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UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE—The ATLAS research group from the University of Seville has just published a study of a high resolution analysis of one of the most important sections of the Peña de los Enamorados, a natural formation included in the Antequera Dolmens Site, declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Specifically, the researchers have studied the site known as the “Abrigo de Matacabras”, which contains cave paintings in the schematic style. This small cave has a first-class visual and symbolic relationship with the Menga dolmen, establishing landscape relationships that are possibly unique in European prehistory.

The Abrigo de Matacabras is set deep in the northern sector of the Peña de los Enamorados, which, due to its shape, is reminiscent of a sleeping woman.

For this investigation, a latest-generation multidisciplinary archaeological method was used, which included a photogrammetric reconstruction of the entire cave, analysis of its graphic motifs by means of digital image processing and colorimetry, uranium-thorium dating of the rock layers that carried the motifs, archaeometric analysis of the ceramics associated with the cave and the neighbouring site of Piedras Blancas I. situated at the foot of the Peña, by means of neutron activation analysis and X-ray diffraction, as well as a complete stylistic analysis of the motifs.

The results obtained indicate the Neolithic chronology of the cave (probably, at least, at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC) and its importance as a place of reference for the Neolithic (and possibly even older) population of the region, which would explain the anomalous orientation of the Menga dolmen. “In addition, the data obtained allows us, for the first time, to consider the Abrigo de Matacabras from the point of view of its future conservation, and diagnosis anything that might threaten or damage the motifs”, says Leonardo García Sanjuán, Professor of Prehistory at the University of Seville.

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The Menga dolmen. Manfred Werner, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: University of Seville news release

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KIEL UNIVERSITY—The advent of food production took place in the Near East over 10,000 years and sparked profound changes in the ways human societies were organized. A new study, published in the journal PloS One by Prof. Cheryl Makarewicz of Kiel University and Prof. Bill Finlayson of the University of Reading, demonstrates that specialized buildings regularly featured in the world’s earliest agricultural villages and were key to maintaining and enhancing community cohesion. Drawing from new archaeological data recovered during excavations at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlement of Beidha, nestled within the same mountains as the UNESCO World Heritage site of Petra, the study shows how the very architectural fabric of early farming villages helped shape human interaction during a period when new social stresses associated with first farming and animal herding emerged.

“These buildings provided a focal point for the community, a place where everyday mundane activities such as preparing food and making tools could have been undertaken by several people simultaneously,” says Makarewicz. “Moreover, these spaces were also important in that they provided a place where community members could drop by and have a chat with their neighbors – this informal, but highly regular activity may have been all the more important in this context of increasingly large and settled populations. Community members knew information was being passed along and there was a central place to catch up on the news.”

“What we are also seeing here at Beidha is a really interesting example of how societies deal with managing new issues of how to access and control ownership of plant and animal resources, which might have become more contested within these increasingly populous settlements. Also interesting is that people at Beidha dealt with these new social tensions very differently from their contemporaries to the west across the Jordan Valley. There, rather than building communal architecture, they engaged in elaborate and multi-stage mortuary practices that involved the removal of skulls from interred individuals some time after their burial, caching those skulls and then plastering them, perhaps collectively, to give them new faces. We think, along with many of our colleagues, that this ritualized treatment of skulls during the early Neolithic was another means to social cohesion, but it did so in a very different way than communal buildings like those at Beidha.”

The researchers suggest that in southern Jordan, a distinctive social cohesion pathway developed which engaged community daily practice within non-residential buildings to maintain and strengthen social structures, rather than occasional and dramatic ritual and mortuary practices used elsewhere in the southern Levant. Both Makarewicz and Finlayson note that “there is a long history of using special-purpose architecture in the south of Jordan to structure the community, and this way of using the built environment for more than just shelter goes right back to the start of the Neolithic here. The continuation of this practice illustrates a strongly local continuity in pathways through the Neolithic revolution.”

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View of the early Neolithic communal structure at Beidha, Jordan. Cheryl Makarewicz

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Article Source: Kiel University news release

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120,000 BP, present-day Germany —Picture a small group of Neanderthals strategizing their movements to approach a young, male antlered deer and then, when the right moment and positioning arrives, quickly and lethally thrusting a sharp wooden spear into their victim in a coordinated effort to bring home their game. It is a good day for these hunters.

This could be a scenario based on new evidence that emerged through the re-analysis of ancient faunal remains recovered from the archaeological site of Neumark-Nord near Halle in present-day Germany, a site which featured animal fossil remains with cut marks and artifacts to which archaeologists have attributed to Neanderthals. Neumark-Nord consists of several ancient lake basins with deposits, including lithic artifacts and faunal remains, that record human activity for the past 400,000 years. Pertinent to the latest study*, wherein Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution and colleagues applied microscopic imaging and experimental ballistic tests, the site also held ancient lake-shore deposits dated to 120,000 BP, an interglacial time when the lake was surrounded by closed-canopy forests. The deposits contained fossil fragments and disarticulated as well as articulated skeletal remains, including straight-tusked elephants and cervids (mammals of the deer family). Four of the cervids, complete or nearly complete male fallow deer, featured very fine cut marks that penetrated the outermost layer of the bones, indicating partial defleshing of the rump, haunch and shoulder areas through butchering. Most significant among them, however, was the skeleton of a 6-7-year-old adult male found lying on its right side, showing a circular perforation in the pelvis; and that of another 6-7-year-old male showing a perforation with a circular outline in one of its cervical vertebra. The researchers characterized these perforations as almost unmistakable hunting lesions. Moreover, “the size, shape and fracture characteristics of the perforations look to be well-matched to wooden spears of the kinds seen at Clacton-on-Sea in Britain and Schöningen and Lehringen in Germany,” writes  Annemieke Milks** in a news report of the Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. study published in the journal, Nature Ecology and Evolution. Study of the perforations also revealed that they were caused by close-range thrusting actions, as opposed to longer-range strikes through throwing or propelled projectiles.

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Excavation of a 120,000 last Interglacial lake-landscape at Neumark-Nord near present day Halle in the eastern part of Germany by the Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution MONREPOS and the Faculty of Archaeology of Leiden University supported by supported by the heritage office of Saxony Anhalt (Germany). Picture credit: W. Roebroeks, Leiden University (NL), j.w.m.roebroeks@arch.leidenuniv.nl

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Skeleton of an extinct fallow deer (Dama dama geiselana) from Neumark-Nord, arranged in flight-posture. Foto Juraj Lipták. © Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Juraj Lipták. BStoll-Tucker@lda.stk.sachsen-anhalt.de

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Front and back view of a hunting lesion in the pelvis of an extinct fallow deer, killed by Neanderthals 120,000 years ago on a lake shore close to current-day Halle (Germany). Picture credit: Eduard Pop, MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Leibniz-Researchinstitute for Archaeology, eduard.pop@rgzm.de

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Front and back view of a hunting lesion in a cervical vertebra of an extinct fallow deer, killed by Neanderthals 120,000 years ago on a lake shore close to current-day Halle (Germany). Picture credit: Eduard Pop, MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Leibniz-Researchinstitute for Archaeology, eduard.pop@rgzm.de

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Micro-CT scans of the lesion in the pelvis of a fallow deer, killed 120,000 years ago on a lake shore close to current-day Halle (Germany). The screenshots show lesion and reconstructed form of the pointed object (spear) which caused the perforation, seen from its exit side. Pictures credit: Arne Jacob & Frieder Enzmann, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany, ajacob@students.uni-mainz.de, enzmann@uni-mainz.de

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Neanderthal Hunting

Although scientists have long suggested that Neanderthals were skilled hunters, including the use of spears, the significance of the Neumark-Nord findings lies in the fact that hunting lesions are very rare in the archaeological record, and the perforations on these assemblages were unusually complete, facilitating better and more reliable forensic analysis “with the demonstrated impact angles and wound channels particularly convincing”.** Additional application of experimental techniques to replicate the lesions also verified their conclusions. In short, the study confirmed “the earliest unambiguous examples of hunting lesions”** in the archaeological record using thorough and updated analysis and techniques, and that these Neanderthals used close-range thrusting to kill their prey. It means that Neanderthals could hunt in closed, forested landscapes, suggesting complex hunting strategies and cooperative behavior. 

Nonetheless, although analysis of the lesions indicated that the apparent weapon impact energy was more consistent with that produced by close range thrusting, writes Milks, “how energies compare and potentially overlap between these delivery methods [thrusting or throwing] is still being established experimentally”.** Neanderthals, therefore, could have used both close-range hunting and throwing as delivery methods for bringing down and killing their prey.

“If future work can focus on building a picture of how these weapons perform when thrown,” writes Milks, “we will be better able to understand whether early weapons and weapon users were optimized only for thrusting, or for throwing as well.”**

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Estimated impact angle shown in relation to a standing fallow deer for the hunting lesion observed in the pelvis of an extinct fallow deer, killed by Neanderthals 120,000 years ago on a lake shore close to current-day Halle (Germany). Picture credit: Eduard Pop, MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Leibniz-Researchinstitute for Archaeology, eduard.pop@rgzm.de

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A 300,000-year-old wooden spear from Schöningen 13/II (Germany). Neanderthals might have used a similar weapon to kill fallow deer at Neumark-Nord, on a lake shore close to current-day Halle (Germany), 120,000 years ago. © R. Müller, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Archäologie, mueller@rgzm.de

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Spear 8 in situ as excavated at Schoningen. Wikimedia Commons

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*Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al., Evidence for close-range hunting by last interglacial Neanderthals, Nature Ecology and Evolution, doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0596-1

**Milks, Annemieke, Making an Impact, Nature Ecology and Evolution News and Views, June 25, 2018.

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A cranium of a four-million-year-old fossil described in 1995 as the oldest evidence of human evolution in South Africa has shown similarities to modern human crania when scanned through high resolution imaging systems.

The cranium of the extinct Australopithecus genus was found in the lower-lying deposits of the Jacovec Cavern in the Sterkfontein Caves, about 40km North-West of Johannesburg in South Africa. Dr Amelie Beaudet from the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies of the University of the Witwatersrand and her colleagues from the Sterkfontein team scanned the cranium at the Evolutionary Studies Institute, based at the University of the Witwatersrand, in 2016 and applied advanced imaging techniques in “virtual paleontology” to further explore the anatomy of the cranium. Their research was funded by the Center of Excellence in Palaeosciences, the Claude Leon Foundation and the French Institute of South Africa and was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

“The Jacovec cranium represents a unique opportunity to learn more about the biology and diversity of our ancestors and their relatives and, ultimately, about their evolution,” says Beaudet.

“Unfortunately, the cranium is highly fragmentary and not much could be said about the identity nor the anatomy of the Jacovec specimen before.”

Through high resolution scanning, the researchers were able to quantitatively and non-invasively explore fine details of the inner anatomy of the Jacovec specimen and to report previously unknown information about the genus Australopithecus.

“Our study revealed that the cranium of the Jacovec specimen and of the Ausralopithecus specimens from Sterkfontein in general was thick and essentially composed of spongy bone,” says Beaudet. “This large portion of spongy bone, also found in our own cranium, may indicate that blood flow in the brain of Australopithecus may have been comparable to us, and/or that the braincase had an important role in the protection of the evolving brain.”

In comparing this cranium to that of another extinct group of our family tree, Paranthropus, that lived in South Africa along with the first humans less than two-million-years ago, their study revealed an intriguing and unexpected aspect of the cranial anatomy in this genus.

“We also found that the Paranthropus cranium was relatively thin and essentially composed of compact bone. This result is of particular interest, as it may suggest a different biology,” says Beaudet.

Situated in the Cradle of humankind, a Unesco World Heritage Site, theSouth African paleontological sites have played a pivotal role in the exploration of our origins. In particular, the Sterkfontein Caves site has been one of the most prolific fossil localities in Africa, with over 800 hominin remains representing 3 genera of hominin recovered since 1936, including the first adult Australopithecus, the iconic “Mrs Ples” and “Little Foot”, the most complete single skeleton of an early hominin yet found.

“The Jacovec cranium exemplifies the relevance of the Sterkfontein fossil specimens for our understanding of human evolution,” says Beaudet. “Imaging techniques open unique perspectives for revisiting the South African fossil assemblage.”

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Original picture (left) and virtual rendering of the Jacovec cranium (middle) with two sections revealing the inner structure (right). Credit: Amelie Beaudet

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Dr Amelie Beaudet. University of the Witwatersrand

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Article Source: University of the Witwatersrand news release

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—A new genus and species of gibbon has been identified in the most unexpected of places – interred in the tomb of an ancient Chinese noble-woman. The remains of this now extinct Holocene gibbon represent the first documented evidence of ape extinction following the last ice-age, and according to this report by Sam Turvey et al., the gibbon may have also been the first to vanish as a direct result of human activity; the findings thus challenge the notion that ape species haven’t been rendered extinct by humans, throughout time. The remains of the gibbon were discovered amidst the grave-menagerie of an approximately 2200-2300 year-old tomb in the ancient capital city of Chang’an, in modern Shaanxi China. At the time, gibbons were perceived as ‘noble,’ and also kept as high-status pets. The tomb in which the remains were found – and perhaps the gibbon itself – may have belonged to Lady Xia, the grandmother of China’s first emperor. Consisting primarily of a partial facial skeleton, the mysterious gibbon’s remains were compared to known living and extinct hylobatids. Their gibbon, which the authors named Junzi imperialis, is a new genus and species, the authors say, based on detailed analyses of cranial and dental measurements. Their results suggest that until recently, eastern Asia supported a previously unknown, yet historically extinct population of apes, and, too, that human-caused primate diversity loss in the past may be underestimated. Historical accounts describe gibbons being caught near Chang’an into the 10th century and inhabiting Shaanxi Province until the 18th century. These recent accounts may represent other undescribed, now extinct, species.

Article Source: AAAS news release

Above image, left: “Two Gibbons in an Oak Tree”, a Song Dynasty painting. Wikimedia Commons

PLOS—Stone tools found with a 5,300-year-old frozen mummy from Northern Italy reveal how alpine Copper Age communities lived, according to a study* published June 20, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ursula Wierer from the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Florence, Italy, and colleagues.

The Tyrolean Iceman is a mummified body of a 45-year-old man originally discovered with his clothes and personal belongings in a glacier of the Alps mountains, in the South Tyrol region, Italy. Previous research showed that the Iceman lived during the Copper Age, between 3370-3100 BC, and was probably killed by an arrow. In this study, the researchers analyzed the Iceman’s chert tools to learn more about his life and the events that led to his tragic death.

The team used high-power microscopes and computed tomography to examine the chert tools in microscopic detail, including a dagger, borer, flake, antler retoucher, and arrowheads. The structure of the tools’ chert reveals that the stone was collected from several different outcrops in what is now the Trentino region (Italy), about 70km away from where the Iceman was thought to live. Comparing this ancient toolkit with other Copper Age artifacts revealed stylistic influences from distant alpine cultures. By carefully analyzing the wear traces of the Iceman’s chert tools, the authors concluded he was right-handed and probably had recently resharpened and reshaped some of his equipment.

These findings shed light into the Iceman’s personal history and support previous evidence suggesting that alpine Copper Age communities maintained long-distance cultural contacts and were well provisioned with chert.

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Stone tool found with the “Iceman”. Wierer et al (2018)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Wierer U, Arrighi S, Bertola S, Kaufmann G, Baumgarten B, Pedrotti A, et al. (2018) The Iceman’s lithic toolkit: Raw material, technology, typology and use. 

LUND UNIVERSITY—Archaeologists at Lund University in Sweden have found carbonized germinated grains showing that malt was produced for beer brewing as early as the [European] Iron Age in the Nordic region. The findings made in Uppåkra in southern Sweden indicate a large-scale production of beer, possibly for feasting and trade.

“We found carbonized malt in an area with low-temperature ovens located in a separate part of the settlement. The findings are from the 400-600s, making them one of the earliest examples of evidence of beer brewing in Sweden”, says Mikael Larsson, who specializes in archaeobotany, the archaeology of human-plant interactions.

Archaeologists have long known that beer was an important product in ancient societies in many parts of the world. Through legal documents and images, it has been found, for example, that beer was produced in Mesopotamia as early as 4000 BCE. However, as written sources in the Nordic region are absent prior to the Middle Ages (before ca 1200 CE), knowledge of earlier beer production in this region is dependent on botanical evidence.

“We often find cereal grains on archaeological sites, but very rarely from contexts that testify as to how they were processed. These germinated grains found around a low-temperature oven indicate that they were used to become malt for brewing beer”, says Mikael Larsson.

Beer is made in two stages. The first is the malting process, followed by the actual brewing. The process of malting starts by wetting the grain with water, allowing the grain to germinate. During germination, enzymatic activities start to convert both proteins and starches of the grain into fermentable sugars. Once enough sugar has been formed, the germinated grain is dried in an oven with hot air, arresting the germination process. This is what happened in the oven in Uppåkra.

“Because the investigated oven and carbonized grain were situated in an area on the site with several similar ovens, but absent of remains to indicate a living quarter, it is likely that large-scale production of malt was allocated to a specific area on the settlement, intended for feasting and/or trading”, explains Mikael Larsson.

Early traces of malt in connection with beer brewing have only been discovered in two other places in the Nordic region. One is in Denmark from 100 CE and one is in Eketorp on Öland from around 500 CE.

“From other archaeological sites in the Nordic region, traces of the bog-myrtle plant have been found, which indicates beer brewing. Back then, bog-myrtle was used to preserve and flavor beer. It wasn’t until later during the Middle Ages that hops took over as beer flavoring”, Mikael Larsson concludes.

Facts: Method

Two-liter soil samples are taken from various archaeological contexts – in houses, in pits, around hearths and ovens. The plant material found is usually preserved in a carbonized state. The soil is mixed with water and the carbon rises to the surface and is sieved through a fine mesh. The particles extracted are dried and studied under a microscope.

Facts: Uppåkra

Uppåkra is currently the largest Iron Age settlement in southern Scandinavia and served as a densely populated political and religious center of power for more than 1,000 years, from 100s BCE to the 1000s CE. The many findings made of imported luxury items such as jewelry and glass bowls, and from a developed production of crafts, indicate that the location was both rich and a significant trading center.

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Archaeologist at work at Uppåkra site. Sven Rosborn

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Article Source: Lund University news release

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY—Scientists have shown that at the Anzick site in Montana – the only known Clovis burial site – the skeletal remains of a young child and the antler and stone artifacts found there were buried at the same time, raising new questions about the early inhabitants of North America, says a Texas A&M University professor involved in the research.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans and colleagues from the University of Oxford and Stafford Research of Colorado have had their work published in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

The main focus of the team’s research centered on properly dating the Anzick site which is named after the family who own the land. The site was discovered in 1968 by construction workers, who found the human remains and stone tools which include Clovis spear points and antler tools. It is the only known Clovis burial site and is associated with Clovis stone and antler artifacts.

“One thing that has always been a problem has been the accurate dating of the human remains from the site,” explains Waters.

“The human remains yielded a younger age that was not in agreement with the ages from the antler artifacts which dated older than the human remains. If the human remains and Clovis artifacts were contemporaneous, they should be the same age.” To resolve the issue, the team used a process called Specific Amino Acid Radiocarbon Dating, which allows a specific amino acid, in this case hydroxyproline, to be isolated from the human bones.

“This amino acid could only have come from the human skeleton and could not be contaminated,” Waters adds.

“The other previous ages suffered from some sort of contamination. With the new method, we got very accurate and secure ages for the human remains based on dating hydroxyproline. As a test, we also redated the antler artifacts using this technique.”

The results prove that both the human remains and antler Clovis artifacts are of the same date.

“The human remains and Clovis artifacts can now be confidently shown to be the same age and date between 12,725 to 12,900 years ago,” Waters notes. “This is right in the middle to the end of the Clovis time period which ranges from 13,000 to 12,700 years ago.

“This is important because we have resolved the dating issues at the site. Some researchers had argued that the human remains were not Clovis and were younger than the Clovis artifacts, based on the earlier radiocarbon dates. We have shown that they are the same age and confirmed that the Anzick site represents a Clovis burial.”

While not the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, Clovis is the first widespread prehistoric culture that first appeared 13,000 years ago. Clovis originated south of the large Ice Sheets that covered Canada at that time and are the direct descendants of the earliest people who arrived in the New World around 15,000 years ago. Clovis people fashioned their stone spear tips with grooved, or fluted, bases. They invented the “Clovis point,’ a spear-shaped weapon made of stone that is found in Texas and other portions of the United States and northern Mexico, and these weapons were used to hunt animals.

The researchers say the findings will also help geneticists in their estimates of the timing of the peopling of the Americas because the Anzick genome is critical to understanding early settlements and the origin of modern Native peoples.

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Artifacts from the Anzick site. Texas A&M University

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The burial mound at the Anzick site. Texas A&M University

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Article Source: Texas A&M University news release

EUROPEAN SOCIETY OF HUMAN GENETICS—Milan, Italy: Interest in the origins of human populations and their migration routes has increased greatly in recent years. A critical aspect of tracing migration events is dating them. However, the radiocarbon techniques*, that are commonly used to date and analyze DNA from ancient skeletons can be inaccurate and not always possible to apply. Inspired by the Geographic Population Structure model that can track mutations in DNA that are associated with geography, researchers have developed a new analytic method, the Time Population Structure (TPS), that uses mutations to predict time in order to date the ancient DNA.

Dr Umberto Esposito, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr Eran Elhaik, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Monday) that TPS can calculate the mixtures of DNA deriving from different time periods to estimate its definitive age. “This introduces a completely new approach to dating. At this point, in its embryonic state, TPS has already shown that its results are very similar to those obtained with traditional radiocarbon dating. We found that the average difference between our age predictions on samples that existed up to 45,000 years ago, and those given by radiocarbon dating, was 800 years. This study adds a powerful instrument to the growing toolkit of paleogeneticists that can contribute to our understanding of ancient cultures, most of which are currently known from archaeology and ancient literature,” says Dr Esposito.

Radiocarbon technology requires certain levels of radiocarbon on the skeleton, and this is not always available. In addition, it is a delicate procedure that can yield very different dates if done incorrectly. The new technique provides results similar to those obtained by radiocarbon dating, but using a completely new DNA-based approach that can complement radiocarbon dating or be used when radiocarbon dating is unreliable.

“This permits us to open a powerful window on our past. The study of genetic data allows us to uncover long-lasting questions about migrations and population mixing in the past. In this context, dating ancient skeletons is of key importance for obtaining reliable and accurate results,” says Dr Esposito. “Through this work, together with other projects that we are working on in the lab, we will be able to achieve a better understanding of the historical developments that took place from the beginning of the Neolithic period, with the introduction of farming practices in Europe, and throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. These periods include some of the most crucial events involving the population movements and replacements that shaped our world.”

The technique is also expected to be valuable for genealogy. “When applying our ancient DNA dating technology to modern genomes, we have seen that some populations have more ancient genomes than others, and this can be helpful in establishing individual origins,” says Dr Esposito.

Health research will benefit too. Since the study of genetic disorders is closely tied up with questions of ancestry and population stratification, being able to analyze the homogeneity of populations is of vital importance to epidemiologists.

The researchers are currently compiling a larger dataset to increase the geographical/time coverage of their model and improve its accuracy. “Given the rapid increase in the number of ancient skeletons with published DNA, we believe that our technique will be useful to develop alternative hypotheses,” Dr Esposito will say.

Chair of the ESHG conference, Professor Joris Veltman, Director of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Newcastle University in Newcastle, United Kingdom, said: “This study shows how DNA derived from ancient skeletons can be used to more accurately determine the age of the skeleton than traditional radiocarbon tracing methods. This is another example of the power of modern genomics technologies to assist in helping us understand where we come from, how the journeys of our forefathers have helped shape our current genome and how this now impacts our current abilities and weaknesses, including risks of disease.”

Article Source: European Society of Human Genetics news release

*Radiocarbon dating is a method for determining the age of an object by analysing the amount of radioactive carbon dioxide it contains. When an animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and measuring the amount that remains provides a method of determining when it died.

Cover image, above right: A Neolithic period skeleton unearthed in Israel. Photograph by Yosef Galili, Ehud Galili, Itamar Greenberg, Wikimedia Commons

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA—Agricultural activity by humans more than 2,000 years ago had a more significant and lasting impact on the environment than previously thought. The finding—discovered by a team of international researchers led by the University of British Columbia—is reported in a new study* published today in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers found that an increase in deforestation and agricultural activity during the Bronze Age in Ireland reached a tipping point that affected Earth’s nitrogen cycle—the process that keeps nitrogen, a critical element necessary for life, circulating between the atmosphere, land and oceans.

“Scientists are increasingly recognizing that humans have always impacted their ecosystems, but finding early evidence of significant and lasting changes is rare,” said Eric Guiry, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow in UBC’s department of anthropology. “By looking at when and how ancient societies began to change soil nutrients at a molecular level, we now have a deeper understanding of the turning point at which humans first began to cause environmental change.”

For the study, the researchers performed stable isotope analyses on 712 animal bones collected from at least 90 archaeological sites in Ireland. The researchers found significant changes in the nitrogen composition of soil nutrients and plants that made up the animals’ diet during the Bronze Age.

The researchers believe the changes were the result of an increase in the scale and intensity of deforestation, agriculture and pastoral farming.

While these results are specific to Ireland during the Bronze Age, Guiry said the findings have global implications.

“The effect of human activities on soil nitrogen composition may be traceable wherever humans have extensively modified landscapes for agriculture,” he explained. “Our findings have significant potential to serve as a model for future research.”

Article Source: University of British Columbia news release

*The study, “Anthropogenic changes to the Holocene nitrogen cycle in Ireland,” was co-authored by researchers at the Institute of Technology Sligo, Trent University, the University of Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast, and Simon Fraser University.

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WILEY—The remains of World War II naval battle sites can be found under water, but most have not yet been subject to archaeological investigation. A new International Journal of Nautical Archaeology study* provides precise geographic information for the preservation, long-term research, and future use of a historically important World War II battle site on the seafloor off the coast of Okinawa, Japan.

The study focuses on the USS Emmons, a 106m US Navy Gleaves-class destroyer minesweeper that sank in 40m of water off Okinawa Island after kamikaze attack in 1945. A record of the site was made using an innovative method incorporating precise control points obtained from high-resolution multibeam echosounding bathymetry to generate 3D models using structure-from-motion photogrammetry. The 3D models produced can be used for sharing information about this underwater cultural heritage and for future monitoring of the archaeological remains.

“This article is not only presenting an innovative methodology for precise 3D mapping of the seafloor. We hope it also serves as a bridge to peace for both Japan and the U.S. and provides materials for future education,” said lead author Prof. Hironobu Kan, of Kyushu University, in Japan.

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USS Emmons (DD-457) at anchor, circa 1942. The ship is painted in Camouflage Measure 12 (Modified) U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.

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Article Source: Wiley news release

*”Assessment and Significance of a World War II battle site: recording the USS Emmons using a High?Resolution DEM combining Multibeam Bathymetry and SfM Photogrammetry.” Hironobu Kan, Chiaki Katagiri, Yumiko Nakanishi, Shin Yoshizaki, Masayuki Nagao and Rintaro Ono. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology; Published Online: June 12, 2018. (DOI: 10.1111/1095-9270.12301).

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Researchers report* evidence of migrations from Europe to North Africa during the Neolithic period. The adoption of agriculture during the Neolithic represents a major development in human history. The process of agricultural adoption, known as the Neolithic transition, in North Africa remains largely uncharacterized, and it is unclear whether this process was driven by local populations adopting cultural and technological innovations or by the migration of people. Rosa Fregel and colleagues tested the possibilities by performing genome-wide analyses of human remains from Neolithic archaeological sites in Morocco. Individuals from the Early Neolithic site of Ifri n’Amr or Moussa, dated to approximately 5000 BCE, had similar ancestry to Later Stone Age individuals from North Africa. This ancestral signature is largely restricted to North Africa in present-day populations. By contrast, Late Neolithic individuals from the Kelif el Boroud site, dated to approximately 3000 BCE, shared only around half of their ancestry with Early Neolithic and Later Stone Age North Africans. The remaining half of their ancestry was shared with Early Neolithic individuals from southern Spain, suggesting that migration across the Strait of Gibraltar occurred between the Early and Late Neolithic. The results suggest that the early stages of the Neolithic transition in North Africa involved the adoption of technological innovations from neighboring areas by the local population, while subsequent migrations from Europe influenced further Neolithic developments, according to the authors.

Article Source: PNAS news release

*“Ancient genomes from North Africa evidence prehistoric migrations to the Maghreb from both the Levant and Europe,” by Rosa Fregel et al.

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PLOS—Three human mandibles may provide new insight into the diet of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in Borneo, according to a study* published June 6, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Darren Curnoe from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues.

Little is known about the early hunter-gatherer populations that lived in island Southeast Asia since human remains from the Late Pleistocene-early Holocene era are extremely rare. The Niah Caves in the northeast of Borneo have been identified as a promising archaeological site for learning about the early humans that dwelled in this region.

Curnoe and colleagues examined three human mandibles that were previously excavated from the West Mouth of the Niah Cave in 1957. Using Uranium-series dating techniques, the researchers estimate that one of the mandibles is 28-30,000 years old, while the other two are at least 11,000 and 10,000 years old, respectively. The oldest mandible of the three was smaller and more robust compared to other Late Pleistocene mandibles, and this may suggest that it was subject to strain that could have been caused by consuming tough or dried meats or palm plants, a diet that has previously been identified in the Niah Caves.

The researchers suggest that their study helps provide insight into the diet of ancient people living near tropical rainforests, a region which has been previously identified as facing economic difficulties. Through their potential consumption of raw plant foods and dried meats, the hunter-gatherer populations living in this region around the Late Pleistocene may have been adapting to their economically challenging environment.

“These early modern humans were seemingly adapted to a difficult life in the tropical rainforests with their very small bodies and ruggedly built jaws from chewing really tough foods,” says Curnoe. “They tell us a lot about the challenges faced by the earliest people living in island Southeast Asia.”

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Two human jaws from Niah Caves in Borneo found in 1958 but only just revealed. Top jaw is 30,000 years old, bottom jaw 11,000 years old; left image is Niah Caves archaeological site where they were both found. Darren Curnoe

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Article Source: PLOS news release

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* http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196633

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BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY—The ancient people of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, were able to move massive stone hats and place them on top of statues with little effort and resources, using a parbuckling technique, according to new research from a collaboration that included investigators from Binghamton University, State University at New York.

“Of the many questions that surround the island’s past, two tend to stand out: How did people of the past move such massive statues (moai) and how did they place such massive stone hats (pukao) on top of their heads?” said Carl Lipo, a professor of anthropology at Binghamton University.

Pukao are cylinders made of red scoria, some of which weigh up to 12 metric tons. They were moved all around the island, across long distances, with few people and resources.

“We’ve learned they moved the statues in a walking fashion using simple, physics-based processes, in a way that was elegant and remarkably effective,” said Lipo. “Our latest study now tackles the issue of the hats (pukao). These multi-ton stone objects were carved at a separate quarry, transported across the island and somehow raised to the top of the heads of the statues.”

The team took photos of different pukao and used them to generate three-dimensional models that document details that are important for identifying the most likely method of pukao transport.

“The number of possible pukao emplacement methods is limited only by the human imagination,” says Sean Hixon, lead author and current graduate student at Penn State University. “Examples of past ideas for pukao transport include sliding the pukao up a wooden ramp or gradually building a pile of stones beneath the pukao. The challenge is to move beyond merely possible transport methods and to identify a transport scenario that is consistent with variation in the archaeological record.”

“We expect that part of the shapes of pukao will reflect the physical constraints associated with transport” explains Hixon. “Different possible transport methods constrain aspects of pukao variability in different ways.”

Lipo continues, “The answer, like that of our findings with the moai, show that Rapa Nui people were remarkably ingenious and found solutions that required the fewest resources and smallest effort to achieve their goals.”

Their analysis* showed that the pukao were most likely rolled from the quarry to the location of the moai, and rolled up large ramps using a parbuckling technique.

“In parbuckling, a line would have been wrapped around the pukao cylinder, and then people would have pulled the rope from the top of the platform,” said Lipo. “This approach minimizes the effort needed to roll the statue up the ramp. Like the way in which the statues were transported, parbuckling was a simple and elegant solution that required minimum resources and effort.”

Lipo also said that this use of resources shows how efficiently the people of Easter Island used their resources, which contrasts with what was previously thought.

“Easter Island is often treated as a place where prehistoric people acted irrationally, and that this behavior led to a catastrophic ecological collapse,” said Lipo. “The archaeological evidence, however, shows us that this picture is deeply flawed and badly misrepresents what people did on the island, and how they were able to succeed on a tiny and remote place for over 500 years.”

Lipo said he plans to continue researching the Rapa Nui people, and their relationship with their environment and community.

“Our analysis of pukao adds significantly to this new understanding of the island: Rapa Nui people made remarkable achievements through their ingenuity,” said Lipo. “These efforts were embedded in a sustainable social system in which monument construction (such as the pukao) played a vital role. While the social systems of Rapa Nui do not look much like the way our contemporary society functions, these were quite sophisticated people who were well-tuned to the requirements of living on this island and used their resources wisely to maximize their achievements and provide long-term stability.”

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This is a restored statue platform with standing moai on the south coast of Rapa Nui. Note that one of the moai is adorned with a red scoria pukao. Sean Hixon

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Standing moai adorned with a red scoria pukao. Sean Hixon

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This is a diagram of pukao emplacement scenario that is supported by analysis of pukao form and the physics associated with pukao transport. Sean Hixon

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*”The Colossal Hats (Pukao) of Monumental Statues on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile): Analysis of Pukao Variability, Transport, and Emplacement,” was published in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences.

Article Source: Binghamton University news release

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COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY—The invention of agriculture changed humans and the environment forever, and over several thousand years, the practice originated independently in a least a dozen different places. But why did agriculture begin in those places, at those particular times in human history?

Using a new methodological approach, researchers at Colorado State University and Washington University in St. Louis have uncovered evidence that underscores one long-debated theory: that agriculture arose out of moments of surplus, when environmental conditions were improving, and populations lived in greater densities.

The first-of-its-kind study, “Hindcasting global population densities reveals forces enabling the origin of agriculture,” published in Nature Human Behaviour, lends support to existing ideas about the origins of human agriculture. In contrast, they found little support for two other, longstanding theories: One, that during desperate times, when environmental conditions worsened and populations lived at lower densities, agriculture was born out of necessity, as people needed a new way of getting food. And two, that no general pattern exists, but instead the story of agriculture’s origins is tied to unique social and environmental conditions in each place.

Senior author Michael Gavin, an associate professor in CSU’s Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, said the findings and the general methodological approach may help explain other watershed events in human history.

“There have been several key threshold events in our history that changed the entire course of our species,” Gavin said. “Agriculture is a link to so many other components for what the world is like today for billions of people. This begins to help us explain a key moment in human history.”

Predicting into the past

Studying the depths of human history is challenging, as little data are available when looking back tens of thousands of years. Scientists typically rely on archeological evidence, but getting a broad picture is difficult, since archeological digs cover relatively small areas.

To overcome these limitations, the researchers modeled correlations between the environment, cultural traits and population densities of relatively recent foraging societies, which used hunting, fishing and gathering to obtain food.

Among the factors they considered as possible predictors of population density: environmental productivity; environmental stability; the average distance travelled when people in a community moved to a new location; whether people owned land or other resources; and distance to the nearest coast.

This model, the team found, did a remarkably good job at predicting recent population densities, which led the researchers to pair the model with data on past climate. In doing so, they could hindcast, or predict into the past, the potential population density of the entire globe dating back thousands of years.

Population maps

This study was the first to produce maps of potential population densities dating back as far as 21,000 years. The researchers used these maps to examine conditions that existed in each of the 12 centers of origin, at the point in time agricultural practices began.

Patrick Kavanagh, a CSU postdoctoral scientist and one of the study’s lead authors, said the different centers of origin for agriculture all showed improving environmental conditions and increasing population densities.

“All regions that developed agriculture showed the same pattern,” he said.

Researchers believe that improving environmental conditions may have allowed people the luxury of tinkering with new ideas, and that having more people living in one place would allow ideas to be shared and honed, with sparks of innovation following.

While the researchers found commonalities in the surplus aspect of what was occurring in different locations, that doesn’t mean the exact same conditions existed in each center of origin. Socially, the places and people studied were probably very different. In addition, the timing of when agriculture began in these major centers varied over thousands of years, and the species of plants they were working with was different.

But, amazingly, although the centers of origin varied in time by thousands of years and ranged from the New Guinea Highlands to Central America and the Middle East, they all had one thing in common: improving environmental conditions, and the potential for higher population densities.

“In all of these major origin centers of agriculture, there were some critical environmental changes that needed to occur,” Kavanagh added. “Environmental conditions needed to improve — which we saw in all 12 centers of origin — despite variation in the timing and the diverse geographic locations in which they occurred.”

The research team is now exploring other applications for the maps they produced.

“It is amazing to examine these maps of the potential population density of the world dating back tens of thousands of years,” said Gavin. “We could potentially create them going back to the dawn of our species. This provides a new tool to explore many unanswered questions about human history.”

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Ancient stone axe that was used in agriculture. John Eisele/ Colorado State University

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Researchers used maps to examine conditions that existed in each of the 12 centers of origin, at the point in time agricultural practices began. Joe A. Mendoza/Colorado State University

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‘Agriculture is a link to so many other components for what the world is like today for billions of people,’ said senior author Michael Gavin, an associate professor at Colorado State University. ‘This begins to help us explain a key moment in human history.’ John Eisele/Colorado State University

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Article Source: Colorado State University news release

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—Two separate studies – both benefiting from ancient DNA – paint detailed pictures of the founding, migration, and evolution of human populations in Iceland and the Americas, respectively.

More broadly, the plethora of historical information from ancient DNA studies such as these represents a new era of archaeogenomics, say Alessandro Achilli and colleagues in a related Perspective. The ability to study the founding of a human population and its subsequent evolutionary history is rare, but here, S. Sunna Ebenesersdóttir and colleagues were able to make progress on this, providing detailed insights into the making of Icelandic populations specifically. The researchers used genome sequencing data from the skeletal remains of 27 ancient Icelanders – the earliest settlers of Iceland, according to radiocarbon dating. Perhaps not unexpectedly since Iceland was peopled in early times by Vikings and enslaved individuals from Norway and the British-Irish Isles, all ancient Icelanders, the authors found, were Norse (Norway and Sweden), Gaelic (Ireland and Scotland), or a mixture. Surprisingly, however, the ancient Icelanders were much more similar to their source populations in Scandinavia and the British-Irish Isles than to modern Icelanders, comparisons with modern European DNA revealed. One explanation for this, the authors hypothesize, is that roughly 1,100 years of genetic drift (or, a change in the frequency of certain genes due to random happenings) have shaped Icelandic populations to what they are today. Intriguingly, the high degree of mixture in the Norse and Gaelic gene pool of ancient Icelanders may account for why modern Icelandic populations are exceptionally good candidates for studies that attempt to associate genes to traits. The high genetic variation resulting from this ancestral mixture is more desirable for genome-wide association studies, compared to more homogenous populations, for which it is difficult to tell which region of DNA causes a specific trait.

The second study by Christiana Scheib et al. explores the genetics of the first people to enter the Americas, providing evidence, through its results, that a deep split in North and South American populations likely occurred not in Beringia, as has been posited, but just south of the ancient Laurentide ice sheet (which covered a large portion of the northern United States, including most of Canada). Scheib and colleagues sequenced 91 genomes of ancient Native American remains predominantly from California and Southwestern Ontario, Canada. They found that ancient Ontarians were most like other ancient Northern Americans as well as modern Algonquian-speaking Native Americans. In contrast, genomes from ancient Californians resembled groups that currently live in Mexico and South America. Based on these findings, the authors reject the emerging theory that the split between Northern and Southern Americans occurred in Beringia, across the Laurentide ice plate, and suggest that a single wave of Ice Age American populations migrated south of the Laurentide ice plate and a genetic split likely occurred after this crossing, at the northwest corner of ancient North America. Notably, the researchers also found both ancient Californian and Ontarian DNA present and mixed throughout Northern and Southern regions. Thus, the authors suggest that there were possible points where the two diverging branches merged either in North America or along the migration route to South America, at least a few thousand years after the initial split.

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Skeletal remains of an ancient pre-Christian (<1000 C.E.) Icelandic female. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the 1 June 2018 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by S.S. Ebenesersdóttir at deCODE Genetics/AMGEN, Inc. in Reykjavik, Iceland, and colleagues was titled, “Ancient genomes from Iceland reveal the making of a human population.” Ivar Brynjolfsson / The National Museum of Iceland

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Article Source: AAAS news release

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, TORONTO, ON (Canada) – New research out of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave led by anthropologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) shows that the climate of the interior of southern Africa almost two million years ago was like no modern African environment — it was much wetter.

In a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, lead author Michaela Ecker, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at U of T, alongside an international team of scientists that included Michael Chazan, director of U of T’s Archaeology Center, recreated the environmental change in the interior of southern Africa over a span of almost two million years.

“The influence of climatic and environmental change on human evolution is largely understood from East African research,” said Ecker. “Our research constructed the first extensive paleoenvironmental sequence for the interior of southern Africa using a combination of methods for environmental reconstruction at Wonderwerk Cave.”

While East African research shows increasing aridity and the spread of grasslands, the study showed that during the same time period, southern Africa was significantly wetter and housed a plant community unlike any other in the modern African savanna — which means human ancestors were living in environments other than open, arid grasslands.

Using carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis on the teeth of herbivores excavated from the cave, Ecker and her team were able to reconstruct the vegetation from the time the animal was alive and gain valuable insight into the environmental conditions our human ancestors were living in.

“Understanding the environment humans evolved in is key to improving our knowledge of our species and its development,” said Ecker. “Our work at Wonderwerk Cave demonstrates how humankind existed in multiple environmental contexts in the past — contexts which are substantially different from the environments of today.”

This is the latest U of T research out of Wonderwerk Cave, a massive excavation site in the Kuruman Hills of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. Chazan has previously discovered early evidence of fire by human ancestors, as well as the earliest evidence of cave-dwelling human ancestors, based on excavations carried out by South African archaeologist Peter Beaumont. Research to date has established a chronology for human occupation of the front of the cave stretching back two million years.

The findings are described in the study “The palaeoecological context of the Oldowan-Acheulean in southern Africa”, published this month in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Research funding was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the German Academic Exchange Service, the University of Oxford’s Boise Fund Trust and the Quaternary Research Association. Other team members include James Brink and Lloyd Rossouw of the National Museum, Bloemfontein, Liora Horwitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Julia Lee-Thorp of the University of Oxford.

Research at Wonderwerk Cave is carried out in collaboration with the McGregor Museum, Kimberley and under permit from the South African Heritage Resources Agency.

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A view of southern African landscape as seen from entrance of Wonderwerk Cave. Michaela Ecker

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Entrance of Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. Michaela Ecker

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View into excavation area from Wonderwerk Cave entrance. Michaela Ecker

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Article Source: University of Toronto news release

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