ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Early humans seem to have recognised the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found.
The study, reported in the journal Science, examined genetic information from the remains of anatomically modern humans who lived during the Upper Palaeolithic, a period when modern humans from Africa first colonised western Eurasia. The results suggest that people deliberately sought partners beyond their immediate family, and that they were probably connected to a wider network of groups from within which mates were chosen, in order to avoid becoming inbred.
This suggests that our distant ancestors are likely to have been aware of the dangers of inbreeding, and purposely avoided it at a surprisingly early stage in prehistory.
The symbolism, complexity and time invested in the objects and jewellery found buried with the remains also suggests that it is possible that they developed rules, ceremonies and rituals to accompany the exchange of mates between groups, which perhaps foreshadowed modern marriage ceremonies, and may have been similar to those still practised by hunter-gatherer communities in parts of the world today.
The study’s authors also hint that the early development of more complex mating systems may at least partly explain why anatomically modern humans proved successful while other species, such as Neanderthals, did not. However, more ancient genomic information from both early humans and Neanderthals is needed to test this idea.
The research was carried out by an international team of academics, led by the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. They sequenced the genomes of four individuals from Sunghir, a famous Upper Palaeolithic site in Russia, which is believed to have been inhabited about 34,000 years ago.
The human fossils buried at Sunghir represent a rare and highly valuable, source of information because very unusually for finds from this period, the people buried there appear to have lived at the same time and were buried together. To the researchers’ surprise, however, these individuals were not closely related in genetic terms; at the very most, they were second cousins. This is true even in the case of two children who were buried head-to-head in the same grave.
Professor Eske Willerslev, who holds posts both as a Fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge, and at the University of Copenhagen, was the senior author on the study. “What this means is that even people in the Upper Palaeolithic, who were living in tiny groups, understood the importance of avoiding inbreeding,” he said. “The data that we have suggest that it was being purposely avoided.”
“This means that they must have developed a system for this purpose. If small hunter-gatherer bands were mixing at random, we would see much greater evidence of inbreeding than we have here.”
Early humans and other hominins such as Neanderthals appear to have lived in small family units. The small population size made inbreeding likely, but among anatomically modern humans it eventually ceased to be commonplace; when this happened, however, is unclear.
“Small family bands are likely to have interconnected with larger networks, facilitating the exchange of people between groups in order to maintain diversity,” Professor Martin Sikora, from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, said.
Sunghir contains the burials of one adult male and two younger individuals, accompanied by the symbolically-modified incomplete remains of another adult, as well as a spectacular array of grave goods. The researchers were able to sequence the complete genomes of the four individuals, all of whom were probably living on the site at the same time. These data were compared with information from a large number of both modern and ancient human genomes.
They found that the four individuals studied were genetically no closer than second cousins, while an adult femur filled with red ochre found in the children’s’ grave would have belonged to an individual no closer than great-great grandfather of the boys. “This goes against what many would have predicted,” Willerslev said. “I think many researchers had assumed that the people of Sunghir were very closely related, especially the two youngsters from the same grave.”
The people at Sunghir may have been part of a network similar to that of modern day hunter-gatherers, such as Aboriginal Australians and some historical Native American societies. Like their Upper Palaeolithic ancestors, these people live in fairly small groups of around 25 people, but they are also less directly connected to a larger community of perhaps 200 people, within which there are rules governing with whom individuals can form partnerships.
“Most non-human primate societies are organised around single-sex kin where one of the sexes remains resident and the other migrates to another group, minimising inbreeding” says Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr, from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge. “At some point, early human societies changed their mating system into one in which a large number of the individuals that form small hunter-gatherer units are non-kin. The results from Sunghir show that Upper Palaeolithic human groups could use sophisticated cultural systems to sustain very small group sizes by embedding them in a wide social network of other groups.”
By comparison, genomic sequencing of a Neanderthal individual from the Altai Mountains who lived around 50,000 years ago indicates that inbreeding was not avoided. This leads the researchers to speculate that an early, systematic approach to preventing inbreeding may have helped anatomically modern humans to thrive, compared with other hominins.
This should be treated with caution, however: “We don’t know why the Altai Neanderthal groups were inbred,” Sikora said. “Maybe they were isolated and that was the only option; or maybe they really did fail to develop an available network of connections. We will need more genomic data of diverse Neanderthal populations to be sure.”
Willerslev also highlights a possible link with the unusual sophistication of the ornaments and cultural objects found at Sunghir. Group-specific cultural expressions may have been used to establish distinctions between bands of early humans, providing a means of identifying who to mate with and who to avoid as partners.
“The ornamentation is incredible and there is no evidence of anything like that with Neanderthals and other archaic humans,” Willerslev added. “When you put the evidence together, it seems to be speaking to us about the really big questions; what made these people who they were as a species, and who we are as a result.”
The research paper, Ancient genomes show social and reproductive behaviour of early Upper Paleolithic foragers, is published in the October 5 issue of Science.
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Detail of one of the burials from Sunghir, in Russia. The new study sequenced the genomes of individuals from the site and discovered that they were, at most, second cousins, indicating that they had developed sexual partnerships beyond their immediate social and family group. Wikimedia Commons
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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—Two new studies on ancient genomes provide valuable insights into the lives of our ancestors and their cousins, the Neandertals. First, scientists have sequenced a new genome of a female Neandertal, which is only the second genome of the species to be fully sequenced with such a high level of quality. The advancement confirms a number of theories about Neandertals, but also reveals new genetic contributions of the species to modern-day humans. Neandertals are the closest evolutionary relatives of all present-day humans and therefore provide a unique perspective on human biology and history. Five Neandertal genomes have been sequenced to date, yet only one yielded high-quality data, an individual found in Siberia known as the “Altai Neandertal.” Three less well-defined genomes come from individuals found in a cave, Vindija, in Croatia, and one from Mezmaiskaya Cave, in Russia. Here, Kay Prüfer and colleagues successfully analyzed billions of DNA fragments sampled from a new individual in the Croatian cave, dubbed Vindija 33.19, a female who lived roughly 52,000 years ago. Similar to previous findings, the genetic data suggest that Neandertals lived in small and isolated populations of about 3,000 individuals. The previously sequenced Altai Neandertal genome suggested that the individual’s parents were half-siblings, prompting scientists to wonder if Neandertals commonly interbred with family members – yet the new Vindija genome does not have similar incestual patterns, suggesting that the extreme inbreeding between the parents of the Altai Neandertal may not have been ubiquitous among Neandertals. Vindija 33.19 does appear to share a maternal ancestor with two of the three other individuals from the Croatian cave who were genetically sequenced, however. The authors use the Vindija 33.19 genome to analyze divergences and gene flow among Neandertals, Denisovans (another extinct species of hominin), and modern humans. Among many findings, they report that early modern human gene flow into Neandertal populations occurred between 130,000 and 145,000 years ago, before the Croatian and Siberian Neandertals diverged. Based on the new high-quality genome, the authors estimate that modern non-African populations carry between 1.8-2.6% Neandertal DNA, which is higher than previous estimates of 1.5-2.1%. Lastly, they identify a wealth of new gene variants in the Neandertal genome that are influential in modern day humans, including variants related to plasma levels of LDL cholesterol and vitamin D, eating disorders, visceral fat accumulation, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia and responses to antipsychotic drugs. A second study by Martin Sikora et al. focuses on the genomes of four archaic, anatomically modern humans that were found at the Sunghir burial site, in Russia. The genomes provide a rare glimpse into the social organization of humans during the Upper Paleolithic period. The individuals, who lived sometime between 34,600 and 33,600 years ago, are all male and unrelated to each other. Furthermore, the researchers did not find inbreeding signatures, as seen with the Altai Neandertal. Given the genetic diversity of these individuals, despite being a part of a small genetic population, the authors suggest that they likely mated outside of their hunter-gatherer clans. The authors also highlight ways in which these genomes compare and mix with Neandertal genomes.
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Ancient genomes extraction process in the lab. Shown here is a Neandertal bone. Wikimedia Commons
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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Two herpes simplex viruses infect primates from unknown evolutionary depths. In modern humans these viruses manifest as cold sores (HSV1) and genital herpes (HSV2).
Unlike HSV1, however, the earliest proto-humans did not take HSV2 with them when our ancient lineage split from chimpanzee precursors around 7 million years ago. Humanity dodged the genital herpes bullet – almost.
Somewhere between 3 and 1.4 million years ago, HSV2 jumped the species barrier from African apes back into human ancestors – probably through an intermediate hominin species unrelated to humans. Hominin is the zoological ‘tribe’ to which our species belongs.
Now, a team of scientists from Cambridge and Oxford Brookes universities believe they may have identified the culprit: Paranthropus boisei, a heavyset bipedal hominin with a smallish brain and dish-like face.
In a study published today in the journal Virus Evolution, they suggest that P. boisei most likely contracted HSV2 through scavenging ancestral chimp meat where savannah met forest – the infection seeping in via bites or open sores.
Hominins with HSV1 may have been initially protected from HSV2, which also occupied the mouth. That is until HSV2 “adapted to a different mucosal niche” say the scientists. A niche located in the genitals.
Close contact between P. boisei and our ancestor Homo erectus would have been fairly common around sources of water, such as Kenya’s Lake Turkana. This provided the opportunity for HSV2 to boomerang into our bloodline.
The appearance of Homo erectus around 2 million years ago was accompanied by evidence of hunting and butchery. Once again, consuming “infected material” would have transmitted the virus – only this time it was P. boisei being devoured.
“Herpes infect everything from humans to coral, with each species having its own specific set of viruses,” said senior author Dr Charlotte Houldcroft, a virologist from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.
“For these viruses to jump species barriers they need a lucky genetic mutation combined with significant fluid exchange. In the case of early hominins, this means through consumption or intercourse – or possibly both.”
“By modelling the available data, from fossil records to viral genetics, we believe that Paranthropus boisei was the species in the right place at the right time to both contract HSV2 from ancestral chimpanzees, and transmit it to our earliest ancestors, probably Homo erectus.”
When researchers from University of California, San Diego, published findings suggesting HSV2 had jumped between hominin species, Houldcroft became curious.
While discussing genital herpes over dinner at Kings College, Cambridge, with fellow academic Dr Krishna Kumar, an idea formed. Kumar, an engineer who uses Bayesian network modelling to predict city-scale infrastructure requirements, suggested applying his techniques to the question of ancient HSV2.
Houldcroft and her collaborator Dr Simon Underdown, a human evolution researcher from Oxford Brookes, collated data ranging from fossil finds to herpes DNA and ancient African climates. Using Kumar’s model, the team generated HSV2 transmission probabilities for the mosaic of hominin species that roamed Africa during “deep time”.
“Climate fluctuations over millennia caused forests and lakes to expand and contract,” said Underdown. “Layering climate data with fossil locations helped us determine the species most likely to come into contact with ancestral chimpanzees in the forests, as well as other hominins at water sources.”
Some promising leads turned out to be dead ends. Australopithecus afarensis had the highest probability of proximity to ancestral chimps, but geography also ruled it out of transmitting to human ancestors.
Ultimately, the researchers discovered the key player in all the scenarios with higher probabilities to be Paranthropus boisei. A genetic fit virally who was found in the right places to be the herpes intermediary, with Homo erectus – and eventually us – the unfortunate recipients.
“Once HSV2 gains entry to a species it stays, easily transferred from mother to baby, as well as through blood, saliva and sex,” said Houldcroft.
“HSV2 is ideally suited to low density populations. The genital herpes virus would have crept across Africa the way it creeps down nerve endings in our sex organs – slowly but surely.”
The team believe their methodology can be used to unravel the transmission mysteries of other ancient diseases – such as human pubic lice, also introduced via an intermediate hominin from ancestral gorillas over 3 million years ago.
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A cast of a P. boisei skull, used for teaching at Cambridge University. Credit: Louise Walsh
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UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES—5,000 years ago, the Yamnaya culture migrated into Europe from the Caspian steppe. In addition to innovations such as the wagon and dairy production, they brought a new language – Indo-European – that replaced most local languages the following millennia. But local cultures also influenced the new language, particularly in southern Scandinavia, where Neolithic farmers made lasting contributions to Indo-European vocabulary before their own language went extinct, new research shows.
Most historical linguists agree that words such as ‘wheel’, ‘wagon’, ‘horse’, ‘sheep’, ‘cow’, ‘milk’ and ‘wool’ can be attributed to the Yamnaya people who migrated into Europe from the Caspian steppe 5,000 years ago. The nomadic and pastoral Yamnayans introduced their material culture to the local peoples through a new language known as Proto-Indo-European, from which most European languages descend.
However, not all words in the European languages are of Proto-Indo-European origin, linguists say; there are words for flora and fauna, which must have been incorporated into Indo-European from local cultures. But where could such cultural exchange have taken place? According to a new study* published in American Journal of Archaeology by archaeologist Rune Iversen and linguist Guus Kroonen from the University of Copenhagen, southern Scandinavia 2,800 BC provides an ideal setting for such an exchange:
“The archaeological evidence tells us that between 2,800 and 2,600 BC two very different cultures co-existed in southern Scandinavia: there was the local, Neolithic culture known as the Funnel Beaker Culture with its characteristic funnel-shaped ceramics and collective burial practices and the new Single Grave Culture influenced by the Yamnaya culture. The Funnel Beaker Culture was eventually superseded by the Single Grave Culture, but the transition took hundreds of years in the eastern part of southern Scandinavia, and the two cultures must have influenced each other during this time, “says archaeologist Rune Iversen, who has specialised in this particular transitional period.
Peas, beans, turnips and shrimps
Historical linguist Guus Kroonen points to a number of words for local flora and fauna and important plant domesticates that the incoming speakers of Indo-European could not have brought with them to southern Scandinavia.
“There is a cluster of words in European languages such as Danish, English, and German – the Germanic languages – which stand out because they do not conform to the established sound changes of Indo-European vocabulary. It is words like sturgeon, shrimp, pea, bean and turnip that cannot be reconstructed to the Proto-Indo-European ancestor,” Guus Kroonen explains and adds:
“This tells us that these words must have entered Indo-European after it had spread from the Caspian steppe to the various parts of Europe. In other words: the new Single Grave Culture is likely to have adopted much farming and hunting terminology from the local Funnel Beaker Culture that inhabited southern Scandinavia and Denmark till around 2,600 BC. When Indo-European in Northern Europe developed into Proto-Germanic, the terminology for local flora and fauna was preserved, which is why we know and can study the terms today.”
Guus Kroonen adds that this farming terminology may be vestiges of a now extinct language spoken by the people who initially brought farming to Europe from Anatolia 9,000-6,000 years ago.
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This is a schematic impression of how the different Indo-European branches may have absorbed lexical items (circles) from previously spoken languages in the linguistically complex setting of Europe from the third millennium BC. Credit: University of Copenhagen
This is the distribution of the earliest Single Grave culture burials in southern Scandinavia, ca. 2850-2800. The Single Grave Culture co-existed with the local Funnel Beaker Culture, which inhabited the island of Zealand, for 200 years. Credit: University of Copenhagen
*Rune Iversen’s and Guus Kroonen’s paper, Talking Neolithic: Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on How Indo-European Was Implemented in Southern Scandinavia in American Journal of Archaeology.
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UPPSALA UNIVERSITY—A genomic analysis of ancient human remains from KwaZulu-Natal revealed that southern Africa has an important role to play in writing the history of humankind. A research team from Uppsala University, Sweden, the Universities of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, South Africa, presents their results in the September 28th early online issue of Science.
The team sequenced the genomes of seven individuals who lived in southern Africa 2300-300 years ago. The three oldest individuals dating to 2300-1800 years ago were genetically related to the descendants of the southern Khoe-San groups, and the four younger individuals who lived 500-300 years ago were genetically related to current-day South African Bantu-speaking groups. “This illustrates the population replacement that occurred in southern Africa”, says co-first author Carina Schlebusch, population geneticist at Uppsala University.
The authors estimate the divergence among modern humans to have occurred between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago, based on the ancient Stone Age hunter-gatherer genomes. The deepest split time of 350,000 years ago represents a comparison between an ancient Stone Age hunter-gatherer boy from Ballito Bay on the east coast of South Africa and the West African Mandinka. “This means that modern humans emerged earlier than previously thought”, says Mattias Jakobsson, population geneticist at Uppsala University who headed the project together with Stone Age archaeologist Marlize Lombard at the University of Johannesburg.
The fossil record of east Africa, and in particular the Omo and Herto fossils have often been used to set the emergence of anatomically modern humans to about 180,000 years ago. The deeper estimate for modern human divergence at 350,000-260,000 years ago coincides with the Florisbad and Hoedjiespunt fossils, contemporaries of the small-brained Homo naledi in southern Africa. “It now seems that at least two or three Homo species occupied the southern African landscape during this time period, which also represents the early phases of the Middle Stone Age”, says Marlize Lombard. It will be interesting to see in the future if we find any evidence of interaction between these groups.
“We did not find any evidence of deep structure or archaic admixture among southern African Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Instead, we see some evidence for deep structure in the West African population, but that affects only a small fraction of their genome and is about the same age as the deepest divergence among all humans”, says Mattias Jakobsson.
The authors also found that all current-day Khoe-San populations admixed with migrant East African pastoralists a little over a thousand years ago. “We could not detect this widespread East African admixture previously since we did not have an un-admixed San group to use as reference. Now that we have access to ancient DNA of people who lived on the landscape before the East African migration, we are able to detect the admixture percentages in all San groups. The admixture percentages in the Khoekhoe, historically identified as pastoralists, are higher than previously estimated”, says Carina Schlebusch.
Of the Iron Age individuals, three carry at least one Duffy null allele, protecting against malaria, and two have at least one sleeping-sickness-resistance variant in the APOL1 gene. The Stone Age individuals do not carry these protective alleles. “This tells us that Iron Age farmers carried these disease-resistance variants when they migrated to southern Africa”, says co-first author Helena Malmström, archaeo-geneticist at Uppsala University.
Marlize Lombard said that “archaeological deposits dating to the time of the split by 350,000-260,000 years ago, attest to South Africa being populated by tool-making hunter-gatherers at the time. Although human fossils are sparse, those of Florisbad and Hoedjiespunt are seen as transitional to modern humans.” These fossils may therefore be ancestral to the Ballito Bay boy and other San hunter-gatherers who lived in southern Africa 2000 years ago.
The transition from archaic to modern humans might not have occurred in one place in Africa but in several, including southern Africa and northern Africa as recently reported. “Thus, both palaeo-anthropological and genetic evidence increasingly points to multiregional origins of anatomically modern humans in Africa, i.e. Homo sapiens did not originate in one place in Africa, but might have evolved from older forms in several places on the continent with gene flow between groups from different places”, says Carina Schlebusch.
“It is remarkable that we can now sequence entire genomes of ancient human remains from tropical areas, such as the southeast coast of South Africa”, says Helena Malmström. This is promising for our several ongoing investigations in Africa.
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Dr. Helena Malmström conducting on-site sampling of bone material in a mobil sampling lab. Credit: Uppsala University
Demographic model of African history and estimated divergences. Vertical colored lines represent migration, with down-pointing triangles representing admixture into another group. Southern African hunter-gatherers are shown by red symbols, and Iron Age farmers as green symbols. Extracted from figure 3. Credit: Uppsala University
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Cumulatively these findings shed new light on our species’ deep African history and show that there is still much more to learn about our process of becoming modern humans and that the interplay between genetics and archaeology has an increasingly important role to play.
This article source: Edited from the Uppsala University news release
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PLOS—An isotopic analysis of megalithic graves and caves in Spain may suggest the existence of a degree of differentiation in the lifeways of people buried in these different funerary sites, according to a study* published September 27, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Teresa Fernández-Crespo and Rick Schulting from the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and the University of Oxford, UK.
Previous research on the burial practices of the Western European Neolithic has revealed variation in burial location and treatment, but their significance is difficult to interpret. To further investigate the meaning behind different burial practices within the same location and period, the authors of the present study analyzed the bone collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of 166 individuals from a series of broadly contemporary Late Neolithic (3500 to 2900 cal BC) mortuary monuments and caves, closely situated together in north-central Spain.
The researchers’ isotopic analysis of both megalithic graves and caves suggests a similar C3 plant-based human diet, mostly consisting of wheat and barley, as well as a substantial amount of protein from cattle and sheep. However, the study surprisingly reveals significant carbon isotope differences between people interred in both funerary site-types. These differences seem to be correlated with elevation, temperature, and precipitation, implying that land use was partitioned on a surprisingly local scale. The authors propose two possible explanations. The first is that this division of land could indicate different socioeconomic classes within the same community, with the lower classes being interred in caves with restricted access to agricultural resources, while the individuals of higher status in the community were buried in monumental graves whose construction would involve a considerable investment of labor. Alternatively, they also consider the possibility that this partitioning of the landscape may involve different populations performing different funerary practices and following distinct subsistence economies in some respect.
Further research on tooth dentine and enamel will explore the age at which the isotopic differences first appeared and investigate different patterns of mobility and landscape-use in the study area. This study offers new insights into different mortuary practices and specifically how they related to lifeways, particularly dietary and subsistence practices, and implications for the emergence of socioeconomic inequality in the Western European Neolithic.
“Using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis of human and animal remains, our study has identified meaningful differences between those buried in caves and megalithic graves in the Late Neolithic of north-central Spain,” says Teresa Fernández-Crespo. “This implies that, despite living in close proximity, these communities had distinct lifeways involving a partitioning of the landscape.”
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Megalithic graves analysed (Chabola de la Hechicera), and in the background, the Cantabria mountain range, where the caves included in the study are located. Credit: Teresa Fernández-Crespo / UPV/EHU
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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—A Dartmouth-led study has demonstrated how the latest aerial thermal imagery is transforming archaeology due to advancements in technology. Today’s thermal cameras, commercial drones and photogrammetric software has introduced a new realm of possibilities for collecting site data. The findings, published in Advances in Archaeological Practice, serve as a manual on how to use aerial thermography, as the co-authors hope to inspire other researchers to apply this methodology in their work.
Archaeologists have long used thermal infrared images to locate buried architecture and other cultural landscape elements. The thermal infrared radiation associated with such archaeological features depends on several variables, including the make-up of the soil, its moisture content and vegetation cover. Past conventional geophysics methods, such as fieldwalking, enabled archaeologists to obtain field data across one hectare of a site per day. But now, aerial thermography makes it possible to gather field survey data across a much larger area in much less time.
New aerial thermography has other advantages, as well. Older cameras were unable to record full spectrum data or temperature data for every pixel of an image. Today’s radiometric thermal cameras coupled with small inexpensive, easy to fly drones, which can be controlled by a smartphone or tablet, have made aerial thermography more accurate, comprehensive and accessible. Mapping multiple aerial images together has also become easier through new photogrammetric software, which automatically aligns images and features ortho-image capabilities, which corrects an image to make the scale uniform.
The researchers conducted case studies at six archaeological sites in North America, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, to assess the effectiveness of aerial thermal surveys. They analyzed how weather, environment, time of day, ground cover, and archaeological features may affect the results, and compared their findings to earlier research and historical images.
For example, at an ancestral Pueblo settlement in Blue J, N.M, the researchers were able to map detailed architectural plans of a dozen ancient house compounds—a discovery enabled by the site’s optimal conditions, the soil matrix, low density ground cover, and the environmental conditions at the time of the aerial thermography. They were also able to recognize traces of long-removed historic buildings and pathways at the Shaker Village in Enfield, N.H.
“A lot of what we’ve learned from our research to date shows how much local environmental conditions and the timing of surveys can impact how well thermal imagery will reveal archaeological remains. Yet, the more we understand these issues, the better we are able to deploy the technology. I think our results demonstrate aerial thermography’s potential to transform how we explore archaeological landscapes in many parts of the world,” says Jesse Casana, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth, who has been using drones in aerial thermography for five years in his archaeological research.
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Figure 4 from the paper/File photos from 2014: A Chaco-era room block (LA 170609) at Blue J, NM as it appears in (a) 5:18 a.m. thermal image; (b) architectural plan produced by test excavations; (c) a color image, and thermal images from (d) 6:18 a.m.; (e) 7:18 a.m.; and (f) 9:58 p.m. (Images by Jesse Casana, John Kantner, Adam Wiewel, and Jackson Cothren). Images are by Jesse Casana, John Kanter, Adam Wiewel, and Jackson Cothren. 2014 Archaeological Aerial Thermography: A Case Study at the Chaco-Era Blue J Community, New Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Science. 45:207-219
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Figure 10 from the paper. (a) Color orthoimage of a survey area at the Enfield Shaker Village, New Hampshire, showing location of historic buildings indicated on a 1917 map; (b) magnetic gradiometry survey data; (c) raw thermal imagery collected with a radiometric thermal camera; and (d) thermal imagery processed to show only values present in the lawn. (Images by Jesse Casana, Austin Chad Hill and Elise Laugier). Images by Jesse Casana.
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FRONTIERS—Easter Island, known as Rapa Nui by its inhabitants, has been surrounded in mystery ever since the Europeans first landed in 1722. Early visitors estimated a population of just 1,500-3,000, which seemed at odds with the nearly nine hundred giant statues dotted around the Island. How did this small community construct, transport and erect these large rock figures?
A new study, published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, hopes to unravel this mystery by giving the best estimate yet of the maximum population size sustained by Easter Island in its heyday.
“Despite its almost complete isolation, the inhabitants of Easter Island created a complicated social structure and these amazing works of art before a dramatic change occurred,” says Dr. Cedric Puleston, lead author of this study, based at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, USA. “We’ve tried to solve one piece of the puzzle – to figure out the maximum population size before it fell. It appears the island could have supported 17,500 people at its peak, which represents the upper end of the range of previous estimates.”
He adds, “If the population fell from 17,500 to the small number that missionaries counted many years after European contact, it presents a very different picture from the maximum population of 3,000 or less that some have suggested.”
Previous archaeological evidence implies the indigenous people numbered far greater than the 1,500-3,000 individuals encountered in the 18th century. The population history of the island remains highly controversial. In addition to internal conflict, the population crash has been attributed to “ecocide,” in which the Island’s resources were exhausted by its inhabitants, reducing its ability to support human life.
Puleston and his colleagues examined the agricultural potential of the Island before these events occurred, to calculate how many people the Island could sustain.
“The project, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, involved a number of really good researchers, including archaeologists, a local expert in Rapa Nui culture, a soil scientist, a biogeochemist, and a population biologist, to get a thorough picture of what the island was like before European contact,” he explains.
“We examined detailed maps, took soil samples around the Island, placed weather stations, used population models and estimated sweet potato production. When we had doubts about one of these factors we looked at the range of its potential values to work out different scenarios.”
They found 19% of the Island could have been used to grow sweet potatoes, which was the main food crop. By using information on how birth and death rates at various ages depend on food availability, the researchers calculated the population size that level of production could sustain.
“The result is a wide range of possible maximum population sizes, but to get the smallest values you have to assume the worst of everything,” says Puleston. “If we compare our agriculture estimates with other Polynesian Islands, a population of 17,500 people on this size of island is entirely reasonable.”
He concludes, “Easter Island is fascinating because it represents an extreme example of a natural experiment in human adaptation, which began when people from a single cultural group spread quickly across the islands of the Pacific. The different environments they encountered on these islands generated a tremendous amount of variation in human behavior. As an extremely unusual case, in both its cultural achievements and its ecological transformation, Easter Island is remarkable and important. It retains an air of mystery, but it’s a real place and has a real history lived by real people. Dispelling that mystery brings us closer to understanding the nature of humanity.”
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HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL—The first large-scale study of ancient human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa opens a long-awaited window into the identity of prehistoric populations in the region and how they moved around and replaced one another over the past 8,000 years.
The findings, published Sept. 21 in Cell by an international research team led by Harvard Medical School, answer several longstanding mysteries and uncover surprising details about sub-Saharan African ancestry — including genetic adaptations for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the first glimpses of population distribution before farmers and animal herders swept across the continent about 3,000 years ago.
“The last few thousand years were an incredibly rich and formative period that is key to understanding how populations in Africa got to where they are today,” said David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS and a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “Ancestry during this time period is such an unexplored landscape that everything we learned was new.”
Reich shares senior authorship of the study with Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Tübingen in Germany.
“Ancient DNA is the only tool we have for characterizing past genomic diversity. It teaches us things we don’t know about history from archaeology and linguistics and can help us better understand present-day populations,” said Pontus Skoglund, a postdoctoral researcher in the Reich lab and the study’s first author. “We need to ensure we use it for the benefit of all populations around the world, perhaps especially Africa, which contains the greatest human genetic diversity in the world but has been underserved by the genomics community.”
Long time coming
Although ancient-DNA research has revealed insights into the population histories of many areas of the world, delving into the deep ancestry of African groups wasn’t possible until recently because genetic material degrades too rapidly in warm, humid climates.
Technological advances–including the discovery by Pinhasi and colleagues that DNA persists longer in small, dense ear bones–are now beginning to break the climate barrier. Last year, Reich and colleagues used the new techniques to generate the first genome-wide data from the earliest farmers in the Near East, who lived between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago.
In the new study, Skoglund and team, including colleagues from South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, coaxed DNA from the remains of 15 ancient sub-Saharan Africans. The individuals came from a variety of geographic regions and ranged in age from about 500 to 8,500 years old.
The researchers compared these ancient genomes—along with the only other known ancient genome from the region, previously published in 2015—against those of nearly 600 present-day people from 59 African populations and 300 people from 142 non-African groups.
With each analysis, revelations rolled in.
“We are peeling back the first layers of the agricultural transition south of the Sahara,” said Skoglund. “Already we can see that there was a whole different landscape of populations just 2,000 or 3,000 years ago.”
Genomic time-lapse
Almost half of the team’s samples came from Malawi, providing a series of genomic snapshots from the same location across thousands of years.
The time-series divulged the existence of an ancient hunter-gatherer population the researchers hadn’t expected.
When agriculture spread in Europe and East Asia, farmers and animal herders expanded into new areas and mixed with the hunter-gatherers who lived there. Present-day populations thus inherited DNA from both groups.
The new study found evidence for similar movement and mixing in other parts of Africa, but after farmers reached Malawi, hunter-gatherers seem to have disappeared without contributing any detectable ancestry to the people who live there today.
“It looks like there was a complete population replacement,” said Reich. “We haven’t seen clear evidence for an event like this anywhere else.”
The Malawi snapshots also helped identify a population that spanned from the southern tip of Africa all the way to the equator about 1,400 years ago before fading away. That mysterious group shared ancestry with today’s Khoe-San people in southern Africa and left a few DNA traces in people from a group of islands thousands of miles away, off the coast of Tanzania.
“It’s amazing to see these populations in the DNA that don’t exist anymore,” said Reich. “It’s clear that gathering additional DNA samples will teach us much more.”
“The Khoe-San are such a genetically distinctive people, it was a surprise to find a closely related ancestor so far north just a couple of thousand years ago,” Reich added.
The new study also found that West Africans can trace their lineage back to a human ancestor that may have split off from other African populations even earlier than the Khoe-San.
Missing links
The research similarly shed light on the origins of another unique group, the Hadza people of East Africa.
“They have a distinct appearance, language and genetics, and some people speculated that, like the Khoe-San, they might represent a very early diverging group from other African populations,” said Reich. “Our study shows that instead, they’re somehow in the middle of everything.”
The Hadza, according to genomic comparisons, are today more closely related to non-Africans than to other Africans. The researchers hypothesize that the Hadza are direct descendants of the group that migrated out of Africa, and possibly spread within Africa as well, after about 50,000 years ago.
Another discovery lay in wait in East Africa.
Scientists had predicted the existence of an ancient population based on the observation that present-day people in southern Africa share ancestry with people in the Near East. The 3,000-year-old remains of a young girl in Tanzania provided the missing evidence.
Reich and colleagues suspect that the girl belonged to a herding population that contributed significant ancestry to present-day people from Ethiopia and Somalia down to South Africa. The ancient population was about one-third Eurasian, and the researchers were able to further pinpoint that ancestry to the Levant region.
“With this sample in hand, we can now say more about who these people were,” said Skoglund.
The finding put one mystery to rest while raising another: Present-day people in the Horn of Africa have additional Near Eastern ancestry that can’t be explained by the group to which the young girl belonged.
Natural selection
Finally, the study took a first step in using ancient DNA to understand genetic adaptation in African populations.
It required “squeezing water out of a stone” because the researchers were working with so few ancient samples, said Reich, but Skoglund was able to identify two regions of the genome that appear to have undergone natural selection in southern Africans.
One adaptation increased protection from ultraviolet radiation, which the researchers propose could be related to life in the Kalahari Desert. The other variant was located on genes related to taste buds, which the researchers point out can help people detect poisons in plants.
The researchers hope that their study encourages more investigation into the diverse genetic landscape of human populations in Africa, both past and present. Reich also said he hopes the work reminds people that African history didn’t end 50,000 years ago when groups of humans began migrating into the Near East and beyond.
“The late Stone Age in Africa is like a black hole, research-wise,” said Reich. “Ancient DNA can address that gap.”
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Mount Hora in Malawi, where the oldest DNA in the study, from a woman who lived more than 8,000 years ago, was obtained. Credit: Jessica C. Thompson/Emory University
Funding for this research was provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant GM100233), the National Science Foundation (HOMINID BCS-1032255 and BCS-1613577), the DFG/German Research Foundation (KR 4015/1-1), the Max Planck Society, the National Research Foundation of South Africa, the South African Medical Research Council, European Research Council starting grants SEALINKS (206148) and ADNABIOARC (263441), a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (100719/Z/12/Z), the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Swedish Research Council (VR grant 2014-453). Reich is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
There were a total of 44 study authors from institutions in 11 countries.
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A new analysis of a well-preserved, remarkably complete Neanderthal child’s skeleton reveals that Neanderthals may have had a more extended period of brain growth compared to modern humans. An understanding of our Neanderthal cousins can provide important insights into our own biology. Of particular interest are differences in brain size, as the Neanderthal fossil record has thus far indicated that they had a larger cranial capacity than that of modern humans.
Some studies have proposed that the larger brain in Neanderthals can be explained by a faster rate of early postnatal growth, yet others have proposed a longer growth rate instead. Here, Antonio Rosas and colleagues describe a juvenile Neanderthal skeleton from the 49,000-year-old site of El Sidrón, in Spain. The specimen, dubbed El Sidrón J1, exhibits an exceptionally well-preserved mix of baby and adult teeth, providing a rare opportunity to estimate an age at death from daily dental incremental markings preserved in the teeth – leading the team to estimate that the child died at 7.69 years of age. Analysis of El Sidrón J1 also reveals that some vertebrae had still not fused in the 7-year-old Neanderthal, yet these same vertebrae tend to fuse in modern day humans around the ages of 4 to 6. Interestingly, the brain of El Sidrón J1 was roughly 87.5% of the size of an average adult Neanderthal brain upon death, whereas modern humans tend to have on average 95% of adult brain weight by that same age. The authors suggest that the unique pattern of vertebral maturation and extended brain growth might reflect the broad Neanderthal body form and physiology, rather than a fundamental difference in the overall pace of growth in Neanderthals.
It is important to note that, while Rosas and colleagues have identified these differences between the Neanderthal and the modern human, or Homo sapiens, for the most part, their growth development is very similar.
The El Sidrón Cave is a limestone karst cave system located in Asturias, northwestern Spain. Here, Paleolithic rock art and more than a dozen fossils of Neanderthals and 53 associated stone tools were found. The discovery was initially made accidentally in 1994, eventually revealing the remains of what scientists identified to be 13 individuals, including adolescent boys, a younger juvenile, women, and infants, dated to about 49,000 years ago. Analysis of the bones suggested that they may have been dropped into the cave in a single ancient event via a collapse of nearby fissures above the site, or by the influx of storm water.
The first sequencing of the Neanderthal Y chromosome was successfully achieved using a bone sample taken from the El Sidrón Cave. The results of DNA analysis indicated that Neanderthals diverged from a common ancestor with modern humans around 590,000 years ago.
Other research on the El Sidrón Neanderthals has shown that their diet consisted primarily of pine nuts, moss and mushrooms, unlike the primarily carnivorous diet of other Neanderthals.
Regarding this most recent study, Rosas and colleagues emphasize that this is really ony a first step, and future research will entail analyzing the remains of Neanderthals from the site and other sites, to increase the overall sample size under study to either qualify or further verify or validate their findings.
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Researchers working inside the El Sidrón cave. Credit: Paleoanthropology group MNCN – CSIC
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Antonio Rosas inside the El Sidrón cave. Credit: Joan Costa – CSIC Communication
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Antonio Rosas beside the Neanderthal child’s skeleton. Credit: Andrés Diaz – CSIC Communication
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DE GRUYTER OPEN—Name one civilization located in the Americas that pre-dates the arrival of Europeans. You probably replied with the Aztecs, the Inca or perhaps the Maya. A new paper, published in De Gruyter’s open access journal Open Archeology by Michael E. Smith of Arizona State University, shows how this view of American civilizations is narrow. It is entitled “The Teotihuacan Anomaly: The Historical Trajectory of Urban Design in Ancient Central Mexico”.
Smith, using a map produced by the Teotihuacan mapping project, conducted a comparative analysis of the city with earlier and later Mesoamerican urban centers and has proved, for the first time, the uniqueness of the city. The paper outlines how the urban design of the city of Teotihuacan differed from past and subsequent cities, only to be rediscovered and partially modeled many centuries later by the Aztecs.
Teotihuacan was in touch with other Mesoamerican civilizations and at the height of its influence between 100 – 650 AD it was the largest city in the Americas and one of the largest in the world. It is unclear who the builders of the city were and what relation they had to the peoples which followed. It is possible they were related to the Nahua or Totonac peoples. It is also unclear why the city was abandoned. There are several theories which include foreign invasion, a civil war, an ecological catastrophe, or some combination of all three.
The Aztecs, who reached the height of their power about a thousand years later, held Teotihuacan in reverence. The site of Teotihuacan is located about forty kilometers from the site of the Aztec capital. They claimed to be the descendants of the Teotihuacans. That may or may not be true, but the Teotihuacans had a huge influence on the later Aztec culture. The name Teotihuacan comes from the Aztec language, and means ‘the birthplace of the gods’ and they believed it was the location of the creation of the universe. But the paper outlines how the influence of this ancient culture on the Aztecs was not limited only to their cultural beliefs, but also how it affected the urban design of their capital city, and also how unparalleled that original design was. Most ancient cities throughout Mesoamerica followed the same planning principles, and they included the same kinds of buildings. Each city usually had a well-planned central area which included temples, a royal palace, a ballcourt, and a plaza that was surrounded by a much more chaotic (in terms of planning) residential area. Teotihuacan most likely had no royal palace, no ballcourt, and no central areas. It was much larger than cities before it, and the residential areas were much better planned than its predecessors, and it had an innovation unique in world history – the apartment compound. Buildings with one entrance that contained many households had been rare before the industrial revolution and those that did exist were for the poor. Teotihuacan’s were spacious and comfortable.
“Teotihuacan stood alone as the only city using a new and very different set of planning principles, and its apartment compounds represent a unique form of urban residence not just in Mesoamerica but in world urban history,” said Michael E. Smith.
All of these features were unique in Central America before and after, until the Aztecs drew their inspiration for their capital Tenochtitlan from Teotihuacan using many of the same features.
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The Sun Pyramid in Teotihuacan. Credit: (CC BY-SA 3.0 license) by Ricardo David Sánchez
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WELLCOME TRUST SANGER INSTITUTE—The first large-scale genetic study of people in Papua New Guinea has shown that different groups within the country are genetically highly different from each other. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their colleagues at the University of Oxford and the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research reveal that the people there have remained genetically independent from Europe and Asia for most of the last 50,000 years, and that people from the country’s isolated highlands region have been completely independent even until the present day.
Reported today (15 September) in Science, the study also gives insights into how the development of agriculture and cultural events such as the Bronze or Iron Age could affect the genetic structure of human societies.
Papua New Guinea is a country in the southwestern Pacific with some of the earliest archaeological evidence of human existence outside Africa. Largely free from Western influence and with fascinating cultural diversity, it has been of enormous interest to anthropologists and other scientists seeking to understand human cultures and evolution.
With approximately 850 domestic languages, which account for over 10 per cent of the world’s total, Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. To discover if the linguistic and cultural diversity was echoed in the genetic structure of the population, researchers studied the genomes of 381 Papuan New Guinean people from 85 different language groups within the country.
The researchers looked at more than a million genetic positions in the genome of each individual, and compared them to investigate genetic similarities and differences. They found that groups of people speaking different languages were surprisingly genetically distinct from each other.
Anders Bergström, the first author on the paper from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: “This is the first large-scale study of genetic diversity and population history in Papua New Guinea. Our study revealed that the genetic differences between groups of people there are generally very strong, often much stronger even than between major populations within all of Europe or all of East Asia.”
Professor Stephen J. Oppenheimer, second author of the paper from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, said: “We found a striking difference between the groups of people who live in the mountainous highlands and those in the lowlands, with genetic separation dating back 10,000-20,000 years between the two. This makes sense culturally, as the highland groups historically have kept to themselves, but such a strong genetic barrier between otherwise geographically close groups is still very unusual and fascinating.”
Human evolution in Europe and Asia has been greatly influenced by the development of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. When small bands of hunter-gatherers settled into villages and started farming, they expanded and over time gave rise to more genetically homogenous (similar) societies. However, despite the independent development of agriculture in Papua New Guinea at about the same time, the same process of homogenization did not occur here. This may indicate that other historical processes in Europe and Asia, such as the later Bronze and Iron Ages, were the key events that shaped the current genetic structure of those populations.
Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, corresponding author on the paper from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: “Using genetics, we were able to see that people on the island of New Guinea evolved independently from rest of the world for much of the last 50,000 years. This study allows us to glimpse a different version of human evolution from that in Europe and Asia, one in which there was agriculture but no later Bronze Age or Iron Age. Papua New Guinea might show the genetic, cultural and linguistic diversity that many settled human societies would have had before these technological transformations.”
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The highlands of Papua New Guinea. eGuide Travel, Wikimedia Commons
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This report presents the past four years of our adaptation and implementation of the construction program PlanGrid as a digital field registration system at the Tel Burna Archaeological Project (Israel). In this report, we will discuss the following: (1) the benefits of using PlanGrid with tablets and smartphones; (2) details related to our specific adaptation at Tel Burna; (3) this past season’s innovation of replacing traditional architectural top plans with photographs taken with a camera attached to an overhead apparatus; and (4) instructions on how other projects may implement PlanGrid as a digital archaeological tool.
Introduction
In recent years, many archaeological projects have adapted their field registration methods to incorporate new technological innovations in order to improve the accuracy, efficiency, and publication of their projects. With the advent of cheaper and reliable forms of hardware (e.g., iPads, Window Surface, etc.), these tools have increasingly been implemented for various purposes in both the field and laboratory (see discussion in McKinny and Shai, in press). At the same time, many new digital programs and applications have been developed to handle the considerable data-management, field-registration, and digitization needs of an archaeological project (REVEAL – Gay et al., 2010; e.g., Codifi – Prins et al., 2014; Archfield – Smith and Levy, 2014).
Over the last few seasons, the Tel Burna Archaeological Project has taken part in this discipline-wide endeavor through our adaptation of PlanGrid as a replacement for our hand-written paper forms and plans. PlanGrid is a widely-used construction app that has revolutionized the construction industry by creating a cloud-based, intuitive blueprint and project management tool (e.g., Miller, 2015). Significantly, many of the main features that allow PlanGrid to streamline workflow within a construction project have a parallel application for an archaeological excavation. These include the following: architectural plan management; searchable and adaptable annotations; archived field photos that can be linked to specific data; scaled field measurements; well-defined and useable administrator tools; simple report compilations in both CSV and annotated PDF formats; and reliable cloud storage across multiple devices with or without an internet connection. Below, we will discuss each of these benefits within the context of our adaptation of PlanGrid at Tel Burna.
The benefits of using PlanGrid with tablets and smartphones
Laptops, tablets, and even smartphones are becoming more and more commonplace at archaeological excavations all over the world. In particular, tablets such as the more recent generations of iPad or the Windows Surface give archaeologists a tool that provides an adequately sized screen, long battery life, a built-in camera, durability, and affordability. PlanGrid is designed to provide its highest level of functionality with a tablet or smartphone and was initially only available on an iPad.
PlanGrid on an iPad works exceptionally well. This is clearly due to the fact that the program has passed the test of being a useable paperless alternative in the construction industry. Since PlanGrid is an app designed around a for-profit cloud-based service, users are assured of both program stability and constant improvement and development. As archaeologists who are concerned with preserving cultural heritage through digital means, PlanGrid’s popularity in the construction industry ensures us that the program will be around for many years to come. In addition to PlanGrid’s stability, it is also inexpensive. This is a major benefit since archaeological projects are often underfunded. Regarding cost, PlanGrid’s free 50 sheet cloud fits the needs of our project, but they also offer several inexpensive options that include storage for many more sheets. The combination of a stable, constantly improving cloud-based program at no cost made PlanGrid an attractive option as a field registration tool at Tel Burna.
In light of this, we chose the combination of an iPad as our field registration tool at Tel Burna. While any later generation iPad will work with PlanGrid, we recommend purchasing iPads with cellular capabilities even if the project does not plan on purchasing a data plan for the device. The cellular feature has two main advantages. First, a project may later decide that they need internet access. Second, the cellular capability comes with a high level GPS chip that makes all photos taken on the device geo-referenced.
During a typical excavation season, we will work in at least three areas, which means that we need at least one device for each area supervisor. Briefly defined, our adaptation of PlanGrid involves uploading a separate architectural top plan for each day of excavation and annotating that plan with our own built-in Locus/Wall and Basket forms on an iPad. Since we do not have internet accessibility at our site, area supervisors register their particular area with PlanGrid on their iPad throughout the day. Upon returning to the excavation camp, each supervisor syncs their data to the cloud, downloads the available data from the other areas, and repeats the process for the next day of excavation.
The benefits of replacing hand-drawn top plans with “aerial” photos and PlanGrid
Over the past two seasons, we have added an additional layer to our recording system as we have replaced daily hand-drawn top plans with “aerial” photos of each excavation square. While aerial or drone images are very common in archaeological excavations, it is very difficult if not impossible to remove and replace shade over an excavation area (a necessity in July in the southern part of Israel) in order for a drone to fly over and take aerial images. Our solution to this problem was to take “aerial” photos beneath the shade using an apparatus that allowed us to take photos with enough elevation to capture all four corners of our 4 x 4 meter excavations. These photos are achieved simply by attaching a DSLR camera with a wide angled lens to a 5.5-meter-long pole (via a GorillaPod flexible tripod and some well-placed tape), which is then raised above the excavation square to take a straight-down photograph. After each square has been photographed, these photos are simply placed within the excavation square in Photoshop and the entire plan is uploaded (as a PDF) to PlanGrid. This process is repeated each day of excavation.
The Tel Burna Archaeological Project
The site of Tel Burna is located in the Judean foothills (Shephelah) a geographical region between the southern Coastal Plain in the west and the Highlands toward the east. A wide range of evidence, including Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian texts; biblical passages; epigraphic and material cultural finds, attest to the importance of this region as a borderland in the Bronze and, particularly, in the Iron Age, when Judahites and Philistines settled on opposite sides of the border. Since 2009, Tel Burna has undergone eight seasons of archaeological investigation under the direction of Itzhaq Shai of Ariel University. The first five seasons of excavations were under the academic affiliation of the Institute of Archaeology of Bar Ilan University, but the last two years, the excavation has been affiliated with the Institute of Archaeology of Ariel University.
Surveys at Tel Burna have shown that the site was inhabited from the Early Bronze until the Byzantine period, but occupation on the tell’s summit ceased during the Persian Period. According to the surveys and the preliminary results of the excavation, the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age II are the most significant periods of occupation at Tel Burna (Shai and Uziel, 2014; Uziel and Shai, 2010). Thus far, we have opened five areas and revealed occupational levels ranging from the 13th-5th centuries BCE. In Areas A1 and B2, we have revealed segments of a large casemate fortification that was in use during the Iron II that seems to be related to the border fortifications of the Kingdom of Judah, i.e. the Iron Age II (Shai et al., 2012). In Area A2, our team has uncovered a large 8th century BCE building on the summit with finds from the 9th-early 6th centuries BCE (Shai et al., 2014, 2015a). In Area C, we exposed several agricultural installations that seem to date from the Early Bronze Age until the Iron Age II. In Area B1, we are excavating a 13th century BCE public building with many imported and cultic finds (Shai et al., 2015b). For the purposes of this paper, we will use Area B1 as a test case for illustrating our adaptation of PlanGrid for use as an archaeological field registration tool.
Area B1 – a large cultic building from the Late Bronze Age
Excavations in Area B1 have uncovered parts of a large building (Building 29305). The architectural remains were found only a few centimeters below the surface. The plan of the structure exposed thus far indicates that it had a large courtyard, constructed directly on the bedrock. The western side of Building 29305 is defined by a 1.4 m wide wall that runs southeast–northwest for a length of 15 m. Near the western wall on courtyard 33211, we found many different locally made and foreign objects. Among these finds were two ceramic cultic masks, several goblets or chalices, a unique three-cupped Cypriot votive vessel, a glyptic cylinder seal in the Mittani style, an Egyptian scarab, two Cypriot wavy-band pithoi, alongside many other finds (Shai et al., 2015b; Sharp et al., 2015). (See Fig 1)
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Fig 1
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We will now use this general archaeological context from Area B1 at Tel Burna to illustrate our adaptation of PlanGrid as a field registration tool:
A guide to adapt PlanGrid as a field registration tool using Area B1 as a test case
This section provides a step-by-step guide on how to setup PlanGrid on an archaeological project by using screenshots of fieldwork in Area B1 at Tel Burna as a case study.
2. Choose a pricing option athttps://app.plangrid.com/en/pricing. You will need to decide if you would like to have a separate PlanGrid account for each season, which means using PlanGrid would be free if your project’s needs are below the 50-sheet threshold, or if you would like to store all your sheets and annotations for your entire project. For the first option, you will need to set up a separate email account and profile credentials for each season.
3. Start a “new project.” Start a new project and name it after the specific archaeological area within the project (e.g., 2016 Tel Burna Area B1). At Tel Burna, each of our devices is signed into the same account, however, a hierarchal workflow (i.e., view-only, administrator credentials) is available if this is necessary for a given project.
4. Customize your project’s stamp/issue list to fit your field registration system.This is accomplished by selecting the punching glove on the tool bar, then selecting “customize stamps.” These issue buttons will serve as the tagged basket and locus forms (or other variations from other recording systems). In theory, the issue list should be customized to match your existing registration system (e.g., “L” represents locus). Note: this step only has to be completed in the initial setup for the excavation season and the customized stamp/issue list can be shared with each “project” (i.e., each excavation area) as long as it remains under the same PlanGrid profile.
5. Create your top plan. This step will largely depend on your project’s method of creating a top plan. At Tel Burna, we overlay an “aerial” photograph (extended over the excavation square – see above for description) over our architect’s hand-drawn plans. Once we have taken these photos of each square, we add it to the top plan in Photoshop and then export the slide as a PDF. This process is then repeated each day. It is helpful if your top plans remain the same size, so that relevant annotations may be copied from one day of excavation to the next.
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Fig 2
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6. Upload your PDF drawing top plan of the excavation area to PlanGrid. This PDF top plan counts as one sheet against your 50-sheet free account. For this step, you will want to include the excavation date, area, and project so that the drawing is displayed properly in the dashboard and may be easily located in a search, although the sheet names can be edited in the browser version of PlanGrid. Note: steps 5-12 are repeated for each day of excavation.
7. Create template stamps for your basket, locus and other field registration forms. This process involves selecting the appropriate stamp (e.g., “L” for Locus) and adding a pre-defined list of data fields from your existing registration system (e.g., stratigraphy, matrix, stratum, etc.) to the “description” stamp template. To make stamps easily distinguishable, users may want to select a specific color for the stamp template (e.g., baskets are black, loci are red, and walls are green). This is accomplished by choosing a color from the tool bar either before creating the template or simply changing the color while the button or text has been selected. These template stamps should be placed in a location on the top plan where they can be easily copied throughout the day as new loci and baskets are opened.
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Fig 3
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8. Register your area by annotating your plan with your pre-defined stamps. This step is the main work of PlanGrid and requires a more detailed explanation. Users should copy and paste their template stamps as the need arises. These stamps should be placed where either the defined archaeological feature (locus/wall) or find (basket/bucket) was excavated. In order to accomplish this, it is helpful to zoom in to the exact area on the top plan before adding your annotation. The resolution of the annotation (i.e., the zoom level) is preserved when viewing the plan on a tablet or smartphone and is helpful for illustrating the archaeological features of an excavation square. Once the annotation has been added and while still at the appropriate zoom level, it is advisable to add a graphic representation of the stamp. If you are using a color-coded system you will want to match the color of the graphic with the stamp (e.g., in our system – a locus number and stamp will both be in red). In addition, there are several font sizes to choose from that may also help distinguish different types of data/stamps. At Tel Burna, we use the following annotation system: blue with the smallest font size to represent levels (no stamp needed), black with the smallest font size for baskets, red with the second smallest font size for loci (or pink if we want to distinguish different types of locus features), and green with the second smallest font size for walls. Once the stamp has received a graphic title and been properly sized and colored, it is ready for data entry, which is accomplished by clicking/touching the stamp and filling in the appropriate details.
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Fig 4
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9. Fill in a form within a pre-defined stamp. Upon opening the form, users should do the following: (1) rename the stamp to the name of the locus or basket number; (2) write the name of the locus (for baskets) or square (for loci) under the data field title “room”; (3) fill in all of the appropriate details in the description section of the form, which will be populated by data field titles from your template; and (4) add a photo or photos of the locus and basket. Within the form, you also have the option to change your stamp symbol, move, copy or add a comment to your annotation. In order for photos to be attached to a specific stamp, the photos must be taken by selecting “add photo” at the bottom of the form. The “camera” button on the tool bar does not link the photos to stamps. The data within these stamps forms (including the photos) will be used to create the annotated PDF and CSV reports. Please note that there are several features in this section that we have not used in our adaption (e.g., push master, assigned to, and layers).
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Fig 5
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10. Measure within PlanGrid. PlanGrid has a built-in measuring tool that once scaled to a known measurement on the plan can measure distances and surface areas. This is a helpful feature when filling out details within the locus form.
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Fig 6
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11. Sync PlanGrid to the cloud and back up your work. Upon finishing the day’s excavation and returning to the excavation camp, users should connect their device to the internet and sync their data to the cloud. Since each excavation area (or sub-area) is assigned to work on a separate part of the project and all users are signed into the same account, all of that day’s registration data will be synced to the exact location where it was placed by the area supervisor. This is also an ideal time to send the excavation director or appropriate staff member a backup of that day’s registration. There are several options for this backup including a snapshot, a PDF of the entire sheet, a PDF packet report (includes snapshot and photos taken with the camera tool), and issue packet (a PDF that includes all of the issues on the sheet). Of these, the issue packet is our preferred option.
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Fig 7
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12. Use PlanGrid for preliminary analysis. At Tel Burna, we use PlanGrid during our daily pottery analysis. Since the pottery basket has the same number on both the physical tag and in PlanGrid, we need to search for that basket number within PlanGrid. This is accomplished either by going directly to the plan from the relevant day of excavation or by selecting the “issues drawer” icon in the upper-right hand corner of the sheets gallery. Using the latter option, one would then select “issues log,” which will allow you to search the entire area for the specific basket. Once selected, the issue will be displayed with the plan in the background, which allows for the archaeologist to immediately determine the context of the pottery basket. This feature also works for other stamps (e.g., locus) and can be used to search the entire project for any word or phrase. Once we have analyzed a pottery basket, we select “closed” from within the form in order to easily distinguish baskets that we have analyzed. Likewise, loci should be “closed” through the same process. We also prefer to distinguish the accompanying locus graphic title by making the title have a box around it, which is an option when choosing the text’s font size.
13. Prepare for the next day of excavation. Repeat steps 5-6, in order to create a top plan for the next day of excavation. Once you have created the plan for the following day, open up the current day’s plan and select all relevant annotations that should appear on the subsequent day’s plan. In order to do this, select the lasso tool at the top of the tool bar. The lasso tool allows you to select annotations by either selecting all, running your finger or stylus through annotations, or “lassoing” annotations by encircling them with a circle. Once the annotations have been selected, select “copy” and then navigate to the next day’s drawings, tap the screen and select “past in place.” This will paste the selected annotations in the same location as the previous day, assuming that your top plan is the same size. If you have changed the size of your top plan, you will need to manually move each annotation (see step 9) to its desired location. After you have copied the annotations to the next day’s plan, you should then update the relevant annotations for the next day’s work (e.g., changing levels, opening new loci, etc.)
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Fig 10
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14. Compile a report. One of the best features of PlanGrid is that it easily creates reports in CSV or PDF formats. Reports can only be created in the browser version of PlanGrid within the “issues” section of the dashboard. There are several filtering options within the “report” system (e.g., sheet, keywords, content, etc.) that allows a user to select the specific data that they need to export. In our adaptation, we use the CSV export in order to transfer the data from PlanGrid to our database system. This process is straightforward, but requires some data manipulation because the majority of our locus and basket data is within a single cell entitled “description,” which includes our fixed locus and basket templates. The exported PDF reports are very useful for sending data to specialists and creating end of season excavation reports for the archaeological governing authorities (e.g., the Israel Antiquities Authority). These reports are automatically collated and each “issue” (i.e., basket or locus) includes a small window showing the location of the issue on the top plan, all of the written data within the form, and any photos taken within the locus or basket form.
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Fig 11
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Conclusion
Tel Burna’s adaptation of PlanGrid has been a very useful and affordable tool for our archaeological field registration. This method together with our “aerial” photos has many advantages over paper forms that allow our project to produce better and more accurate archaeological data at a faster pace than traditional methods (i.e., hand-drawn plans and hand-written forms). Over the course of four seasons (2012-2016), we have continued to refine our PlanGrid adaptation and achieved better results in each season we have used the software. Moreover, PlanGrid itself has been constantly updated and improved by its developers, which indicates that our archaeological adaptation of the system will continue to improve as new features are added to PlanGrid. One of the defining characteristics of the system is that it provides a flawless and effortless data synchronization across multiple devices. After four seasons, we have yet to lose any data despite the fact that we work in difficult field conditions and often have a poor internet connection at the excavation camp. In light of the fact that the software itself is free, PlanGrid would seem to be a particularly useful tool for a small scale excavation on a limited budget. On the other hand, it should be noted that PlanGrid is not a database, however, the data from PlanGrid can easily be exported in a CSV file for importation into an existing archaeological database.
We understand that there are many new digital archaeological recording systems (e.g., Codifi, Archfield, etc.), and we are open to the possibility of testing and implementing these types of systems at Tel Burna. Still, based on our very positive experience with PlanGrid over the last four seasons we highly recommend its use as an archaeological field registration tool.
Gay, E., Cooper, D., Kimia, B., Taubin, G., Cabrini, D., Karumuri, S., Doutre, W., Liu, S., Galor, K., Sanders, D., 2010. REVEAL intermediate report, in: Proceedings of CVPR Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision in Archaeology (ACVA’10). IEEE, pp. 1–6.
McKinny, C., Shai, I., in press. Using Tools in Ways in Which They Were Not Intended: A Test Case of the Use of PlanGrid for Field Registration at Tel Burna, in: Levy, T.E., Jones, I. (Eds.), Cyber-Archaeology and Grand Narratives: Digital Technology and Deep-Time Perspectives on Culture Change in the Middle East. Springer.
Miller, R., 2015. PlanGrid Lands $40 Million Investment To Expand Product. TechCrunch.
Prins, A.B., Adams, M.J., Homsher, R.S., Ashley, M., 2014. Digital Archaeological Fieldwork and the Jezreel Valley Regional Project, Israel. East. Archaeol. 77, 192–197. doi:10.5615/neareastarch.77.3.0192
Shai, I., Ben-Shlomo, D., Cassuto, D., Uziel, J., 2015a. Tel Burna in Iron Age II: A Fortified City on Judah’s Western Border. Judah Samaria Res. Stud. 24, 27–34.
Shai, I., Cassuto, D., Dagan, A., Uziel, J., 2012. The Fortifications at Tel Burna: Date, Function and Meaning. Isr. Explor. J. 62, 141–157.
Shai, I., Dagan, A., Riehl, S., Orendi, A., Uziel, J., Suriano, M., 2014. A Private Stamped Seal Handle from Tel Burna, Israel. Z. Dtsch. Paläst.-Ver. 130, 121–137.
Shai, I., McKinny, C., Uziel, J., 2015b. Late Bronze Age Cultic Activity in Ancient Canaan: A View from Tel Burna. Bull. Am. Sch. Orient. Res. 115–133.
Shai, I., Uziel, J., 2014. Addressing Survey Methodology in the Southern Levant: Applying Different Methods for the Survey of Tel Burna, Israel. Isr. Explor. J. 64, 172–190.
Sharp, C., McKinny, C., Shai, I., 2015. Late Bronze Age Figurines from Tel Burna. Strata Bull. Anglo-Isr. Archaeol. Soc. 33, 61–76.
Smith, N.G., Levy, T.E., 2014. ArchField in Jordan: Real-Time GIS Data Recording for Archaeological Excavations. East. Archaeol. 77, 166–170. doi:10.5615/neareastarch.77.3.0166
Uziel, J., Shai, I., 2010. The Settlement History of Tel Burna: Results of the Surface Survey. Tel Aviv 37, 227–245.
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Marek Titien Olszewski is Associate Professor, PhD from the Sorbonne, lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, specialist in Roman archaeology and iconography, and an expert on ancient mosaics, Roman archaeology and Syria (UNESCO). He sits on the board of the AIEMA (Association Internationale pour l’Etude de la Mosaïque Antiqua).
Houmam Saad has a PhD in archaeology and is on the staff of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria (DGAMS). He is also an associate of the French Academy of Sciences (CNRS) and a specialist in the archaeology of Syria.
Beyond the devastation and tragedy of human lives precipitated by the conflict in Syria, priceless representations of ancient culture and history have likewise fallen victim to a seemingly never-ending maelstrom of destruction. Ancient monuments and art have either been destroyed, damaged, or lost as chaos persists in a region that has for thousands of years seen the footprint of a parade of civilizations. Missing but not forgotten among these cultural victims is one very important Roman mosaic — a floor mosaic that tells a history of the great ancient city of Apamea, an important Greek and Roman hub of the Levant. Like many other splendid and unique mosaic floors, this one was unfortunately cut from its bedding, smuggled abroad and sold on the black market to a foreign collector by an organized group of professional antiquities thieves. However, the panel was photographed with a cell phone by an anonymous person. The images were passed on to specialists by pure coincidence, and today it is one of the most valuable objects wanted by INTERPOL.
The uniqueness of this Roman mosaic, discovered and stolen in 2011, warrants its presentation here, based on the presumption that the panel originated most probably from Apamea, one of the most important classical sites in Syria.
A Slice of Material History
The panel was likely part of a larger work from a very large hall of a wealthy residence belonging to perhaps the most important person in the local and Roman administration officiating in Apamea. This rectangular figural panel, an estimated 19 m2 in size, was surrounded with a geometrical frame. It comprised different scenes arranged in three zones, one above the other, the one in the middle wider than the other two, which are otherwise of the same dimensions. The scenes are historical, extremely rare on Roman mosaics. They tell the story of the founding of Pella/Apamea and further development of this city on the Orontes river. Three main groups of scenes can be distinguished: (1) the foundation of Pella-on-the-Orontes by the legendary Archippos, (2) the (re)foundation of the city as Apamea-on-the-Orontes (earlier Pella-on-the-Orontes) by Seleucus I Nikator and the simultaneous financial generosity of his wife, Apama, for the development of the new Seleucid colony in 300 BC, and (3) the raising of the town fortifications around monumental public buildings and an illustration of the daily life of a joyous people living in the rich Apamean agglomeration and hinterland. Features of style date the panels to the 4th century AD.
The photographic image shows that the lower zone and about half of the central zone of the mosaic floor were not preserved. The rest of the panel is in good condition, save for a few minor losses.
The religious act of the foundation of Pella-on-the-Orontes
The upper zone of this floor mosaic is filled with a scene composed of ten figures. On one side there are five Macedonian light cavalrymen – strong men with their horses, shields and spears. On the other side, there is a religious scene, a cult offering being made by five figures, three of which are identified by inscriptions in Greek. Archippos, the legendary founder of Pella-on-the-Orontes, is shown with a patter in his right hand, held above the bodies of sacrificial bulls. He is accompanied on either side by two of the Diadochi, successors of Alexander the Great, namely Antipater and his son Kassander. All three are dressed in rich tunics, pallia and diadems. Crowning the scene is an eagle with spread wings symbolizing Zeus.
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Fig. 1. Upper zone of the mosaic from Apamea. Representation of a cult offering made by Archippos before the diadochi Antipater and his son Kassander, and the Macedonian cavalry, occasioned by the founding of the Macedonian colony of Pella-on-the-Orontes. Anonymous photographer, image modified and sharpened by D. Zielińska.
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The (re)foundation of Apamea – the royal generosity of Seleucus and Apama
The central zone presents scenes that can be divided into three groups: (1) six richly attired people around a large table (mensa argentaria), (2) a city with monumental buildings, and (3) craftsmen and workers building the fortifications. Silver and gold coins cover the tabletop. All the figures standing and sitting around the table have Greek captions. One of them is Seleucus I Nikator, recognized also by the bull’s horns. He holds in his hands an architect’s measure, symbol of the king as founder of the city (ktistes). Antipater is looking on. Sitting at the table are Archippos, Apama – first wife of Seleucus, Kassander and Antiochus I Soter, son of Seleucus, who became a very powerful ruler. They are all dressed exquisitely like Hellenistic rulers should be, in tunics and pallia, and they wear diadems. Apama has her head draped and wears a chiton and himation.
The city is surrounded by huge defense walls. Apama contributes an enormous sum of money for the construction of the city. Seleucus is shown as the founder, whereas the other diadochi are present and express with gestures their solidarity with the queen and her act of generosity, suggesting at the same time their personal contribution to the development of the town. A temple on a high podium rises behind Seleucus; one can see the roof with a tympanum in front, set on five columns; a few columns can also be seen in the side elevation. Behind the general and the rulers there is a large oval building with two structures on the long axis of the central inner courtyard. It is a hippodrome or Roman circus with a semi-oval base (meta) with three colonettes topped by an egg-shaped form, standing at either end of the spina or central axis. The circus is adjoined by a number of buildings, including one of monumental size. Inside the walls there are many different buildings beside the monumental temple, but the mosaic is fragmentary in this spot. At the bottom one can discern a large ox pulling something very heavy. Away from the town walls, on a small fragment, there is a semi-nude female figure personifying the springs that filled the Orontes (Belos) river, resting her arm on a vessel (?) with water pouring from it (?). Two builders are shown working on the fortifications. Outside the wall there are three other builders pushing one of the large dressed stone blocks and a fourth depicted walking.
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Fig. 2. Central zone of the mosaic from Apamea. (Re)foundation of Pella/Apamea-on-the-Orontes by Seleucus I Nikator and the donation of Apama for the development and fortification of the town. Other participants of the scene include Archippos, Antipater, Kassander and Antiochus I Soter. The representation of the town of Apamea shows its main buildings. In the bottom zone, the hinterland of the city of Apamea with a noria and baths. Anonymous photographer, image modified and sharpened by D. Zielińska.
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Apamea: prosperity and joy of suburban life
The third zone at the bottom of the panel depicts scenes showing the prosperity of the hinterland of the city of Apamea, possibly the plain of Ghȃb or other nearby regions on the Orontes. A splendid Roman bath catches the eye here, as does a noria on a river, which is most probably the Orontes. Two entrances can be seen, one leading most probably to the apodyterium (cloakroom), the other onto a ramp leading to a large pool. Three children are playing on the ramp and in the pool, while two women leading small children are entering the cloakroom. A fowler is hunting birds next to the baths and a man carrying a load can be seen on the road.
The mosaic as a new historical source for the history of Apamea
The hypothesis that this mosaic was one of a series of panels showing cities of the Tetrapolis founded by Seleucus I Nikator in 300 BC decorating a rich private house or a public building belonging to a high official of Apamea seems possible. The dating of the mosaic brings to mind the oration made by Libanios in honor of Antioch in AD 356.
It is noteworthy that the diadoch Antigonos, who is believed to be the “founder” of Pella-on-the-Orontes in modern scholarly literature, is not present in this panel, whereas Antipater and Kassander were shown twice as active contributors to the development of the Macedonian colony. The unknown source that inspired the creators of the mosaic in question gave Archippos (he is confirmed by Pseudo-Oppian) as the founder and suggested that Macedonian veterans colonized the city, possibly after the Battle of Issos in 333 BC. The colony gained in importance in the times of Antipater when he was regent of the empire in 321- 319 BC., and in the time when Kassander commanded the Macedonian cavalry stationed in Pella. The cavalry depicted in the mosaic as well as the way in which they are shown recall some iconographic scenes from the period of the Diadochi, e.g., the wall paintings from the tomb of Agios Athanasios from Thessaloniki and the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great from Sidon, today in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul.
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Fig. 3. Macedonian cavalryman with his horses from the tomb of Agios Athanasios in Thessaloniki, dated to the end of the 4th century BC (after H. Brecoulaki, La peinture funéraire de Macédoine. Emplois et functions de la couleur, IVe-IIe siècle aavant J.-C., Athens-Paris 2006, pl. 96.2).
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The mosaic depicts historical events of the highest importance for the city of Apamea: after 333 BC and then in 300 BC. Meetings of rulers and generals, whose rule impacted the development of the colony and city, occurred between 321 and 261 BC (death of Antiochus I Soter). This points to the allegorical nature of the mosaic, emphasizing the circumstances of the founding and development of the city of Apamea. This narrative corresponds to an unknown and more detailed and complementary story of the origins of the town. The mosaic was inspired by unknown sources, perhaps Hellenistic pictures complemented with elements contemporary with the city of the 4th century AD. A possible source is the lost work of Euphorion of Chalcis describing the origins and development of Apamea. The mosaic is of exceptional significance for the history and iconography of the Diadochi. This is the first portrait of Apama, first wife of Seleucus I Nikator, to be preserved in Classical art. The panel is also an exceptional source for reconstructing the urban architecture of Apamea. For the first time we are treated to a view of the famous temple of Belos(?), the hippodrome (circus), suburban baths and a representation of the noria a whole one hundred years earlier than the oldest known iconographical image of this installation known to date, from Apamea from the mid 5th century AD. One may also observe certain parallels with the iconography of buildings from a later mosaic of Megalopsychia from Yakto in Antioch. The mosaic is exceptional in its expression and is part of a series of exceptionally rare historical mosaics.
As one of the most important works of ancient art, the mosaic is part of the Syrian national heritage and should be returned one day to the place where it belongs, that is, the archaeological museum in Apamea.
Summing up, one should note that many mosaic panels from the Syrian Apamea have been plundered by organized bands of professional thieves of ancient artifacts and works of art. These thieves are also propagating false information regarding stolen works of art, suggesting that they are forgeries. It is unfortunate that some restorers, not necessarily specialized in ancient art and Roman mosaics, originating from countries neighboring with Syria, are receptive to such disinformation. Information that objects of real antiquity are forgeries is meant to protect future dishonest buyers of such objects from the Interpol and local police.
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***
The mosaic panel was first identified in 2016 by permission of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria (DGAMS) and its director, Prof. Maamoun Abdulkarim. The co-authors would like to express their deep gratitude.
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The Diadochi shown on the mosaic from Apamea:
Antiochus I Soter (“the Savior”) – 324–261 BC; king 281–261 BC
Antipater – 397–319 BC; regent of the empire 323–319 BC
Apama – ? –299 BC; wife of Seleucus I Nikator
Kassander – 350–297 BC; regent of Macedonia 317–305 BC; king of Macedonia 305–297 BC
Seleucus I Nikator (“Victor”) 358–281 BC; king of the Seleucid empire 305–281 BC
Bibliography:
OLSZEWSKI M. T., SAAD H., 2016 (in press), « Origin of Apamea of Syria on the Roman mosaic wanted by Interpol. New Roman Source to Hellenistic and Roman History of Apamea », Archeologia (Warsaw), 66.
INTERPOL calls for vigilance on looting of ancient mosaics in Syria :
Fig. 1. Upper zone of the mosaic from Apamea. Representation of a cult offering made by Archippos before the diadochi Antipater and his son Kassander, and the Macedonian cavalry, occasioned by the founding of the Macedonian colony of Pella-on-the-Orontes. Anonymous photographer, image modified and sharpened by D. Zielińska.
Fig. 2. Central zone of the mosaic from Apamea. (Re)foundation of Pella/Apamea on the Orontes by Seleucus I Nikator and the donation of Apama for the development and fortification of the town. Other participants of the scene include Archippos, Antipater, Kassander and Antiochus I Soter. The representation of the town of Apamea shows its main buildings. In the bottom zone, the hinterland of the city of Apamea with a noria and baths. Anonymous photographer, image modified and sharpened by D. Zielińska.
Fig. 3. Macedonian cavalryman with his horses from the tomb of Agios Athanasios in Thessaloniki, dated to the end of the 4th century BC (after H. Brecoulaki, La peinture funéraire de Macédoine. Emplois et functions de la couleur, IVe-IIe siècle aavant J.-C., Athens-Paris 2006, pl. 96.2).
Just north of the bustling city of Trujillo, a distinctively imposing 30-meter-high mound of earth and stone overlooks the Pacific coast along the edge of the Chicama Valley. Unlike Trujillo, it is a quiet place. Agricultural fields dress its backdrop nearby. It has a name — Huaca Prieta, which, in Spanish, means “dark mound”. To the casual passer-by it strikes the impressive image of a distinctive greyish natural hill rising prominently behind the beach. But aside from its imposing physical appearance, Huaca Prieta stands apart for another very dramatic reason: within the underlying terrace that defines its foundation lies an archaeological record of human occupation that goes back as long ago as nearly 15,000 years B.P., with the astounding discovery of this very early occupation only recently coming to light.
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Huaca Prieta means “dark mound”, which was built on a low late Pleistocene terrace between 7,800-3,500 years ago and since then used as a burial place for later cultures. Today it is used for shaman rituals. Buried in the terrace below the mound are maritime and terrestrial cultural remains dated from about 14,500 to 8,000 years ago. Courtesy Tom Dillehay
Archaeologists first began uncovering the mystery of the mound when excavations began under Junius B. Bird in 1946–1947. He and his team excavated three test pits. Among their finds were complex textiles with designs representing mythological humans, snakes, crabs and condors, as well as stone artifacts such as pebble tools and flakes. While excavating, they encountered the remains of underground structures, some of them featuring burials constructed of cobblestones and an ash-water mix. Evidence also emerged, with objects such as fish net weights and fish bones, that suggested the ancient inhabitants were fishers and gathered shellfish, with organic remains also indicating they were agriculturalists, growing beans, squash, gourds, tubers, peppers, cotton and fruit.
But the latest, and perhaps most remarkable, chapter at Huaca Prieta did not unfold until 2006, when anthropologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University began excavations and investigations of the site with the late Peruvian archaeologist, Duccio Bonavia, and a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and specialists. (Dillehay is best known for his work and discoveries at Monte Verde in Chile, where evidence of early human settlement more than 14,000 years old was found in 1975, challenging the long-held Clovis theory that suggested the first human arrival in the Americas was no older than 13,000 years ago). “I was always fascinated by the work of Junius Bird at the site and by the incredibly distinct color and form of the mound located next to the ocean,” said Dillehay of the site. “I had never seen anything like it.”Dillehay had been working on the north coast of Peru since 1976 and continued to visit the site, but a series of unanswered questions, and a tip from geologists who had previously examined the site suggesting it could possibly contain cultural material deep into prehistory, inspired him to renew investigations.
As a scientist, however, Dillehay’s interest went far beyond the prospect of discovering deep history. “The objectives were simply to better understand the economy, stratigraphy and chronology of the site with new questions and methods,” he continued. “We also planned a detailed interdisciplinary study focused on paleoecology and outlying settlement patterns in the area, including other Preceramic sites, and we wanted to produce detailed quantification and qualification of the faunal and floral remains.”
His investigations slowly made their way to accomplishing these goals. But little did he know what treasures awaited him and his team as they carefully and systematically dug their way down through the mound. “We had expected many of the findings, but we found many more and diverse items than Bird had found,” said Dillehay. The team uncovered exotic materials, as well as food and non-food remains, and countless flecks of charcoal that suggested, in the context of associated artifacts, ritual fires.“Bird thought the mound was residential, like a midden,” said Dillehay, “but it was almost exclusively ritual and mortuary.” Many other well-preserved organic remains were uncovered, including textiles, cordage, and ornate baskets. The basket remnants consisted of diverse materials, including a local reed still used by basket makers today. Some of the baskets were remarkably sophisticated, featuring segments made from domesticated cotton, colored with what was determined to be one of the oldest dyes known in the Americas. Indeed, in 2016, 6,000-year-old dyed cotton fabric was discovered. Analysis showed that it was indigotin, an indigoid dye, the earliest documented use of indigo dye to date, predating the use of indigo in Egypt by 1,500 years. In addition, stone tools, including a variety of hooks and objects likely used for deep-sea fishing, were also found.
But equally exciting was the dating of the site, particularly the lower layers.
“We were very surprised when we started getting early dates underneath the mound and especially on the south end of the mound where Bird never excavated,” exclaimed Dillehay in his correspondence with Popular Archaeology. Radiocarbon dating techniques showed human occupation as early as nearly 15,000 years ago.
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Workers taking bucket loads of excavated sedimentsfrom a deep excavation unit to screens for sifting. Courtesy Tom Dillehay
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Archaeologists working at the 30 m depth level at Huaca Prieta. Courtesy Tom Dillehay
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An Early Society
It is no longer extraordinary to discover evidence of a human presence in the Americas before 13,000 years ago. A number of discoveries at disparate locations have attested to this — such as Blue Fish caves in the Yukon territory of Canada where archaeological remains suggest humans at about 24,000 years ago, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in western Pennsylvania, where stone tools were found to be as much as 16,000+ years old, and Monte Verde in Chile, the site of Dillehay’s excavations beginning in the 1970’s, with evidence suggesting human occupation as long ago as 18,500 B.P. These sites and discoveries name only a few that have emerged in recent years. The findings have supported the formulation of new paradigms for human migration into the Americas, adding the possibility that humans crossed by water, along coastal routes, in addition to the traditionally accepted inland routes (such as passage through the ice-free corridor from ancient Beringia after leaving Asia).
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the Huaca Prieta investigations thus far, outside of the early dates, is the realization that a relatively sophisticated society was emerging in the region long before the earliest great civilizations were taking shape in other areas of the world. Part of the foundation of that early civilization as exemplified by Huaca Prieta was in part because of the exploitation of multiple streams of resources, combining maritime and agricultural-based economies into an integrated strategy for survival and creating an economic surplus as the basis for the early, structured, urbanized centers that followed.
“These strings of events that we have uncovered demonstrate that these people had a remarkable capacity to utilize different types of food resources, which led to a larger society size and everything that goes along with it such as the emergence of bureaucracy and highly organized religion,” said James Adovasio, co-author of the recently published study on Huaca Prieta and a world-acclaimed archaeologist at Florida Atlantic University. (It was Adovasio who conducted the pioneering work at the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, where some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in the Americas was found).
Adovasio is one of the world’s leading experts in the analysis of ancient textiles and basketry. He focused particularly on the extensive collection of basket remnants excavated at the site.
“To make these complicated textiles and baskets indicates that there was a standardized or organized manufacturing process in place and that all of these artifacts were much fancier than they needed to be for that time period,” said Adovasio. “Like so many of the materials that were excavated, even the baskets reflect a level of complexity that signals a more sophisticated society as well as the desire for and a means for showing social stature. All of these things together tell us that these early humans were engaged in very complicated social relationships with each other and that these fancy objects all bespeak that kind of social messaging.”*
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Various unifacial flakes from basalt and andesite cobbles, dating between ~14,500-13,500 years ago. Courtesy Tom Dillehay
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Above: Some of the exotic ritual offerings dated between 7,000-4,500 yrs ago: a, Spondylus fragment; b-c, turquoise fragments; d, malachite; e, Scleractinia sp. coral; f, rock crystals; g, ceramic fragments. Courtesy Tom Dillehay
Textiles: Early cotton fibers were dated to around 6,200 yrs ago. The textiles shown here are dated to 5,500-4,000 yrs ago: a, Specimen 2009.154.02.B before (left) and after (right) it was washed with hexametasulfate to remove paste and reveal dark-blue warp stripes (left: photo by the author; right: photo by Lauren Badams); b, comparison of Specimen 2009.114.12 before (left) and after (right) washing it with hexametasulfate, revealing a gold color (photos by Lauren Badams); c, Specimen 2009.001.11 (front, back, and detail) of tapestry band with gold camelid hair; d, Specimen 2009.052.01.B, which was dyed with indigo (photo by Lauren Badams); e, Specimen 2009.114.08, which has overall red color (photo by Lauren Badams). Courtesy Tom Dillehay
Basket remnants retrieved from the site were made from diverse materials including a local reed that is still used today by modern basket makers. More elaborate baskets included segments made from domesticated cotton and were colored using some of the oldest dyes known in the New World. Credit: Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute
James M. Adovasio, Ph.D., D.Sc., co-author of the study and a world acclaimed archaeologist at FAU’s Harbor Branch, with a basket artifact from the site. Adovasio is one of the world’s foremost authorities on ancient textiles and materials such as those used in basketry. Credit: Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute
Above: a, photograph of burial HP08-01 on the south rim of the sunken circular plaza; b, cobblestone architecture of Tomb 8 containing HP08-01 on the rim of the circular plaza. Courtesy Tom Dillehay
Moving forward, Dillehay, Adovasio and colleagues are convinced that Huaca Prieta, and sites like it, will open new windows on our understanding of how and why remarkably early monumental civilizations arose along the Peruvian coast, in addition to a better understanding of the full chronology of civilization in Peru.
“Huaca Prieta is located on the Sangamon terrace**, which also contains later occupations all the way up to the Colonial period, so that area has the entire history of Peru there,” said Dillehay. “As for the peopling of the Americas, the early material simply adds another site to the now longer list of Pre-Clovis locales in the New World.”
The name Jebel Irhoud means nothing to most people. It is what the locals on a semi-desolate landscape in southwestern Morocco call a certain mountainous karstic limestone outcrop that lies southeast of the coastal city of Safi. Collectively with all other hilly outcrops in the region, there is nothing distinguishable about it — except for a distinctive, massive cut-away a little over halfway down its ridge line on its east side. Today this cut-away looks very much like a rock shelter. But at one time, several hundred thousand years ago, it was a complete cave.
Jebel Irhoud is filled with 8 meters of deposits from the Pleistocene epoch, and thus it has a story to tell — about a slightly greener, wetter Sahara of over 300,000 years ago — a steppe-like environment where equids, bovids, gazelles, rhinoceros and various otherpredators roamed the landscape — including humans, who lived in this cave and hunted and fed on the gazelles and other animals that made the region their home. We know there were humans here because archaeologists and other scientists have discovered what they left behind here, including their bones — bones that looked startlingly like those of modern humans.
Lost and forgotten for millennia, evidence of the cave’s human existence finally came to light in 1960, when miners stumbled across what appeared to be the remains of a human skull within its wall. The skull was eventually consigned to the University of Rabat, sparking a joint French-Moroccan expedition to explore and study the site in 1961. Under the leadership of the French scientist Émile Ennouchi, this excavation team discovered several fossil bone specimens identified as human — a skull, part of another skull, and a lower mandible — along with the remains of about 30 species of mammals, some of which were dated to the Middle Pleistocene. The finds stirred the scientific world with the suggestion that some form of humans occupied the site perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. Further excavations conducted by a team under Jacques Tixier and Roger de Bayle des Hermens in 1967 and 1969 deepened the story, with the recovery of additional fossils, including a human-like humerus and a pelvic (hip) bone. A plethora of stone artifacts were discovered, as well.
But one real sticking point about the Jebel Irhoud finds revolved around the Middle Pleistocene faunal remains that appeared to be associated with the human remains. The Middle Pleistocene generally spans the range between 781,000 to 126,000 years ago. Other considerations assigned a much later date to the human occupants. Moreover, the human fossils found at Jebel Irhoud exhibited many characteristics that were distinctly ‘modern’, or Homo sapiens, in terms of morphology, as well as some distinctively more archaic characteristics. The combination of findings created a puzzling mix of elements, given the state of knowledge and assumptions about dating and human evolution.
Pushing Back the Clock on Homo sapiens
Enter 2004, when a team led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, began to investigate the site. Hublin, long at the forefront of research on Pleistocene hominins, particularly Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, could not keep the mystery of Jebel Irhoud out of his mind. “The description of the small, child’s mandible found at the site in the 60’s was one of the first original fossils I ever described and published back in the early 80’s,” he wrote Popular Archaeology. “Since then, I have been fascinated by the material yielded by Jebel Irhoud. The combination of primitive and modern features that these fossils display could not make much sense if the rather late age that was originally assigned to the site were accurate.” The new excavations eventually yielded 16 new Homo sapiens fossils with associated Middle Stone Age type stone tools and more animal bones. The finds included skulls, teeth, and long bones that represented at least 5 individuals.
One of the objectives of the new investigations was to make sense of the dating at the site. “Our first goal was to obtain accurate radiometric dates confirming or falsifying the Middle Pleistocene age suggested by the study of the fauna,” said Hublin. One of the salient discoveries at the site revolved around the finding of bunt flint samples associated with the sediments containing the human fossils, a key to dating the site and the human remains. With the recent advancements in dating technology and techniques, it was an opportune time to take a new look at the material.
After applying newly refined thermoluminescence dating to the heated flints found at the site, Hublin and his team had astounding results — the samples yielded an age at approximately 300,000 years ago. If the results were valid, this meant that the Jebel Irhoud humans occupied the site tens of thousands of years earlier than the previously oldest Homo sapiens fossils, found at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dated to 195,000 years ago, Herto Bouri, also in Ethiopia, dated to 160,000 years ago, and Florisbad, South Africa, at 260,000 years ago. “There was still a long way to go to confirm these dates on a significant number of other samples and to confirm them with another method,” said Hublin about their initial results. “So we worked with specialists of ESR (Electron Spin Resonance) to double-check the dating of the site.”
Geochronology expert Daniel Richter of the Max Planck Institute, who worked on the dating process, played a key role in getting researchers to the end game on age. “Well-dated sites of this age are exceptionally rare in Africa, but we were fortunate that so many of the Jebel Irhoud flint artifacts had been heated in the past,” he said. “This allowed us to apply thermoluminescence dating methods on the flint artifacts and establish a consistent chronology for the new hominin fossils and the layers above them.”* Moreover, the researchers were finally in a position to recalculate a date for the Jebel Irhoud mandible found in the 1960s excavations. The mandible was previously dated to 160 thousand years ago by the electron spin resonance dating method. But now, using newly improved methods, the mandible’s newly calculated date was consistent with the new thermoluminescence dates, making it much older than previously thought.
With dates confirmed, Hublin and colleagues could make a bold but supportable claim: Some form of Homo sapiens lived at Jebel Irhoud about 300,000 years ago.
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The Jebel Irhoud (Morocco). Credit: Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0
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View looking south of the Jebel Irhoud site. The remaining deposits and several people excavating them are visible in the center. At the time the site was occupied by early hominins, it would have been a cave, but the covering rock and much sediment were removed by work at the site in the 1960s. Credit: Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
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Excavators working on the remaining deposits at Jebel Irhoud. The new fossils were found in the sediments in front of where the two excavators on the left are working. Credit Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Two of the new Jebel Irhoud fossils in situ as they were discovered during excavation. In the center of the image, in a slightly more yellow brown tone, is the crushed top of a human skull (Irhoud 10) and visible just above this is a partial femur (Irhoud 13) resting against the back wall. Not visible behind the pointed rock (between the femur and the skull) is the mandible (Irhoud 11). The scale is in centimeters. Credit: Steffen Schatz, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin on first seeing the new finds at Jebel Irhoud. He is pointing to the crushed human skull (Irhoud 10) whose orbits are visible just beyond his finger tip. Credit: Shannon McPherron, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Key to understanding the significance of the human fossil finds is the distinctive combination of modern and archaic features they exhibit, particularly in the skull. The distinguishing hallmarks of modern human skulls include a small and gracile face (in contrast to most other hominin species fossil specimens), and a large, globular braincase. The Jebel Irhoud fossils exhibit the same facial characteristics and a large brain case capacity comparable to that of modern humans, but a more archaic-looking, elongated braincase with relatively prominent supraorbital (brow) ridges similar to what can be found in Neanderthals and other more ‘primitive’ species. Hublin and colleagues applied state-of-the-art tomographic scans and produced digital avatars of the fossils, using advanced mathematical tools to assess 3D morphometry. Statistical shape analysis was performed using hundreds of 3D measurements, showing that the facial morphology of the Jebel Irhoud fossils is nearly identical to that of modern humans living today. This combination with the elongated braincase and other features shared with other, earlier species of humans raised new questions about the evolutionary morphology of the human skeleton.
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The mandible Irhoud 11 is the first, almost complete adult mandible discovered at the site of Jebel Irhoud. It is very robust and reminiscent of the smaller Tabun C2 mandible discovered in Israel in a much younger deposit. The bone morphology and the dentition display a mosaic of archaic and evolved features, clearly assigning it to the root of our own lineage. Credit: Jean-Jacques Hublin, MPI EVA Leipzig.
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Virtual palaeoanthropology can correct distortions and fragmentations of fossil specimens. This reconstruction of the Irhoud 11 mandible allows its comparison with archaic hominins, such as Neanderthals, as well as with early forms of anatomically modern Humans. Credit: Jean-Jacques Hublin, MPI EVA Leipzig.
A composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils. Dated to 300 thousand years ago these early Homo sapiens already have a modern-looking face that falls within the variation of humans living today. However, the archaic-looking braincase indicates that brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within the Homo sapiens lineage. Credit: Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
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Two views of a composite reconstruction of the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud based on micro computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils. Dated to 300 thousand years ago these early Homo sapiens already have a modern-looking face that falls within the variation of humans living today. However, the archaic-looking virtual imprint of the braincase (blue) indicates that brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within the Homo sapiens lineage. Credit: Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
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Two views of the Irhoud 10 face. Several reconstructions of the second hominin face discovered at the Irhoud site can be proposed. All these reconstructions enter the variability of extant, anatomically modern humans within the limits of anatomical constraints. Modern conditions for the facial skeleton were, therefore, already reached 300 thousand years ago in the earliest forms of Homo sapiens known to date. Credit: Sarah Freidline, MPI EVA Leipzig.
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How Modern?
Although these humans exhibited physical characteristics that were anatomically modern, given the accompanying archaic features, just how ‘modern’ really were the people represented by these fossils?
Clues could be found among the other finds excavated at the site, all of which were associated with the human fossils. These finds included animal bones representing gazelles, hartebeests, wildebeests, zebras, buffalos, porcupines, hares, tortoises, freshwater molluscs, snakes and ostrich egg shells. Most plentiful were the remains of gazelles. Teresa Steele, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Davis, analyzed the animal fossils. As she examined the hundreds of bones and shells, she identified cut marks and breaks, indicating that many of them had been modified by humans, most likely processed for food. Breaks along the long bones clearly indicated that the humans broke them open for the marrow, she said. And even though the remains of other predators, such as hyenas and leopards, were found at the site, Steele said that there was little evidence of gnawing on the animal bones by the nonhuman predators.
There was a clear behavioral takeaway in all of this. “It really seemed like people were fond of hunting,” Steele said.*
What kinds of tools did these human hunters/consumers use to acquire and process this game?
Stone tools found at the site and associated with the fossils were identified by the team of archaeologists as belonging to the Middle Stone Age. Made from high quality flint imported from elsewhere, they exhibited characteristics typical of the Middle Stone Age, such as objects prepared using Levallois core techniques and pointed forms. Such assemblages have been found at various sites dated to the time range inclusive of the Jebel Irhoud site all across Africa. “The stone artifacts from Jebel Irhoud look very similar to ones from deposits of similar age in east Africa and in southern Africa” says Max Planck Institute archaeologist Shannon McPherron.*
Evidence pointed to a group of people with a capability beyond what could typically be attributed to more archaic species, such as Homo erectus or other species on the early human spectrum.
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Some of the Middle Stone Age stone tools from Jebel Irhoud. Pointed forms such as a-i are common in the assemblage. Also characteristic are the Levellois prepared core flakes (j-k). Credit: Mohammed Kamal, MPI EVA Leipzig, License: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
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What does it all mean?
Assuming that the dating holds under scrutiny by other scholars and any additional studies, the findings at Jebel Irhoud forces current scholarship to reconsider or revamp the traditional thinking about how and where modern humans arose from the ancestral soup in Africa. For one thing, the fossils present new implications for the evolutionary development of modern human species-specific physical characteristics. “Our findings suggest that modern human facial morphology was established early on in the history of our species, and that brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved within the Homo sapiens lineage,” says Philipp Gunz, one of the authors of the recent detailed studyof the finds published in Nature. To this point have been recent discoveries bearing on comparisons of ancient DNA extracted from Neanderthals and Denisovans to the DNA of modern humans — revealing differences in genes related to the human brain and nervous systems. Changes in the shape of the Homo sapiens braincase over time may be reflective of genetic changes in brain development, organization and nerve connectivity, changes that separate our species from other extinct human species.
Moreover, the morphology and dates of the Jebel Irhoud fossils fit with the designation of the partial cranium found at Florisbad, South Africa, as an archaic form of Homo sapiens. Now, very early, archaic Homo sapiens fossils have been found at very disparate locations across the African continent — Morocco, Ethiopia, and South Africa — and the finds are associated with Middle Stone Age tools, revealing a cognitive capacity and development commonly associated with Homo sapiens. “The fossil and archaeological evidence at Jebel Irhoud obligate us to revise the textbooks,” says Hublin. “It looks like by 300,000 years ago, our species was already represented all over the African continent and not restricted to a small “garden of Eden” in East or Southern Africa.”
Perhaps most significantly, the finds at Jebel Irhoud and other sites across Africa have served to raise questions about what is meant by Homo sapiens. Clearly, there were people who lived in Africa who looked, and perhaps behaved, very much like us, well over 200,000 years ago, the time when most scholars have suggested modern humans emerged. As new evidence indicates, modern humans didn’t suddenly pop into history in a single century or even a single millennium. Nothing in evolution is truly that simple or fantastic. Indeed, as new discoveries have been made, there has been a pattern of pushing back the clock and overturning long-held theories and assumptions about human evolution and what constitutes being a ‘modern’ human. Sites like Jebel Irhoud, Omo Kibish, Herto Bouri, Florisbad, Pinnacle Point, Blombos, and a score of others are slowly painting a much more complex picture of what it means to be Homo sapiens, and where and when our species existed.
Moving Forward
“Although we might be very close to the root of Homo sapiens with Jebel Irhoud, there are still many questions to elucidate regarding earlier stages of our lineage and its relationship with other hominin groups,” says Hublin. “Unfortunately many of the human remains that have been found in Africa in Middle Pleistocene contexts come from sites where either archaeological association is missing, or dating is problematic. The outstanding interest of Jebel Irhoud is to represent a stratified deposit in a human dwelling where lithics, faunal remains, fire-features, and human remains are found in direct association and can be accurately dated.”
The story of modern human beginnings, at least as far as Hublin and his colleagues are concerned, is far from being elucidated. But Jebel Irhoud, and some other sites across Africa, have opened new windows where previously it seemed none existed. “The site of Jebel Irhoud still has a lot to teach us,” added Hublin in closing a communication with Popular Archaeology. “We will return to the excavation work next fall and hope to collect more hominin material. The description that we provide of the lithics, faunal remains and hominins must now be completed by in-depth studies that will provide the material for new publications.”
And as any serious scientist knows, many of the best revelations from a site come long after the digging has stopped.
Brian Fagan is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Trained in archaeology at Cambridge University, he spent his early career in Central and East Africa, where he worked on ancient African farming villages and multidisciplinary African history. Since moving to the United States in 1966, he has focused his career on communicating archaeological research to the general public. He has written numerous books on the past, especially climate change, as well as seven undergraduate textbooks. His latest book (with Nadia Durrani) is Climate Chaos: Lessons of Survival from our Ancestors (New York: Public Affairs, 2021). He also lectures widely about archaeology to both college and general audiences.
In 1865, the American archaeologist and diplomat Ephraim Squier, who would later provide some of the first descriptions of Inka ruins, landed on Peru’s North Coast. His ship’s crew rowed him ashore through a sluggish swell, passing over “a solid mass of the little fishes [anchovies] . . . which were apparently driven inshore by large and voracious enemies in the sea . . . The little victims crowded each other, until their noses, projecting to the surface, made the ocean look as if covered over with a cloak of Oriental mail. We could dip them up by handfuls and by thousands.” The belt of anchovies extended about a mile along the shore. Women and children scooped them up “with their hats, with basins, baskets, and the fronts of their petticoats.” Squier had arrived at one of the richest coastal fisheries in the world. Centuries earlier, these small fish helped create some of the most spectacular Pre-Columbian kingdoms in the Americas.
Ancient Bounty
The Peruvian anchovy (Engraulis ringens) live off larger zooplankton, among them krill and large copepods, and swim in enormous shoals in the upwelling waters of the Humboldt Current off the coast of Peru. Anchovies are small fish that live for three years and reach a maximum size of about 8 inches (20 centimeters). Today they are one of the most heavily exploited fish in the world. The bounty of the anchovy fishery is legendary. Extending over 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) from northern Chile to northern Peru, this strip of coastal water can yield as much as 100 tons of anchovies per square kilometer year after year. Today it produces more than one-fifth of the world’s commercially taken fish, a wealth rivaled only by the waters of the Benguela Current off Namibia in southwestern Africa. There are well known “hot spots” off Peru that can yield as much as 1,000 tons per square kilometer.Not surprisingly, the largest early monuments in Peru occur along the 375 miles (600 kilometers) of the coast bracketed by these hot spots. The most complex fishing societies arose where the fisheries were richest. At least in theory, the anchovy population in pre-modern times could support as many as six million people.
The anchovies feasted on zooplankton, sea birds thrived on anchovies and mollusks, and humans ate all three, except in El Niño years, when warm waters flowed over the cold and the anchovies moved elsewhere, followed by the birds. El Niños were unpredictable events. The more severe ones brought unfamiliar tropical fish to the coast, precipitating years of suffering when the people ate less fish, mollusks when they could find them, and whatever they could obtain on land.
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Anchovies
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People have been fishing on the Peruvian coast for a very long time, perhaps as early as 14,000 years ago. The earliest fisher folk moved between the interior and the coast, where they subsisted almost entirely on shallow water fish like drums. Almost certainly the fishers took their catches with nets. As proof, we have only a few fragments of what may have been nets and pieces of gourds that may have served as floats. They also foraged for surf clams, Mesodesma donacium, which grow in great abundance in the intertidal zone unless their habitat is disrupted by El Niño events. The resources of the coast were so easy to acquire that at some point before 6000 BC, permanent settlement replaced temporary encampments. Further, near the modern town of Ito, a permanent fishing village, known to archaeologists as the Ring site, flourished between 9200 and 3850 BC. The inhabitants lived off fish, sea birds, and sea mammals. The only terrestrial bones found at the site were those of four mice.
Far to the north, some thirty to forty people lived in a permanent settlement of dome-shaped, reed and grass houses at Paloma near Lima. These were serious fishers. Anchovies, sardines, and some larger fish appear in their dry middens, which also yielded fragments of fiber fishing nets and bone fish hooks. The clincher is their bone chemistry, which revealed very low strontium levels, a sign of an unusually high strontium component in the diet, which could have come from the Pacific. The Palomans relied on the land for their raw materials clothing, dwellings, nets, baskets, and fishing floats, as well as firewood for cooking and warmth. The land provided a simple infrastructure for effective fishing to the point that marine- and land-based economies were interdependent from very early times. This interdependence increased when inland societies began constructing major ritual centers and society grew more complex.
Invariably, fishing intensified as coastal populations rose. Along the Peruvian coast with its hot spots, fishers wove more nets and used reed canoes to gather ever-larger anchovy harvests. They could not have done this without growing cotton, a fiber with the rare ability to survive long exposure to seawater, which made it exceptionally useful for making fine-meshed nets. Mass harvesting of small fish intensified as cotton cordage and nets came into widespread use after about 2500 BC, when they switched from larger fish almost entirely to anchovies and sardines. At that time, coastal Andeans were growing far more plants for tool manufacture, such as cotton for net-making and gourds for floats, than for food.
The densest populations along the Pacific were at the backs of sandy beaches, where anchovy harvests were the largest. Some experts believe the coastal population may have grown as much as thirtyfold in the four centuries before 1800 BC, a time of massive construction projects along the coast, when local societies became less egalitarian and socially more complex. The explosive growth in human settlement in the valleys also resulted in some of the most elaborate irrigation systems in the ancient world. The Andeans began to cultivate maize, beans, chilies, squash, and other crops using carefully husbanded river floodwater, first in small-scale irrigation systems and later in much larger ones. Between 1800 and 400 BC, short and longer canals irrigated no less than 9,888 acres (4,100 hectares) of farmland. Once even small-scale irrigation came into common use and the proportion of plant foods in people’s diets began to rise, the dynamics of coastal life changed significantly. Food supplies, from the combination of the coastal fishery and river valley crops, became more reliable. Some coastal villages became specialist fishing communities, supplying fish as a commodity to the increasingly powerful inland centers.
The yield of the anchovy fisheries increased considerably with the development of coastal watercraft. Having no trees from which to build dugouts, the fishermen fashioned light canoes with sharply raised bows out of bundles of tied totora reeds, which abound close to shore and were used for thousands of years to build simple dwellings. Known today as caballitos de totora, “little reed horses,” these canoes ride low in the water, so an occupant can straddle it. The fisherman uses his legs to push off from the sand into the surf, where the high bow allows the totora to cut through swells into deeper water, where larger fish can be taken.
Once in deep water, several canoes would come together to lay fine, weighted gill nets that could catch thousands of anchovies and sometimes larger fish such as mullet. Once the gill net lay in place, individual fishers would have laid baited reed traps for lobster and other crustaceans or fished with hook and line. Judging from modern practice—some totaras are still in use—each fisherman would have had two canoes, one drying out on land to offset waterlogging while the other was in use. There is a remarkable similarity between the totora and the modern-day paddle board.
The enormous anchovy catches were dried, probably by laying them out on reed mats. As a product, dried anchovies and sardines had numerous advantages: they were easily caught and dried in enormous numbers, they were a reliable food source, and they were light enough to be carried inland in bulk, in baskets or nets on peoples’ backs, or in llama saddle packs. The new emphasis on anchovy and sardine fishing coincided with the development of large ceremonial centers and the expansion of irrigation agriculture. These large public works and the increasingly elaborate social and ritual environment required great numbers of people who were neither farmers nor fishermen. Workers laboring on adobe structures and those digging increasingly large-scale irrigation works all required rations.
Ruling Polities
How important were fish and other marine products in the emergence of Andean civilization? Generations of archaeologists have assumed that pre-industrial civilizations arose only when intensive agriculture was available to support rapidly growing urban populations. This assumption does not necessarily apply to the Peruvian coast and its associated river valleys, where major ceremonial centers and growing populations flourished before 2000 BC. Many years ago, the archaeologist Michael Moseley, working in the Ancon-Chillon area of the North Coast, documented the rapid pace of economic change after about 2000 BC. He pointed out that farming the desert required cultivated plants and knowledge of how to grow them, work forces to construct irrigation canals and field systems, and social institutions capable of organizing workers. The social mechanisms to build these large structures must have been already in place.
Long before they began irrigating river valleys, the people living along the Pacific had already built complex ritual structures that required large numbers of workers. The maritime economy supported this labor. There was no sudden change to farming. Instead, an increasingly powerful political authority arose to build and maintain elaborate ceremonial structures erected long before intensive floodplain agriculture. Moseley argues that this authority first came into being when fishing communities submitted willingly and voluntarily to some form of control. He believes that the unique maritime resources of the Pacific coast provided sufficient calories to support rapidly growing sedentary populations of non-farmers, clustered in increasingly larger communities on the coast and in inland river valleys. If Moseley is right—and his theory has survived a long time—then fish were the ultimate economic basis for the elaborate Andean state-organized societies that developed in later times.
The change can be seen in the quantities of fish brought ashore. Judging from modern yields, if ancient coastal populations had lived at sixty percent of the carrying capacity of the fisheries, and eaten nothing but small fish, the coast could have supported more than 6.5 million people.This does not, of course, mean that it did, but the figures show that the exploitation of small fish would have provided a more than adequate economic base for the emergence of complex societies.
Thus, although fishing didn’t by itself cause the rise of Andean civilization, it was certainly part of a cultural change that unfolded both in the Andes mountains and the Pacific lowlands over many centuries. The reliance on coastal resources led to the formation of large, densely concentrated coastal populations whose leaders were able to organize labor forces not only to build large ritual centers but later to transform river valleys with extensive irrigation works to grow cotton and gourds for nets as well as other crops. Under this scenario, irrigation agriculture was in the hands of a small, well-defined group with powerful religious authority, who took advantage of the existing simple technology and local populations to create new economies. This transformation, based on trade, maize agriculture—which reached the coast around 4500 BC—and a maritime diet, provided an impetus for radical changes in Andean society. But it depended on ancient fishing traditions that can be documented thousands of years earlier at early coastal villages.
The exponential growth in the size and complexity of coastal societies is apparent all along the nearly 400 miles (600 kilometers) where the richest fisheries lay. Dozens of ancient settlements in the Supe and neighboring river valleys, some 124 miles (200 kilometers) north of Lima, flourished between 3100 and 1800 BC. One of them, Caral, arguably the earliest city in the Americas, was occupied between about 2876 and 1767 BC. Six large mounds and at least thirty-two public buildings form the core of the city. Its Great Temple, a massive construction 30 meters high, has a large sunken circular court in front of it. The Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis believes that Caral was the hub of a network of eighteen settlements in the Supe Valley that formed a cluster of major sites, along with numerous villages and smaller communities scattered along the edge of the valley. The central city of Caral is estimated to have absorbed more than a quarter of all the labor invested in the valley during these centuries. Many Supe Valley communities played specialized roles in the local network. Some were fishing villages. Caral and other Supe settlements were vulnerable to both major earthquakes and storms from El Niño events, both of which heavily damaged the main temple. The city was abandoned in about 1767 BC.
After 1800 BC, ever larger sites and ceremonial centers grew alongside the irrigation systems as society became more formalized. Farmers working under increasingly close supervision modified river valley landscapes for maize agriculture. Fishers became an anonymous background to elaborate, volatile river valley kingdoms. On the North Coast, the Moche state developed in coastal river valleys in two major regions, the Moche and the Lambayeque Valleys, between AD 200 and 800. The Mochica are best known for their spectacular warrior priest burials at Sipán in the Lambayeque Valley and for their magnificent ceramics and metallurgy. Their artists, masters of realistic portraiture, left us a vivid impression of a colorful society ruled by a wealthy elite. The rulers built spectacular temples, like the Huaca del Sol and Huaca de le Luna in the Moche Valley, which were settings for the kind of elaborate public ceremonies that tend to validate elite authority. Densely packed neighborhoods on the flat ground between the two great huacas (shrines) housed artisans who produced gold objects, textiles, and sophisticated ceramics. Exotic gold ornaments and fine cotton textiles passed from lowlands to the highlands, as did coastal products like seaweed, the only source of iodine for highland famers, who exchanged crops such as ulluco and potatoes for it.
The subsistence world of farming and fishing became overlain by the cut and thrust of elite politics and territorial ambitions. The Sicán dynasty, under a lord named Namlap, rose in about AD 750 to 800 and thrived for five centuries. By this time, water control and large-scale irrigation works were central to coastal subsistence, with fish providing a supplement that became especially important in El Niño years.
The Chimu, successors of the Sicán dynasty after about AD 900, developed a state that presided over the coast from the Moche Valley to the Lambayeque. Their leaders ruled from Chan Chan, a sprawling city that covered more than 7.7 square miles (20 square kilometers). This was a controlling domain, which governed not only valley towns and irrigation schemes but outlying villages that grew cotton and edible crops, or caught large quantities of fish. At their height, Chimu farmers had 30 to 40 percent more land under cultivation than is farmed today. Everyone, fisher, farmer or artisan, was part of a much larger enterprise. Chimu rulers were careful to maintain strategic monopolies on the trade of key exotics and other commodities. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Cerro Azul, an important fishing community of the Warku kingdom, 75 miles (130 kilometers) south of Lima. Here, tens of thousands of anchovies were harvested, dried, and traded to inland farmers, and perhaps even farther afield.
In 1470, the coast became part of the vast Inka empire, Tawantinsuyu, “The Land of the Four Quarters”, which came into being through conquest in a century or less, spanning highland and lowland environments from the Lake Titicaca region to Ecuador. The Inka were accomplished warriors and brilliant organizers who used both administrative skill and draconian force to hold their empire together. Now the coastal fisher folk served remote masters.
The Inka erected an imposing stone fortress overlooking Cerro Azul.The local economy became a highly organized production line based on the anchovy fishery, whose harvests far exceeded the supplies needed to feed the locals. Thousands of anchovies and sardines were dried, packed tightly into storage rooms, and covered with dry sand to preserve the harvest. They were inventoried and taxed by ubiquitous officials with their quipus, knotted strings used to record numbers. The volume of the trade must have been enormous. Some idea of the numbers of people involved comes from contemporary descriptions of a polity in the neighboring valley to the south, home to 12,000 farmers, 10,000 fishers, and 6,000 merchants.
The Inka empire collapsed in the face of the Spanish conquistadores, but, as usually happened in history, the ancient rhythms of field and fishery continued unchanged.People have to eat. Anchovies passed by the basket- and wagonful into Lima and other cities. But the fishery was still pre-industrial, much of it conducted in small wooden boats or from reed canoes identical to those of earlier times. It may have yielded millions of fish and significant weights of fishmeal, used, like bird guano, as fertilizer, but now it was for purely local markets. Five centuries were to pass before anchovies and guano would become two main staples of the Peruvian economy, a status that anchovies would maintain until industrial-scale fishing brought about the collapse of one of the richest fisheries in the world.
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The great Inka city of Machu Picchu
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Readers can find out more about the role of fishing in laying the foundations of civilizations all over the world in Brian Fagan’s new book, Fishing, published by Yale University Press.
“This is the first human-built holy place,” Klaus Schmidt, the late director of excavation at Göbekli Tepe, once said of the ancient Anatolian site.It is a powerful statement, but belying the grandiose imagery is the reality on the ground.
Called “Potbelly Hill” by locals for its gently sloping curves, the tawny promontory of Göbekli Tepe was a place of little note for thousands of years compared to its more illustrious neighbor, the city of Urfa. Believed by pious Muslims to be the Ur of the Chaldaeans and thus the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham, the geography of Urfa is pregnant with Biblical imagery. A large fishpond serves as a refreshing gathering spot today, but in local lore, it is the place where King Nimrod attempted to burn Abraham on a pyre. His plan was foiled when God turned the fire to water and the coals to fish, and it is believed they remain in place as a reminder of this early miracle and a testament to the power of faith. Göbekli Tepe, by contrast, had been used for agriculture and the pasturing of sheep.
And yet, the tawny earth of the mountaintop has long concealed a secret far older than Urfa, Ur, Nimrod, or Abraham: a ritual site of monumental design, built 6,500 years before the Great Pyramids of Egypt saw their first dawn. From the top of the hill on down, monolithic T-shaped limestone pillars, of variable weight and up to 20 feet in height, were installed into and supported by building walls or inserted into stone pedestals in the ground and supported, perhaps by roofs. Each monolith is carved with reliefs that ranged from the earliest depiction of an individual human ever discovered to dangerous animals, such as carrion birds or jaguars, to pictograms and, perhaps, sacred symbols. Hundreds of them exist, though only five percent of the site has been excavated and much work remains to be done.
The majesty of the site lies not just in its age and complexity. In its refutation of the received wisdom on the origins of civilization, there may be found a new history more mysterious and exciting than that charted before. Before Göbekli Tepe’s significance was discovered, archaeologists believed that the social conditions that prevailed with the emergence of agriculture, namely the division of labor, hierarchical societies, and increasing urbanization, birthed the first religions, which existed in part to legitimize the social order and provide it with a suitable metaphysical foundation. Only then, with the settling effects of village life firmly in place, did the earliest civilizations begin to construct the first humble temples and, when their might waxed greater, the first massive temple complexes. Hunter-gatherers, by contrast, lacked the ability to construct anything much more complicated than a lean-to.
After Göbekli Tepe, however, that wisdom was shown to be, if not wrong, at least wrongheaded.
The transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic lifeways was actually much messier than earlier histories have argued, for the storage of goods and the practice of sedentism, the settled life of non-nomadic peoples, arose in the Epipaleolithic among the Natufian people circa 9,500 BC. Around the same time, circa 8,200 BC, genetic changes have been observed in crop plants indicating their domestication. All these new developments, pre-agricultural though characteristic of the agricultural revolution in nature, took place in the Levant during the construction of Göbekli Tepe, highlighting the ferment of innovation surrounding its rise.
The remarkably early date of Göbekli Tepe’s construction, before the mass advent of agriculture and in the liminal period between man’s condition as a hunter-gatherer and as a settled farmer, suggests that the social pressures of agricultural society did not provide the rationale for ritualistic practices. These new practices themselves provided the grounds for a pre-agricultural, hunter–gatherer culture to band together, divide their labor, procure a steady source of food, and erect a megalithic site of proportions so epic they would not be matched anywhere for several thousand years – all without the use of writing, advanced tools, or even the wheel.
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The location of Göbekli Tepe in relation to its surrounding geography and nearby Urfa. Wikimedia Commons
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The ancient remains of Göbekli Tepe. Teo Mancimit, Wikimedia Commons
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History of the Site
Göbekli Tepe’s significance was not realized right away, for when a joint American–Turkish survey expedition arrived at the top in the 1960s, their discovery of worked limestone and flint artifacts did not arouse any suspicion of the site’s significance or antiquity. Although they recognized it as a pre-historic site, their subsequent field report offered no clues as to its monumental construction. That laid beneath the ground, awaiting discovery.
This was an advantageous state of affairs for the late Klaus Schmidt, the excavator and site director for the German Archaeological Institute’s project at Göbekli Tepe in collaboration with the Museum of Sanliurfa and the Turkish Ministry of Culture. After following the American team’s field notes to the top of the promontory, Schmidt recalls seeing what he deemed a Neolithic-era quarry and flint and limestone scattered everywhere. Instantly, he knew the value of what he saw. “In one minute – in one second – it was clear” he says. For 20 years, Schmidt dedicated his life to excavating the site in the quest to reveal its many hidden secrets.
Göbekli Tepe is astounding for the complexity and majesty of its design, and until excavations began, a complex of this scale was not thought possible for a community so ancient. Explaining the purpose of the site has been paramount for the researchers working there, and the hypotheses have evolved over time.
Prof. Schmidt did not believe Göbekli Tepe to have been a settlement, despite its antiquity and baffling complexity. He based his opinion on the paucity of evidence for residential buildings or fortifications of any kind – other than those housing the monolithic T-shaped pillars – as well as the lack of evidence that settlers cultivated the nearby land. Due to the remoteness of the site, he believed Göbekli Tepe was instead a sanctuary and regional pilgrimage center where communities met to engage in rites from up to 60 miles away. The myriad butchered animal bones found at the site indicate a lively industry for hunting, preparing, and feeding these congregants, and may have been used for any sacrificial functions as well. (Image right: Göbekli Tepe by night, by Nico Becker)
As work has progressed at the site, however, new evidence has shown that this hypothesis may not be correct. Contrary to the claims of the late Prof. Schmidt, Dr. Lee Clare, the current director of excavation at Göbekli Tepe, explains it is becoming increasingly clear that Göbekli Tepe supported at least a semi-sedentary population from its inception. The discovery of animal bones thus only confirms the presence of a community at Göbekli Tepe, as there has yet to be found any corroborating evidence of a sacrificial purpose. Indeed, their presence in the buildings may not indicate a ritual purpose at all but, instead, the wholly secular subsidence of nearby refuse piled into the buildings over time.
Göbekli Tepe Over Time: An Evolution in Thought
The evolution of thought on Göbekli Tepe’s origins and purpose has also impacted the understanding of its chronology. Prof. Schmidt argued the hill was built in three phases over a 2,000-year period beginning in the 10th millennium BC, which he labeled strata I, II, and III. The monumental ovoid or circular buildings were built in stratum III, being the deepest and earliest workings on the site; stratum II consisted of smaller, rectangular-shaped buildings with smaller T-shaped pillars; and stratum I was a transitory period when the older buildings were ritually backfilled with up to 650 cubic yards of refuse, including limestone fragments, animal and human bones, and discarded tools, marking the end of Göbekli Tepe’s cultic significance.
This is no longer an accurate picture, however, as new results obtained from the field show, first, that the monumental buildings, which Prof. Schmidt argued were part of the site’s earliest period—stratum III—were still in use during stratum II. This new insight alone has rendered the old stratigraphic hypothesis obsolete. Second, it is doubtful whether the backfilling of the buildings was ritualistic at all; it may instead reflect a more pedestrian cause, such as the erosion of midden piles from a higher point on the slope, an entirely unintentional consequence of natural processes rather than an intentional ritualized act. Third, later rectangular buildings were constructed over some of the filled buildings, further undercutting the clean chronology depicted in the strata I-III hypothesis.
T-Shaped Pillars
Göbekli Tepe’s earliest period saw the installation of approximately 170 T-shaped monoliths ranging in size from seven to 20 feet in height into the bedrock of the hill and the walls or roofs of the site’s circular, ovoid, or rectangular enclosures. The monoliths were cut from nearby limestone quarries and transported by hand to the hewn-out bedrock where they would be erected. Reliefs were also likely made at that time. According to one interpretation, the monolith is an abstract representation of the human form, with arms, hands, legs, loin cloths, belts, and other human accoutrements carved in low relief. These may have represented individuals, stylized humans, or incipient deities.
Many monoliths are adorned with intricate reliefs of totem animals, such as leopards, vultures, eagles, wild boar, scorpions, spiders, and snakes. The diversity of animal life depicted on the monoliths is indicative of their antiquity, for the region is believed to have been much more lush during the Neolithic era, when the land was a steppe-like environment of wild grasses dotted with small copses of pistachio, almond, and oak trees. By contrast, today’s region around Göbekli Tepe can best be thought of as a cultural landscape heavily influenced by farming and animal husbandry. Other pillars display pictograms that may be sacred symbols. All create a rich and intriguing iconography conducive to stimulating interpretations.
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A T-shaped pillar with modern supports. Courtesy Klaus Schmidt
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A pillar with a low-relief carving at night. Courtesy Nico Becker
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An animal represented in stone, found at Göbekli Tepe. Courtesy Nico Becker
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Göbekli Tepe’s Buildings
The T-shaped pillars provide the biggest draw to the site, but how they are arranged sheds light on the chronology and development of the site itself. The excavation team has discovered the existence of nearly 10 structures scattered throughout the site, which they named A through H in order of their discovery. Buildings A, B, C, D, and G were all discovered in Göbekli Tepe’s main excavation area, Building E is in the site’s western plateau area, Building F at the southwestern quadrant of the site, and Building H in the northwestern quadrant.
Of these structures, Building D is the best preserved of all known buildings in the site’s archaeological zone. It has the following form: 12 T-shaped pillars form a circle around two larger, central pillars measuring approximately 20 feet in height. Carved out of limestone from the nearby quarry and inserted into pedestals hewn from Göbekli Tepe’s own bedrock, these pillars are frequently blank but are sometimes adorned with reliefs of local animals, including foxes, cranes, storks, ducks, snakes, boar, aurochs, gazelle, and wild donkeys.
This is not to say that Building D is the definitive type, however, as there exists a variety of architectural styles ranging from circular to ovoid and rectangular, some of which are transitional between the two. Building C, for example, was built in three concentric rings, one within the other, reflecting different periods of use. Whether the denizens of Göbekli Tepe would fill in the outer rings with material before building newer, smaller ones within it or if the filling was, as stated above, an unintentional process of erosion, is not fully clear.
Excavations of Buildings A and G show a more transitional-rectangular shape. Doorless and windowless and with floors of polished lime, these were likely the cellars of multi-story buildings that have since collapsed. If families lived in the buildings, as the semi-sedentary hypothesis suggests, they would have conducted much of their business from the roof, and the entrances likely would have been located there as well. Like the monumental enclosures that preceded them, these rectangular buildings also served as sanctuaries for T-shaped pillars which, though smaller than their predecessors – these pillars never reached higher than seven feet tall – were placed in the center of the cellars where they could be given the greatest prominence.
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One of the rectangular structures unearthed at Göbekli Tepe. Courtesy Nico Becker
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Conserving Göbekli Tepe
Under the direction of the late Prof. Dr. Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute and in partnership with local Turkish governmental agencies, excavations began at Göbekli Tepe in 1995. The team on site and their local partners quickly recognized the need to protect the exposed features of the site, which grew in number and complexity with the closing of each excavation season. After nearly two decades of excavation and conservation work, the Global Heritage Fund was brought on to collaborate with the DAI and local partners to develop conservation guidelines for the site.
Earth and Stone Materials
Conserving the fragile limestone from the harsh local environment was a primary concern for Global Heritage Fund’s conservation efforts on the ground, though one complicated by the dearth of available data. Most scientific literature on stone and earth conservation had been collected in South America and Europe, which have very different geological formations but, more importantly, very different climates from Göbekli Tepe’s harsh southeastern Anatolian environment. Between winter and summer, southern Turkey experiences temperature swings from a daily mean of 40 degrees Fahrenheit in January to 90 degrees in July. This leads to freeze–thaw and wetting–drying cycles, weathering local stone and leading to material losses in the forms of breakouts, granular disintegration and pitting, fissures and cracks, discoloration, and depositions. The climatic conditions of the region are especially salient now, as the site was previously buried underground and has only recently been exposed.
The hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters of southern Turkey are damaging to the soft rock structures of Göbekli Tepe but especially so to the site’s earthen materials, which may degrade during the yearly freeze-thaw and wetting-drying cycles. Global Heritage Fund has sought to rectify this situation with extensive research into site-specific conservation measures. Between 2014 and 2015, Global Heritage Fund and partners conducted six conservation studies to determine weather and weathering patterns and their impact on the project site. These included: conducting diagnostic studies on stone and earthen materials; typifying, recording, and mapping stone weathering patterns; constructing mock stone walls to study how natural materials degrade in the local environment; installing a weather station to gather climatic data; and performing X-ray diffraction (XRD) assays on collected soil samples.
An additional concern is that the stone pillars, of variable size and located in different parts of the site, exhibit different types and degrees of weathering depending on their composition and the length of their exposure to the elements. Thus, it became necessary for GHF to create reliable, reproducible methods of recording the present conditions of the stones from macro to micro scale and plan to develop a conservation strategy accordingly. The stone conservation applications can be grouped under four main headings:
Determination of Microstructural, Physical and Physicomechanical Properties of the Stones
Developing Stone Conservation Treatments (consolidation, lime mortar production, etc.)
Evaluation of the Efficiency of Conservation Treatments
Application of Conservation Interventions within a Long-Term program
After studying these processes, GHF and partners on the ground began to explore how a holistic approach could be used to prevent the extreme weathering from further damaging the fragile, exposed excavations.
Earth Materials
The T-shaped megaliths are the biggest draws to the site, amazing visitors with their immense size, consummate artistry, and improbable age. However, Göbekli Tepe’s construction depended on the acquisition of limestone from nearby quarries, which formed the foundations and architectural features of the site’s ritualistic core. Additionally, substantial amounts of mud were used in various forms and applications throughout the site. Mud primarily served as a mortar between the stones of the circular retaining walls that surround Göbekli Tepe’s T-shaped megaliths, though the site’s builders also found uses for it as plaster.
Preserving the earthen materials, including mortar, is about more than ensuring the integrity of the site. Their continued existence serves as a fertile repository of knowledge on Neolithic construction techniques, which would otherwise be lost as the site continued to degrade under the malign influence of sun and rain. As building materials and construction techniques are very local and are still, in general, used by the local people living near the site, understanding the construction techniques, properties, and provenance of the site’s earthen materials is useful for developing new conservation treatments, such as producing new sacrificial plasters and mortars or gap-filling materials.
Shelter Construction
Once exposed to the elements, Göbekli Tepe’s stone and earthen materials immediately began to degrade in the harsh climate of southern Anatolia. Global Heritage Fund and partners built a temporary wooden protective shelter in 2013 to protect the exposed archaeological structures and stop or, at the very least slow down, the main processes contributing to the continued degradation of the site. Meant to serve only until the construction of a more permanent shelter, the wooden shelter has been partially disassembled as the final, permanent protective shelter nears completion at the end of 2017.
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Picture showing stones from the same enclosure but different types of visual weathering forms. Courtesy K.G. Akoglu
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Stone pillar with a severe crack leading to break out, granular disintegration, discoloration and biological deposition. Courtesy K.G. Akoglu
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T-Shaped stone with a severe crack along the (probable) bedding plane. Courtesy K.G. Akoglu
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Stone pillar with rounding at the corners, discoloration, biological deposition and pitting. Courtesy K.G. Akoglu
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Special thanks to Dr. Lee Clare of the German Archaeological Institute, who reviewed this article for accuracy, and Dr. Kiraz Göze Akoglu, who prepared reports on the state of conservation at Göbekli Tepe.
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About the Global Heritage Fund (GHF)
Global Heritage Fund’s mission is to sustainably preserve the most significant and endangered cultural heritage sites in developing regions of the world. With this mission, it also works to empower local communities through heritage preservation. Believing in a future that is beyond monuments, GHF partners with local people, communities, organizations, and governments to both preserve the heritage of the past and ensure that it is a beneficial part of the present.
For more information about GHF and how you can contribute, go to the GHF website for more details.
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SAN DIEGO—Ancient DNA recovered from fossils is a valuable tool to study evolution and anthropology. Yet ancient fossil DNA from earlier geological ages has not been found yet in any part of Africa, where it’s destroyed by extreme heat and humidity. In a potential first step at overcoming this hurdle, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya have discovered a new kind of glycan—a type of sugar chain—that survives even in a 4 million-year-old animal fossil from Kenya, under conditions where ancient DNA does not.
While ancient fossils from hominins (human ancestors and extinct relatives) are not yet available for glycan analysis, this proof-of-concept study, published September 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may set the stage for unprecedented explorations of human origins and diet.
“In recent decades, many new hominin fossils were discovered and considered to be the ancestors of humans,” said Ajit Varki, MD, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “But it’s not possible that all gave rise to modern humans—it’s more likely that there were many human-like species over time, only one from which we descended. This new type of glycan we found may give us a better way to investigate which lineage is ours, as well as answer many other questions about our evolution, and our propensity to consume red meat.”
Glycans are complex sugar chains on the surfaces of all cells. They mediate interaction between cells and the environment, and often serve as docking sites for pathogens. For millions of years, the common ancestors of humans and other apes shared a particular glycan known as Neu5Gc. Then, for reasons possibly linked to a malarial parasite that exploited Neu5Gc as a means to establish infection, a mutation that probably occurred between 2 and 3 million years ago inactivated the human gene encoding the enzyme that makes the molecule. The loss of Neu5Gc amounted to a radical molecular makeover of human ancestral cell surfaces and might have created a fertility barrier that expedited the divergence of the lineage leading to humans.
Today, chimpanzees and most other mammals still produce Neu5Gc. In contrast, only trace amounts can be detected in human blood and tissue—not because we make Neu5Gc, but, according to a previous study by Varki’s team, because we accumulate the glycan when eating Neu5Gc rich red meat. Humans mount an immune response to this non-native Neu5Gc, possibly aggravating diseases such as cancer.
In their latest study, Varki and team found that, as part of its natural breakdown, a signature part of Neu5Gc is also incorporated into chondroitin sulfate (CS), an abundant component in bone. They detected this newly discovered molecule, called Gc-CS, in a variety of mammalian samples, including easily detectable amounts in chimpanzee bones and mouse tissues.
Like Neu5Gc, they found that human cells and serum have only trace amounts of Gc-CS—again, likely from red meat consumption. The researchers backed up that assumption with the finding that mice engineered to lack Neu5Gc and Gc-Cs (similar to humans) had detectable Gc-CS only when fed Neu5Gc-containing chow.
Curious to see how stable and long-lasting Gc-CS might be, Varki bought a relatively inexpensive 50,000-year-old cave bear fossil at a public fossil show and took it back to the lab. Despite its age, the fossil indeed contained Gc-CS.
That’s when Varki turned to a long-time collaborator—paleoanthropologist and famed fossil hunter Meave Leakey, PhD, of Turkana Basin Institute of Kenya and Stony Brook University. Knowing that researchers need to make a very strong case before they are given precious ancient hominin fossil samples, even for DNA analysis, Leakey recommended that the researchers first prove their method by detecting Gc-CS in even older animal fossils. To that end, with the permission of the National Museums of Kenya, she gave them a fragment of a 4-million-year-old fossil from a buffalo-like animal recovered in the excavation of a bone bed at Allia Bay, in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya. Hominin fossils were also recovered from the same horizon in this bone bed.
Varki and team were still able to recover Gc-CS in these much older fossils. If they eventually find Gc-Cs in ancient hominin fossils as well, the researchers say it could open up all kinds of interesting possibilities.
“Once we’ve refined our technique to the point that we need smaller sample amounts and are able to obtain ancient hominin fossils from Africa, we may eventually be able to classify them into two groups—those that have Gc-CS and those that do not. Those that lack the molecule would mostly likely belong to the lineage that led to modern humans,” said Varki, who is also adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and co-director of the UC San Diego/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA).
In a parallel line of inquiry, Varki hopes Gc-CS detection will also reveal the point in evolution when humans began consuming large amounts of red meat.
“It’s possible we’ll one day find three groups of hominin fossils—those with Gc-CS before the human lineage branched off, those without Gc-CS in our direct lineage, and then more recent fossils in which trace amounts of Gc-CS began to reappear when our ancestors began eating red meat,” Varki said. “Or maybe our ancestors lost Gc-CS more gradually, or only after we began eating red meat. It will be interesting to see, and we can begin asking these questions now that we know we can reliably find Gc-CS in ancient fossils in Africa.”
Leakey is also hopeful about the role Gc-CS could play in the future, as an alternative to current approaches.
“Because DNA rapidly degrades in the tropics, genetic studies are not possible in fossils of human ancestors older than only a few thousand years,” she said. “Therefore such ancient glycan studies have the potential to provide a new and important method for the investigation of human origins.”
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Partial upper jaw of Australopithecus anamensis, a primitive hominin, recovered from the bone bed excavated at the Allia Bay site. Photo courtesy of Meave Leakey, PhD
Excavation of the bone bed at the Allia Bay site, East Turkana, in 1996. A cross section of the bone bed can be seen passing diagonally from the center of the image to the right hand corner. This is the site where researchers collected a 4-million-year-old bovid fossil that contained Gc-CS. Photo courtesy of Meave Leakey, PhD.
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Co-authors of this study also include: Anne K. Bergfeld, Roger Lawrence, Sandra L. Diaz, Oliver M.T. Pearce, Darius Ghaderi, and Pascal Gagneux, all at UC San Diego.
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This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe. Find it on Amazon.com.
STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY—War was not an activity exclusive to males in the Viking world. A new study conducted by researchers at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities shows that women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who led the study, explains: “What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to be a woman”.
The study was conducted on one of the most iconic graves from the Viking Age. It holds the remains of a warrior surrounded by weapons, including a sword, armour-piercing arrows, and two horses. There were also a full set of gaming pieces and a gaming board. “The gaming set indicates that she was an officer”, says Charlotte, “someone who worked with tactics and strategy and could lead troops in battle”. The warrior was buried in the Viking town of Birka during the mid-10th century. Isotope analyses confirm an itinerant life style, well in tune with the martial society that dominated 8th to 10th century northern Europe.
Anna Kjellström, who also participated in the study, has taken an interest in the burial previously. “The morphology of some skeletal traits strongly suggests that she was a woman, but this has been the type specimen for a Viking warrior for over a century why we needed to confirm the sex in any way we could.”
And this is why the archaeologists turned to genetics, to retrieve a molecular sex identification based on X and Y chromosomes. Such analyses can be quite useful according to Maja Krezwinska: “Using ancient DNA for sex identification is useful when working with children for example, but can also help to resolve controversial cases such as this one”. Maja was thus able to confirm the morphological sex identification with the presence of X chromosomes but the lack of a Y chromosome.
Jan Storå, who holds the senior position on this study, reflects over the history of the material: “This burial was excavated in the 1880ies and has served as a model of a professional Viking warrior ever since. Especially, the grave-goods cemented an interpretation for over a century”. It was just assumed she was a man through all these years. “The utilization of new techniques, methods, but also renewed critical perspectives, again, shows the research potential and scientific value of our museum collections”.
The study is a part of the ongoing ATLAS project, which is a joint effort by Stockholm University and Uppsala University, supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences) and Vetenskapsrådet (The Swedish Research Council), to investigate the genetic history of Scandinavia.
Receive 30 days free access to the popular new CuriosityStream lineup of documentaries on science, history, nature, and technology as a new Popular Archaeology premium subscriber.
This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe. Find it on Amazon.com.
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