for the in-depth special feature article, Before Kings and Temples, in the upcoming Spring 2018 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine. 

Article Source: Edited and adapted from the subject AAAS and Binghamton University news releases.

*“The earliest modern humans outside Africa,” by I. Hershkovitz; R. Sarig; H. May; V. Slon; D.E. Bar-Yosef Mayer at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel; G.W. Weber; C. Fornai; V.A. Krenn at University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria; R. Quam at Binghamton University (SUNY) in Binghamton, NY; R. Quam; J.L. Arsuaga; L. Rodríguez; R. García; J.M. Carretero at Centro UCM-ISCIII de Investigación sobre la Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos in Madrid, Spain; R. Quam at American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY; M. Duval; R. Grün at Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) at Griffith University in Nathan, QLD, Australia.

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Although studies suggest that the brain size of Homo sapiens was within the modern human range as of about 300,000 years ago, more globular (or round) brain features exhibited by present-day humans only emerged approximately 40,000 years ago, according to a new fossil analysis. That’s roughly the time when the full suite of modern human behaviors emerged, say the authors. These findings demonstrate a more gradual appearance of so-called behavioral modernity, one in which brain shape played a part. Modern humans have large, globular brains which develop early and affect cognitive development; however, how and when globularity evolved, and how that relates to the evolutionary increase in brain size remains unknown. Using computed tomographic scans and sophisticated 3-D analyses to elucidate the evolution of brain shape, Simon Neubauer and colleagues analyzed endocranial casts of 20 H. sapiensfossils from different time periods, dating from about 300,000 to 10,000 years ago. Their analyses showed that endocranial shape variations of Upper Paleolithic and more recent specimens overlap with present-day human shape variations, ultimately suggesting brain shape reached current globularity ranges somewhere between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago – thus, not coincident with the evolution of larger brain size in earlier H. sapiens. Based on their fossil analyses as well as information about human behavior from archeological records, the authors believe the gradual globularization of the brain during evolution paralleled the emergence of behavioral modernity. As such, they say, the “human revolution” during the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe around 50,000 years ago was not due to a rapid evolutionary event related to a specific genetic change, but rather, was merely a point in time where gradual changes supported the full suite of modern behaviors.

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Brain shape evolution in Homo sapiens. The left image shows brain shape as reconstructed based on micro computed tomographic scans of one of the earliest known members of our species, the fossil cranium Jebel Irhoud 1, dated to about 300,000 years. Brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved gradually, and have reached the globularity typical for present-day humans (right image) only by about 35,000 years ago. Simon Neubauer, Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 4.0)

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Brain shape comparison between Homo sapiensand Neandertals. The left image shows the globular endocranial shape of present-day humans as reconstructed based on micro computed tomographic scans. In contrast, endocranial shape of Neandertals like in La-Chapelle-aux-Saints shown on the right, but also in the earliest Homo sapiens fossils, is elongated. The typical globular human shape evolved gradually and reached modern conditions only recently – about 35,000 years ago. Simon Neubauer, Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 4.0)

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Article Source: AAAS news release

Cover image, top left: Modern human skull. Skimsta, Wikimedia Commons

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Climate change is one of the most important issues facing people today and year on year the melting of glacial ice patches in Scandinavia, the Alps and North America reveals and then destroys vital archaeological records of past human activity.

Enter the glacial archaeologists – specialists who rescue now-threatened artifacts and study the relationship between variability in climate and the intensity of human use of alpine landscapes.

Focusing on Jotunheimen and the surrounding mountain areas of Oppland, which include Norway’s highest mountains (to 2649m), an international team of researchers have conducted a systematic survey at the edges of the contracting ice, recovering artifacts of wood, textile, hide and other organic materials that are otherwise rarely preserved.

To date, more than 2,000 artifacts have been recovered. Some of the finds date as far back as 4000 BC and include arrows, Iron Age and Bronze Age clothing items and remains of skis and packhorses.

By statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates on these incredibly unusual finds, patterns began to emerge showing that they do not spread out evenly over time. Some periods have many finds while others have none.

What could have caused this chronological patterning – human activity and/or past climate change? These questions are the focus of a new study published today in Royal Society Open Science.

Dr James H. Barrett, an environmental archaeologist at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the paper commented, “One such pattern which really surprised us was the possible increase in activity in the period known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age (c. 536 – 660 AD). This was a time of cooling; harvests may have failed and populations may have dropped. Remarkably, though, the finds from the ice may have continued through this period, perhaps suggesting that the importance of mountain hunting (mainly for reindeer) increased to supplement failing agricultural harvests in times of low temperatures. Alternatively, any decline in high-elevation activity during the Late Antique Little Ice Age was so brief that we cannot observe it from the available evidence.”

Barrett continues, “We then see particularly high numbers of finds dating to the 8th – 10th centuries AD, probably reflecting increased population, mobility (including the use of mountain passes) and trade – just before and during the Viking Age when outward expansion was also characteristic of Scandinavia. One driver of this increase may have been the expanding ecological frontier of the towns that were emerging around Europe at this time. Town-dwellers needed mountain products such as antlers for artifact manufacture and probably also furs. Other drivers were the changing needs and aspirations of the mountain hunters themselves.”

There is then a decrease in the number of finds dating to the medieval period (from the 11th century onwards). Lars Pilø, co-director of the Glacier Archaeology Program at Oppland County Council and lead author on the study further explains, “There is a sharp decline in finds dating from the 11th century onwards. At this time, bow-and-arrow hunting for reindeer was replaced with mass-harvesting techniques including funnel-shaped and pitfall trapping systems. This type of intensive hunting probably reduced the number of wild reindeer.”

Professor in medieval archaeology Brit Solli, of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, who led the study of the recovered artifacts, comments “Once the plague arrived in the mid-14th century, trade and markets in the north also suffered. With fewer markets and fewer reindeer the activity in the high mountains decreased substantially. This downturn could also have been influenced by declining climatic conditions during the Little Ice Age.”

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Iron Age arrow from Trollsteinhøe used to study the relationship between climate variability and how humans used alpine landscapes in the past. James H. Barrett, Wikimedia Commons 

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Glacial archaeologists systematically survey the mountainous areas of Oppland, Norway, rescuing now-threatened ancient artifacts. Johan Wildhagen, Palookaville

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Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

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UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS—Before the expansion of the Inka empire, the Late Intermediate Period was marked by political upheaval and the emergence of new cultural practices. In “Ethnogenesis and Social Difference in the Andean Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100-1450): A Bioarchaeological Study of Cranial Modification in the Colca Valley, Peru,” published in Current Anthropology, Matthew C. Velasco examines how the prevalence and evolution of cranial modification practices during the Late Intermediate Period influenced ethnic identity formation in Peru’s Colca Valley. In the study, Velasco explores how head-shaping practices may have enabled political solidarity and furthered social inequality in the region.

The study employs ethnogenetic research to determine the historical processes responsible for the formation and embodiment of new group identities during this period.

Cranial modification is a deliberate, permanent, and highly visible identity marker that is inscribed during infancy. Head shape may have served as an indicator of ethnic affiliation, kin categorization, or geographic origin. Archaeological and ethnohistoric data offer insights into the head-shaping practices of two major ethnic groups in the Colca Valley, the Collaguas and the Cavanas. The Collaguas employed methods to make their heads assume a longer, narrower shape while the Cavanas sought to make their heads wide and squat.

To analyze how the frequency and significance of cranial modification changed over time, skeletal samples were collected from two mortuary sites in the Collagua region and submitted for radiocarbon measurement. Crania were assorted into five categories based on modification type. Utilizing newly-calibrated radiocarbon dates, the samples were divided into two groups representing the early LIP (AD 1150-1300) and the late LIP (AD 1300-1450).

Bioarchaeological and radiometric data present a significant increase in the prevalence of cranial modification practices. During the early LIP, 39.2% of individuals exhibited modification. This percentage rose to 73.7% during the later portion of the Late Intermediate Period. The study also reveals a significant change in the distribution of modification types as time progresses. Initially, there is an equal distribution of individuals among four modification types: tabular, erect, oblique, and slight. However, results indicate that by the late LIP, oblique modification–similar to the elongated head shape of the Collaguas–became the predominant style of cranial modification.

Increased homogeny of head shapes in the late LIP suggests that modification practices contributed to the creation of a new collective identity, and while cranial modification consolidated prior social boundaries, the author argues that the standardization of these practices may have exacerbated emerging social differences.

Acting as a signifier of affiliation, head shape may have encouraged unity among elites and fostered increased cooperation in politics. Involvement in political and social matters may have, in turn, elevated the status of modified individuals and conferred on them distinct privileges that were not available to unmodified individuals. Bioarchaological evidence also suggests that modification practices reinforced structures of inequality that prioritized modified females. Compared to unmodified females, modified females possessed greater access to diverse food options and were less likely to encounter violence.

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Modified cranium from Peru. Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons 

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Article Source: University of Chicago Press Journals news release

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UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE—DURHAM, N.H. – Tropical forests span a huge area, harbor a wide diversity of species, and are important to water and nutrient cycling on a planet scale. But in ancient Amazonia, over 500 years ago, clearing tropical forests was a way of survival to provide land for families to farm and villages to prosper. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire used high-tech tools to more precisely view where these cleared sites were and how much lasting impact they had on the rainforest in the Amazon Basin in South America.

“One of the key mysteries in this area of the world is that no one knows how many people lived in Amazonia before European contact,” said Michael Palace, an associate professor in the Earth Sciences Department and Earth Systems Research Center at UNH. “Once the Europeans arrived, indigenous populations were devastated due to disease, slavery and displacement so it’s often hard to determine lasting impact. It is important to understand the resilience or fragility of these forests to past human disturbance, which allows for appropriate planning on the use of natural resources.”

One of the few indicators of human settlements are the terra preta, or Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs). These are black, human-made soils that are enriched by materials left behind from past societies, pottery remnants, charcoal and other artifacts frequently associated with human origin. There is very little rock and metal in that part of the world (a former ocean bottom), and wood, bone and other organic materials decay quickly in the humid tropics.

In their study, recently published in the journal Ecosphere, the researchers used imagery from NASA’s terra satellite, MODIS, and geospatial modeling to predict the ADE probability across six million square kilometers of the Amazonia. They found that biomass (primarily weight of trees in forests), tree height, and tree cover were all lower at ADE sites than adjacent random non-ADE locations. The ADE sites were also more susceptible to drought.

Indigenous people most likely used slash-and-burn techniques to clear the forests so the ADE sites may have been pre-selected due to the propensity for drought or intensity of dry seasons. Researchers also observed differences in spectral properties (reflective light) between ADE and non-ADE sites that are likely driven by forest structure and tree species, indicating that remnant forests are still showing impacts from past human settlement patterns.

Researchers further explain that the high spatial heterogeneity in ADE sites across the Amazon suggests that pre-Columbian occupation by indigenous people was complex and varied substantially across this ecologically diverse region. But they speculate that because of their proximity to the rivers, ADEs may have become areas of interest for other groups to settle and reoccupy, further impacting the forests and vegetation in the ADE areas.

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Map developed using satellite imagery and spatial modeling showing estimated past human impact on the Amazonian forest. Michael Palace/UNH 

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Article Source: University of New Hampshire news release

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