PLOS—Innovations in stone knapping technology during the South African Middle Stone Age enabled the creation of early projectile weapons, according to a study* published April 26, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Veerle Rots from University of Liège, Belgium, and colleagues.
The South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) is considered a period of major technological advancement, with hunter-gatherers introducing new manipulative techniques using heat and pressure to create stone projectile weapons. However, the timing and location of these developments is a topic of much debate.
The authors of the present study examined 25 weapon point fragments excavated from the Sibudu Cave site, analyzing their technological and functional differences and comparing them with reference samples produced for the purpose by an experienced knapper. Some of the points had two faces, a likely result of applying pressure to both sides. Some had serrations, or jagged edges, that were likely produced by a technique known as pressure flaking.
The researchers found that 14 of the 25 point fragments bore evidence of impact-related damage, animal residues, and wear features that strongly indicated that these points may have been used for hunting. Examination of the impact-related fractures and the distribution of the points indicated that these points may have been attached to handles to form projectile weapons and that these weapons were projected from a distance, most likely with a flexible spear-thrower or a bow.
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Sibudu Cave is a rock shelter in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from 77,000 years ago to 38,000 years ago. Text and image credit:DarkaRolandStark, Wikimedia Commons
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Analyzed serrated pieces from Sibudu Cave. Credit: Rots et al (2017)
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While further research would help to confirm the timeline and development of stone knapping techniques, the new Sibudu Cave site data may push back the evidence for the use of pressure flaking during the MSA to 77,000 years ago. The authors note that these findings highlight the diversity of technical innovations adopted by southern African MSA humans.
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—The most comprehensive study on the bones of Homo floresiensis, a species of tiny human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, has found that they most likely evolved from an ancestor in Africa and not from Homo erectus as has been widely believed.
The study by The Australian National University (ANU) found Homo floresiensis, dubbed “the hobbits” due to their small stature, were most likely a sister species of Homo habilis — one of the earliest known species of human found in Africa 1.75 million years ago.
Data from the study concluded there was no evidence for the popular theory that Homo floresiensis evolved from the much larger Homo erectus, the only other early hominid known to have lived in the region with fossils discovered on the Indonesian mainland of Java.
Study leader Dr Debbie Argue of the ANU School of Archaeology & Anthropology, said the results should help put to rest a debate that has been hotly contested ever since Homo floresiensis was discovered.
“The analyses show that on the family tree, Homo floresiensis was likely a sister species of Homo habilis. It means these two shared a common ancestor,” Dr Argue said.
“It’s possible that Homo floresiensis evolved in Africa and migrated, or the common ancestor moved from Africa then evolved into Homo floresiensis somewhere.”
Homo floresiensis is known to have lived on Flores until as recently as 54,000 years ago.
The study was the result of an Australian Research Council grant in 2010 that enabled the researchers to explore where the newly-found species fits in the human evolutionary tree.
Where previous research had focused mostly on the skull and lower jaw, this study used 133 data points ranging across the skull, jaws, teeth, arms, legs and shoulders.
Dr Argue said none of the data supported the theory that Homo floresiensis evolved from Homo erectus.
“We looked at whether Homo floresiensis could be descended from Homo erectus,” she said.
“We found that if you try and link them on the family tree, you get a very unsupported result. All the tests say it doesn’t fit — it’s just not a viable theory.”
Dr Argue said this was supported by the fact that in many features, such as the structure of the jaw, Homo floresiensis was more primitive than Homo erectus.
“Logically, it would be hard to understand how you could have that regression — why would the jaw of Homo erectus evolve back to the primitive condition we see in Homo floresiensis?”
Dr Argue said the analyses could also support the theory that Homo floresiensis could have branched off earlier in the timeline, more than 1.75 million years ago.
“If this was the case Homo floresiensis would have evolved before the earliest Homo habilis, which would make it very archaic indeed,” she said.
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Homo floresiensis skull 1 Credit: Stuart Hay – ANU
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Homo floresiensis skull 2 Credit: Stuart Hay – ANU
Professor Mike Lee of Flinders University and the South Australian Museum, used statistical modeling to analyse the data.
“When we did the analysis there was really clear support for the relationship with Homo habilis. Homo floresiensis occupied a very primitive position on the human evolutionary tree,” Professor Lee said.
“We can be 99 per cent sure it’s not related to Homo erectus and nearly 100 per cent chance it isn’t a malformed Homo sapiens,” Professor Lee said.
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 ADELAIDE—Studies of bones from Ice Age megafaunal animals across Eurasia and the Americas have revealed that major increases in environmental moisture occurred just before many species suddenly became extinct around 11-15,000 years ago. The persistent moisture resulting from melting permafrost and glaciers caused widespread glacial-age grasslands to be rapidly replaced by peatlands and bogs, fragmenting populations of large herbivore grazers.
Research led by the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, has revealed that the ancient bones preserve direct biochemical evidence of the environmental upheavals, which can be traced through time.
Using 511 radiocarbon dated bones from animals such as bison, horse, and llamas the team was able to investigate the role of environmental change in the mysterious megafaunal extinctions, which claimed the vast majority of existing large land animals such as giant sloths and sabre-toothed cats.
“We didn’t expect to find such clear signals of moisture increases occurring so widely across all of Europe, Siberia and the Americas,” says study leader Professor Alan Cooper, ACAD Director. “The timing varied between regions, but matches the collapse of glaciers and permafrost and occurs just before most species go extinct.
The international team of researchers, including the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Oslo, the Yukon Government, and palaeontologists across Russia and Canada, measured nitrogen isotopes preserved in dated ancient animal bones and teeth recovered from permafrost areas and caves across Europe, Siberia, North and South America. They found distinctive biochemical signals reflecting massive increases of moisture on the landscape.
“Grassland megafauna were critical to the food chains. They acted like giant pumps that shifted nutrients around the landscape”, says lead author Dr Tim Rabanus-Wallace, from the University of Adelaide. “When the moisture influx pushed forests and tundras to replace the grasslands, the ecosystem collapsed and took many of the megafauna with it.”
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Extinct megafauna, scene from La Brea Tar Pits. Wikimedia Commons
“The idea of moisture-driven extinctions is really exciting because it can also explain why Africa is so different, with a much lower rate of megafaunal extinctions and many species surviving to this day,” says Professor Cooper. “Africa’s position across the equator means that grassland zones have always surrounded the central monsoon region. The stable grasslands are what has allowed large herbivores to persist – rather than any special wariness of hunters learned from humans evolving there.”
Professor Matthew Wooller, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says: “We find that on different continents the climate changes happened at different times, but they all showed that moisture increased massively just prior to extinction. The really elegant feature of this study is that it produces direct evidence from the fossils themselves – these extinct creatures are informing us about the climate they experienced leading up to their own extinctions.”
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—According to new research, nomadic horse culture—famously associated with Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes—can trace its roots back more than 3,000 years in the eastern Eurasian Steppes, in the territory of modern Mongolia.
The study, published online March 31 in Journal of Archaeological Science, produces scientific estimates of the age of horse bones found from archaeological sites belonging to a culture known as the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex. This culture, named for the beautiful carved standing stones (“deer stones”) and burial mounds (khirigsuurs) it built across the Mongolian Steppe, is linked with some of the oldest evidence for nomadic herding and domestic livestock use in eastern Eurasia. At both deer stones and khirigsuurs, stone mounds containing ritual burials of domestic horses – sometimes numbering in the hundreds or thousands – are found buried around the edge of each monument.
A team of researchers from several academic institutions – including the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Yale University, University of Chicago, the American Center for Mongolian Studies, and the National Museum of Mongolia – used radiocarbon dating to estimate the spread of domestic horse ritual at deer stones and khirigsuurs.
When an organism dies, an unstable radioactive molecule present in living tissues, known as radiocarbon, begins to decay at a known rate. By measuring the remaining concentration of radiocarbon in organic materials, such as horse bone, archaeologists can estimate how many years ago an animal took its final step. Many previous archaeological projects in Mongolia produced radiocarbon date estimates from horse remains found at these Bronze Age archaeological sites. However, because each of these measurements must be calibrated to account for natural variation in the environment over time, individual dates have large amounts of error and uncertainty, making them difficult to aggregate or interpret in groups.
By using a statistical technique known as Bayesian analysis – which combines probability with archaeological information to improve precision for groups of radiocarbon dates – the study authors were able to produce a high-precision chronology model for early domestic horse use in Mongolia. Lead author William Taylor, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, says that this model “enables us for the first time to link horse use with other important cultural developments in ancient Mongolia and eastern Eurasia, and evaluate the role of climate and environmental change in the local origins of horse riding.”
According to the study, domestic horse ritual spread rapidly across the Mongol Steppe at around 1200 BC – several hundred years before mounted horsemen are clearly documented in historical records. When considered alongside other evidence for horse transport in the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex these results suggest that Mongolia was an epicenter for early horse culture – and probably early mounted horseback riding.
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“Deer stone” stela in Bayankhongor province, central Mongolia, surrounded by small stone mounds containing domestic horse remains. Credit: Photo: William Taylor
Precision Chronology: According to new research, nomadic horse culture—famously associated with Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes—can trace its roots back more than 3,000 years in the eastern Eurasian Steppes, in the territory of modern Mongolia. Photo: William Taylor
The study has important consequences for our understanding of human responses to climate change. For example, one particularly influential hypothesis argues that horse riding and nomadic herding societies developed during the late second millennium BCE, as a response to drought and a worsening climate. Taylor and colleagues’ results indicate instead that early horsemanship took place during a wetter, more productive climate period – which may have given herders more room to experiment with horse breeding and transport.
In recent years, scholars have become increasingly aware of the role played by Inner Asian nomads in early waves of globalization. A key article by Dr. Michael Frachetti and colleagues, published this month in Nature argues that nomadic movement patterns shaped the early trans-Eurasian trade networks that would eventually move goods, people, and information across the continent. The development of horsemanship by Mongolian cultures might have been one of the most influential changes in Eurasian prehistory – laying the groundwork for the economic and ecological exchange networks that defined the Old World for centuries to come.
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.
PENN STATE—Reconstructed food webs from the Ancestral Puebloan southwestern United States show the complexity and interconnectedness of humans, other animals, crops and the environment, in an area of uncertain climate and resources, according to researchers, who think climate change and human decisions then, may shed light on future human choices.
“As southwestern archaeologists, we know that Ancestral Puebloan people were intrinsically connected to the environment,” said Stefani Crabtree, postdoctoral fellow in human behavioral ecology in the Department of Anthropology, Penn State. “But, most food webs have omitted humans.”
Traditionally, food webs, while they map the interaction of all the animals and plants in an area, usually do not emphasize the human component. Crabtree and colleagues created a digital food web that captures all categories of consumers and consumed, can be defined for specific time periods and can also represent food webs after major food sources or predators disappear from the area. If an area suddenly becomes devoid of deer or humans or corn, for example, a food web of that situation can show where predators went to find prey, or which prey thrived for lack of a predator.
These knockout food webs—webs missing a specific predator or prey—show the changes and pressures on the food sources substituted for the missing ones, or the changes that occur when pressure is removed by removing a major consumer. The researchers report the results of their study today (Apr. 10) in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
“When people show up in the area around A.D. 600 they bring corn,” said Crabtree. “It takes a while for critters to get used to it, but eventually, everything that eats vegetation, eats corn and prefers it.”
Humans bringing corn into an area is a major disruption of the existing food web. Planting corn means clearing fields to displace whatever plants and animals were there, creating a high-energy plant source of food and switching plant eaters to the preferred higher-calorie food source.
In the American Southwest, the Ancestral Puebloan people eventually preyed on their deer population enough so that they deer were no longer a reliable source of food. To compensate for this, they began to domesticate turkeys for food. Turkeys need to be fed corn if they are captive and that competes with corn for human consumption. At this time, corn made up 70 to 80 percent of Ancestral Puebloans’ food and so feeding turkeys altered the food web.
To create the food web, the team identified all the common, noninvasive species in the area. They then added species that were found in archaeological sites, but were absent from the modern lists. In some food webs, components are identified by their function, so all humming birds are considered flying pollinators, but in this case each type of humming bird received its own place in the web, linked to what it ate and what, if anything, ate it. This produced a very complicated web, but supplied exceptional redundancy.
“In the insect world it is harder to get at the data,” said Crabtree. “We have not been able to get at good databases so we aggregate at the functional level—pollinators or bloodsuckers for example.”
The exception to individual web entries then are invertebrates—insects, spiders, snails, etc.—that were classified by their function. Invertebrates are organized to the level of order and then grouped by function. With insects, for example, the researchers would group butterflies and moths that pollinated and sipped nectar, together in one group.
The overall food web had 334 nodes representing species or order-level functional groups with 11,344 links between predator and prey.
The researchers realize that there are differences in the environment between now and the Ancestral Puebloan period, but many things, such as pinon-juniper woodlands and sage flats are the same. Enough similarity exists for this approach to work.
The team did not produce just one overall food web, but also food webs corresponding to three archaeological locations and three time periods of Ancestral Pueblo occupation in the area —Grass Mesa Pueblo for Pueblo I, Albert Porter Pueblo for Pueblo II and Sand Canyon Pueblo for Pueblo III. They began with using archaeological assemblages from these sites incorporating all human prey and all human predators into the food web. Then they included the prey of the primary prey of humans and then predators of these human-prey species. Prey, in this case, includes animals, insects and plants.
When creating knockout food webs, the researchers included only those species that were found in reasonable quantities in the archaeological assemblages at those times.
“Knockout food webs are one of the best ways to understand how people interact with the environment,” said Crabtree. “Because we can remove something, predator or prey, and see what would happen.”
When major changes in climate variables such as drought, heat and lack of snowpack are factored in, the balance in the food web may become unstable. When food becomes scarce, most mobile creatures, animals and insects move to another location. During the time of the Ancestral Puebloans, this was possible and eventually, these people moved to the area of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and other places in New Mexico and Arizona.
“We didn’t have a long-term plan during the 600 years of Ancestral Pueblo habitation in the Mesa Verde region,” said Crabtree. “We don’t have a long-term plan today either. We don’t even have a four-year plan. Some people are pushing us to look closely at climate change.”
In the past, people migrated, said Crabtree. Unless we figure out better strategies, where are we going to migrate out to? We do not have a place to go, she said.
What people plant and eat has a great effect on the environment and on ecosystems. In the end, those choices will impact human survival, according to the researchers.
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This is a sample food web with red nodes representing primary producers, orange nodes primary consumers, yellow-orange nodes omnivores, true-yellow nodes are true carnivores. This draft food web was created with the program Network3D from foodwebs.org Credit: Stefani Crabtree, Penn State
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This is Square Tower House in Mesa Verde National Park. Credit: Nate Crabtree
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This work is part of a collaboration of researchers creating resolved food webs from a variety of places. Crabtree believes that she can compare this project to others that include humans in other geographical areas to help understand ecosystems with humans in them.
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 HUDDERSFIELD—A new article co-authored by experts at the University of Huddersfield bolsters a theory that the spread of agriculture throughout Europe followed migration into the Mediterranean from the Near East more than 13,000 years ago – thousands of years earlier than widely believed.
This was during the Late Glacial period and initially the migrants were hunter-gatherers. But they later developed a knowledge of agriculture from further newly-arrived populations from the Near East – where farming began – and during the Neolithic, approximately 8,000 years ago, they began to colonise other parts of Europe, taking their farming practices with them.
The University of Huddersfield is home to the Archaeogenetics Research Group, which uses DNA analysis to solve questions from archaeology, anthropology and history. It is headed by Professor Martin Richards, and the issue of the genetic ancestry of Europeans has been one of his major research areas for many years.
Now he is a principal contributor to the article that appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It describes how the researchers used almost 1,500 mitochondrial genome lineages to date the arrival of people in different regions of Europe.
It was found that in central Europe and Iberia, these could mainly be traced to the Neolithic. However, in the central and eastern Mediterranean, they predominantly dated to the much earlier Late Glacial period.
The authors write that: “This supports a scenario in which the genetic pool of Mediterranean Europe was partly a result of Late Glacial expansions from a Near Eastern refuge, and that this formed an important source pool for subsequent Neolithic expansions into the rest of Europe”.
Professor Richards explained that he and his co-researchers carried out their latest investigations using modern DNA samples because in Italy and Greece there is an acute shortage of pre-Neolithic skeletal remains from which ancient samples can be taken. The warmth of the climate has resulted in low levels of preservation.
“We haven’t been able to fill the gap with ancient DNA, so we found a way to get round that by looking at modern samples. Instead of dating the lineages across Europe as a whole we have dated them firstly in the Mediterranean area and then we have looked at what happens if you assume that they have arrived in that area and then moved on,” said Professor Richards.
Now he hopes that new sources of ancient DNA in Italy and Greece will be discovered, so that his migration scenario can be tested more directly.
“In the past, it’s been difficult to recover DNA from these kinds of environments but there have been so many technical developments in the recovery of ancient DNA in the last few years that I think it will happen soon.” In fact, another team of researchers has already confirmed one of the paper’s main predictions, by looking at pre-Neolithic DNA from Sardinia, just one week ago.
The research was carried out primarily by Dr Joana Pereira as part of her PhD project, supervised jointly by Professor Richards and Dr Luisa Pereira of the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology at the University of Porto, alongside Dr Pedro Soares of the University of Minho, in Portugal. The authors of the new article – titled Reconciling evidence from ancient and contemporary genomes: a major source for the European Neolithic within Mediterranean Europe – also include Dr Maria Pala, who is Senior Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and a key member of the archaeogenetics group.
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—Great apes help a person access an object when that person thinks they knows where it is but is mistaken, according to a study* published April 5, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Buttelmann from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, and colleagues.
Understanding when someone else has a false belief is a mark of advanced social cognition in people, and researchers had believed that great apes lacked this capacity. Using a test that was developed for 1.5-year-old human infants, Buttelmann and colleagues evaluated understanding of others’ beliefs in 34 great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans) at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany.
The test involved a person placing an object in one of two boxes. Another person then took this object out of this box, put it into another box, and locked both boxes. For the true belief condition, the first person stayed in the room—so this person knew where the object was and thus had a true belief. For the false belief condition, however, the first person was out of the room during the switch—so while he thought he knew where the object was, he was mistaken and thus had a false belief. In both conditions, the first person tried to open the box he originally had put his object in. The apes knew how to unlock the boxes, and could decide which box to open for the first person during the test.
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Right before the response phase, the experimenter tries to open the box which he believes contains his object (false-belief condition) or which he knows is empty (true-belief condition). In both conditions this is the same empty box; all that differs is the experimenter’s belief about what is in it. Credit: Buttelmann et al (2017)
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The researchers found that, like human infants, great apes were more likely to help the person find the object when he had a false belief about which box the object was in. This suggests that great apes used their understanding of the person’s beliefs about reality to decide how to help him. If true, say the researchers, great apes, like people, may have the capacity to “read” the minds of others in social interactions.
“This study shows for the first time that great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans) can use an understanding of false beliefs to help others appropriately,” says David Buttelmann.
KENT STATE UNIVERSITY—Approximately 13,500 years after nomadic Clovis hunters crossed the frozen land bridge from Asia to North America, researchers are still asking questions and putting together clues as to how they not only survived in a new landscape with unique new challenges but adapted with stone tools and weapons to thrive for thousands of years.
Kent State University’s Metin Eren, Ph.D., director of archaeology and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and his colleagues are not only asking these questions but testing their unique new theories. They want to better understand the engineering, techniques and purposes of Clovis weapon technologies. Specifically, they study stone projectile points, such as arrowheads and spear points, made by flint knapping, the ancient practice of chipping away at the edges of rocks to shape them into weapons and tools.
In their most recent article published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Eren and his co-authors from Southern Methodist University (Brett A. Story, David J. Meltzer and Kaitlyn A. Thomas), University of Tulsa (Briggs Buchanan), Rogers State University (Brian N. Andrews), Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri (Michael J. O’Brien) explain the flint knapping technique of “fluting” the Clovis points, which could be considered the first truly American invention. This singular technological attribute, the flake removal or “flute,” is absent from the stone-tool repertoire of Pleistocene Northeast Asia, where the Clovis ancestors came from.
Archaeologists have debated for years as to why the Clovis added this flute feature to their points. Basically, it is a thin groove chipped off at the base on both sides, perhaps first made by accident, which logically makes it very thin and brittle. However, after several types of testing, the researchers have reported that this thinning of the base can make it better able to withstand and absorb the shock of colliding with a hard object, such as the bone of a mastodon or bison.
This fluted point turned out to be an invention that allowed these colonizers to travel great distances with some confidence that their weaponry would hold up at least long enough until they could find the next rock quarry to make new points.
“It was risky and couldn’t have been easy to learn how to do this effectively,” Eren explained. “Archaeological evidence suggests that up to one out of five points break when you try to chip this fluted base, and it takes at least 30 minutes to produce a finished specimen. So, though it was a time-consuming process and risky technique, successfully fluted Clovis points would have been extremely reliable, especially while traveling great distances into unknown regions on a new continent. They needed points that would hold up and be used over and over again.”
In their article, the researchers compared standardized computer models of fluted and unfluted points, as well as experimental “real-world” test specimens, and found that the fluted-point base does in fact act as a “shock absorber,” increasing point robustness and ability to withstand physical stress via stress redistribution and damage relocation. In other words, upon impact, the brittle base of the spearhead crumples and absorbs some energy, which prevents fatal breaks elsewhere on the point so it could be reused.
“It’s amazing to think that people 12,000 years ago were flaking shock absorbers and engineering stone weapons in a way that it took 21st century modern engineering to figure out,” Eren said.
“As engineers, we don’t typically get to work with archaeologists, but this project has allowed us the exciting opportunity to provide additional tools from engineering mechanics to explore how fluting affects the behavior of Clovis points,” Story said.
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Pictured is a collection of Clovis point replicas and casts in the archaeology lab at Kent State University. Credit: Kent State University
Metin Eren, director of archaeology and an assistant professor of anthropology in Kent State University’s College of Arts and Sciences, demonstrates the ancient weapon-making technique of flint knapping a point in his laboratory on the Kent Campus. Credit: Kent State University
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.
Researchers report the genetic ancestry of indigenous Pacific Northwest populations based on ancient genome sequences. The Pacific Northwest Coast of North America played a potentially significant role in the initial peopling of the Americas. Research on the demographic history of this region has been hindered by the limited availability of ancient genomic data. Ripen Malhi and colleagues sequenced the genome of an ancient individual from southeastern Alaska from remains dated to approximately 10,300 years ago, as well as the genomes of two individuals from coastal British Columbia dated to 2,500 and 1,750 years ago. Comparison of the genome sequences with previously published ancient genomes from the Pacific Northwest and modern indigenous genomic data suggest that all three newly sequenced individuals share a common ancestry with the modern indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. Two other ancient individuals from the northwestern United States, dated to the same time period, appeared to belong to a separate lineage ancestral to modern Central and South American populations. According to the authors, the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest might belong to a genetic lineage dating back to at least 10,000 years, possibly stemming from the initial peopling of the region, and population structure may have existed in North America as far back as the late Pleistocene. State the researchers in the report, “we conclude from individuals sampled through time that people of the northern Northwest Coast belong to an early genetic lineage that may stem from a late Pleistocene coastal migration into the Americas”*.
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A smoky day at the Sugar Bowl—A Hupa Pacific Northwest Native American. By Edward S. Curtis, Photographer 1868-1952
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.
FACULTY OF SCIENCE – UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN—In an earlier study Professor Kristian Kristiansen from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, and their research teams, showed that the large demographic changes during the first part of the Bronze Age happened as a result of massive migrations of Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into Neolithic Europe. They were also able to show that plague was widespread in both Europe and Central Asia at this time.
Now Professor Kristiansen and Professor Willerslev with co-authors reveal a more detailed view of the mechanism behind the emerging culture known as the Corded Ware Culture—the result of the encounter between the Yamnaya and the Neolithic people. Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: “We are now for the first time able to combine results from genetics, strontium isotopes on mobility and diet, and historical linguistics on language change, to demonstrate how the integration process unfolded on the ground after the Yamnaya migrations from the steppe. In our grand synthesis we argue that Yamnaya migrants were predominantly males, who married women who came from neighbouring Stone Age farming societies.” These Stone Age Neolithic societies were based on large farming communities reflected in their collective burial ritual often in big stone chambers, so called megaliths—very different from the traditions of the incoming migrants.
The origin of the Yamnaya
The Yamnaya people originated on the Caspian steppes where they lived as pastoralists and herders, using wagons as mobile homes. From burial pits archaeologists have found extensive use of thick plant mats and felt covers. Their economy was based on meat, dairy products and fish, they were tall and rather healthy with little caries in their teeth. No agriculture is documented. Barrows were aligned in groups forming lines in the landscape to mark seasonal routes and after death diseased people were put into individual graves under small family barrows. Their burial ritual thus embodied a new perception of the individual and of small monogamous family groups as the foundation of society. The continent encountered by the Yamnaya people around 3000 BC had seen a decline in the agrarian Stone Age societies, thereby allowing space for incoming migrants. This decline was probably the result of a widespread plague from Siberia to the Baltic.
“The disease dynamic here may have been comparable to the European colonization process in America after Christopher Columbus”, says Kristiansen. “Perhaps Yamnaya brought plague to Europe and caused a massive collapse in the population”.
“Black Youth” as migrating males and their marriage to Neolithic women
In the new synthesis article, Kristiansen and colleagues argue for a dominance of males during the early phase after the migrations, and correspond to the old Indo-European mythology of later times. These sources talk about war-bands of youths—called “Black Youth”—who were employed in pioneer migrations as a dynamic force. Evidence from strontium isotopic analyses, published in 2016 by Kristiansen together with Douglas Price and Karl Goran Sjogren, showed that a majority of the women in Corded Ware burials in south Germany were non-locals who had married in from Neolithic societies, since they had a Neolithic diet in their childhood. These results now form part of the new synthesis. Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: “Existing archaeological evidence of a strong 90% male dominance in the early phase of the Corded Ware/Single Grave Culture settlement in Jutland, Denmark, and elsewhere can now be explained by the old Indo-European tradition of war bands of young males who did not have any inheritance to look forward to. Therefore they were probably more willing to make a career as migrating war bands.”
These Neolithic women also brought new knowledge of pottery production, and started to imitate pottery containers made of wood from the Yamnaya migrants. In this way a new pottery culture was created called Corded Ware, because of the cord impressions around the neck of the pots. They were made for beer drinking, and the new migrants also learned how to grow barley from the in-married Neolithic women in order to produce beer.
Rapid genetic changeover from Neolithic to Corded Ware cultures after 3000 BC
Eske Willerslev undertook the ancient DNA analyses together with Morten Allentoft and Martin Sikora. Professor Willerslev says:
“In our big Bronze Age study, published in 2015, we were astonished to see how strong and fast the genetic changeover was from the Neolithic to the Corded Ware. There was a heavy reduction of Neolithic DNA in temperate Europe, and a dramatic increase of the new Yamnaya genomic component that was only marginally present in Europe prior to 3000 BC. Moreover, the apparent abruptness with which this change occurred indicates that it was a large-scale migration event, rather than a slow periodic inflow of people”.
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Corded ware vessel, an axe and two discs made of amber from an early male grave. Credit: Danish National Museum
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New words and new Proto-Germanic dialect
The Yamnaya brought the Indo-European languages into Bronze Age Europe, but as herders, they did not have words for crops or cultivation, unlike the Neolithic farmers. As the Corded Ware Culture developed it adopted words related to farming from the indigenous Neolithic people, which they were admixing with. Guus Kroonen, a historical linguist, was able to demonstrate that these new words did not belong to the original Indo-European languages. Therefore it was possible to conclude that the Neolithic people were not speaking an Indo-European language, as did the Yamnaya migrants. Thus, the process of genetic and cultural admixture was accompanied by a process of language admixture, creating the foundations for later Germanic languages, termed Proto-Germanic.
The birth of the Bronze Age
The Yamnaya migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into temperate Europe changed the course of history: they brought not only a new language, but also new ideas about how society was organized around small monogamous families with individual ownership to animals and land. This new society became the foundation for the Bronze Age, and for the way European societies continued to develop to the present.
The paper “Re-theorising mobility and the formation of culture and language among the Corded Ware Culture in Europe” by Kristiansen, Allentoft, Frei, Iversen, Johannsen, Kroonen, Pospiezny, Price, Rasmussen, Sjögren, Sikora and Willerslev is published in the journal Antiquity ,4 April 2017.
For more about Indo-Europeans, see the premium article, The Battle-Axe Culture, published in the Spring 2017 issue of Popular Archaeology.
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.
Researchers report* evidence of ancient human symbolic culture in the Wallacea zone of eastern Indonesia. Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) had colonized Wallacea by 47,000 years ago, but evidence of the cultural complexity associated with AMHs from the same period elsewhere in the world has been sparse. Adam Brumm and colleagues describe artifacts recovered from a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi dated from 30,000-22,000 years ago. Some of the artifacts were bones and teeth of endemic animals modified into ornaments, including a bear cuscus bone likely to have been worn as a pendant and previously undocumented disc-shaped beads manufactured from the teeth of babirusas, also known as “pig-deer.” Several stone flakes were incised with various geometric patterns, possibly representing a form of portable art. The authors also found evidence for the use of pigment, such as ochre pieces with traces from scraping and grinding, ochre residues on stone artifacts, and a hollow long bone with traces of red and black pigment that may have been used as a kind of airbrush for creating rock art. According to the authors, the artifacts suggest the existence of a distinct symbolic culture in Wallacea that incorporated animals unique to the region.
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 SOUTHAMPTON—A new scientific study of medieval human bones, excavated from a deserted English village, suggests the corpses they came from were burnt and mutilated. Researchers from the University of Southampton and Historic England believe this was carried out by villagers who believed that it would stop the corpses rising from their graves and menacing the living.
The team found that many of the bones from Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire showed knife-marks—suggesting the bodies had been decapitated and dismembered. There was also evidence of the burning of body parts and deliberate breaking of some bones after death.
The findings are published in an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports. The research was led by Simon Mays, Human Skeletal Biologist at Historic England, working in collaboration with Alistair Pike, Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Southampton.
In medieval times, there was a folk-belief that corpses could rise from their graves and roam the local area, spreading disease and violently assaulting those unlucky enough to encounter them. Restless corpses were usually thought to be caused by a lingering malevolent life-force in individuals who had committed evil deeds or created animosity when living.
Medieval writers describe a number of ways of dealing with revenants, one of which was to dig up the offending corpse, decapitate and dismember it, and burn the pieces in a fire. Perhaps the bones from Wharram Percy were parts of bodies that were mutilated and burnt because of medieval fears of corpses rising from their graves. The researchers considered other theories, but this explanation appears to be the most consistent with the alterations observed on the bones.
In some societies, people may be treated in unusual ways after death because they are viewed as outsiders. However, analysis of strontium isotopes in the teeth showed this was not the reason in this case. Professor Alistair Pike, who directed the isotopic analysis, explains: “Strontium isotopes in teeth reflect the geology on which an individual was living as their teeth formed in childhood. A match between the isotopes in the teeth and the geology around Wharram Percy suggests they grew up in an area close to where they were buried, possibly in the village. This was surprising to us, as we first wondered if the unusual treatment of the bodies might relate to their being from further afield, rather than local.”
Famines were quite common in medieval times, so another possibility might be that the remains were of corpses that had been cannibalised by starving villagers. However, the evidence did not seem to fit. For example, in cannibalism, knife marks on bone tend to cluster around major muscle attachments or large joints, but at Wharram Percy the knife marks were not at these locations but mainly in the head and neck area.
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This is the Wharram Percy Medieval village, North Yorkshire, UK. Credit: Historic England
Knife marks on external surfaces of two rib bone fragments. Credit: Historic England
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Simon Mays concludes: “The idea that the Wharram Percy bones are the remains of corpses burnt and dismembered to stop them walking from their graves seems to fit the evidence best. If we are right, then this is the first good archaeological evidence we have for this practice. It shows us a dark side of medieval beliefs and provides a graphic reminder of how different the medieval view of the world was from our own.”
The bones come from the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, a site managed by English Heritage. There was a total of 137 bones representing the mixed remains of at least ten individuals. They were buried in a pit in the settlement part of the site. They date from the 11th-14th centuries AD.
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—The cognitive abilities of Neanderthals are debated, but a raven bone fragment found at the Zaskalnaya VI (ZSK) site in Crimea features two notches that may have been made by Neanderthals intentionally to display a visually consistent pattern, according to a study* by Ana Majkic at the Universite de Bordeaux and colleagues, published in the open access journal, PLOS ONE on March 29, 2017.
Majkic and colleagues conducted a mixed-methods study to assess whether the two extra notches on the ZSK raven bone were made by Neanderthals with the intention of making the final series of notches appear to be evenly spaced. First, researchers conducted a multi-phase experiment where recruited volunteers were asked to create evenly spaced notches in domestic turkey bones, which are similar in size to the ZSK raven bone. Morphometric analyses reveal that the equal spacing of the experimental notches was comparable to the spacing of notches in the ZSK raven bone, even when adjusted for errors in human perception. Archaeological specimens featuring aligned notches from different sites were also analyzed and compared with the ZSK raven bone specimen.
Researchers concluded that the two extra notches on the ZSK raven bone may have been made by Neanderthals intentionally to create a visually consistent, and perhaps symbolic, pattern.
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Left: notched raven bone from Zaskalnaya VI Neanderthal site, Crimea. center: experimental notching of a bird bone; right: sequences of experimentally made notches compared to those from Zaskalnaya VI. Credit: Francesco d’Errico
A series of recent discoveries of altered bird bones across Neanderthal sites has caused many researchers to argue that the objects were used for personal ornaments, as opposed to butchery tools or activities. But this study is the first that provides direct evidence to support a symbolic argument for intentional modifications on a bird bone.
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.
The famous Australopithecus fossilized skeleton known as “Little Foot“, the nearly complete articulated skeletal remains of a possible human ancestor, cannot be more than 2.8 million years old, according to a recent research study. This individual has previously been dated to approximatley 3.67 million years old. But based on research conducted by Jan D. Kramers of the University of Johannesburg and Paul H.G.M. Dirks of James Cook University, Little Foot may actually be over 800,000 years younger.
Interpreting the ages of hominin fossils is very important for understanding the timeline of human evolution. Little Foot, a complete Australopithecus skeleton found in 1997/1998 in sediments of the Silberberg Grotto in the Sterkfontein Caves, has played into this. But the age of the find has been beset by scholarly debate for years. Based on the abundance in quartz of the radioactive isotopes 26Al and 10Be, which accumulate at the surface due to cosmic rays, Granger et al. (Nature 2015;522:85–88) previously determined that the sediments surrounding Little Foot had been underground for 3.67±0.16 million years, and thus concluded this age for the fossil. Kramers and Dirks, however, recently re-examined the data in detail and found that the breccia deposit encasing Little Foot, and therefore the fossil itself, cannot be older than about 2.8 million years based on dating of chert fragments within the breccia mix encasing the skeleton. So why the inconsistent mix of dates? To resolve the paradox of the two ages, they propose that Little Foot, when alive, may have fallen from a higher-level cave chamber, shown to have once existed immediately above the Silberberg Grotto. Sediments older than 2.8 million years may have flowed into and were deposited in the lower chamber over time, encasing Little Foot. Subsequently, the older sediments characterizing the upper chamber were eroded away over time in the upper chamber, but remained preserved in the lower chamber. The case of Little Foot’s age is therefore not yet closed.
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General view of Little Foot skeleton in its original position in Sterkfontein cave, November 2006. 120 / V. Mourre, Wikimedia Commons
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The Little Foot skull, removed from its breccia context. Courtesy Wits University, Wikimedia Commons
Prominent surface feature at Sterkfontein and its relation to the Silberberg Grotto. (a) Cave map showing the position of surface workings, entry chambers and (b) relative to the Silberberg Grotto. (b) View from the east of a large tilted dolomite block on the south side of the open excavation, adjoining breccia of Member 4. (a) Source: Adapted from Martini et al.41; (b) Photo: Paul Dirks
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.
Researchers report* an ancient royal palace complex in Mexico. The emergence of early state societies is a major focus of anthropological studies, and a key characteristic of state societies is the royal palace, the ruler’s residence and seat of government. Elsa Redmond and Charles Spencer report on the well-preserved remains of a royal palace at the archaeological site of El Palenque in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Excavation data from the site indicate that the palace complex was built according to a preconceived design in a single large-scale construction effort and exhibits architectural and organizational features similar to later, historically documented royal palaces in Mesoamerica. Covering a maximum estimated area of 2,790 m2, the palace exhibits a ground plan differentiated into governmental and residential components, reflecting a centralized, hierarchical, and specialized state administration. Analysis of ceramic samples and radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples from the site suggest that the El Palenque palace complex was in use during 300-100 BC, a time of archaic state emergence in the region. The authors suggest that the palace complex at El Palenque represents the oldest multifunctional palace in Mexico’s Valley of Oaxaca, and provides evidence of early state society in the region.
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El Palenque royal palace. Image courtesy Elsa M. Redmond and Charles Spencer
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Water shrine, where a stone-lined drain descending from ruler’s residence supplied rainwater to cistern. Image courtesy Elsa M. Redmond and Charles Spencer
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 BONN—Egyptologists at the University of Bonn discovered rock art from the 4th millennium BC during an excavation at a necropolis near Aswan in Egypt. The paintings were engraved into the rock in the form of small dots and depict hunting scenes like those found in shamanic depictions. They may represent a link between the Neolithic period and Ancient Egyptian culture. The discovery earned the scientists the award for one of the current ten most important archeological discoveries in Egypt from the Minister of Antiquities in Cairo.
For more than 100 years, Qubbet el-Hawa (English: hill of wind) has been a magnet for archeology. Over 80 burial mounds have been uncovered on the hill near Aswan in Egypt during countless excavations. The history of this necropolis for the provincial capital Elephantine extends from around 2200 to the 4th century BC. It was an important trading base for Egyptians in Nubia, and their nobles were buried in the burial mounds. Prof. Elmar Edel from the University of Bonn investigated and documented the necropolis from 1959 to 1984. “The majority of the objects in the Egyptian Museum in Bonn come from these field campaigns,” reports Prof. Ludwig Morenz, who heads Egyptology at the Bonn alma mater.
A completely new aspect at Qubbet el-Hawa has now been uncovered during an excavation begun at the necropolis in 2015. The team led by Prof. Morenz with Amr El Hawary, Andreas Dorn, Tobias Gutmann, Sarah Konert and David Sabel discovered much older Neolithic rock art from the 4th millennium BC. “Style and iconography provide solid clues when dating these,” says the scientist. “It opens up a new archeological dimension”. Some of these engravings on the rock wall are clearly Egyptian in terms of iconography and stylistics, while others are clearly pre-Egyptian as regards the presentation method and motif.
The images were pecked into the rock with a hard point and are now barely perceivable due to their considerable age. Only the archeologically precise recording of the traces and the drawing of the outlines revealed the images with noteworthy iconography. The initially confusing-looking arrangement of dots allows three figures to be seen upon closer inspection: a hunter with bow, a dancing man with raised arms and, between them, an African ostrich.
“The archer clearly shows hunting for the large flightless bird, while the man with raised arms can be identified as a hunt dancer,” reports Prof. Morenz. The dancer apparently wears a bird mask. The scene is reminiscent of the conceptual world of hunting, masks and shamanism, as known from many parts of the Earth – including ostrich hunting by what are known as San (bushmen).
Such hunting and dancing scenes are new in Egyptology.
“This social practice and the associated complex of ideas have barely been looked at in Egyptology,” says Prof. Morenz. Small painted female figures with dancing, raised arms and a bird mask also come from the 4th millennium BC, and some clay masks were discovered a few years ago in the Upper Egyptian Hierakonpolis. These finds show astounding consistency with the rock paintings of Qubbet el-Hawa.
They may represent a link between the ancient Near Eastern and even southern European Neolithic period and Ancient Egyptian culture. “This opens up new horizons for research,” says Prof. Morenz. However, the finds need to be investigated more closely. The much older rock art clearly has nothing to do with the necropolis directly and is probably linked to a prehistoric network of trails that also needs to be researched more intensively.
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.
Analysis of isotopes in bones and teeth from fifth-century cemeteries suggests that nomadic Huns and Pannonian settlers on the frontier of Roman Empire may have intermixed, according to a study* published March 22, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Susanne Hakenbeck from University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues.
Marauding hordes of barbarian Huns, under their ferocious leader Attila, are often credited with triggering the fall of one of history’s greatest empires: Rome.
Historians believe Hunnic incursions into Roman provinces bordering the Danube during the 5th century AD opened the floodgates for nomadic tribes to encroach on the empire. This caused a destabilisation that contributed to collapse of Roman power in the West.
According to Roman accounts, the Huns brought only terror and destruction. However, research from the University of Cambridge on gravesite remains in the Roman frontier region of Pannonia (now Hungary) has revealed for the first time how ordinary people may have dealt with the arrival of the Huns.
Biochemical analyses of teeth and bone to test for diet and mobility suggest that, over the course of a lifetime, some farmers on the edge of empire left their homesteads to become Hun-like roaming herdsmen, and consequently, perhaps, took up arms with the tribes.
Other remains from the same gravesites show a dietary shift indicating some Hun discovered a settled way of life and the joys of agriculture—leaving their wanderlust, and possibly their bloodlust, behind.
Lead researcher Dr Susanne Hakenbeck, from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, says the Huns may have brought ways of life that appealed to some farmers in the area, as well learning from and settling among the locals. She says this could be evidence of the steady infiltration that shook an empire.
“We know from contemporary accounts that this was a time when treaties between tribes and Romans were forged and fractured, loyalties sworn and broken. The lifestyle shifts we see in the skeletons may reflect that turmoil,” says Hakenbeck.
“However, while written accounts of the last century of the Roman Empire focus on convulsions of violence, our new data appear to show some degree of cooperation and coexistence of people living in the frontier zone. Far from being a clash of cultures, alternating between lifestyles may have been an insurance policy in unstable political times.”
For the study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, Hakenbeck and colleagues tested skeletal remains at five 5th-century sites around Pannonia, including one in a former civic centre as well as rural homesteads.
The team analysed the isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen, strontium and oxygen in bones and teeth. They compared this data to sites in central Germany, where typical farmers of the time lived, and locations in Siberia and Mongolia, home to nomadic herders up to the Mongol period and beyond.
The results allowed researchers to distinguish between settled agricultural populations and nomadic animal herders in the former Roman border area through isotopic traces of diet and mobility in the skeletons.
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A modified skull. The practice of modification originated in central Asia and has been associated with Huns and other nomadic populations. Credit: Erzsébet Fóthi, Hungarian Natural History Museum Budapest
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All the Pannonian gravesites not only held examples of both lifestyles, but also many individuals that shifted between lifestyles in both directions over the course of a lifetime. “The exchange of subsistence strategies is evidence for a way of life we don’t see anywhere else in Europe at this time,” says Hakenbeck.
She says there are no clear lifestyle patterns based on sex or accompanying grave goods, or even ‘skull modification’ – the binding of the head as a baby to create a pointed skull – commonly associated with the Hun.
“Nomadic animal herding and skull modification may be practices imported by Hun tribes into the bounds of empire and adopted by some of the agriculturalist inhabitants.”
The diet of farmers was relatively boring, says Hakenbeck, consisting primarily of plants such as wheat, vegetables and pulses, with a modicum of meat and almost no fish.
The herders’ diet on the other hand was high in animal protein and augmented with fish. They also ate large quantities of millet, which has a distinctive carbon isotope ratio that can be identified in human bones. Millet is a hardy plant that was hugely popular with nomadic populations of central Asia because it grows in a few short weeks.
Roman sources of the time were dismissive of this lifestyle. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman official, wrote of the Hun that they “care nothing for using the ploughshare, but they live upon flesh and an abundance of milk.”
“While Roman authors considered them incomprehensibly uncivilised and barely human, it seems many of citizens at the edge of Rome’s empire were drawn to the Hun lifestyle, just as some nomads took to a more settled way of life,” says Hakenbeck.
However, there is one account that hints at the appeal of the Hun, that of Roman politician Priscus. While on a diplomatic mission to the court of Attila, he describes encountering a former merchant who had abandoned life in the Empire for that of the Hun enemy as, after war, they “live in inactivity, enjoying what they have got, and not at all, or very little, harassed.”
“Written sources tell us of violence, treachery and treaties that were broken as soon as they were made, but this was not the whole story,” adds Hakenbeck. “Our research gives an insight into ordinary people’s lives along the late Roman frontier, where nomadic animal herders could become farmers and farmers could become herders.”
UNIVERSITY OF KONSTANZ—In the past, researchers have paid limited attention to this fact, which has led to a dearth of modern anthropological, historical and archaeological investigations as well as insights regarding this period of proto-globilisation in this region of the world. Research directed by María Cruz Berrocal is starting to fill this gap. Cruz Berrocal’s archaeological excavations at a settlement in northern Taiwan have brought a new perspective on the colonisation of the Pacific region to light: the small Spanish colony of ‘San Salvador de Isla Hermosa’ was an early globalised spot. María Cruz Berrocal is a Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz and associated with the Department of History and Sociology.
The focus of her investigation is a settlement on the small Island of Heping Dao, which belongs to the city of Keelung in the north of Taiwan. The excavations, carried out at this site since 2011, have recovered important archaeological artefacts. They document the history of human habitation on the island: from early history onwards, the region played an important role for Taiwan and was also influential during the age of European colonisation. ‘San Salvador de Isla Hermosa’ was founded as a Spanish colony on Heping Dao in 1626 and was later taken over by the Dutch. The Chinese eventually annexed the territory, followed by Japanese occupation until the end of World War II.
The Spanish lived in the settlement from 1626 until 1642. The excavations by María Cruz Berrocal’s international research group provided considerably more evidence of early European presence and influence than expected. The archaeologists discovered the foundations of a church or Christian convent and the associated cemetery. “Our findings demonstrate that this colony did not play a marginal role. Taiwan was a juncture for commercial relations in the Pacific region and therefore a hub for extensive interaction,” explains María Cruz Berrocal.
The excavations, with the most recent taking place from September to November of 2016, have so far uncovered six burials and other dislocated human remains near the church. In November 2016, the archaeologists unearthed a skeleton of a deceased person who was buried with hands folded in prayer. “These are the first European burials from this time period discovered in the entire Asia-Pacific region and they contain the first documented human remains. The colonial cemetery that we unearthed is also the oldest in the region,” says María Cruz Berrocal.
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Above and below: In November 2016, a skeleton with its hands folded in prayer was unearthed — the first documented European burial from the 17th century in the Asia-Pacific region. Credit: University of Konstanz
Analysis of the human bones and especially the teeth is revealing a multifaceted picture. Compelling biographical information such as geographic origin, diet and medical history can be gathered through isotope and botanical analyses of dental remains as well as the examination of the preserved DNA of pathogens. The isotopic analysis is being carried out by Dr Estelle Herrscher from the CNRS, France and the botanical analysis by Dr Alexandre Chevalier from the Royal Belgian Institute of Science. Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany is analysing the human and pathogen DNA. Plant remains are also providing important information since many new plant species were introduced into the Pacific region by Europeans.
Initial findings are indicating that the human remains most likely belong to people who came from Europe, Asia and possibly even Africa. Since they were also interacting with the native Taiwanese population on Heping Dao, it is important to carry out further research here in order to discern the impact they experienced as a result of European colonisation. Additional analyses will provide a more comprehensive picture of the early history of this region. “The results demonstrate that we are dealing with an early globalisation hub here. The Spanish-style construction of the church illustrates that this colony was just as important to the Spanish Crown as other colonies established elsewhere, as in the Americas, for example. However, its attempt to gain a long-term foothold in the Pacific region was ultimately unsuccessful. For this reason, historians have since assumed that Taiwan only played a marginal role. But that is not the case,” concludes María Cruz Berrocal.
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 TEXAS AT AUSTIN—AUSTIN, Texas—The evolution of bipedalism in fossil humans can be detected using a key feature of the skull — a claim that was previously contested but now has been further validated by researchers at Stony Brook University and The University of Texas at Austin.
Compared with other primates, the large hole at the base of the human skull where the spinal cord passes through, known as the foramen magnum, is shifted forward. While many scientists generally attribute this shift to the evolution of bipedalism and the need to balance the head directly atop the spine, others have been critical of the proposed link. Validating this connection provides another tool for researchers to determine whether a fossil hominid walked upright on two feet like humans or on four limbs like modern great apes.
Controversy has centered on the association between a forward-shifted foramen magnum and bipedalism since 1925, when Raymond Dart discussed it in his description of “Taung child,” a 2.8 million-year-old fossil skull of the extinct South African species Australopithecus africanus. A study published last year by Aidan Ruth and colleagues continued to stir up the controversy when they offered additional criticisms of the idea.
However, in a study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, UT Austin anthropology alumna Gabrielle Russo, now an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, and UT Austin anthropologist Chris Kirk built on their own prior research to show that a forward-shifted foramen magnum is found not just in humans and their bipedal fossil relatives, but is a shared feature of bipedal mammals more generally.
“This question of how bipedalism influences skull anatomy keeps coming up partly because it’s difficult to test the various hypotheses if you only focus on primates,” Kirk said. “However, when you look at the full range of diversity across mammals, the evidence is compelling that bipedalism and a forward-shifted foramen magnum go hand-in-hand.”
In this study, Russo and Kirk expanded on their previous research (published in the same journal in 2013) by using new methods to quantify aspects of foramen magnum anatomy and sampling the largest number of mammal species to date.
To make their case, Russo and Kirk compared the position and orientation of the foramen magnum in 77 mammal species including marsupials, rodents and primates. Their findings indicate that bipedal mammals such as humans, kangaroos, springhares and jerboas have a more forward-positioned foramen magnum than their quadrupedal close relatives.
“We’ve now shown that the foramen magnum is forward-shifted across multiple bipedal mammalian clades using multiple metrics from the skull, which I think is convincing evidence that we’re capturing a real phenomenon,” Russo said.
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Comparison of the positioning of the foramen magnum in a bipedal springhare (left) and its closest quadrupedal relative, the scaly-tailed squirrel (right). Credit: Image from Russo and Kirk, Journal of Human Evolution
Additionally, the study identifies specific measurements that can be applied to future research to map out the evolution of bipedalism. “Other researchers should feel confident in making use of our data to interpret the human fossil record,” Russo said.
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.
Big, small, broad, narrow, long or short, turned up, pug, hooked, bulbous or prominent, humans inherit their nose shape from their parents, but ultimately, the shape of someone’s nose and that of their parents was formed by a long process of adaptation to our local climate, according to an international team of researchers.
“We are interested in recent human evolution and what explains the evident variation in things like skin color, hair color and the face itself,” said Mark D. Shriver, professor of anthropology, Penn State. “We focused on nose traits that differ across populations and looked at geographical variation with respect to temperature and humidity.” The researchers noted today (Mar. 17) in PLOS Genetics that “An important function of the nose and nasal cavity is to condition inspired air before it reaches the lower respiratory tract.”*
The nose is one of humanity’s most distinctive facial features, which also has the important job of conditioning the air that we breathe, to ensure that it is warm and moist when it reaches the lungs, which helps to prevent infections. Previous studies suggest that people whose ancestors lived in hot, humid places tend to have wider nostrils than people whose ancestors came from cold and dry environments, but whether these differences arose in response to local climates or just due to chance was unknown. In the current study, researchers examined the size and shape of noses on people with West African, South Asian, East Asian, or Northern European ancestry and found that differences in nose shape across these populations are greater than can be explained by chance alone. Additionally, wider nostrils are correlated with ancestors who evolved in warmer temperatures and with greater absolute humidity, suggesting that climate was one factor driving nasal evolution. The nose has had a complex evolutionary history, however, and researchers suspect that additional factors, such as cultural preferences when picking a mate, have also played a role in shaping the nose.
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Study says climate a factor in determining the variety of shapes for the human nose throughout evolutionary history. Image Lhoon, Wikimedia Commons
Researchers considered a variety of nose measurements, looking at the width of the nostrils, the distance between nostrils, the height of the nose, nose ridge length, nose protrusion, external area of the nose and the area of the nostrils. The measurements were made using 3D facial imaging.
Differences in the human nose may have accumulated among populations through time as a result of a random process called genetic drift. However, divergent selection — variation in natural selection across populations—may also be the reason that different populations have differing noses. Teasing the two apart is difficult, especially in humans.
The researchers found that the width of the nostrils and the base of the nose measurements differed across populations more than could be accounted for by genetic drift, indicating a role for natural selection in the evolution of nose shape in humans. To show that the local climate contributed to this difference, the researchers looked at the spatial distribution of these traits and correlated them with local temperatures and humidity. They showed that the width of the nostrils is strongly correlated with temperature and absolute humidity The researchers noted that “the positive direction of the effects indicate that wider noses are more common in warm-humid climates, while narrower noses are more common in cold-dry climates.”
“It all goes back to Thompson’s Rule (Arthur Thompson),” said Shriver. “In the late 1800s he said that long and thin noses occurred in dry, cold areas, while short and wide noses occurred in hot, humid areas. Many people have tested the question with measurements of the skull, but no one had done measurements on live people.”
One purpose of the nose is to condition inhaled air so that it is warm and moist. The narrower nostrils seem to alter the airflow so that the mucous-covered inside of the nose can humidify and warm the air more efficiently. It was probably more essential to have this trait in cold and dry climates, said Shriver. People with narrower nostrils probably fared better and had more offspring than people with wider nostrils, in colder climates. This lead to a gradual decrease in nose width in populations living far away from the equator.
Shriver notes that this is not the only explanation for nose-shape variation in humans. The researchers also found differences between men and women in nose features across the board. This sexual dimorphism is not unusual, as human men tend to be larger than human women, and their noses would be larger as well.
He thinks another way that the cross-population differences in nose size may occur is through sexual selection. People may choose mates simply because they find a smaller or larger nose more attractive. If an entire group thinks small is better, then those with large noses will have less success in reproducing and fewer large-nosed people will be in the group. Over time, the nose size in the group will shrink relative to other groups where large noses are favored. These notions of beauty may be linked to how well-adapted the nose is to the local climate.
Ecological selection and sexual selection could reinforce each other, according to the researchers. However, whether this connection between the two types of selection was important in the evolution of the nose requires further investigation.
Investigations into nose shape evolution and climate adaptation may have medical as well as anthropological implications. Studies of human adaptation are essential to our understanding of disease and yield insights into why certain conditions, such as sickle cell anemia, lactose intolerance or skin cancer, are more common in certain populations. The researchers suggest that it may be worth investigating whether the shape of the nose and the size of the nasal cavity impact one’s risk of contracting a respiratory disease when living in a climate that is different from one’s ancestors.
This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe. Find it on Amazon.com.
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