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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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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.

Article Source: University of California, San Diego news release

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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.

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 The drawing is a reconstruction of how the grave with the woman originally may have looked. Credit: The illustration is made by Þórhallur Þráinsson (© Neil Price).

Article Source: Stockholm University news release

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The article “A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics” is published in American Journal of Physical Anthropology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23308/full

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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.

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—At the end of the Stone Age and in the early Bronze Age, families were established in a surprising manner in the Lechtal, south of Augsburg, Germany. The majority of women came from outside the area, probably from Bohemia or Central Germany, while men usually remained in the region of their birth. This so-called patrilocal pattern combined with individual female mobility was not a temporary phenomenon, but persisted over a period of 800 years during the transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age.

The findings, published today in PNAS, result from a research collaboration headed by Philipp Stockhammer of the Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In addition to archaeological examinations, the team conducted stable isotope and ancient DNA analyses. Corina Knipper of the Curt-Engelhorn-Centre for Archaeometry, as well as Alissa Mittnik and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena and the University of Tuebingen jointly directed these scientific investigations. “Individual mobility was a major feature characterizing the lives of people in Central Europe even in the 3rd and early 2nd millennium,” states Philipp Stockhammer. The researchers suspect that it played a significant role in the exchange of cultural objects and ideas, which increased considerably in the Bronze Age, in turn promoting the development of new technologies.

For this study*, the researchers examined the remains of 84 individuals using genetic and isotope analyses in conjunction with archeological evaluations. The individuals were buried between 2500 and 1650 BC in cemeteries that belonged to individual homesteads, and that contained between one and several dozen burials made over a period of several generations. “The settlements were located along a fertile loess ridge in the middle of the Lech valley. Larger villages did not exist in the Lechtal at this time,” states Stockhammer.

“We see a great diversity of different female lineages, which would occur if over time many women relocated to the Lech Valley from somewhere else,” remarks Alissa Mittnik on the genetic analyses. Corina Knipper also explains, “Based on analysis of strontium isotope ratios in molars, which allows us to draw conclusions about the origin of people, we were able to ascertain that the majority of women did not originate from the region.” The burials of the women did not differ from that of the native population, indicating that the formerly foreign women were integrated into the local community.

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From an archaeological point of view, the new insights prove the importance of female mobility for cultural exchange in the Bronze Age. They also allow us to view the immense extent of early human mobility in a new light. “It appears that at least part of what was previously believed to be migration by groups is based on an institutionalized form of individual mobility,” declares Stockhammer.

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

*“Female exogamy and gene pool diversification at the transition from the Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in central Europe,” by Corina Knipper et al.

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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.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers report ages of Neanderthal remains using an improved dating technique. Neanderthal remains from Vindija Cave in northern Croatia have been previously dated at approximately 32,000 years old, making them the most recent known Neanderthal remains and implying considerable temporal overlap between Neanderthals and modern humans in Central Europe. Thibaut Deviese and colleagues dated four Neanderthal bone samples from Vindija, one of which was previously unidentified, by extracting the amino acid hydroxyproline (HYP) from bone collagen. Because HYP occurs almost exclusively in collagen, dating purified HYP removed modern contaminants, including conservation materials, from the specimens. The authors obtained dates older than 40,000 years for all four sets of Neanderthal remains, far older than previously obtained dates. Dating of animal bones from the same layer as the Neanderthal bones yielded a wide range of dates. The finding suggests that postdepositional mixing of material has occurred, and therefore Upper Paleolithic tools found alongside the Neanderthal bones may not necessarily date from the same period. The Neanderthals at Vindija Cave likely did not overlap with modern humans, and were not part of a late-surviving, refugial population as previously thought, according to the authors.

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 Neanderthal bone found at Vindija Cave, Croatia. Credit: Thomas Higham

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Article Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences news release

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*”Direct dating of Neanderthal remains from the site of Vindija Cave and implications for the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition,” by Thibaut Deviese et al.

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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.

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY—Newly discovered human-like footprints from Crete may put the established narrative of early human evolution to the test. The footprints are approximately 5.7 million years old and were made at a time when previous research puts our ancestors in Africa – with ape-like feet.

Ever since the discovery of fossils of Australopithecus in South and East Africa during the middle years of the 20th century, the origin of the human lineage has been thought to lie in Africa. More recent fossil discoveries in the same region, including the iconic 3.7 million year old Laetoli footprints from Tanzania which show human-like feet and upright locomotion, have cemented the idea that hominins (early members of the human lineage) not only originated in Africa but remained isolated there for several million years before dispersing to Europe and Asia. The discovery of approximately 5.7 million year old human-like footprints from Crete, published online this week by an international team of researchers, overthrows this simple picture and suggests a more complex reality.

Human feet have a very distinctive shape, different from all other land animals. The combination of a long sole, five short forward-pointing toes without claws, and a hallux (“big toe”) that is larger than the other toes, is unique. The feet of our closest relatives, the great apes, look more like a human hand with a thumb-like hallux that sticks out to the side. The Laetoli footprints, thought to have been made by Australopithecus, are quite similar to those of modern humans except that the heel is narrower and the sole lacks a proper arch. By contrast, the 4.4 million year old Ardipithecus ramidus from Ethiopia, the oldest hominin known from reasonably complete fossils, has an ape-like foot. The researchers who described Ardipithecus argued that it is a direct ancestor of later hominins, implying that a human-like foot had not yet evolved at that time.

The new footprints, from Trachilos in western Crete, have an unmistakably human-like form. This is especially true of the toes. The big toe is similar to our own in shape, size and position; it is also associated with a distinct ‘ball’ on the sole, which is never present in apes. The sole of the foot is proportionately shorter than in the Laetoli prints, but it has the same general form. In short, the shape of the Trachilos prints indicates unambiguously that they belong to an early hominin, somewhat more primitive than the Laetoli trackmaker. They were made on a sandy seashore, possibly a small river delta, whereas the Laetoli tracks were made in volcanic ash.

‘What makes this controversial is the age and location of the prints,’ says Professor Per Ahlberg at Uppsala University, last author of the study.

At approximately 5.7 million years, they are younger than the oldest known fossil hominin, Sahelanthropus from Chad, and contemporary with Orrorin from Kenya, but more than a million years older than Ardipithecus ramidus with its ape-like feet. This conflicts with the hypothesis that Ardipithecus is a direct ancestor of later hominins. Furthermore, until this year, all fossil hominins older than 1.8 million years (the age of early Homo fossils from Georgia) came from Africa, leading most researchers to conclude that this was where the group evolved. However, the Trachilos footprints are securely dated using a combination of foraminifera (marine microfossils) from over- and underlying beds, plus the fact that they lie just below a very distinctive sedimentary rock formed when the Mediterranean sea briefly dried out, 5.6 millon years ago. By curious coincidence, earlier this year, another group of researchers reinterpreted the fragmentary 7.2 million year old primate Graecopithecus from Greece and Bulgaria as a hominin. Graecopithecus is only known from teeth and jaws.

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Above and below: The footprints were discovered by Gerard Gierlinski (1st author of the study) by chance when he was on holiday on Crete in 2002. Gierlinski, a paleontologist at the Polish Geological Institute specialized in footprints, identified the footprints as mammal but did not interpret them further at the time. In 2010 he returned to the site together with Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki (2nd author), a Polish paleontologist now at Uppsala University, to study the footprints in detail. Together they came to the conclusion that the footprints were made by hominins. Credit: Andrzej Boczarowski

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During the time when the Trachilos footprints were made, a period known as the late Miocene, the Sahara Desert did not exist; savannah-like environments extended from North Africa up around the eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, Crete had not yet detached from the Greek mainland. It is thus not difficult to see how early hominins could have ranged across south-east Europe and well as Africa, and left their footprints on a Mediterranean shore that would one day form part of the island of Crete.

‘This discovery challenges the established narrative of early human evolution head-on and is likely to generate a lot of debate. Whether the human origins research community will accept fossil footprints as conclusive evidence of the presence of hominins in the Miocene of Crete remains to be seen,’ says Per Ahlberg.

Article Source: Uppsala University news release

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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.

PLOS—Analysis of a skeleton found in the Chan Hol cave near Tulum, Mexico suggests human settlement in the Americas occurred in the late Pleistocene era, according to a study* published August 30, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Wolfgang Stinnesbeck from Universität Heidelberg, Germany, and colleagues.

Scientists have long debated about when humans first settled in the Americas. While osteological evidence of early settlers is fragmentary, researchers have previously discovered and dated well-preserved prehistoric human skeletons in caves in Tulum in Southern Mexico.

To learn more about America’s early settlers, Stinnesbeck and colleagues examined human skeletal remains found in the Chan Hol cave near Tulum. The researchers dated the skeleton by analyzing the Uranium, Carbon and Oxygen isotopes found in its bones and in the stalagmite which had grown through its pelvic bone.

The researchers’ isotopic analysis dated the skeleton to ~13 k BP, or approximately 13,000 years before present. This finding suggests that the Chan Hol cave was accessed during the late Pleistocene, providing one of the oldest examples of a human settler in the Americas. While the researchers acknowledge that changes in climate over time may have influenced the dating of the skeleton, future research could potentially disentangle how climate impacted the Chan Hol archaeological record.

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Article Source: PLOS ONE news release

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*Stinnesbeck W, Becker J, Hering F, Frey E, González AG, Fohlmeister J, et al. (2017) The earliest settlers of Mesoamerica date back to the late Pleistocene.  

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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.

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI—Researchers examine pre-colonial geometric earthworks in the southwestern Amazonia from the point of view of indigenous peoples and archaeology. The study shows that the earthworks were once important ritual communication spaces.

The geometric earthworks of southwestern Amazonia have raised the interest within the scientific community as well as the media and the general public, and they have been explored recently by several international research teams.

These unique archaeological sites have been labeled the Geoglyphs of Acre, as most of them are located in the Brazilian State of Acre. Nearly 500 sites have already been registered and have been included on the Brazilian State Party’s Tentative List for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The construction period and use, span the time period of approximately 3000-1000 BP. The earthwork ditches form geometric patterns, such as squares, circles, U-forms, ellipses and octagons. They can be several meters deep and enclose areas of hundreds of square meters.

Members of the community interacted with the environment

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland, has conducted research with indigenous peoples in the study area for a long time. Sanna Saunaluoma, Post Doctoral researcher at the São Paulo University, Brazil, is specialized in Amazonian archeology and made her doctoral dissertation on Acre’s earthwork sites. Their article published in the American Anthropologist (119[4], 2017), already in early view, examines pre-colonial geometric earthworks from the point of view of indigenous peoples and archaeology.

The study shows that the sites were once important ritual spaces where, through the geometric designs, certain members of the community communicated with various beings of the environment, such as ancestor spirits, animals, and celestial bodies. Thus people were constantly reminded that human life was intertwined with the environment and previous generations. People did not distinguish themselves from nature, but nonhumans enabled and produced life.

The geometric earthwork sites were especially used by the experts of that era, who specialized in the interaction with the nonhuman beings. The sites were important for members of the community at certain stages of life, and the various geometric patterns acted as “doors” and “paths” to gain the knowledge and strength of the different beings of the environment. Visualization and active interactions with nonhuman beings were constructive for these communities.

Contemporary indigenous peoples of Acre still regard earthwork sites as sacred places

The geometric patterns inspired by characteristics and skin patterns of animals still materialize the thinking of indigenous people of Amazonia and are also present in their modern pottery, fabrics, jewelry, and arts. As the theories of Amerindian visual art also show, geometric patterns can provide people with desired qualities and abilities, such as fertility, resistance, knowledge, and power.

Contemporary indigenous peoples of Acre still protect earthwork sites as sacred places and, unlike other Brazilian residents in the area, avoid using the sites for mundane activities, such as housing or agriculture, and therefore protect these peculiar ancient remains in their own way.

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 Sá and Seu Chiquinho sites featuring circular, square, and U-shaped earthworks. Photographer: Sanna Saunaluoma

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Article Source: University of Helsinki news release

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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.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers infer urban development in ancient Rome from lead-contaminated sediments of an early harbor. Urban contaminants preserved in sedimentary deposits can offer a historical narrative of economic and industrial development. Hugo Delile and colleagues describe how urban development in ancient Rome can be deduced from lead-contaminated sediments from the city’s first harbor, Ostia. Using high-resolution geochemical and isotopic analyses and radiocarbon dating of a sediment core from Ostia harbor, the authors found that lead pipes used in the aquatic infrastructure of Rome and Ostia were likely the source of lead contamination in the sediment sample. Based on the analyses, the authors stratified the core into three main sedimentary units—pre-harbor, harbor, and post-harbor—that described urban development of Rome’s water system, ranging from the system’s initial expansion to its peak during the early-high Imperial period, around 1st century AD. The authors dated the installation of ancient Rome’s lead pipe system to around 2nd century BC, approximately a century and half after the introduction of Rome’s aqueduct system. Together with the sample from Ostia, a sedimentary core analyzed from Portus, a nearby entry port constructed during 1st and 2nd centuries AD, indicated a reduction in lead levels during the Imperial period that corresponded to the contraction of Rome’s water system. According to the authors, the findings might help fill gaps in the history of ancient Rome’s hydraulic infrastructure.

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The Via Gherardo in the ancient Roman port of Ostia. Rabax63, Wikimedia Commons 

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Article Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences news release

Study Article: “Rome’s urban history inferred from Pb-contaminated waters trapped in its ancient harbor basins,” by Hugo Delile et al.

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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.

UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES—UNSW Sydney scientists have discovered the purpose of a famous 3700-year old Babylonian clay tablet, revealing it is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, possibly used by ancient mathematical scribes to calculate how to construct palaces and temples and build canals.

The new research shows the Babylonians beat the Greeks to the invention of trigonometry – the study of triangles – by more than 1000 years, and reveals an ancient mathematical sophistication that had been hidden until now.

Known as Plimpton 322, the small tablet was discovered in the early 1900s in what is now southern Iraq by archaeologist, academic, diplomat and antiquities dealer Edgar Banks, the person on whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based.

It has four columns and 15 rows of numbers written on it in the cuneiform script of the time using a base 60, or sexagesimal, system.

“Plimpton 322 has puzzled mathematicians for more than 70 years, since it was realised it contains a special pattern of numbers called Pythagorean triples,” says Dr Daniel Mansfield of the School of Mathematics and Statistics in the UNSW Faculty of Science.

“The huge mystery, until now, was its purpose – why the ancient scribes carried out the complex task of generating and sorting the numbers on the tablet.

“Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius.

“The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry.

“This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education.

“This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new,” he says.

The new study by Dr Mansfield and UNSW Associate Professor Norman Wildberger is published in Historia Mathematica, the official journal of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics.

A trigonometric table allows you to use one known ratio of the sides of a right-angle triangle to determine the other two unknown ratios.

The Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived about 120 years BC, has long been regarded as the father of trigonometry, with his “table of chords” on a circle considered the oldest trigonometric table.

“Plimpton 322 predates Hipparchus by more than 1000 years,” says Dr Wildberger. “It opens up new possibilities not just for modern mathematics research, but also for mathematics education. With Plimpton 322 we see a simpler, more accurate trigonometry that has clear advantages over our own.”

“A treasure-trove of Babylonian tablets exists, but only a fraction of them have been studied yet. The mathematical world is only waking up to the fact that this ancient but very sophisticated mathematical culture has much to teach us.”

Dr Mansfield read about Plimpton 322 by chance when preparing material for first year mathematics students at UNSW. He and Dr Wildberger decided to study Babylonian mathematics and examine the different historical interpretations of the tablet’s meaning after realizing that it had parallels with the rational trigonometry of Dr Wildberger’s book Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry.

The 15 rows on the tablet describe a sequence of 15 right-angle triangles, which are steadily decreasing in inclination.

The left-hand edge of the tablet is broken and the UNSW researchers build on previous research to present new mathematical evidence that there were originally 6 columns and that the tablet was meant to be completed with 38 rows.

They also demonstrate how the ancient scribes, who used a base 60 numerical arithmetic similar to our time clock, rather than the base 10 number system we use, could have generated the numbers on the tablet using their mathematical techniques.

The UNSW Science mathematicians also provide evidence that discounts the widely-accepted view that the tablet was simply a teacher’s aid for checking students’ solutions of quadratic problems.

“Plimpton 322 was a powerful tool that could have been used for surveying fields or making architectural calculations to build palaces, temples or step pyramids,” says Dr Mansfield.

The tablet, which is thought to have come from the ancient Sumerian city of Larsa, has been dated to between 1822 and 1762 BC. It is now in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York.

A Pythagorean triple consists of three, positive whole numbers a, b and c such that a2 + b2 = c2. The integers 3, 4 and 5 are a well-known example of a Pythagorean triple, but the values on Plimpton 322 are often considerably larger with, for example, the first row referencing the triple 119, 120 and 169.

The name is derived from Pythagoras’ theorem of right-angle triangles which states that the square of the hypotenuse (the diagonal side opposite the right angle) is the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

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 The 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. Credit: UNSW/Andrew Kelly

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 Reverse view of the Plimpton 322 tablet. Credit: UNSW/Andrew Kelly

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 UNSW Sydney scientist Dr. Daniel Mansfield with the 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. Credit: UNSW/Andrew Kelly

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Article Source: University of New South Wales news release

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA (USF HEALTH)—Chemical analysis conducted on ancient pottery could dramatically predate the commencement of winemaking in Italy. A large storage jar from the Copper Age (early 4th millennium BC) tests positive for wine.

This finding published in Microchemical Journal is significant as it’s the earliest discovery of wine residue in the entire prehistory of the Italian peninsula. Traditionally, it’s been believed wine growing and wine production developed in Italy in the Middle Bronze Age (1300-1100 B.C.) as attested just by the retrieval of seeds, providing a new perspective on the economy of that ancient society.

Lead author Davide Tanasi, PhD, University of South Florida in Tampa conducted chemical analysis of residue on unglazed pottery found at the Copper Age site of Monte Kronio in Agrigento, located off the southwest coast of Sicily. He and his team determined the residue contains tartaric acid and its sodium salt, which occur naturally in grapes and in the winemaking process.

It’s very rare to determine the composition of such residue as it requires the ancient pottery to be excavated intact. The study’s authors are now trying to determine whether the wine was red or white.

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Article Source: University of South Florida news release

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DUKE UNIVERSITY—DURHAM, N.C.—The H.L. Hunley, the first combat submarine to sink an enemy ship, also instantly killed its own eight-man crew with the powerful explosive torpedo it carried, according to new research from a Duke University Ph.D. in biomedical engineering.

The Hunley’s first and last combat mission occurred during the Civil War on Feb. 17, 1864, when it sank a 1,200-ton Union warship, the USS Housatonic, outside Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The Hunley delivered a blast from 135 pounds of black powder below the waterline at the stern of the Housatonic, sinking the Union ship in less than five minutes. Housatonic lost five seamen, but came to rest upright in 30 feet of water, which allowed the remaining crew to be rescued after climbing the rigging and deploying lifeboats.

The fate of the crew of the 40-foot Hunley, however, remained a mystery until 1995, when the submarine was discovered about 300 meters away from the Housatonic’s resting place. Raised in 2000, the submarine is currently undergoing study and conservation in Charleston by a team of Clemson University scientists.

Initially, the discovery of the submarine only seemed to deepen the mystery. The crewmen’s skeletons were found still at their stations along a hand-crank that drove the cigar-shaped craft. They suffered no broken bones, the bilge pumps hadn’t been used and the air hatches were closed. Except for a hole in one conning tower and a small window that may have been broken, the sub was remarkably intact.

Speculation about their deaths has included suffocation and drowning.

But after an exhaustive three-year Duke study that involved repeatedly setting blasts near a scale model, shooting authentic weapons at historically accurate iron plate and doing a lot of math on human respiration and the transmission of blast energy, researcher Rachel Lance, a 2016 Ph.D. graduate of Duke Engineering, says it was a powerful shockwave from the Hunley’s weapon that killed the crew.

In a paper* appearing Aug. 23 in PLOS ONE, Lance calculates the likelihood of immediately fatal lung trauma to be at least 85 percent for each member of the Hunley crew.

The Hunley’s torpedo was not a self-propelled bomb, as we think of them now. Rather, it was a copper keg of gunpowder held ahead and slightly below the Hunley’s bow on a 16-foot pole called a spar. The sub rammed this spar into the enemy ship’s hull and the bomb exploded. The furthest any of the crew was from the blast was about 42 feet.

Lance says the crew died instantly from the force of the explosion travelling through the soft tissues of their bodies, especially their lungs and brains. She says the crippled sub then drifted out on a falling tide and slowly took on water before sinking.

“This is the characteristic trauma of blast victims, they call it ‘blast lung,'” said Lance, who worked as a biomechanist at the U.S. Navy’s base in Panama City, Florida for three years before entering graduate school at Duke. “You have an instant fatality that leaves no marks on the skeletal remains. Unfortunately, the soft tissues that would show us what happened have decomposed in the past hundred years.”

Blast-lung is a phenomenon of something Lance calls “the hot chocolate effect.” The shockwave of the blast would travel about 1500 meters per second in water, and 340 m/sec in air. “When you mix these speeds together in a frothy combination like the human lungs, or hot chocolate, it combines and it ends up making the energy go slower than it would in either one,” thus amplifying the tissue damage. Lance said that when it crossed the lungs of the crewmen, the shockwave was slowed to about 30 m/s.

While a normal blast shockwave travelling in air should last less than 10 milliseconds, Lance calculated that the Hunley crew’s lungs were subjected to 60 milliseconds or more of trauma.

“That creates kind of a worst case scenario for the lungs,” Lance said. Shear forces would tear apart the delicate structures where the blood supply meets the air supply, filling the lungs with blood and killing the crew instantly. It’s likely they also suffered traumatic brain injuries from being so close to such a large blast, Lance added.

Traumatic blast injuries have unfortunately become a familiar part of recent U.S. military history, but “the injuries experienced by soldiers in a Humvee who hit an IED are different because they are injured mostly by shrapnel and the destruction of the vehicle,” Lance said. “In that case, there are shrapnel effects and effects from the damage to the vehicle that cause broken bones and other injuries. But the crew of the Hunley were protected by the hull. It was just the blast wave itself that propagated into the vessel, so their injuries would have been purely in the soft tissues, in the lungs and in the brain.”

The sub’s design was known to be precarious. During development and testing, the Hunley had sunk twice, drowning 13 crewmen including its namesake, Horace L. Hunley, a privateer who had the submarine built from an old ship’s boiler in Alabama in 1863.

Lance says the designers of the powderkeg weapon also may have recognized the dangers of being too close to a blast in water. Her historical research found that they stayed hundreds of yards away from test blasts of devices that were significantly smaller than the bomb that sank the Housatonic.

“Blast travels really far underwater,” Lance said. “If you’re practicing 200 yards away, and then you triple the size of your bomb and put it 16 feet away, you have to be at least aware that there’s a possibility of injury.”

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 An oil painting by Conrad Wise Chapman, “Submarine Torpedo Boat H.L. Hunley, Dec. 6, 1863.” Credit: Conrad Wise Chapman

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 An x-ray reconstruction of the interior of the H.L.Hunley shows the color coded skeletons of the eight crewmen still at their stations with no broken bones. Credit: Friends of the Hunley

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Lance’s calculations are based on tests she did with a 6-1/2 foot mild steel scale model of the Hunley she had built for her experiments. Fitted with interior sensors and floated in water, the model sub was subjected to a series of pressurized-air blasts and scaled black powder explosions. For several reasons, her scale-model blasts ended up being somewhat weaker than what the Hunley crew experienced.

Lance’s dissertation research included searching the National Archives in Washington, testing historically accurate sheets of iron, a dive-certified ATF agent expert in explosives, a Civil War reenactor with a working, period-accurate rifle, and a visit to a museum at DuPont’s original black powder mill.

Scholars at Clemson who have been painstakingly removing concretions from the sub’s cramped interior to learn more about its fate have been evaluating several possible explanations: among them, the crew suffocated, they drowned, a ‘lucky shot’ from Housatonic’s small arms fire breached the hull, or shear forces broke a valve and the sub flooded rapidly.

But Lance has tested and ruled out all of those ideas. “All the physical evidence points to the crew taking absolutely no action in response to a flood or loss of air,” she said.

Lance says her evidence points to a very sudden, soft-tissue injury, rather than drowning or suffocation. “If anyone had survived, they may have tried to release the keel ballast weights, set the bilge pumps to pump water, or tried to get out the hatches, but none of these actions were taken,” she writes in her paper, which is part of her dissertation research.

Article Source: Duke University news release

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The research was supported by the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation Endowment Fund at Duke University, the Department of Defense SMART Scholarship Program, the US Army MURI program (U Penn prime – W911NF-10-1-0526) and an Exploratory Research Grant from the Hagley Library’s Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society.

Lance is working on a book about the Hunley and the experiments that were required to solve the mystery.

*”Air Blast Injuries Killed The Crew Of The Submarine H.L. Hunley,” Rachel M. Lance, Lucas Stalcup, Brad Wojtylak, Cameron R. Bass. PLOS ONE, Aug. 23, 2017. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182244

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UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES—Excavations of architecture and associated deposits left by hunter-gatherers in the Black Desert in eastern Jordan have revealed bones from wild sheep – a species previously not identified in this area in the Late Pleistocene. According to the team of University of Copenhagen archaeologists, who led the excavations, the discovery is further evidence that the region often seen as a ‘marginal zone’ was capable of supporting a variety of resources, including a population of wild sheep, 14,500 years ago.

A study by a team of archaeologists based at the University of Copenhagen published today in the Royal Society journal Open Science documents that the region now known as the Black Desert in eastern Jordan could sustain a population of wild sheep.

“On the basis of morphological and metrical analysis of the faunal remains from Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A hunter-gatherer deposits, we can document that wild sheep would have inhabited the local environment year-round and formed an important resource for the human population to target for food. Most significantly, however, the presence of the substantial number of bones identified as mouflon extends the known range of wild sheep. This means that we cannot rely on broad scale maps showing ancient wild animal distributions as neat lines,” said zooarchaeologist and first-author of the study Lisa Yeomans of the University of Copenhagen.

Adaptive hunter-gatherers

The team have been investigating human occupation in the Late Pleistocene of eastern Jordan. The Levant (i.e. modern-day Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria) has long been recognised as an important region associated with changes in social complexity and shifts in subsistence economy that pre-empted the shift to agriculture and farming. Hitherto investigations have generally focused on the Natufian occupation in the Levantine corridor while eastern Jordan was considered a more marginal environment.

Recent investigations, however, have shown this ‘marginal environment’ of eastern Jordan to be a resource rich environment which offered people the opportunity to hunt a range of species.

“Our findings illustrate how adaptive humans were nearly 14,500 years ago in a period of climatic change: Wild sheep offered the Natufian and later Pre-Pottery Neolithic populations one of a myriad of resources that could be exploited during the Late Pleistocene even in this more marginal environment beyond the Mediterranean zone. Despite the influences of climate on the resources presented to these hunter-foragers, their subsistence strategies were flexible and they could shift focus. Hunting wild sheep is just one of the ways that this is reflected in the archaeological record,” said Lisa Yeomans.

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 Semi-subterranean basalt paved structure in the Black Desert, dated to nearly 14,500 years ago. Credit: University of Copenhagen

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Article Source: University of Copenhagen news release

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Read the research paper ‘Expansion of the known distribution of Asiatic mouflon (Ovis orientalis) in the Late Pleistocene of the Southern Levant’ in Royal Society’s journal Open Science.

Read more about the Late Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic Occupation of the Black Desert project at the University of Copenhagen.

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AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY—WASHINGTON, Aug. 21, 2017—Molten lava, volcanic ash, modern grime, salt, humidity. The ancient painting of a Roman woman has been through it all, and it looks like it. Scientists now report that a new type of high-resolution X-ray technology is helping them discover just how stunning the original portrait once was, element-by-element. The technique could help conservators more precisely restore this image, as well as other ancient artworks.

The researchers are presenting their work today at the 254th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world’s largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features nearly 9,400 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

“Science is allowing us to get closer to the people who lived in Herculaneum,” says Eleonora Del Federico, Ph.D. “By unraveling the details of wall paintings that are no longer visible to the naked eye, we are in essence bringing these ancient people back to life. And learning more about the materials and techniques they used will help us to better preserve this artistry for future generations.”

Herculaneum was an ancient Roman resort town near modern-day Naples on the Italian coast. The city, along with nearby Pompeii, was destroyed during an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. For centuries, Herculaneum was buried under 66 feet of volcanic material, which helped preserve much of the artwork in the city. Ironically, it was only when Herculaneum was rediscovered and excavation began in the mid-19th century that many of the paintings, frescos and statues started to deteriorate. Humidity, temperature variations, salt and other atmospheric agents have done most of the damage. The portrait of the young woman, for instance, was only excavated about 70 years ago. Del Federico, who is at Pratt Institute’s School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, speculates that when it was first uncovered, the image was probably stunning. But she says just a few decades of exposure to the elements has wrought incalculable damage to it.

To help scientists involved with the Herculaneum Conservation Project better understand what they need to do to preserve this artwork, Del Federico and colleagues at the Pratt Institute and XGLab SRL sought to find out more about the wall paintings hidden beneath accumulating layers of crystalized salt and muck.

In one of the first-of-its-kind field studies, the researchers used a recently developed portable macro X-ray fluorescence (macro XRF) instrument, ELIO by XGLab SRL, to scan and analyze a painting of a young woman in the ancient city. This new instrument allows scientists to noninvasively analyze a painting without having to move it or have the device come into contact with the artwork. ELIO can produce maps of the elements, such as iron, lead and copper, in the painting. Del Federico says these insights could help conservators choose cleaning solvents that are compatible with the elements in a painting and possibly allow much of its original magnificence to be restored.

After she used the method, Del Federico was surprised at how much detail it uncovered. The analysis revealed that the artist had sketched the young woman with an iron-based pigment and then highlighted around her eyes with a lead pigment. High levels of potassium in her cheeks suggested that green earth pigment was used as an underpainting to help create a “flesh” color. But the analysis also revealed much more.

“This young woman is gone forever, but our study has revealed in remarkable detail her humanity, her thoughtful expression and her beauty,” Del Federico says.

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 An iron element map (right) made with new X-ray technology reveals the underlying craftsmanship hidden beneath a damaged portrait of a Roman woman (left). Credit: Roberto Alberti, Ph.D.

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Article Source: American Chemical Society news release

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This research was done in conjunction with the Herculaneum Conservation Project. Del Federico acknowledges funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Stockman Family Foundation and the Izchak Friedman Endowed Scholarship.

The American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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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.

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY—A team of archaeologists from The Australian National University (ANU) has uncovered a vast trading network which operated in Vietnam from around 4,500 years ago up until around 3,000 years ago.

A new study shows a number of settlements along the Mekong Delta region of Southern Vietnam were part of a sophisticated scheme where large volumes of items were manufactured and circulated over hundreds of kilometres.

Lead researcher Dr Catherine Frieman School of the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology said the discovery significantly changes what was known about early Vietnamese culture.

“We knew some artefacts were being moved around but this shows evidence for a major trade network that also included specialist tool-makers and technological knowledge. It’s a whole different ball game,” Dr Frieman said.

“This isn’t a case of people producing a couple of extra items on top of what they need. It’s a major operation.”

The discovery was made after Dr Frieman, an expert in ancient stone tools, was brought in to look at a collection of stone items found by researchers at a site called Rach Nui in Southern Vietnam.

Dr Frieman found a sandstone grinding stone used to make tools such as axe heads out of stone believed to come from a quarry located over 80 kilometres away in the upper reaches of the Dong Nai River valley.

“The Rach Nui region had no stone resources. So the people must have been importing the stone and working it to produce the artefacts,” she said.

“People were becoming experts in stone tool making even though they live no-where near the source of any stone.”

Dr Phillip Piper of the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, an expert in Vietnamese archaeology, is working to map the transition from hunting and gathering to farming across Southeast Asia.

“Vietnam has an amazing archaeological record with a number of settlements and sites that provide significant information on the complex pathways from foraging to farming in the region” Dr Piper said.

“In southern Vietnam, there are numerous archaeological sites of the Neolithic period that are relatively close together, and that demonstrate considerable variation in material culture, methods of settlement construction and subsistence.

“This suggests that communities that established settlements along the various tributaries and on the coast during this period rapidly developed their own social, cultural and economic trajectories.

“Various complex trading networks emerged between these communities, some of which resulted in the movements of materials and manufacturing ideas over quite long distances”

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 The Rach Nui site in Southern Vietnam under excavation. Credit: ANU

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 A stone grinding tool found at Rach Nui in Southern Vietnam. Credit: ANU

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Article Source: Australian National University news release

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The research has been published in the journal Antiquity.

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AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—New research from Tel Aviv University reveals that citrons and lemons were clear status symbols for the ancient Roman ruling elite and plots the route and evolution of the citrus trade in the ancient Mediterranean.

The study is based on a collection of ancient texts, art, artifacts, and archaeobotanical remains such as fossil pollen grains, charcoals, seeds, and other fruit remnants. It was led by archaeobotanist Dr. Dafna Langgut of TAU’s Institute of Archaeology and The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and recently published in HortScience.

Until the first century AD, the only citrus produce available to the ancient Romans were the extremely rare and inordinately expensive citrons and lemons. “Today, citrus orchards are a major component of the Mediterranean landscape and one of the most important cultivated fruits in the region. But citrus is not native to the Mediterranean Basin and originated in Southeast Asia,” Dr. Langgut said.

“My findings show that citrons and lemons were the first citrus fruits to arrive in the Mediterranean and were status symbols for the elite. All other citrus fruits most probably spread more than a millennium later for economic reasons.”

The first Roman lemon?

At first the Romans only had access to rough-skinned citrons, also known as etrogim — mostly rind and dry, tasteless flesh. The citron arrived in Rome from what is now Israel. The earliest botanical remains of the citron were identified in a Persian royal garden near Jerusalem and dated to the 5th-4th centuries BC. It is presumed that it spread from there to other locations around the Mediterranean.

“The first remains of the earliest lemon, found in the Roman Forum, date to right around the time of Jesus Christ, the end of the first century BC and early first century AD,” said Dr. Langgut. “It appears that the citron was considered a valuable commodity due to its healing qualities, symbolic use, pleasant odor and rarity. Only the rich could have afforded it. Its spread therefore was helped more by its high social status, its significance in religion and its unique features, rather than its culinary qualities.”

According to Dr. Langgut, sour oranges, limes and pomelos were introduced to the West by Muslim traders via Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula much later, in the 10th century AD.

Muslim trade routes

“It is clear that Muslim traders played a crucial role in the dispersal of cultivated citrus in Northern Africa and Southern Europe,” Dr. Langgut said. “It’s also evident because the common names of many of the citrus types were derived from Arabic, following an earlier diversification in Southeast Asia. Muslims controlled extensive territory and commerce routes from India to the Mediterranean.”

According to the research, the sweet orange associated with Israel today only dates as far back as the 15th century and was the product of a trade route established by the Genoese and, later, the Portuguese. The sticky-sweet mandarin was introduced to the Mediterranean only in the beginning of the 19th century.

“It wasn’t until the 15th century that the sweet orange arrived on European tables. By the time mandarins appeared in the 19th century, citrus fruits were considered commonplace,” said Dr. Lanngut. “They were cash crops rather than luxury items.”

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 Lemons growing on the island of Malta. Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University news release

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The researcher is currently determining which plants were grown in the gardens of Herod the Great’s palaces, with the support of the Israel Science Foundation.

American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) supports Israel’s most influential, comprehensive and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (TAU). TAU is recognized and celebrated internationally for creating an innovative, entrepreneurial culture on campus that generates inventions, startups and economic development in Israel. For three years in a row, TAU ranked 9th in the world, and first in Israel, for alumni going on to become successful entrepreneurs backed by significant venture capital, a ranking that surpassed several Ivy League universities. To date, 2,400 patents have been filed out of the University, making TAU 29th in the world for patents among academic institutions.

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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.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK—The ancient Romans were famous for their advanced water supply. But the drinking water in the pipelines may have been poisoned on a scale that could have led to daily problems like vomiting, diarrhoea, and liver and kidney damage. This is the finding of analyses of water pipe from Pompeii.

University of Southern Denmark chemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a specialist in archaeological chemistry, revealed through the analysis of a piece of water pipe from Pompeii that the pipes contained high levels of the toxic chemical element, antimony.

The result has been published in the journal Toxicology Letters.

Romans poisoned themselves

For many years, archaeologists believed that the Romans’ water pipes were problematic when it came to public health. After all, they were made of lead: a heavy metal that accumulates in the body and eventually shows up as damage to the nervous system and organs. Lead is also very harmful to children. So there has been a long-lived thesis that at least some Romans poisoned themselves to a point of ruin through their drinking water.

However, this thesis is not always tenable. A lead pipe gets calcified rather quickly, thereby preventing the lead from getting into the drinking water. In other words, there were only short periods when the drinking water was poisoned by lead: for example, when the pipes were laid or when they were repaired: assuming, of course, that there was lime in the water, which there usually was, says Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

Instead, he believes that the Romans’ drinking water may have been poisoned by the chemical element, antimony, which was found mixed with the lead.

Advanced equipment at SDU

Unlike lead, antimony is acutely toxic. In other words, you react quickly after drinking poisoned water. The element is particularly irritating to the bowels, and the reactions are excessive vomiting and diarrhoea that can lead to dehydration. In severe cases it can also affect the liver and kidneys and, in the worst-case scenario, can cause cardiac arrest.

A small metal fragment of 40 mg, which Rasmussen obtained from a French colleague, Professor Philippe Charlier of the Max Fourestier Hospital, was analysed. “The fact is that we have some particularly advanced equipment at SDU, which enables us to detect chemical elements in a sample and, ever more importantly, to measure where they occur in large concentrations,” said Rasmussen.

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 Pompeii was supported by a sophisticated water pipe system. Wikimedia Commons

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 The technology used to analyze the lead pipe sample at the University of Southern Denmark. Credit: SDU

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Volcano made it worse

Rasmussen emphasizes that he only analysed one small fragment of water pipe from Pompeii. He says it will take several analyses before scientists can get a more precise picture of the extent to which Roman public health was affected.

But there is no question that the drinking water in Pompeii contained alarming concentrations of antimony, and that the concentration was even higher than in other parts of the Roman Empire, because Pompeii was located in the vicinity of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius. Antimony occurs naturally in groundwater near volcanoes.

Article Source: Adapted and edited from the University of Southern Denmark news release

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—An international team of archaeological scientists have put an end to the more than half-a-century old claim about the earliest copper smelting event at the Late Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey – one of the world’s best-studied prehistoric archaeological sites.

Scholars have been hotly debating the origins and spread of metallurgy for decades, mainly due to the relationship this technology had with the rise of social complexity and economy of the world’s first civilisations in the Near East.

Whether metallurgy was such an exceptional skill to have only been invented once or repeatedly at different locations is therefore still contentious. The proponents of the latter have just provided conclusive evidence of the incidental nature of what was held to be the key find for the single origin of metallurgy claim.

Published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the re-examination of a c. 8,500-year-old by-product from metal smelting, or ‘slag’, from the site of Çatalhöyük presents the conclusive reconstruction of events that led to the firing of a small handful of green copper minerals.

“From the beginning of our study it was clear that the small handful of ‘slag’ samples were only semi-baked. This indicated a non-intentional, or accidental copper firing event, but the ‘eureka’ moment of how and why that happened arrived quite late”, says Dr Miljana Radivojevic, lead author and researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.

“The co-authors had a lengthy debate about why the semi-baked copper minerals were deposited in a burial, but then when our pigment specialist (Camurcuo?lu) mentioned earlier examples of green and blue copper pigments in graves and our excavation specialist (Farid) reported firing events that charred bones and materials in the shallow graves, the penny started to drop”, she explains.

“The native copper artefacts from the site of Çatalhöyük were not chemically related to this non-intentionally produced metallurgical slag sample”, adds Professor Ernst Pernicka, of the University of Heidelberg, further strengthening the claim these authors elaborated in the article.

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(Left) Blue pigments (azurite) scattered as lumps in Burial 1202 in Çatalhöyük (campaign 2003). The distribution might have been an indication of deposition as either loose lumps or in a (skin or fabric) pouch that had decayed (courtesy of the Çatalhöyük Research Project); (Right) Green pigment (malachite) from Burial 757 (campaign 2001) in Çatalhöyük, discovered as a lump that supposedly preserved the shape of the original organic carrier (fabric or skin pouch). Note the crumbly nature of recovered pigment and soil coating. Courtesy of the Çatalhöyük Research Project 

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Professor Thilo Rehren, of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, explains the significance of these results: “The invention of metallurgy is foundational for all modern cultures, and clearly happened repeatedly in different places across the globe. As we have seen, not every piece of semi-molten black and green stuff from an excavation is necessarily metallurgical slag. Only materials science methods, in combination with good archaeological records, can distinguish between debris from intentional metal smelting and accidental waste from a destructive fire”.

“It has been a long journey for the materials now identified as vitrified copper minerals to be recognised as once important solely for their colour properties, and we can finally put this debate to rest”, comments Professor Ian Hodder, from Stanford University, who has been directing the excavations of Çatalhöyük for the past 25 years.

Article Source: University of Cambridge news release

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BOYCE THOMPSON INSTITUTE—Centuries ago, the ancient networks of the Silk Road facilitated a political and economic openness between the nations of Eurasia. But this network also opened pathways for genetic exchange that shaped one of the world’s most popular fruits: the apple. As travelers journeyed east and west along the Silk Road, trading their goods and ideas, they brought with them hitchhiking apple seeds, discarded from the choicest fruit they pulled from wild trees. This early selection would eventually lead to the 7,500 varieties of apple that exist today.

Researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) have been working hard to excavate the mysteries of the apple’s evolutionary history, and a new publication this week in Nature Communications reveals surprising insights into the genetic exchange that brought us today’s modern, domesticated apple, Malus domestica.

In collaboration with scientists from Cornell University and Shandong Agricultural University in China, the researchers sequenced and compared the genomes of 117 diverse apple accessions, including M. domestica and 23 wild species from North America, Europe, and East and central Asia.

A tale of two roads

The most exciting outcome of this genomic comparison is a comprehensive map of the apple’s evolutionary history. Previous studies have shown that the common apple, Malus domestica arose from the central Asian wild apple, Malus sieversii, with contributions from crabapples along the Silk Road as it was brought west to Europe.

With the results of this new study, the researchers could zoom in on the map for better resolution. “We narrowed down the origin of domesticated apple from very broad central Asia to Kazakhstan area west of Tian Shan Mountain,” explained Zhangjun Fei, BTI professor and lead author of this study.

In addition to pinpointing the western apple’s origin, the authors were excited to discover that the first domesticated apple had also traveled to the east, hybridizing with local wild apples along the way, yielding the ancestors of soft, dessert apples cultivated in China today.

“We pointed out two major evolutionary routes, west and east, along the Silk Road, revealing fruit quality changes in every step along the way,” summarized Fei.

Although wild M. sieversii grows east of Tian Shan Mountain, in the Xinjiang region of China, the ecotype there was never cultivated, and did not contribute to the eastern domesticated hybrid. Instead, it has remained isolated all these centuries, maintaining a pool of diversity yet untapped by human selection. First-author Yang Bai remarked, “it is a hidden jewel for apple breeders to explore further.”

The sour (but firm) side of the story

As the apple traveled west along the Silk Road in the hands of travelers, trees grew from dropped seeds and crossed with other wild apple varieties, including the incredibly sour European crabapple, Malus sylvestris. The sourness of crabapples was once described by Henry David Thoreau as, “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.”

The authors found that M. sylvestris has contributed so extensively to the apple’s genome that the modern apple is actually more similar to the sour crabapple than to its Kazakhstani ancestor, M. sieversii.

“For the ancestral species, Malus sieversii, the fruits are generally much larger than other wild apples. They are also soft and have a very plain flavor that people don’t like much,” Bai remarked.

The hybridization between ancient cultivated apples and M. sylvestris, followed by extensive human selection, gave us new apples that are larger and fuller in flavor, and with a crispy firmness that gives them a longer shelf life.

Bai further explained, “The modern domesticated apples have higher and well-balanced sugar and organic acid contents. That is how the apple started to become a popular and favored fruit.”

A sizeable discovery with big potential

A new flavor and texture may have put the apple into our pies, but size matters a great deal too. In crop breeding, one of the most desirable traits selected for is a larger fruit or seed. In nearly all cases of fruit domestication, the wild ancestor has tiny fruit that were shaped into their large, nutritious cultivated counterpart through centuries of selection. For example, the domesticated tomato is at least 100 times larger than its wild relatives.

“This is not quite the case for apple. Its domestication started with a medium to large-sized fruit,” asserted Bai. “It has great potential for further enlarging fruit size in breeding programs.”

By comparing the many different apple genomes, the researchers were able to find evidence supporting two different evolutionary steps contributing to apple’s size increase – one before, and one after domestication.

The large size of Malus sieversii compared to other wild apples gave it a great advantage for domestication. It had already evolved to a suitable size before it was even cultivated, likely making it more attractive to growers who would then not need to spend much effort selecting for larger fruits.

Such a lack of size selection also means that the genes responsible for size increase still retain a variability that holds potential for future selection. But it can also make identification of the size-associated genes difficult. Despite this, the extensive breadth of the new study allowed the researchers to identify several genetic markers underlying the fruit size increases, which is great news for breeders who might want to further increase the apple’s girth.

The apple (genome) falls far from the tree

While consumers may ask for better apples, breeders are met with difficulty when it comes to polishing apple traits. One major issue is that apple can’t self-pollinate. It can only cross with other varieties, introducing too much genetic variability with each generation. While genetic change is necessary to tweak a trait of interest, too much change will tweak everything. Combined with the several years to get from apple seed to fruit, this makes breeding for desired traits a challenge.

“The genomic regions and candidate genes under human selection for a certain trait identified in this study will be very helpful and inspiring to breeders working on the same trait,” asserted Fei, who expects that the results from this study will, “improve speed and accuracy of ‘marker-assisted selection’ in apple.”

Now with an extensive and diverse collection of representative apple genomes, thorough and careful analyses have allowed Fei’s group to distinguish important genetic markers that will greatly aid breeders in their quest for better apples – be it for disease resistance, shelf-life, taste, or even size.

When asked how big she thinks an apple could get through breeding, Bai responded with a twinkle in her eye, “Well, in my wild imagination, maybe one day it can be as big as a watermelon.”

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Map depicting apple’s ancient journey along the Silk Road. Credit: Alexa M Schmitz/Yang Bai

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Article Source: Boyce Thompson Institute news release

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Research reported in this news release was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31572091), the Special Fund for Agro-Scientific Research in the Public Interest of China (201303093), and the US National Science Foundation (IOS-0923312, IOS-1339287 and IOS-1539831).

About Boyce Thompson Institute:

Boyce Thompson Institute is a premier life sciences research institution located in Ithaca, New York on the Cornell University campus. BTI scientists conduct investigations into fundamental plant and life sciences research with the goals of increasing food security, improving environmental sustainability in agriculture and making basic discoveries that will enhance human health. Throughout this work, BTI is committed to inspiring and educating students and to providing advanced training for the next generation of scientists. For more information, visit http://www.bti.cornell.edu.

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA—AGRIGENTO, Italy (Aug. 15, 2017) – Some of the mystery behind one of Sicily’s largest ancient Roman villas is now solved thanks to a team of archeologists from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla. They’re the first to successfully excavate the 5,000 square meter Roman villa of Durreueli at Realmonte, located off the southern coast of Sicily.

Project director Dr. Davide Tanasi, assistant professor in the USF Department of History, and his students worked alongside USF’s Center for Virtualization and Applied Spatial Technologies (CVAST). Together they created terrestrial and aerial 3D scanning of the entire villa, an invaluable tool in guiding the excavation and interpreting the villa’s architectural phases.

Through a month of excavations, they determined the villa was consistently occupied between the 2nd and 7th century CE and reconfigured to settlement in the 5th century Common Era (CE). That conclusion comes following the discovery of new walls, floor levels, staircase and water channel.

The team found cookware and lamps along with a large quantity of African Late Roman pottery and related materials such as kiln spacers. This leads researchers to believe an important function of the village was to produce pottery, bricks and tiles in industrial scale, helping explain the economic history of Late Antique Sicily.

Parts of the Roman villa of Durreuli at Realmonte were uncovered during a Japanese-led excavation effort in 1979-1985, but the team did not discover such an extensive part of Roman history.

USF worked in conjunction with the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage of Agrigento and plans to continue its research next summer. Such an effort is important to USF and Tampa, as it is a sister city with Agrigento, the provincial capital in which Realmonte is located.

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Davide Tanasi, Ph.D., assistant professor in the USF Department of History, leads a team in uncovering the ancient Roman villa Durreueli at Realmonte. Credit: Dr. Davide Tanasi

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Article Source: University of South Florida news release

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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.