UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS—Neanderthals had large brains and made complex tools but never demonstrated the ability to draw recognizable images, unlike early modern humans who created vivid renderings of animals and other figures on rocks and cave walls. That artistic gap may be due to differences in the way they hunted, suggests a University of California, Davis, expert on predator-prey relations and their impacts on the evolution of behavior.
Neanderthals used thrusting spears to bring down tamer prey in Eurasia, while Homo sapiens, or modern humans, spent hundreds of thousands of years spear-hunting wary and dangerous game on the open grasslands of Africa.
Richard Coss, a professor emeritus of psychology, says the hand-eye coordination involved in both hunting with throwing spears and drawing representational art could be one factor explaining why modern humans became “smarter” than Neanderthals.
In an article recently published in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Coss examines archaeological evidence, genomics, neuroscience studies, animal behavior and prehistoric cave art.
New theory of evolution
From this, he proposes a new theory for the evolution of the human brain: Homo sapiens developed rounder skulls and grew bigger parietal cortexes—the region of the brain that integrates visual imagery and motor coordination—because of an evolutionary arms race with increasingly wary prey.
Early humans hunted with throwing spears in sub-Saharan Africa for more than 500,000 years—leading their increasingly watchful prey to develop better flight or fight survival strategies, Coss said.
Some anthropologists have suggested that throwing spears from a safe distance made hunting large game less dangerous, he said. But until now, “No explanation has been given for why large animals, such as hippos and Cape buffalo, are so dangerous to humans,” he said. “Other nonthreatening species foraging near these animals do not trigger alert or aggressive behavior like humans do.”
Drawn from earlier research on zebras
Coss’ paper grew out of a 2015 study in which he and a former graduate student reported that zebras living near human settlements could not be approached as closely before fleeing as wild horses when they saw a human approaching on foot—staying just outside the effective range of poisoned arrows used by African hunters for at least 24,000 years.
Neanderthals, whose ancestors left Africa for Eurasia before modern human ancestors, used thrusting spears at close range to kill horses, reindeer, bison, and other large game that had not developed an innate wariness of humans, he said.
Hunting relates to drawing
“Neanderthals could mentally visualize previously seen animals from working memory, but they were unable to translate those mental images effectively into the coordinated hand-movement patterns required for drawing,” Coss writes.
Coss, who taught drawing classes early in his academic career and whose previous research focused on art and human evolution, used photos and film to study the strokes of charcoal drawings and engravings of animals made by human artists 28,000 to 32,000 years ago in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in southern France.
The visual imagery employed in drawing regulates arm movements in a manner similar to how hunters visualize the arc their spears must make to hit their animal targets, he concludes.
These drawings could have acted as teaching tools. “Since the act of drawing enhances observational skills, perhaps these drawings were useful for conceptualizing hunts, evaluating game attentiveness, selecting vulnerable body areas as targets, and fostering group cohesiveness via spiritual ceremonies,” he writes.
As a result, the advent of drawing may have set the stage for cultural changes, Coss said. “There are enormous social implications in this ability to share mental images with group members.”
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Replica of drawing of lions painted in the Chauvet Cave. Art in the cave has been identified as created by early modern humans.
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Remotely detecting changes in landforms has long relied upon the interpretation of aerial and satellite images. Effective interpretation of these images, however, can be hindered by the environmental conditions at the time the photo was taken, the quality of the image and the lack of topographical information.
More recently, data produced by photogrammetry and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) models have become commonplace for those involved in geographical analysis – engineers, hydrologists, landscape architects and archaeologists.
In general, these techniques were designed to highlight small-scale ‘micro-topographies’ such as the expansive Mayan settlement network recently revealed in the dense jungles of Guatemala. But, how to connect the dots on a larger scale?
In new research published this week in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Cambridge archaeologists present a new algorithm, Multi-Scale Relief Model (MSRM), which is able to extract micro-topographic information at a variety of scales employing micro-, meso- and large-scale digital surface (DSM) and digital terrain (DTM) models.
Dr Hector Orengo, researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and lead author of the study, said, “We originally developed this algorithm to complement multitemporal remote-sensing using multispectral satellite images that are currently being applied to the reconstruction of the prehistoric river network in northwest India as part of the TwoRains project.”
The TwoRains multitemporal remote sensing approach has had an important impact as it was able to find and accurately trace more than 8,000km of relict water courses; the image of which has been selected as the cover image of this year’s Cambridge Science Festival (see image above).
However, the authors were conscious that many ancient rivers were not being found. Dr Orengo said, “It soon became clear that detecting and mapping topographic features such as levees, riverbeds, bluff lines and dune fields could help provide insight into how palaeorivers behaved and eventually disappeared.”
“The new MSRM algorithm has addressed this need and its application has significantly extended our knowledge of the palaeoriver network of north-western India with more than 10,000 new rivers detected.”
Understanding how the Indus civilisation accessed and managed their water resources is at the heart of the TwoRains Project.
Dr Cameron Petrie, director of the ERC-funded project and co-author on the study, commented, “We are investigating the nature of human adaptation to the ecological conditions created by the winter and summer rainfall systems of India. These systems are important for understanding the past and planning for the future due to their potential for direct impact on very current issues such as food security and the sustainability of human settlement in particular areas.”
“Humans can adapt their behaviour to a wide range of climatic and environmental conditions, so it is essential that we understand the degree to which human choices in the past, present and future are resilient and sustainable in the face of variable weather conditions, and when confronted with abrupt events of climate change. Reconstructing the prehistoric hydrographical network of the Sutlej-Yamuna interfluve in northwest India helps us to understand these adaptations more fully.”
Dr Orengo believes that the new method has many uses outside the realm of archaeology. He commented, “The application of MSRM can also be beneficial to all other research fields aiming to interpret small terrain differences. We have made the code open access in the paper with the hope that others will be able to use it for their own interests, and also evaluate and improve it.”
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A composite image of vegetation indices in Northwest India created from 1254 images reveals a complex palaeoriver network comprised of more than 8000km of palaeochannels. The new MSRM algorithm will contribute to mapping the complete ancient palaeoriver network of northwest India and to a better understanding of how the Indus Civilisation operated c. 2600-1900 BC. Hector A. Orengo
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—The massive Toba volcanic eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago did not cause a six-year-long “volcanic winter” in East Africa and thereby cause the human population in the region to plummet, according to new University of Arizona-led research.
The new findings disagree with the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, which says the eruption and its aftermath caused drastic, multi-year cooling and severe ecological disruption in East Africa.
“This is the first research that provides direct evidence for the effects of the Toba eruption on vegetation just before and just after the eruption,” said lead author Chad L. Yost, a doctoral candidate in the UA Department of Geosciences. “The Toba eruption had no significant negative impact on vegetation growing in East Africa.”
Researchers can use ancient plant parts that wash into and accumulate on the bottoms of lakes to reconstruct a region’s past ecosystem. Yost and his colleagues studied microscopic bits of plants preserved in two sediment cores from Lake Malawi, which is approximately 570 kilometers (354 miles) long and is the southernmost of the East African Rift lakes.
Previous investigators found material from the Toba eruption in the Lake Malawi cores. That material pinpoints the time of the eruption and allowed Yost and colleagues to peer back in time 100 years before to 200 years after the Toba eruption. The team analyzed samples that represented, on average, every 8.5 years within that 300-year interval.
“It is surprising,” Yost said. “You would have expected severe cooling based on the size of the Toba eruption–yet that’s not what we see.”
Yost and his colleagues did not find marked changes in lower-elevation vegetation post-eruption. The team did find some die-off of mountain plants just after the eruption. Cooling from the eruption might have injured frost-intolerant plants, he said.
Had the region experienced the drastic, multi-year cooling post-Toba, the cores would have evidence of a massive die-off of the region’s vegetation at all elevations, Yost said.
Part of the Toba catastrophe hypothesis suggests the eruption caused human populations to shrink.
“We know anatomically modern humans were living within 50 kilometers of Lake Malawi,” Yost said. “People would have been able to travel to habitats and lower elevations that had little to no cooling effect from the Toba eruption.”
Most of the region’s known archaeological sites are from low elevations, not the mountains, he said.
Co-author Andrew S. Cohen, UA Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, said, “That a singular event in Earth history 75,000 years ago caused human populations in the cradle of humankind to drop is not a tenable idea.”
The team’s paper, “Subdecadal phytolith and charcoal records from Lake Malawi, East Africa imply minimal effects on human evolution from the ~74 ka Toba supereruption,” is published online this week in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Yost’s and Cohen’s co-authors are Lily J. Jackson of the University of Texas at Austin, and Jeffery R. Stone of Indiana State University, Terre Haute. The National Science Foundation and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program funded the research.
The Lake Malawi Drilling Project took the cores from the lake bottom in 2005, said Cohen, one of the principal investigators on the collaborative project. The lake is one of the deepest in the world. The material archived in the cores goes back more than one million years.
Plant and animal material washes into lakes and is deposited on the bottom in annual layers, so a sediment core contains a record of the past environments of a lake and of the surrounding land.
Yost studied two cores taken from the lake: one from the north end of the lake, which is closer to the mountains, and the other from the central part of the lake. Other researchers had pinpointed what layer in those cores had glass and crystals from the Toba eruption, Cohen said.
Yost took samples from the cores that straddled the eruption and analyzed the samples for charcoal and for silica-containing plant parts called phytoliths.
The work required hundreds of hours of peering through a microscope, said Yost, who is an expert in identifying the type of plant a particular phytolith came from.
If the Toba catastrophe hypothesis is true, the massive die-off of vegetation would have resulted in more wildfires and therefore more charcoal washing into the lake. However, he did not find an increase in charcoal outside the range of normal variability in the sediments deposited after the eruption.
“We determined that the Toba eruption had no significant negative impact on vegetation growing in East Africa,” Yost said. “We hope this will put the final nail in the coffin of the Toba catastrophe hypothesis.”
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Members of the Lake Malawi Drilling Project science team handle the corer—part of the equipment used to collect sediment cores from the bottom Lake Malawi. Note the sediment in the end of the metal tube. Courtesy of the Lake Malawi Drilling Project
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Microscopic plant remains, called phytoliths, from grasses, sedges, palms, forbs, and trees that lived near Lake Malawi in East Africa about 74,000 years ago. Chad L. Yost, University of Arizona Department of Geosciences
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* suggests that early Neanderthals in southern Tuscany may have used fire to manufacture wooden tools used for foraging. In 2012, excavations for constructing thermal baths at Poggetti Vecchi, nestled at the foot of a hill in Grosseto in southern Tuscany, turned up a trove of wooden implements and fossil bones of the straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. The site was radiometrically dated to the late Middle Pleistocene, around 171,000 years ago, when early Neanderthals inhabited the region. Biancamaria Aranguren and colleagues report that most of the wooden implements were hewn from boxwood branches and likely used as digging sticks. The ends of the 100 cm-long sticks were fashioned into blunt points and rounded handles useful for foraging; such digging sticks have been known to be used for gathering plants and hunting small game. Cut marks and striations on the sticks bear witness to the manufacturing process, and signs of superficial charring and microanalysis of blackened surfaces suggest the use of fire, in addition to stone tools, to scrape and shape the sticks. The choice of boxwood, among the hardiest and heaviest of European timbers, and the inferred use of fire buttress the technical mastery of toolmaking by early Neanderthals, and suggest the early use of pyrotechnology for fabricating wooden tools. According to the authors, the finds at Poggetti Vecchi furnish some of the earliest evidence of wood processing and fire use by Neanderthals.
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Poggetti Vecchi, Grosseto (Italy). This is a general view of the excavation. PNAS
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Poggetti Vecchi, Grosseto (Italy). The excavation of the tusk of a straight-tusked elephant. PNAS
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Detail of the handle of digging stick no. 2 on the paleosurface U2 of the Poggetti Vecchi site. PNAS
UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—A team of archaeologists, led by Cat Jarman from the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, has discovered that a mass grave uncovered in the 1980s dates to the Viking Age and may have been a burial site of the Viking Great Army war dead.
Although the remains were initially thought to be associated with the Vikings, radiocarbon dates seemed to suggest the grave consisted of bones collected over several centuries. New scientific research now shows that this was not the case and that the bones are all consistent with a date in the late 9th century. Historical records state that the Viking Great Army wintered in Repton, Derbyshire, in 873 A.D. and drove the Mercian king into exile.
Excavations led by archaeologists Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle at St Wystan’s Church in Repton in the 1970s and 1980s discovered several Viking graves and a charnel deposit of nearly 300 people underneath a shallow mound in the vicarage garden.
The mound appears to have been a burial monument linked to the Great Army.
An Anglo-Saxon building, possibly a royal mausoleum, was cut down and partially ruined, before being turned into a burial chamber.
One room was packed with the commingled remains of at least 264 people, around 20 percent of whom were women. Among the bones were Viking weapons and artifacts, including an axe, several knives, and five silver pennies dating to the period 872-875 A.D. 80 percent of the remains were men, mostly aged 18 to 45, with several showing signs of violent injury.
During the excavations, everything pointed to the burial’s association with the Viking Great Army, but confusingly, initial radiocarbon dates suggested otherwise. It seemed to contain a mix of bones of different ages, meaning that they could not all have been from the Viking Age.
Now, new dating* proves that they are all consistent with a single date in the 9th century and therefore with the Viking Great Army.
Cat Jarman said: “The previous radiocarbon dates from this site were all affected by something called marine reservoir effects, which is what made them seem too old.
“When we eat fish or other marine foods, we incorporate carbon into our bones that is much older than in terrestrial foods. This confuses radiocarbon dates from archaeological bone material and we need to correct for it by estimating how much seafood each individual ate.”
A double grave from the site – one of the only Viking weapon graves found in the country – was also dated, yielding a date range of 873-886 A.D.
The grave contained two men, the older of whom was buried with a Thor’s hammer pendant, a Viking sword, and several other artifacts.
He had received numerous fatal injuries around the time of death, including a large cut to his left femur. Intriguingly, a boar’s tusk had been placed between his legs, and it has been suggested that the injury may have severed his penis or testicles, and that the tusk was there to replace what he had lost in preparation for the after-world.
The new dates now show that these burials could be consistent with members of the Viking Great Army.
Outside the charnel mound another extraordinary grave can now be shown to likely relate to the Vikings in Repton as well.
Four juveniles, aged between eight and 18, were buried together in a single grave with a sheep jaw at their feet.
Next to them large stones may have held a marker, and the grave was placed near the entrance to the mass grave. At least two of the juveniles have signs of traumatic injury. The excavators suggested this may have been a ritual grave, paralleling accounts of sacrificial killings to accompany Viking dead from historical accounts elsewhere in the Viking world. The new radiocarbon dates can now place this burial into the time period of 872-885 A.D.
Cat Jarman added: “The date of the Repton charnel bones is important because we know very little about the first Viking raiders that went on to become part of a considerable Scandinavian settlement of England.
“Although these new radiocarbon dates don’t prove that these were Viking army members, it now seems very likely. It also shows how new techniques can be used to reassess and finally solve centuries old mysteries.”
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Overview of the charnel burial from the original excavations. Martin Biddle
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Bones from the Repton charnel during excavations. Mark Horton
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON—Archaeologists are a little like forensic investigators: They scour the remains of past societies, looking for clues in pottery, tools and bones about how people lived, and how they died.
And just as detectives might re-create the scene of a crime, University of Washington archaeologists have re-created the weapons used by hunter-gatherers in the post-Ice Age Arctic some 14,000 years ago. Looking for clues as to how those early people advanced their own technology, researchers also considered what that might tell us about human migration, ancient climates and the fate of some animal species.
In an article published Jan. 31 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Janice Wood, recent UW anthropology graduate, and Ben Fitzhugh, a UW professor of anthropology, show how they reconstructed prehistoric projectiles and points from ancient sites in what is now Alaska and studied the qualities that would make for a lethal hunting weapon.
The UW team chose to study hunting weapons from the time of the earliest archaeological record in Alaska (around 10,000 to 14,000 years ago), a time that is less understood archaeologically, and when different kinds of projectile points were in use. Team members designed a pair of experiments to test the effectiveness of the different point types. By examining and testing different points in this way, the team has come to a new understanding about the technological choices people made in ancient times.
“The hunter-gatherers of 12,000 years ago were more sophisticated than we give them credit for,” Fitzhugh said. “We haven’t thought of hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene as having that kind of sophistication, but they clearly did for the things that they had to manage in their daily lives, such as hunting game. They had a very comprehensive understanding of different tools, and the best tools for different prey and shot conditions.”
Prior research has focused on the flight ballistics of the hunting weapons in general, and no prior study has looked specifically at the ballistics of tools used in Siberia and the Arctic regions of North America just after the Ice Age. In addition to foraging for plants and berries (when available), nomadic groups hunted caribou, reindeer and other animals for food, typically with spears or darts (thrown from atlatl boards). Without preservation of the wood shafts, these tools are mainly differentiated in the archaeological record by their stone and bone points. But it was not known how effective different kinds of points were in causing lethal injury to prey.
Nor is it known, definitively, whether different types of points were associated with only certain groups of people, or whether with the same groups used certain point types to specialize on particular kinds of game or hunting practices. It is generally accepted that different point types were developed in Africa and Eurasia and brought to Alaska before the end of the Ice Age. These included rudimentary points made of sharpened bone, antler or ivory; more intricate, flaked stone tips popularly familiar as “arrowheads”; and a composite point made of bone or antler with razor blade-like stone microblades embedded around the edges.
The three likely were invented at separate times but remained in use during the same period because each presumably had its own advantages, Wood said. Learning how they functioned informs what we know about prehistoric hunters and the repercussions of their practices.
So Wood traveled to the area around Fairbanks, Alaska, and crafted 30 projectile points, 10 of each kind. She tried to stay as true to the original materials and manufacturing processes as possible, using poplar projectiles, and birch tar as an adhesive to affix the points to the tips of the projectiles. While ancient Alaskans used atlatls (a kind of throwing board), Wood used a maple recurve bow to shoot the arrows for greater control and precision.
For the bone tip, modeled on a 12,000-year-old ivory point from an Alaskan archaeological site, Wood used a multipurpose tool to grind a commercially purchased cow bone;
For the stone tip, she used a hammerstone to strike obsidian into flakes, then shaped them into points modeled on those found at another site in Alaska from 13,000 years ago;
And for the composite microblade tip — modeled microblade technologies seen in Alaska since at least 13,000 years ago and a rare, preserved grooved antler point from a more recent Alaskan site used more than 8,000 years ago — Wood used a saw and sandpaper to grind a caribou antler to a point. She then used the multipurpose tool to gouge out a groove around its perimeter, into which she inserted obsidian microblades.
Wood then tested how well each point could penetrate and damage two different targets: blocks of ballistic gelatin (a clear synthetic gelatin meant to mimic animal muscle tissue) and a fresh reindeer carcass, purchased from a local farm. Wood conducted her trials over seven hours on a December day, with an average outdoor temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit.
In Wood’s field trial, the composite microblade points were more effective than simple stone or bone on smaller prey, showing the greatest versatility and ability to cause incapacitating damage no matter where they struck the animal’s body. But the stone and bone points had their own strengths: Bone points penetrated deeply but created narrower wounds, suggesting their potential for puncturing and stunning larger prey (such as bison or mammoth); the stone points could have cut wider wounds, especially on large prey (moose or bison), resulting in a quicker kill.
Wood said the findings show that hunters during this period were sophisticated enough to recognize the best point to use, and when. Hunters worked in groups; they needed to complete successful hunts, in the least amount of time, and avoid risk to themselves.
“We have shown how each point has its own performance strengths,” she said. Bone points punctured effectively, flaked stone created a greater incision, and the microblade was best for lacerated wounds. “It has to do with the animal itself; animals react differently to different wounds. And it would have been important to these nomadic hunters to bring the animal down efficiently. They were hunting for food.”
Weapon use can shed light on the movement of people and animals as humans spread across the globe and how ecosystems changed before, during and after the ice ages.
“The findings of our paper have relevance to the understanding of ballistic properties affecting hunting success anywhere in the world people lived during the 99 percent of human history that falls between the invention of stone tools more than 3 million years ago in Africa and the origins of agriculture,” Fitzhugh said.
It could also inform debates on whether human hunting practices directly led to the extinction of some species. The team’s findings and other research show that our ancestors were thinking about effectiveness and efficiency, Wood said, which may have influenced which animals they targeted. An animal that was easier to kill may have been targeted more often, which could, along with changing climates, explain why animals such as the horse disappeared from the Arctic. A shot to the lung was lethal for early equines, Wood said, but a caribou could keep going.
“I see this line of research as looking at the capacity of the human brain to come up with innovations that ultimately changed the course of human history,” she said. “This reveals the human capacity to invent in extreme circumstances, to figure out a need and a way to meet that need that made it easier to eat and minimized the risk.”
Upon completion of the experiment, the bones were sterilized for future study of projectile impact marks.
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University of Washington researchers re-created ancient projectile points to test their effectiveness. From left to right: stone, microblade and bone tips. Janice Wood
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, analyzed ancient human genomes from 38 northern Europeans dating from approximately 7,500 to 500 BCE. The study, published today in Nature Communications, found that Scandinavia was initially settled via a southern and a northern route and that the arrival of agriculture in northern Europe was facilitated by movements of farmers and pastoralists into the region.
Northern Europe could be considered a late bloomer in some aspects of human history: initial settlement by hunter-gatherers occurred only about 11,000 years ago, after the retreat of the lingering ice sheets from the Pleistocene, and while agriculture was already widespread in Central Europe 7,000 years ago, this development reached Southern Scandinavia and the Eastern Baltic only millennia later.
Several recent studies of ancient human genomes have dealt with the prehistoric population movements that brought new technology and subsistence strategies into Europe, but how they impacted the very north of the continent has still been poorly understood.
For this study, the research team, which included scientists from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and Sweden, assembled genomic data from 38 ancient northern Europeans, from mobile hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic (approximately 12,000 to 7,000 years ago) and the first Neolithic farmers in southern Sweden (approximately 6,000 to 5,300 years ago) to the metallurgists of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Baltic (approximately 1300 to 500 BCE). This allowed the researchers to uncover surprising aspects of the population dynamics of prehistoric northern Europe.
Two routes of settlement for Scandinavia
Previous analysis of ancient human genomes has revealed that two genetically differentiated groups of hunter-gatherers lived in Europe during the Mesolithic: the so-called Western Hunter-Gatherers excavated in locations from Iberia to Hungary, and the so-called Eastern Hunter-Gatherers excavated in Karelia in north-western Russia. Surprisingly, the results of the current study show that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Lithuania appear very similar to their Western neighbors, despite their geographic proximity to Russia. The ancestry of contemporary Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, on the other hand, was comprised from both Western and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers.
“Eastern Hunter-Gatherers were not present on the eastern Baltic coast, but a genetic component from them is present in Scandinavia. This suggests that the people carrying this genetic component took a northern route through Fennoscandia into the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula. There they genetically mixed with Western Hunter-Gatherers who came from the South, and together they formed the Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherers,” explains Johannes Krause, Director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and senior author of the study.
Agriculture and animal herding – cultural imports by incoming people
Large-scale farming first started in southern Scandinavia around 6,000 years ago, about one millennium after it was already common in Central Europe. In the Eastern Baltic, the inhabitants relied solely on hunting, gathering and fishing for another 1000 years. Although some have argued that the use of the new subsistence strategy was a local development by foragers, possibly adopting the practices of their farming neighbors, the genetic evidence uncovered in the present study tells a different story.
The earliest farmers in Sweden are not descended from Mesolithic Scandinavians, but show a genetic profile similar to that of Central European agriculturalists. Thus it appears that Central Europeans migrated to Scandinavia and brought farming technology with them. These early Scandinavian farmers, like the Central European agriculturalists, inherited a substantial portion of their genes from Anatolian farmers, who first spread into Europe around 8,200 years ago and set in motion the cultural transition to agriculture known as the Neolithic Revolution.
Similarly, a near-total genetic turnover is seen in the Eastern Baltic with the advent of large-scale agro-pastoralism. While they did not mix genetically with Central European or Scandinavian farmers, beginning around 2,900 BCE the individuals in the Eastern Baltic derive large parts of their ancestry from nomadic pastoralists of the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
“Interestingly, we find an increase of local Eastern Baltic hunter-gatherer ancestry in this population at the onset of the Bronze Age,” states Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, lead author of the study. “The local population was not completely replaced but coexisted and eventually mixed with the newcomers.”
This study emphasizes the regional differences of cultural transitions and sets the stage for more in-depth studies of later periods in northern European prehistory, such as the Iron Age and Viking Age.
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Skull included in this study from Ölsund, Hälsingland, Sweden, dating to around 2,300 BCE, in the ancient DNA laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Alissa Mittnik
Map showing locations and timeline of the samples introduced in this study. Mittnik et al. The Genetic Prehistory of the Baltic Sea Region. Nature Communications (2018).
UNIVERSITY OF YORK—Archaeologists say they may have discovered one of the earliest examples of a ‘crayon’ – possibly used by our ancestors 10,000 years ago for applying colour to their animal skins or for artwork.
The ochre crayon was discovered near an ancient lake, now blanketed in peat, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire. An ochre pebble was found at another site on the opposite side of the lake.
The pebble had a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder. The crayon measures 22mm long and 7mm wide.
Ochre is an important mineral pigment used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers across the globe. The latest finds suggest people collected ochre and processed it in different ways during the Mesolithic period.
The ochre objects were studied as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Departments of Archaeology and Physics at the University of York, using state-of-the-art techniques to establish their composition.
The artifacts were found at Seamer Carr and Flixton School House. Both sites are situated in a landscape rich in prehistory, including one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, Star Carr.
A pendant was discovered at Star Carr in 2015 and is the earliest known Mesolithic art in Britain. Here, more than 30 red deer antler headdresses were found which may have been used as a disguise in hunting, or during ritual performances by shamans when communicating with animal spirits.
Lead author, Dr Andy Needham from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said the latest discoveries helped further our understanding of Mesolithic life.
He commented: “Color was a very significant part of hunter-gatherer life and ochre gives you a very vibrant red color. It was very important in the Mesolithic period and seems to have been used in a number of ways. One of the latest objects we have found looks exactly like a crayon; the tip is faceted and has gone from a rounded end to a really sharpened end, suggesting it has been used. For me it is a very significant object and helps us build a bigger picture of what life was like in the area; it suggests it would have been a very colorful place.”
The research team say Flixton was a key location in the Mesolithic period and the two objects help paint a vibrant picture of how the people interacted with the local environment.
“The pebble and crayon were located in an area already rich in art. It is possible there could have been an artistic use for these objects, perhaps for colouring animal skins or for use in decorative artwork,” Dr Needham added.
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The crayon revealed a sharpened end. Paul Shields/University of York
The study, which involved collaboration with the Universities of Chester and Manchester, is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
CELL PRESS—Until recently, very little was known about the genetic relationship between modern humans of the Upper Paleolithic age (the period of time between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, also called the Late Stone age) and today’s populations. But with direct DNA sequencing, researchers are discovering unexpected genetic connections between individuals on opposing sides of Eurasia. These suggest a complex history that may represent early gene flow across Eurasia or an early population structure that eventually led to Europeans and Asians.
In a review* published in the journal Trends in Genetics on January 25, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing discuss what we know about the genetics of ancient individuals from Eurasia (Europe and Western Asia) between 45,000-7,500 years ago. The authors summarized work that investigated the genomes of more than 20 ancients in the Eurasian family tree, including the 45,000-year-old Ust’-Ishim individual from Central Siberia, for their paper.
“Aside from these individuals, it is a fact that sampling for the Eurasian region is sparse for all time periods except the present-day,” says co-author Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “But with the information from the several individuals available for ancient DNA sequencing we do have hints at interesting population structure, migration and interaction in East Asia.”
The researchers learned that in Eurasia between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago, at least four distinct populations were present. These were early Asian and Europeans, as well as populations with ancestry hardly found or not at all in modern populations. By 15,000-34,000 years ago, however, DNA sequencing showed that modern humans in Eurasia are similar to either Europeans or to Asians, suggesting that a genetic Asian-European separation likely occurred prior to 40,000 years ago. By 7,500-14,000 years ago, the populations across Eurasia shared genetic similarities, suggesting greater interactions between geographically distant populations.
These analyses also revealed at least two Neanderthal population mixing events, one approximately 50,000-60,000 years ago and a second more than 37,000 years ago. This Neanderthal ancestry gradually declined in archaic ancestry in Europeans dating from ~14,000-37,000 years ago.
“Genetic studies of ancient individuals have become more frequent in recent years because of technology,” says Fu. “As a result, we can now see the presence of multiple distinct subpopulations in Europe and in Asia, and these in turn contribute different amounts of ancestry to more recent subpopulations.”
“Right now is a great time to study human evolutionary genetics because the development of sequencing technology and computing resources minimizes destruction of samples and maximizes data generation and storage,” Fu says. “With large present-day genomic datasets and increased international collaboration to handle the many newly sequenced ancient datasets, there is huge potential to understand the biology of human prehistory in a way that has never been accessible before.”
Looking ahead, Fu and colleagues hope to extend this type of sequencing and analysis to learn more about the genetic prehistory of East Asia and other regions, including Oceania, Africa, and the Americas. “All of those areas have a rich human prehistory, particularly in Africa, so any ancient DNA from those continents will likely resolve some major questions on human migration,” she says.
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This is a schematic of populations in Eurasia and the Americas from 45,000 to 7,500 years ago. A summary of major events in each of the time periods is on the left. Melinda A.Yang and Qiaomei Fu
An international research team led by Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University has discovered a modern human fossil dated to between 177,000 and 194,000 years old, excavated from the Misliya Cave at Mount Carmel in northern Israel. The find pushes back the estimated time range as evidenced by the archaeological record for arrival of modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa by about 40,000 to 50,000 years.
The fossil, an upper jaw bone designated ‘Misliya-1’, features some intact teeth and falls within the upper size range characteristic of modern human teeth. Scientists examining Misliya-1 maintain that the fossil shares some features but lacks other key features identifiable with Neandertals and other earlier hominin species, such as a low, broad tooth crown, and that it otherwise shares many features of teeth and jawbones typical of modern humans. They analyzed the fossil using microCT scans and 3D virtual models, then compared it to other hominin fossils from Africa, Europe and Asia.
“While all of the anatomical details in the Misliya fossil are fully consistent with modern humans, some features are also found in Neandertals and other human groups,” said Rolf Quam, Binghamton University anthropology professor and a coauthor of the fossil study*. “One of the challenges in this study was identifying features in Misliya that are found only in modern humans. These are the features that provide the clearest signal of what species the Misliya fossil represents.”
Stone tools were also excavated near Misliya-1. The tools, said by the archaeologists to have been produced using the Levallois technique, may represent the earliest known association of the technique with modern humans in this region, suggesting that the emergence of this technology may have been due to the appearance of modern humans in the Levant. Levallois can be found in Middle Stone Age assemblages associated with Home sapiens in Africa.
The archaeological evidence from Misliya Cave thus far reveals that the inhabitants of the cave were capable hunters of large game species, controlled the production of fire and were associated with an Early Middle Paleolithic stone tool kit, similar to that found with the earliest modern humans in Africa.
While older fossils of modern humans have been found in Africa, the timing and routes of modern human migration out of Africa are key issues for understanding the evolution of our own species, said the researchers. The region of the Middle East represents a major corridor for hominin migrations during the Pleistocene and has been occupied at different times by both modern humans and Neandertals. This new discovery opens the door to demographic replacement or genetic admixture with local populations earlier than previously thought. Indeed, the evidence from Misliya is consistent with recent suggestions based on ancient DNA for an earlier migration, prior to 220,000 years ago, of modern humans out of Africa. Several recent archaeological and fossil discoveries in Asia are also pushing back the first appearance of modern humans in Eurasia and, by implication, the migration out of Africa.
For all of these reasons, “Misliya is an exciting discovery,” says Quam, “It also means that modern humans were potentially meeting and interacting during a longer period of time with other archaic human groups, providing more opportunity for cultural and biological exchanges.”
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A view of Misliya Cave when approached climbing from the coastal plain. The cave is located some 90 m above mean sea level (AMSL) and is part of a series of prominent prehistoric cave sites located along the western slopes of Mount Carmel, Israel. The cave had collapsed following the Early Middle Paleolithic human occupation, represented by rich lithic and faunal assemblages associated with the maxilla (Misliya-1) of a modern human. Strongly cemented archaeological sediments (breccias) that extend some 30 m west of the cliff indicate that the cave had once been very large. Mina Weinstein-Evron, Haifa University
The Misliya Cave Early Middle Paleolithic layers of the Upper Terrace of the cave, during excavation (viewed from the southeast). The layers here are some 1.5-2 m thick. Note the in-situ hearth, consisting of indurated dark ashy sediment, at the bottom central-right part of the picture. Hearths were repeatedly constructed during the long habitation of the cave. The habitual use of fire is also evident from abundant wood ash, as well as burnt animal bones, flint implements and phytoliths. Charred laminated vegetal tissues constitute the earliest evidence for bedding or matting to date. Mina Weinstein-Evron, Haifa University
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The Misliya-1 left maxilla. All teeth are present except the central incisor. The shape and structure of the teeth and the dentine underneath yielded important data regarding the definition of this specimen as Homo sapiens. Israel Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University
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Close-up view of the of Misliya-1 dentition, showing details of the crown topography and dental features. Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna
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Virtual reconstruction of the left upper jaw of Misliya-1. The right (transparent) side is a mirror image of the preserved left side for visualization purposes. The dental arch is parabolic and the alignment of the anterior teeth appears very modern human like. Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna
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Location of early modern human fossils in Africa and the Middle East. The fossils from Jebel Irhoud date to 315,000 years ago and are thus older than Misliya, while those from Omo Kibish (195,000) and Herto (160,000) are similar in age to Misliya (177,000-194,000). The 3D virtual reconstruction of the Misliya-1 maxilla and several Early Middle Paleolithic stone tools from Misliya Cave are also included. Similar stone tools have been found at Jebel Irhoud. Image modified from [http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?vev1id=11656 “Blue Marble”]. Rolf Quam, Binghamton University
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For more about all of the astonishing new discoveries of early humans in the Levant, look for the in-depth special feature article, Before Kings and Temples, in the upcoming Spring 2018 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.
*“The earliest modern humans outside Africa,” by I. Hershkovitz; R. Sarig; H. May; V. Slon; D.E. Bar-Yosef Mayer at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel; G.W. Weber; C. Fornai; V.A. Krenn at University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria; R. Quam at Binghamton University (SUNY) in Binghamton, NY; R. Quam; J.L. Arsuaga; L. Rodríguez; R. García; J.M. Carretero at Centro UCM-ISCIII de Investigación sobre la Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos in Madrid, Spain; R. Quam at American Museum of Natural History in New York, NY; M. Duval; R. Grün at Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) at Griffith University in Nathan, QLD, Australia.
Although studies suggest that the brain size of Homo sapiens was within the modern human range as of about 300,000 years ago, more globular (or round) brain features exhibited by present-day humans only emerged approximately 40,000 years ago, according to a new fossil analysis. That’s roughly the time when the full suite of modern human behaviors emerged, say the authors. These findings demonstrate a more gradual appearance of so-called behavioral modernity, one in which brain shape played a part. Modern humans have large, globular brains which develop early and affect cognitive development; however, how and when globularity evolved, and how that relates to the evolutionary increase in brain size remains unknown. Using computed tomographic scans and sophisticated 3-D analyses to elucidate the evolution of brain shape, Simon Neubauer and colleagues analyzed endocranial casts of 20 H. sapiensfossils from different time periods, dating from about 300,000 to 10,000 years ago. Their analyses showed that endocranial shape variations of Upper Paleolithic and more recent specimens overlap with present-day human shape variations, ultimately suggesting brain shape reached current globularity ranges somewhere between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago – thus, not coincident with the evolution of larger brain size in earlier H. sapiens. Based on their fossil analyses as well as information about human behavior from archeological records, the authors believe the gradual globularization of the brain during evolution paralleled the emergence of behavioral modernity. As such, they say, the “human revolution” during the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe around 50,000 years ago was not due to a rapid evolutionary event related to a specific genetic change, but rather, was merely a point in time where gradual changes supported the full suite of modern behaviors.
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Brain shape evolution in Homo sapiens. The left image shows brain shape as reconstructed based on micro computed tomographic scans of one of the earliest known members of our species, the fossil cranium Jebel Irhoud 1, dated to about 300,000 years. Brain shape, and possibly brain function, evolved gradually, and have reached the globularity typical for present-day humans (right image) only by about 35,000 years ago. Simon Neubauer, Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 4.0)
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Brain shape comparison between Homo sapiensand Neandertals. The left image shows the globular endocranial shape of present-day humans as reconstructed based on micro computed tomographic scans. In contrast, endocranial shape of Neandertals like in La-Chapelle-aux-Saints shown on the right, but also in the earliest Homo sapiens fossils, is elongated. The typical globular human shape evolved gradually and reached modern conditions only recently – about 35,000 years ago. Simon Neubauer, Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 4.0)
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Climate change is one of the most important issues facing people today and year on year the melting of glacial ice patches in Scandinavia, the Alps and North America reveals and then destroys vital archaeological records of past human activity.
Enter the glacial archaeologists – specialists who rescue now-threatened artifacts and study the relationship between variability in climate and the intensity of human use of alpine landscapes.
Focusing on Jotunheimen and the surrounding mountain areas of Oppland, which include Norway’s highest mountains (to 2649m), an international team of researchers have conducted a systematic survey at the edges of the contracting ice, recovering artifacts of wood, textile, hide and other organic materials that are otherwise rarely preserved.
To date, more than 2,000 artifacts have been recovered. Some of the finds date as far back as 4000 BC and include arrows, Iron Age and Bronze Age clothing items and remains of skis and packhorses.
By statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates on these incredibly unusual finds, patterns began to emerge showing that they do not spread out evenly over time. Some periods have many finds while others have none.
What could have caused this chronological patterning – human activity and/or past climate change? These questions are the focus of a new study published today in Royal Society Open Science.
Dr James H. Barrett, an environmental archaeologist at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the paper commented, “One such pattern which really surprised us was the possible increase in activity in the period known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age (c. 536 – 660 AD). This was a time of cooling; harvests may have failed and populations may have dropped. Remarkably, though, the finds from the ice may have continued through this period, perhaps suggesting that the importance of mountain hunting (mainly for reindeer) increased to supplement failing agricultural harvests in times of low temperatures. Alternatively, any decline in high-elevation activity during the Late Antique Little Ice Age was so brief that we cannot observe it from the available evidence.”
Barrett continues, “We then see particularly high numbers of finds dating to the 8th – 10th centuries AD, probably reflecting increased population, mobility (including the use of mountain passes) and trade – just before and during the Viking Age when outward expansion was also characteristic of Scandinavia. One driver of this increase may have been the expanding ecological frontier of the towns that were emerging around Europe at this time. Town-dwellers needed mountain products such as antlers for artifact manufacture and probably also furs. Other drivers were the changing needs and aspirations of the mountain hunters themselves.”
There is then a decrease in the number of finds dating to the medieval period (from the 11th century onwards). Lars Pilø, co-director of the Glacier Archaeology Program at Oppland County Council and lead author on the study further explains, “There is a sharp decline in finds dating from the 11th century onwards. At this time, bow-and-arrow hunting for reindeer was replaced with mass-harvesting techniques including funnel-shaped and pitfall trapping systems. This type of intensive hunting probably reduced the number of wild reindeer.”
Professor in medieval archaeology Brit Solli, of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, who led the study of the recovered artifacts, comments “Once the plague arrived in the mid-14th century, trade and markets in the north also suffered. With fewer markets and fewer reindeer the activity in the high mountains decreased substantially. This downturn could also have been influenced by declining climatic conditions during the Little Ice Age.”
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Iron Age arrow from Trollsteinhøe used to study the relationship between climate variability and how humans used alpine landscapes in the past. James H. Barrett, Wikimedia Commons
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Glacial archaeologists systematically survey the mountainous areas of Oppland, Norway, rescuing now-threatened ancient artifacts. Johan Wildhagen, Palookaville
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS—Before the expansion of the Inka empire, the Late Intermediate Period was marked by political upheaval and the emergence of new cultural practices. In “Ethnogenesis and Social Difference in the Andean Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100-1450): A Bioarchaeological Study of Cranial Modification in the Colca Valley, Peru,” published in Current Anthropology, Matthew C. Velasco examines how the prevalence and evolution of cranial modification practices during the Late Intermediate Period influenced ethnic identity formation in Peru’s Colca Valley. In the study, Velasco explores how head-shaping practices may have enabled political solidarity and furthered social inequality in the region.
The study employs ethnogenetic research to determine the historical processes responsible for the formation and embodiment of new group identities during this period.
Cranial modification is a deliberate, permanent, and highly visible identity marker that is inscribed during infancy. Head shape may have served as an indicator of ethnic affiliation, kin categorization, or geographic origin. Archaeological and ethnohistoric data offer insights into the head-shaping practices of two major ethnic groups in the Colca Valley, the Collaguas and the Cavanas. The Collaguas employed methods to make their heads assume a longer, narrower shape while the Cavanas sought to make their heads wide and squat.
To analyze how the frequency and significance of cranial modification changed over time, skeletal samples were collected from two mortuary sites in the Collagua region and submitted for radiocarbon measurement. Crania were assorted into five categories based on modification type. Utilizing newly-calibrated radiocarbon dates, the samples were divided into two groups representing the early LIP (AD 1150-1300) and the late LIP (AD 1300-1450).
Bioarchaeological and radiometric data present a significant increase in the prevalence of cranial modification practices. During the early LIP, 39.2% of individuals exhibited modification. This percentage rose to 73.7% during the later portion of the Late Intermediate Period. The study also reveals a significant change in the distribution of modification types as time progresses. Initially, there is an equal distribution of individuals among four modification types: tabular, erect, oblique, and slight. However, results indicate that by the late LIP, oblique modification–similar to the elongated head shape of the Collaguas–became the predominant style of cranial modification.
Increased homogeny of head shapes in the late LIP suggests that modification practices contributed to the creation of a new collective identity, and while cranial modification consolidated prior social boundaries, the author argues that the standardization of these practices may have exacerbated emerging social differences.
Acting as a signifier of affiliation, head shape may have encouraged unity among elites and fostered increased cooperation in politics. Involvement in political and social matters may have, in turn, elevated the status of modified individuals and conferred on them distinct privileges that were not available to unmodified individuals. Bioarchaological evidence also suggests that modification practices reinforced structures of inequality that prioritized modified females. Compared to unmodified females, modified females possessed greater access to diverse food options and were less likely to encounter violence.
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Modified cranium from Peru. Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE—DURHAM, N.H. – Tropical forests span a huge area, harbor a wide diversity of species, and are important to water and nutrient cycling on a planet scale. But in ancient Amazonia, over 500 years ago, clearing tropical forests was a way of survival to provide land for families to farm and villages to prosper. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire used high-tech tools to more precisely view where these cleared sites were and how much lasting impact they had on the rainforest in the Amazon Basin in South America.
“One of the key mysteries in this area of the world is that no one knows how many people lived in Amazonia before European contact,” said Michael Palace, an associate professor in the Earth Sciences Department and Earth Systems Research Center at UNH. “Once the Europeans arrived, indigenous populations were devastated due to disease, slavery and displacement so it’s often hard to determine lasting impact. It is important to understand the resilience or fragility of these forests to past human disturbance, which allows for appropriate planning on the use of natural resources.”
One of the few indicators of human settlements are the terra preta, or Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs). These are black, human-made soils that are enriched by materials left behind from past societies, pottery remnants, charcoal and other artifacts frequently associated with human origin. There is very little rock and metal in that part of the world (a former ocean bottom), and wood, bone and other organic materials decay quickly in the humid tropics.
In their study, recently published in the journal Ecosphere, the researchers used imagery from NASA’s terra satellite, MODIS, and geospatial modeling to predict the ADE probability across six million square kilometers of the Amazonia. They found that biomass (primarily weight of trees in forests), tree height, and tree cover were all lower at ADE sites than adjacent random non-ADE locations. The ADE sites were also more susceptible to drought.
Indigenous people most likely used slash-and-burn techniques to clear the forests so the ADE sites may have been pre-selected due to the propensity for drought or intensity of dry seasons. Researchers also observed differences in spectral properties (reflective light) between ADE and non-ADE sites that are likely driven by forest structure and tree species, indicating that remnant forests are still showing impacts from past human settlement patterns.
Researchers further explain that the high spatial heterogeneity in ADE sites across the Amazon suggests that pre-Columbian occupation by indigenous people was complex and varied substantially across this ecologically diverse region. But they speculate that because of their proximity to the rivers, ADEs may have become areas of interest for other groups to settle and reoccupy, further impacting the forests and vegetation in the ADE areas.
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Map developed using satellite imagery and spatial modeling showing estimated past human impact on the Amazonian forest. Michael Palace/UNH
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER—Using ‘next generation’ DNA sequencing scientists have found that the famous ‘Two Brothers’ mummies of the Manchester Museum have different fathers so are, in fact, half-brothers.
The Two Brothers are the Museum’s oldest mummies and amongst the best-known human remains in its Egyptology collection. They are the mummies of two elite men – Khnum-nakht and Nakht-ankh – dating to around 1800 BC.
However, ever since their discovery in 1907 there has been some debate amongst Egyptologists whether the two were actually related at all. So, in 2015, ‘ancient DNA’ was extracted from their teeth to solve the mystery.
But how did the mystery start? The pair’s joint burial site, later dubbed The Tomb of The Two Brothers, was discovered at Deir Rifeh, a village 250 miles south of Cairo.
They were found by Egyptian workmen directed by early 20th century Egyptologists, Flinders Petrie and Ernest Mackay. Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the coffins indicated that both men were the sons of an unnamed local governor and had mothers with the same name, Khnum-aa. It was then the men became known as the Two Brothers.
When the complete contents of the tomb were shipped to Manchester in 1908 and the mummies of both men were unwrapped by the UK’s first professional female Egyptologist, Dr Margaret Murray. Her team concluded that the skeletal morphologies were quite different, suggesting an absence of family relationship. Based on contemporary inscriptional evidence, it was proposed that one of the Brothers was adopted.
Therefore, in 2015, the DNA was extracted from the teeth and, following hybridization capture of the mitochondrial and Y chromosome fractions, sequenced by a next generation method. Analysis showed that both Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht belonged to mitochondrial haplotype M1a1, suggesting a maternal relationship. The Y chromosome sequences were less complete but showed variations between the two mummies, indicating that Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht had different fathers, and were thus very likely to have been half-brothers.
Dr Konstantina Drosou, of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester who conducted the DNA sequencing, said: “It was a long and exhausting journey to the results but we are finally here. I am very grateful we were able to add a small but very important piece to the big history puzzle and I am sure the brothers would be very proud of us. These moments are what make us believe in ancient DNA. “
The study, which is being published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, is the first to successfully use the typing of both mitochondrial and Y chromosomal DNA in Egyptian mummies.
Dr Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, said: “The University of Manchester, and Manchester Museum in particular, has a long history of research on ancient Egyptian human remains. Our reconstructions will always be speculative to some extent but to be able to link these two men in this way is an exciting first.”
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The Two Brothers are the Museum’s oldest mummies and amongst the best-known human remains in its Egyptology collection. They are the mummies of two elite men—Khnum-nakht and Nakht-ankh—dating to around 1800 BC. Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH—More than half of Europe’s forests have disappeared over the past 6,000 years thanks to increasing demand for agricultural land and the use of wood as a source of fuel, new research led by the University of Plymouth suggests.
Using pollen analysis from more than 1,000 sites, scientists showed that more than two thirds of central and northern Europe would once have been covered by trees.
Today, that is down to around a third, although in more western and coastal regions, including the UK and Republic of Ireland, the decline has been far greater with forest coverage in some areas dropping below 10%.
However, those downward trends have begun to reverse, through the discovery of new types of fuel and building techniques, but also through ecological initiatives such as the ongoing National Forest project and the new Northern Forest, announced by the UK Government in January 2018.
The study is published in Nature’s Scientific Reports and lead author Neil Roberts, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Plymouth, said: “Most countries go through a forest transition and the UK and Ireland reached their forest minimum around 200 years ago. Other countries in Europe have yet to reach that point, and some parts of Scandinavia – where there is not such a reliance on agriculture – are still predominantly forest. But generally, forest loss has been a dominant feature of Europe’s landscape ecology in the second half of the current interglacial, with consequences for carbon cycling, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity.”
The research, which also involved academics in Sweden, Germany, France, Estonia and Switzerland, sought to establish precisely how the nature of Europe’s forests has changed over the past 11,000 years.
It combined three different methods of analysing pollen data, taken from the European Pollen Database, and showed that forest coverage actually increased from around 60% 11,000 years ago up to as much as 80% 6,000 years ago.
However, the introduction of modern farming practices during the Neolithic period sparked a gradual decline which accelerated towards the end of the Bronze Age and has largely continued until the present day.
Professor Roberts said this was one of the more surprising elements of the research because while forest clearance might be assumed to be a relatively recent phenomena, 20% of Britain’s forests had actually gone by the end of the Bronze Age 3,000 years ago.
He added: “Around 8,000 years ago, a squirrel could have swung tree to tree from Lisbon to Moscow without touching the ground. Some may see that loss as a negative but some of our most valued habitats have come about through forests being opened up to create grass and heathland. Up until around 1940, a lot of traditional farming practices were also wildlife friendly and created habitats many of our most loved creatures. This data could then potentially be used to understand how future forestry initiatives might also influence habitat change.”
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Gribskov Forest in Denmark. Malene Thyssen, Wikimedia Commons
POLITECNICO DI MILANO—In early November 2017, Nature published the results of the Scan Pyramids project, led by Mehdi Tayoubi (Hip Institute, Paris) and Kunihiro Morishima (University of Nagoya, Japan): there is a “huge void”, at least 30 meters long, within the Pyramid of Cheops.
Discovering its function and content clearly is a most passionate challenge for archaeologists.
Giulio Magli, Director of the Department of Mathematics and Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the Politecnico di Milano, has formulated one of the first hypotheses of interpretation.
“Cheop’s Pyramid, built around 2550 BC, is one of the largest and most complex monuments in the history of architecture. Its internal rooms are accessible through narrow tunnels, one of which, before arriving at the funerary chamber, widens and rises suddenly forming the so-called Great Gallery. The newly discovered room is over this gallery, but does not have a practical function of “relieving weight ” from it, because the roof of the gallery itself was already built with a corbelled technique for this very reason.”
So what does that mean?
“There is a possible interpretation, which is in good agreement with what we know about the Egyptian funerary religion as witnessed in the Pyramids Texts. In these texts it is said that the pharaoh, before reaching the stars of the north, will have to pass the “gates of the sky” and sit on his “throne of iron”.
Within the Pyramid there are four narrow shafts, the width of a handkerchief, directed to the stars. The pharaoh’s afterlife was in fact, according to the Texts, in the sky, and in particular among the stars of the north, like the Big Dipper and Draco. Two of the four channels open onto the facades of the monument, while the other two run into small doors. One of the two doors, the south one, has been explored several times without results, while the north one is still sealed.
These doors are with all probabilities representative of the “gates of the sky” and the north one could well lead into the newly discovered room. The room may contain, at its upper end and exactly under the apex of the great pyramid, an object needed by Cheops after crossing the doors: the “iron throne” mentioned in the Pyramid Texts.
We can get an idea of how this object could be, looking at the throne of Cheop’s mother, Queen Hetepheres, which has been found in pieces and reconstructed by Harward University. It is a low chair of cedar wood covered with sheets of gold and faience. Cheops’ could be similar, but coated with thin iron sheets. Of course it would not be melted iron, but meteoritic iron that is, fallen from the sky in the form of Iron meteorites (distinguishable due to the high percentage of the element Nickel) and again cited in the Texts. It is certain that the Egyptians knew this material for many centuries before Cheops, and continued to use it for special items designed for the Pharaohs during millennia: just think of the famous Tutankamon dagger.
A way to check or discard this hypothesis exists: a new exploration of the north shaft. This is a long-awaited exploration, long before the room’s discovery. At present, it is difficult to say with certainty that the northern channel leads into the newly discovered room – the “big void” as called by its discoverers – because the available images are approximate. The Scan Pyramid project indeed used a non-invasive technique based on the measurement of muons: elementary particles that are generated in cosmic rays and are absorbed differently depending on the materials they go through. The result is similar to a radiography which must be interpreted.
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North-south section of the Great Pyramid showing (dust-filled area) the hypothetical chamber, in connection with the lower southern shaft. The upper southern shaft does not intersect the chamber (as instead suggested by the section) because, when viewed in plan, it is displaced to the west with respect to the Great Gallery. Giulio Magli
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A view of the Giza Pyramids from the east with the Great Pyramid in the foreground. Giulio Magli
PLOS—Ancient DNA from the Phoenician remains found in Sardinia and Lebanon could provide insight into the extent of integration with settled communities and human movement during ancient times, according to a study* published January 10, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by E. Matisoo-Smith from the University of Otago, New Zealand and Pierre Zalloua from the Lebanese American University, Beirut, and colleagues. The researchers looked at mitochondrial genomes, which are maternally inherited, in a search for markers of Phoenician ancestry.
The Phoenicians were an ancient civilization who emerged in 1800 BCE in the Northern Levant and by the 9th century BCE had spread their culture across the Mediterranean to parts of Asia, Europe and Africa through their trade networks and settlements. Despite their widespread influence, most of what we know about the Phoenicians comes from Greek and Egyptian documents on this civilization.
The authors of this study analyzed Phoenicians’ ancient DNA to investigate how Phoenicians integrated with the Sardinian communities they settled. The researchers found 14 new ancient mitogenome sequences from pre-Phoenician (~1800 BCE) and Phoenician (~700-400 BCE) samples from Lebanon and Sardinia and then compared these with 87 new complete mitogenomes from modern Lebanese and 21 recently published pre-Phoenician ancient mitogenomes from Sardinia.
The researchers found evidence of continuity of some lineages of indigenous Sardinians after Phoenician settlement, which suggests that there was integration between Sardinians and Phoenicians in Monte Sirai. They also discovered evidence of new, unique mitochondrial lineages in Sardinia and Lebanon, which may indicate the movement of women from sites in the Near East or North Africa to Sardinia and the movement of European women to Lebanon. Combined, the authors suggest that there was a degree of female mobility and genetic diversity in Phoenician communities, indicating that migration and cultural assimilation were common occurrences.
Pierre Zalloua says, “this DNA evidence reflects the inclusive and multicultural nature of Phoenician society. They were never conquerors, they were explorers and traders”.
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A sampling from the Tomb 351 Monte Sirai. Michele Guirguis
UPPSALA UNIVERSITY—In a new study published in PLoS Biology, an international research team suggests Scandinavia was populated by two main migrations after the last glacial maximum: an initial migration of groups from the south (modern day Denmark and Germany) and an additional migration from the north-east, following the ice-free Atlantic coast.
After the last glacial maximum more than 10,000 years ago, Scandinavia was one of the last parts of Europe that became ice-free and thus habitable for humans. In the new study, a team of interdisciplinary researchers assembled archaeological and genetic data in combination with the latest results of climate modeling in order to study the early post-glacial settlers of Scandinavia.
The team collected human remains of seven individuals from the Norwegian Atlantic coast and the Baltic islands of Gotland and Stora Karlsö. The remains were radiocarbon-dated to more than 8,000 years before present and belonged to a part of the Stone Age called the Mesolithic. DNA was extracted from bones and teeth for genome sequencing. For one individual, the team was able to reconstruct one of the highest quality genomes of any prehistoric individual so far.
The team compared the genomic data to the genetic variation of Mesolithic hunter-gathers from other parts of Europe.
“We were surprised to see that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from the Norwegian west coast were genetically more similar to contemporaneous populations from east of the Baltic Sea while hunter-gatherers from what is Sweden today were genetically more similar to other hunter-gatherers from central and western Europe”, says population-geneticist Torsten Günther of Uppsala University, one of the lead authors of the study.
This contradiction between genetics and geography can be explained by two main migrations into Scandinavia after the last glacial maximum: an initial migration of groups from the south – modern day Denmark and Germany – and an additional migration from the north-east, following the ice-free Atlantic coast.
Obtaining genomic data from the Norwegian individuals was the key to understanding the migration routes. The genetic patterns overlap the distribution patterns of different stone tool techniques, and archaeological artifacts and diet isotopes show that the Scandinavian hunter-gatherers used different stone tool technology and relied on different food sources.
“The archaeological sites have been subject to different types of research for more than a century, it is exciting to see what the genetic data can add to our understanding of these hunter-gatherer groups”, says osteoarcheologist Jan Storå of Stockholm University, one of the senior authors of the study.
The comprehensive data allowed the team a deeper study of the population dynamics in Mesolithic Scandinavia. One consequence of the two groups mixing was a surprisingly large number of genetic variants in Scandinavian hunter-gatherers.
“These groups were genetically more diverse than the groups that lived in central, western and southern Europe at the same time. That is in stark contrast to the pattern seen today where more genetic variation is found in southern Europe and less in the north,” says Mattias Jakobsson, population-geneticist at Uppsala University and one of the senior authors of the study.
The two groups migrating into Scandinavia in the Mesolithic were genetically distinct and displayed different physical appearance. The people from the south likely displayed blue-eyes and dark skin and the people from the northeast a variation of eye colors and pale skin.
Similar to northern Europeans today, the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were facing a high latitude climate associated with low levels of sunlight in winter causing low temperatures, which would be a challenging environment to live in. Humans can cope with such conditions physiologically and by changes in behavior, but in the long term there is also potential for genetic adaptation to such environments.
The team found that genetic variants associated with light skin and eye pigmentation were carried, on average, in greater frequency among Scandinavian hunter-gatherers than their ancestors from other parts of Europe.
“That suggests local adaptation taking place in Scandinavia after these groups arrived which is in line with the world-wide pattern of pigmentation decreasing with distance to the equator,” Torsten Günther explains.
While comparing the Mesolithic groups to modern-day northern Europeans, the team found particular similarities in a gene associated with physical performance.
“It will be interesting to see if future studies can show how this gene affects the physiological adaptation to cold environments,” says Torsten Günther.
Modern-day people of northern Europe trace relatively little genetic material back to the Mesolithic Scandinavians.
“What we have found is that already 10,000 years ago, after Scandinavia became ice-free, different groups of migrants entered the Scandinavian Peninsula. A migration process into Scandinavia that we have seen over and over again; later in the Stone Age, in the Bronze Age and in historical times,” says Mattias Jakobsson.
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The excavations of Stora Förvar on Stora Karlsö. Hjalmar Stolpe. Antiquarian Topographical Archives (ATA), Stockholm.
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Skeletal fragments from the Hummervikholmen site. Beate Kjørslevik
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY—An archaeologist from The Australian National University (ANU) is set to redefine what we know about elderly people in cultures throughout history, and dispel the myth that most people didn’t live much past 40 prior to modern medicine.
Christine Cave, a PhD Scholar with the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, has developed a new method for determining the age-of-death for skeletal remains based on how worn the teeth are.
Using her method, which she developed by analysing the wear on teeth and comparing with living populations of comparable cultures, she examined the skeletal remains of three Anglo-Saxon English cemeteries for people buried between the years 475 and 625.
Her research determined that it was not uncommon for people to live to old age.
“People sometimes think that in those days if you lived to 40 that was about as good as it got. But that’s not true.
“For people living traditional lives without modern medicine or markets the most common age of death is about 70, and that is remarkably similar across all different cultures.”
Ms Cave said the myth has been built up due to deficiencies in the way older people are categorised in archaeological studies.
“Older people have been very much ignored in archaeological studies and part of the reason for that has been the inability to identify them,” she said.
“When you are determining the age of children you use developmental points like tooth eruption or the fusion of bones that all happen at a certain age.
“Once people are fully grown it becomes increasingly difficult to determine their age from skeletal remains, which is why most studies just have a highest age category of 40 plus or 45 plus.
“So effectively they don’t distinguish between a fit and healthy 40 year old and a frail 95 year old.
“It’s meaningless if you are trying to study elderly people.”
Ms Cave said the new method will give archaeologists a more accurate view of past societies and what life was like for older people.
For those in the three cemeteries she studied, which were Greater Chesterford in Essex, Mill Hill in Kent, and Worthy Park in Hampshire, she found a marked difference in the way male and female people of old age were buried.
“Women were more likely to be given prominent burials if they died young, but were much less likely to be given one if they were old,” she said.
“The higher status men are generally buried with weapons, like a spear and a shield or occasionally a sword.
“Women were buried with jewellery, like brooches, beads and pins. This highlights their beauty which helps explain why most of the high-status burials for women were for those who were quite young.”
Ms Cave’s study “Sex and the Elderly” was published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
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Teeth examined as part of Christine Cave’s research. Credit: ANU
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