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Ancient inscriptions testify to widespread literacy in Judah by 600 BCE

Posted on April 11, 2016 by No Author -

A team of scholars and scientists have analyzed Hebrew inscriptions dated to about 600 BCE, and suggest results that indicate a high degree of literacy in ancient Hebrew writing among officials of the military and administrative apparatus of the kingdom of Judah before the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE.

Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Arie Shaus and colleagues of Tel Aviv University conducted an analysis* of 16 ink inscriptions in Hebrew on ancient ceramic shards (otherwise known as ‘ostraca‘) which were previously excavated from the desert fortress of Arad in southern Judah and dated to around 600 BCE. Their analysis was based on data acquired through new computerized image processing and document analysis techniques, including machine learning algorithms. The study concluded that the inscriptions were created by at least six different authors, individuals whose position or rank ranged from a top military commander down to a person who was a subordinate of the Arad fortress warehouse. More specifically, the inscriptions were connected to one unnamed Judahite military commander; Malkiyahu, the commander of the Arad fortress; one individual named Gemaryahu and another named Nehemyahu; Kittiyim officers (a Greek mercenary unit); Eliashib, who was in charge of the Arad fortress warehouse; and a subordinate of Eliashib. The King of Judah was mentioned in one ostracon as dictating the overall military strategy. Another ostracon mentioned “the house of YHWH”, meaning the Temple in Jerusalem.

The inscriptions included instructions for troop movement and registration of expenses for victuals (wine, oil and flour), suggesting evidence of writing ability along the military chain of command down to the fort’s deputy quartermaster. Scholars have often mentioned the prime role of professional scribes, whose assistance many scholars have suggested was necessary for the production of written records during the times of the Judahite kings. But the new results paint a very different portrait: The tone and nature of the inscriptions, say the study authors, combined with the remoteness of Arad and its links to the kingdom’s military administration as well as the narrowly constrained ages of the ostraca all together suggest that literacy was widespread among the Judahite army ranks, priests, and administrators as early as 600 BCE.

According to the authors, this implies the existence of an educational infrastructure that may have helped to support the composition of significant literary texts in Judah before the destruction of the first Temple.

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Aerial view of Arad fortress. Wikimedia Commons

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Holy of Holies in the Israelite Sanctuary of Tel Arad. Ian Scott, Wikimedia Commons

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The detailed study report is published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: Adapted and edited from the subject PNAS press release

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*”Algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judah’s military correspondence sheds light on composition of biblical texts,” by Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin 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.

Reconstructing the history of Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave

Posted on April 11, 2016 by No Author -

Researchers report* a chronology for Paleolithic human and animal occupation of the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave based on radiocarbon dates. The Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave in southern France contains well-preserved and complex graphic panels of Paleolithic artwork. Initial radiocarbon dates revealed the artwork to be more than 30,000 years old, an age that is 10,000 years older than that predicted through stylistic considerations.

Anita Quiles and colleagues compiled more than 250 radiocarbon dates obtained over the past 15 years from charcoal pieces found on the cave floor, charcoal drawings and markings on the walls, and animal bones found within the cave. The authors incorporated the dates into statistical models to reconstruct the history of cave occupation.

The dates obtained from the charcoal samples on the cave floor and walls are consistent with two phases of human occupation, the first lasting from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago, and the second lasting from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago. The majority of animal bones found within the cave are traced to cave bears, and dates from these bones are consistent with cave bear occupation until 33,000 years ago, contemporary with the first human occupation phase. The end of the first human and cave bear occupations correlates with a rockfall that occurred approximately 34,500 years ago, as estimated by ³⁶Cl dating. The end of the second human occupation correlates with a second rockfall 29,400 years ago that partially closed off the cave entrance, according to the authors.

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Black rhino at the entrance of Megaloceros Gallery, Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave. Image courtesy of Jean-Michel Geneste, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

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Bears in red ochre, Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave. Image courtesy of Jean-Michel Geneste, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

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The study report is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Source: Edited from the subject PNAS press release

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*“A high-precision chronological model for the decorated Upper Paleolithic cave of Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, Ardèche, France,” by Anita Quiles et al.

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Neanderthals may have been infected by diseases carried out of Africa by humans

Posted on April 10, 2016 by No Author -

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—A new study suggests that Neanderthals across Europe may well have been infected with diseases carried out of Africa by waves of anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens. As both were species of hominin, it would have been easier for pathogens to jump populations, say researchers. This might have contributed to the demise of Neanderthals.

Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford Brookes have reviewed the latest evidence gleaned from pathogen genomes and DNA from ancient bones, and concluded that some infectious diseases are likely to be many thousands of years older than previously believed.

There is evidence that our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals and exchanged genes associated with disease. There is also evidence that viruses moved into humans from other hominins while still in Africa. So, the researchers argue, it makes sense to assume that humans could, in turn, pass disease to Neanderthals, and that – if we were mating with them – we probably did.

Dr Charlotte Houldcroft, from Cambridge’s Division of Biological Anthropology, says that many of the infections likely to have passed from humans to Neanderthals – such as tapeworm, tuberculosis, stomach ulcers and types of herpes – are chronic diseases that would have weakened the hunter-gathering Neanderthals, making them less fit and able to find food, which could have catalysed extinction of the species.

“Humans migrating out of Africa would have been a significant reservoir of tropical diseases,” says Houldcroft. “For the Neanderthal population of Eurasia, adapted to that geographical infectious disease environment, exposure to new pathogens carried out of Africa may have been catastrophic.”

“However, it is unlikely to have been similar to Columbus bringing disease into America and decimating native populations. It’s more likely that small bands of Neanderthals each had their own infection disasters, weakening the group and tipping the balance against survival,” says Houldcroft.

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Left, modern human skull. Right, Neanderthal skull. Evidence mounts that modern humans and Neanderthals came in contact with each other, exchanging not only DNA but likely also pathogens as well. Hairymuseummatt, Wikimedia Commons

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New techniques developed in the last few years mean researchers can now peer into the distant past of modern disease by unravelling its genetic code, as well as extracting DNA from fossils of some of our earliest ancestors to detect traces of disease.

In a paper published today in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Houldcroft, who also studies modern infections at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and Dr Simon Underdown, a researcher in human evolution from Oxford Brookes University, write that genetic data shows many infectious diseases have been “co-evolving with humans and our ancestors for tens of thousands to millions of years”.

The longstanding view of infectious disease is that it exploded with the dawning of agriculture some 8,000 years ago, as increasingly dense and sedentary human populations coexisted with livestock, creating a perfect storm for disease to spread. The researchers say the latest evidence suggests disease had a much longer “burn in period” that pre-dates agriculture.

In fact, they say that many diseases traditionally thought to be ‘zoonoses’, transferred from herd animals into humans, such as tuberculosis, were actually transmitted into the livestock by humans in the first place.

“We are beginning to see evidence that environmental bacteria were the likely ancestors of many pathogens that caused disease during the advent of agriculture, and that they initially passed from humans into their animals,” says Houldcroft.

“Hunter-gatherers lived in small foraging groups. Neanderthals lived in groups of between 15-30 members, for example. So disease would have broken out sporadically, but have been unable to spread very far. Once agriculture came along, these diseases had the perfect conditions to explode, but they were already around.”

There is as yet no hard evidence of infectious disease transmission between humans and Neanderthals; however, considering the overlap in time and geography, and not least the evidence of interbreeding, Houldcroft and Underdown say that it must have occurred.

Neanderthals would have adapted to the diseases of their European environment. There is evidence that humans benefited from receiving genetic components through interbreeding that protected them from some of these: types of bacterial sepsis – blood poisoning occurring from infected wounds – and encephalitis caught from ticks that inhabit Siberian forests.

In turn, the humans, unlike Neanderthals, would have been adapted to African diseases, which they would have brought with them during waves of expansion into Europe and Asia.

The researchers describe Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, as a prime candidate for a disease that humans may have passed to Neanderthals. It is estimated to have first infected humans in Africa 88 to 116 thousand years ago, and arrived in Europe after 52,000 years ago. The most recent evidence suggests Neanderthals died out around 40,000 years ago.

Another candidate is herpes simplex 2, the virus which causes genital herpes. There is evidence preserved in the genome of this disease that suggests it was transmitted to humans in Africa 1.6 million years ago from another, currently unknown hominin species that in turn acquired it from chimpanzees.

“The ‘intermediate’ hominin that bridged the virus between chimps and humans shows that diseases could leap between hominin species. The herpes virus is transmitted sexually and through saliva. As we now know that humans bred with Neanderthals, and we all carry 2-5% of Neanderthal DNA as a result, it makes sense to assume that, along with bodily fluids, humans and Neanderthals transferred diseases,” says Houldcroft.

Recent theories for the cause of Neanderthal extinction range from climate change to an early human alliance with wolves resulting in domination of the food chain. “It is probable that a combination of factors caused the demise of Neanderthals,” says Houldcroft, “and the evidence is building that spread of disease was an important one.”

Source: University of Cambridge news release

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Neanderthal Y chromosome offers clues to what kept us separate species

Posted on April 8, 2016 by No Author -

CELL PRESS—Researchers reporting in the American Journal of Human Genetics, published by Cell Press, have completed the first in-depth genetic analysis of a Neanderthal Y chromosome. The findings offer new insights into the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans and some of the genetic factors that might have kept the two lineages apart.

The Y chromosome was the main component remaining to be analyzed from the Neanderthal genome, the researchers say.

“Characterizing the Neanderthal Y chromosome helps us to better understand the population divergence that led to Neanderthals and modern humans,” says Fernando Mendez of Stanford University. “It also enables us to explore possible genetic interactions between archaic and modern [gene] variants within hybrid offspring.”

Mendez and his colleagues, including Carlos Bustamante, also at Stanford, and Sergi Castellano, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, analyzed the Y chromosome from a Neanderthal male found in El Sidrón, Spain. Their analysis suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged almost 590,000 years ago, consistent with earlier evidence.

The researchers say that the Neanderthal Y chromosome they sequenced is distinct from any Y chromosome observed in modern humans, suggesting that the lineage in question is to be extinct. They also found some intriguing protein-coding differences between genes on the Neanderthal and modern human Y chromosomes.

Three of those changes are missense mutations in genes known in humans to produce male-specific minor histocompatibility antigens. Antigens derived from one of these genes, known as KDM5D, are thought to elicit an immune response in some pregnant mothers against their male fetuses and lead to miscarriages.

The researchers speculate that incompatibilities at one or more of these genes might have played a role in driving ancient humans and Neanderthals apart by discouraging interbreeding between them.

“The functional nature of the mutations we found suggests to us that the Y chromosome may have played a role in barriers to gene flow,” Bustamante says.

“The finding that most of the functional differences associate with these genes, rather than with genes involved in [sperm production], came as a surprise,” Mendez adds.

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Recent studies have now shown that Neanderthals and modern humans diverged almost 590,000 years ago. Image by Nathan Harig, Wikimedia Commons

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The researchers say additional research is required to confirm the role of those Y-chromosome mutations in discouraging the formation of a hybrid Neanderthal and human species. They are planning those experiments now.

Source: Cell Press news release

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What really happened on Easter Island?

Posted on April 8, 2016 by No Author -

Hundreds of iconic moai statues stand testament to the vibrant civilization that once inhabited Easter Island, but there are far fewer clues about why this civilization mysteriously vanished. Did they shortsightedly exhaust the island’s resources? Were they decimated by European illnesses and slave trade? Or did stow-away rats devastate the native ecosystem? Such theories have spread widely, but recent evidence shows that the truth is not as simple as any one of these alone.

“These different interpretations may be complementary, rather than incompatible,” said Dr. Valentí Rull. “In the last decade, there’s been a burst in new studies, including additional research sites and novel techniques, which demand that we reconsider the climatic, ecological and cultural developments that occurred.” Rull is a senior researcher of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, Spain, and the lead author of an overview on the holistic reassessment of Easter Island history.

Until recently, the evidence has been limited. Prior sedimentary samples–commonly used as historical records of environmental change–were incomplete, with gaps and inconsistencies in the timeline. Furthermore, past interpretations relied heavily on pollen alone, without incorporating more faithful indicators of climate change. Due to this uncertainty, many fundamental questions remain, not only about why the culture disappeared, but also precisely when these events occurred and how this civilization developed in the first place.

Using the latest analytical methods, Rull and his collaborators are beginning to shed light on many of these questions. Complete sedimentary samples now show a continuous record of the last 3000 years, showing how droughts and wet seasons may have influenced the island’s population. Sea travel depended on such weather patterns, resulting in periods of cultural exchange or isolation. Rainfall also impacted native palm forests, with droughts potentially contributing to the island’s eventual deforestation. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of artifacts and human remains are also showing where the inhabitants lived on the island, what they farmed and ate, and the influence of cultures beyond their Polynesian ancestors.

“These findings challenge classical collapse theories and the new picture shows a long and gradual process due to both ecological and cultural changes. In particular, the evidence suggests that there was not an island-wide abrupt ecological and cultural collapse before the European arrival in 1722,” said Rull.

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Moai statue found on Easter Island. Photo courtesy of Dr. Valentí Rull

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There is much work yet to be done before this mystery is solved, but it is clear that neither environmental nor human activities are solely responsible for the events on Easter Island. Only a combined approach that encompasses climate, ecology, and culture will fully explain how this ancient civilization went extinct.

The article is published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Source: Frontiers

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New discoveries into how an ancient civilization conserved water

Posted on April 8, 2016 by No Author -

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI—Collection, storage and management of water were top priorities for the ancient Maya, whose sites in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala were forced to endure seven months out of the year with very little rainfall. As researchers expand their explorations of the civilization outside of large, elite-focused research site centers, aerial imagery technology is helping them locate and study areas that are showing them how less urbanized populations conserved water for drinking and irrigation. The NSF-supported research by Jeffrey Brewer, a doctoral student in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Geography, and Christopher Carr, a UC research assistant professor of geography, was presented at the 81st annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology. The meeting takes place April 6-10, in Orlando, Florida.

The UC researchers used a surveying technology called LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) – along with excavation data – to examine the spatial characteristics, cultural modifications and function of residential-scale water tanks – a little-investigated component of Maya water management by commoners versus the more powerful and visible elites, says Brewer.

LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that collects high-resolution imagery shot from an airplane at 30,000 points per second, allowing researchers to map ground surfaces through dense vegetation. The technology saves a significant amount of time in the field, compared with trekking through forests to locate these small depressions at ground level.

The specific area under study is the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah, located in the Central Yucatan. “One of the unique aspects of this particular site is that it appears to date a little earlier than many regional sites of the same size in terms of displaying significant cultural activity,” says Brewer. “So, we’re still at ground level with our discoveries here.”

Although the LiDAR analysis revealed more than 100 potential small reservoirs scattered throughout the site, only five have been excavated so far. Brewer says three out of the five reservoirs appear to be water features based on the archaeological evidence.

“We looked specifically at small depressions that were adjacent to residential structures, and we could assume they were household accessible,” explains Brewer. “We found modified reservoirs, a limestone quarry that would have served as a resultant water tank, and a depression that appears to have served as an area for localized horticulture or agriculture.

“Based on recovered ceramic material, we know that some of these residential-scale reservoirs at Yaxnohcah date to the Middle Preclassic period (around 900 B.C.). We also have evidence from the soil layers that shows these systems were lined with a thick, clay ‘plaster’ that would help them hold water,” Brewer says. “The geology in this region is all limestone, so if they hadn’t been modified or sealed in some way, the water would have just seeped through them.”

Agricultural communities also would have needed water to farm maize, cotton and possibly even tubers, so Brewer says future examination will explore how the water features would have been used for agricultural purposes. “If the reservoir was elevated, it could have released water into agricultural fields for irrigation. If it was lower, it could have collected runoff from a paved surface or a field. We’re still examining the elevation profiles.”

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The base of an excavated depression showing evidence of limestone quarrying for building material. Credit: Jeff Brewer

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A view of a depression showing placement of excavation units. Credit: Jeff Brewer

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Brewer adds that one of the depressions appears to have originated as a quarry for limestone, which would have been used in construction at the adjacent residential complex. Although not lined with clay, the resulting limestone tank floor could opportunistically hold water for the extended annual period that the region received very little rainfall – extremely useful for agricultural purposes if not for drinking water.

Brewer says investigating how the commoners existed at these ancient sites is becoming a growing trend in research among archaeologists, anthropologists and geographers.

Source: University of Cincinnati news release

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Archaeologists Survey Damage from Cyclone Winston in Fiji

Posted on April 6, 2016 by No Author -

It was an unfortunate albeit serendipitous development for Dr. Kate Leonard, a young Canadian archaeologist who was due to ﬂy into Fiji on February 20th, 2016. On that day, Winston, a category 5 cyclone, had arrived, wreaking devastation the Fiji islanders had never witnessed in their lifetimes, and hoped never to see again. Indeed, it was recorded as the most powerful cyclone to have ever impacted the southern hemisphere, and the second strongest on a global scale. Leonard saw herself stranded in Melbourne, Australia, waiting for the brunt of the storm to pass before she could continue on to her destination. Leonard’s pending departure was part of an ambitious global project she hatched to volunteer her knowledge and skills to work at no less than 12 projects in 12 countries in 12 months. Fiji was to be her third stop on her globe-trotting worldwide archaeology project, what she has called Global Archaeology: A Year of Digs. Now, after completing one month of work in Tasmania, she was looking forward to her newly assigned tasks with the Archaeology Department at the Fiji Museum in Suva on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji’s biggest island.

But after ﬁnally arriving on the 22nd, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to ﬁgure out that all her original plans for work on Fiji would be radically changed. As the Fiji Museum was a government organization, the devastation turned the plans and work schedule of the museum’s Archaeology Department on its head. Her initial ﬂight across the country told the story.

“From the air it looked like giant hands had pressed down pockets of trees in the forests,” said Leonard. “There was ﬂooding everywhere and the rivers had burst their banks. Once I reached Suva everything was uncertain. The electricity was still coming on and off and the country had been put into a state of emergency by the government. Many homes and livelihoods on the islands north of Viti Levu were lost and the death count a week after the cyclone approached 50.”

Due to the state of emergency all archaeology work would be focused on doing archaeological damage assessments. This meant that Leonard, in concert with a small team of museum archaeologists, would be traveling from Suva on the southeast coast of the island to Nadi on the western side. Along the way, they visited Bourewa, site of the earliest known settlement in Fiji (c. 3100 BP) and Momi Battery, a WWII gun emplacement site run by the National Trust of Fiji. Bourewa has yielded artifacts and features attributed to the Lapita, a Paciﬁc Ocean people who thrived from c. 1600 BCE to c. 500 BCE. Archaeologists suggest that the Lapita is ancestral to the later cultures found in Polynesia, Micronesia, and some coastal areas of Melanesia.

“We also did a walk over of the amazing Sigatoka Sand Dunes, where we had to do an unanticipated rescue lift of two human skeletons,” she said. The effects of the cyclone had re-sculpted the dunes, erased much of the previous vegetation and deposited debris, including an excess of driftwood, along the shore. Along with that, the force of the cyclonic waves and wind had also dredged up human bones.

“The team divided to see if more bone could be found,” Leonard writes in her blog “One group stuck to the lower slope where a skull, arm bones, and some vertebrae and ribs had already fallen down the slope and were resting in a jumble; the other group trudged directly up the steep slope and found a pelvis, ribs and vertebrae exposed to the elements. Once the sand was removed we found that there were actually two sets of legs lined up together! The force of the winds from Cyclone Winston had removed much of the sand covering the burials and the upper halves had fallen down the slope. Their location high up on the dune, above the latest dated occupation layer, tells us that the burials likely date to after 280 AD. If we had not lifted them that day all evidence of them being there would have been lost, but now they will be kept in the Fiji Museum for analysis. This was rescue archaeology to the extreme!”*

Human occupation at Sigatoka has been dated from the earliest settlement period of Fiji to the historic period. Archaeologists have determined occupation here through at least six different episodes, creating a layer-cake physical record observed on some of the coastal slopes. In addition to human remains, the team took note of pottery fragments, evidence of a sea salt drying operation. Dated to 420 – 660 A.D., they were once part of large trays, about 60 cm in diameter. “On the back of some of the fragments you can see the impressions of mats and leaves,” explains Leonard in her blog. “This small clue helps to paint a picture of how the trays were made of thick slabs of wet clay pressed onto mats or beds of leaves. These large shallow trays would have been ﬁlled with sea water, left in the sun to evaporate, and then the sea salt collected for use and maybe trade.”

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Discovering the bone exposed high up on the sand slope. Image courtesy Fiji Museum

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Fragments of ceramic salt drying trays. Image courtesy Kate Leonard and the Fiji Museum

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Kate Leonard in the lab. Image courtesy Kate Leonard and the Fiji Museum

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Popular Archaeology asked Leonard what she thought was unique about doing archaeology work in Fiji.

“The pace of work is very different from what I am accustomed to as a North American,” she responded. “There are certain protocols and sequences of interaction that must be followed in order to be considered polite.” For example, she continues, “When archaeologists go out into the ﬁeld to conduct work they must ﬁrst visit the village associated with the land/archaeological site they are interested in and participate in a sevusevu. This is a ceremony whereby kava (a mildly narcotic powdered root made into a drink) is exchanged and consumed. The ceremony not only allows for the exchange of information regarding where all the parties are from, their chieﬂy afﬁliations and what work they wish to conduct, but it is a way of showing respect. It is a great transgression to go onto community land without conducting the sevusevu.”

For Leonard, the diversity and abundance of archaeological sites on Fiji has been an eye-opener. Yet, Leonard adds, “since there have not been many archaeological investigations here, there is still so much to discover and discuss.”

Popular Archaeology will be following and reporting on Leonard’s worldwide experiences periodically throughout 2016 as she hops from one location to another during her global journey. To continue the work, however, Leonard will need ﬁnancial support from donors. Readers interested in reading about and supporting her self-directed Global Archaeology crowdfunded project can learn more at gofundme.com/globalarchaeology.

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*”Sigatoka Sand Dunes: Rescue archaeology in Fiji,” Global Archaeology blog, Dr. Kate Leonard.

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Nepali textile find suggests Silk Road extended further south than previously thought

Posted on April 2, 2016 by No Author -

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—The first results of textile and dye analyses of cloth dated between 400-650 AD and recovered from Samdzong 5, in Upper Mustang, Nepal have today been released by Dr Margarita Gleba of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.

Identification of degummed silk fibres and munjeet and Indian lac dyes in the textile finds suggests that imported materials from China and India were used in combination with those locally produced. Says Gleba: “There is no evidence for local silk production suggesting that Samdzong was inserted into the long-distance trade network of the Silk Road.”

“The data reinforce the notion that instead of being isolated and remote, Upper Mustang was once a small, but important node of a much larger network of people and places. These textiles can further our understanding of the local textile materials and techniques, as well as the mechanisms through which various communities developed and adapted new textile technologies to fit local cultural and economical needs.”

The cloth remains are of further significance as very few contemporary textile finds are known from Nepal. The dry climate and high altitude of the Samdzong tomb complex, at an elevation of 4000 m, favoured the exceptional preservation of the organic materials.

One of the cloth objects recovered is composed of wool fabrics to which copper, glass and cloth beads are attached. It was found near a coffin of an adult along with a spectacular gold/silver funerary mask. The mask has small pinholes around its edges, suggesting it had been sewn to a fabric, and probably constitutes the remains of a complex, decorative headwear.

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This is a gold/silver mask believed to cover the face of the adult in the coffin of the Samdzong 5 tomb complex, Upper Mustang, Nepal. Credit: M. Aldenderfer

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This is a fine open tabby of silk with irregular red color. There is no indication of local silk production, suggesting Samdzong was part of the long-distance trade network of the Silk Road. Credit: M. Gleba

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These are the probable remains of a complex decorative headware, which may have been attached to the gold/silver mask. Credit: M. Gleba

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Samdzong 5 is one of ten shaft tombs excavated by Mark Aldenderfer, (University of California Merced and Visiting Scholar of the McDonald Institute). The tombs were only exposed to view in 2009 following a seismic event that calved off the façade of the cliff, having been originally carved out in prehistory from the soft conglomerate rock of a massive cliff face.

The dye analyses were conducted by Ina Vanden Berghe at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage.

Source: University of Cambridge press release.

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Ancient Southwest marked by repeated periods of boom and bust

Posted on April 1, 2016 by No Author -

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY—PULLMAN, Wash.—The heavily studied yet largely unexplained disappearance of ancestral Pueblo people from southwest Colorado is “the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology,” according to the New York Times.

But it’s not all that unique, say Washington State University scientists. Writing in the journal Science Advances, they say the region saw three other cultural transitions over the preceding five centuries. The researchers also document recurring narratives in which the Pueblo people agreed on canons of ritual, behavior and belief that quickly dissolved as climate change hurt crops and precipitated social turmoil and violence.

“The process of releasing one’s self from those canons, the process of breaking that down, can occur very quickly and occurred very quickly four times in the Pueblo past,” said Kyle Bocinsky, a WSU adjunct faculty member in anthropology and director of sponsored projects for the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colo. The article grew out of work toward Bocinsky’s WSU doctorate.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, Bocinsky, WSU Regents Professor Tim Kohler and colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,000 southwest archaeological sites and nearly 30,000 tree-ring dates that served as indicators of rainfall, heat and time. Their data-intensive approach, facilitated by climate reconstructions run at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gives a remarkably detailed picture of year-to-year changes.

This is particularly important as droughts of just five or ten years were enough to prompt major shifts in the small niches where Pueblo people grew maize, their major crop.

The niches, said Kohler, were “woven together with a web of ceremony and ritual that required belief in the supernatural” to ensure plentiful rain and good crops. When rains failed to appear, he said, the rituals were delegitimized.

“Then there’s a point where people say, ‘This isn’t working. We’re leaving,'” he said.

That starts a period of exploration in which people look for new places to live and develop new ways of living, followed by a period of exploitation in a new niche with different behaviors and values.

“There’s a new period of wealth creation, investment in architecture and culture change,” said Kohler.

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Pueblo Bonito, one of the largest Great Houses in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, grew out of one of several cultural transformations that researchers have documented in the ancient Southwest. Credit: Nate Crabtree

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The researchers said the first period of exploitation, known as Basketmaker III, took place between 600 and 700 A.D. It ended with a mild drought and was followed by a period known as Pueblo I, in which the practice of storing maize in underground chambers gave way to storage in rooms above ground.

The researchers think this represents a shift from unrestricted sharing of food to more restricted exchanges controlled by households or family groups. The period ended around 890 with a slightly larger drought.

The exploitation phase of the Pueblo II period ran from 1035 to 1145 and was marked by large shared plazas and great houses—what we would today call McMansions—in the Chaco Canyon area south of Mesa Verde, Colo.

“We’re talking some of the largest—actually, the largest—prehistoric masonry structures in North America north of Mexico,” said Kohler. “These things are huge.”

Wood for roofs had to come from 50 to 75 miles away, requiring an unprecedented level of coordination. The mix of large and small buildings also suggests a more hierarchal social structure with someone in charge.

Pueblo III, which peaked around 1250, featured restricted access to civic and ceremonial spaces and has some of the greatest evidence of social inequality. This period ended with the largest and most widespread of the four droughts. By contrast, the ensuing Pueblo IV period had big rectangular pueblos with apartments surrounding large shared plazas and civic ceremonial spaces.

“It’s as if everybody has equal access to where all the important stuff happens,” said Bocinsky. “That’s been interpreted as being far more egalitarian in how people were organizing themselves as a society than what we see during any of the previous periods.”

“There’s a total reorganization,” said Kohler.

The researchers hope their analysis of societal expansion and collapse, as well as periods of exploration and exploitation, can be applied to other Neolithic societies whose economic, organizational and ritual practices collapsed when they failed to meet expectations.

To varying degrees, Bocinsky and Kohler also draw parallels to the current dissatisfaction among people who have yet to recover from the last recession.

“A lot of the nation has not recovered since 2008, and what you’re seeing is a populist movement to radically reorganize the way that politics is done in this country,” said Bocinsky. “We’re seeing that need to reorganize four times in the Pueblo record.”

Bocinsky and Kohler collaborated on their paper with Jonathan Rush of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Keith Kintigh of Arizona State University.

The work is in keeping with WSU’s Grand Challenges, a suite of research initiatives aimed at large societal issues. It is particularly relevant to the themes of sustainable resources and advancing opportunity and equity.

Source: Washington State University press release.

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Ancient DNA sheds new light on early Americans

Posted on April 1, 2016 by No Author -

UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE—The first large-scale study of ancient DNA from early American people has confirmed the devastating impact of European colonisation on the indigenous American populations of the time.

Led by the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), the researchers have reconstructed a genetic history of indigenous American populations by looking directly into the DNA of 92 pre-Columbian mummies and skeletons between 500 and 8600 years old.

Published today in Science Advances, the study reveals a striking absence of the pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern indigenous Americans; showing extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards.

“Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost 100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in today’s indigenous populations,” says joint lead author Dr Bastien Llamas, Senior Research Associate with ACAD. “This separation appears to have been established as early as 9000 years ago and was completely unexpected, so we examined many demographic scenarios to try and explain the pattern.”

“The only scenario that fit our observations was that shortly after the initial colonization, populations were established that subsequently stayed geographically isolated from one another, and that a major portion of these populations later became extinct following European contact. This closely matches the historical reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s.”

The research team, which also includes members from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and Harvard Medical School, studied maternal genetic lineages by sequencing whole mitochondrial genomes extracted from bone and teeth samples from 92 pre-Columbian—mainly South American—human mummies and skeletons.

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The Llull Maiden: DNA of the Doncela (The Maiden) Incan mummy found at Mount Llullaillaco, Argentina, in 1999, was used in the study. Credit: Johan Reinhard

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Human remains at a burial site of the Lima culture (500-700 AD) uncovered at the Huaca Pucllana great adobe pyramid, in the city of Lima, Peru. Credit: Huaca Pucllana research, conservation and valorization project

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The ancient genetic signals also provide a more precise timing of the first people entering the Americas—via the Beringian land bridge that connected Asia and the northwestern tip of North America during the last Ice Age.

“Our genetic reconstruction confirms that the first Americans entered around 16,000 years ago via the Pacific coast, skirting around the massive ice sheets that blocked an inland corridor route which only opened much later,” says Professor Alan Cooper, Director of ACAD. “They spread southward remarkably swiftly, reaching southern Chile by 14,600 years ago.”

“Genetic diversity in these early people from Asia was limited by the small founding populations which were isolated on the Beringian land bridge for around 2400 to 9000 years,” says joint lead author Dr Lars Fehren-Schmitz, from UCSC. “It was at the peak of the last Ice Age, when cold deserts and ice sheets blocked human movement and limited resources would have constrained population size. This long isolation of a small group of people brewed the unique genetic diversity observed in the early Americans.”

Dr Wolfgang Haak, formerly at ACAD and now at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, says: “Our study is the first real time genetic record of these key questions regarding the timing and process of the peopling of the Americas. To get an even fuller picture, however, we will need a concerted effort to build a comprehensive dataset from the DNA of people alive today and their pre-Columbian ancestors, to further compare ancient and modern diversity.”

Source: University of Adelaid press release.

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Indonesian ‘Hobbits’ may have died out sooner than thought

Posted on March 31, 2016 by No Author -

GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY—An ancient species of pint-sized humans discovered in the tropics of Indonesia may have met their demise earlier than once believed, according to an international team of scientists who reinvestigated the original finding.

Published in the journal Nature this week, the group challenges reports that these inhabitants of remote Flores island co-existed with modern humans for tens of thousands of years.

They found that the youngest age for Homo floresiensis, dubbed the ‘Hobbit’, is around 50,000 years ago not between 13,000 and 11,000 years as initially claimed.

Led by Indonesian scientists and involving researchers from Griffith University’s Research Centre of Human Evolution (RCHE) the team found problems with prior dating efforts at the cave site, Liang Bua.

“In fact, Homo floresiensis seems to have disappeared soon after our species reached Flores, suggesting it was us who drove them to extinction,” says Associate Professor Maxime Aubert, a geochronologist and archaeologist at RCHE, who with RCHE’s Director Professor Rainer measured the amount of uranium and thorium inside Homo floresiensis fossils to test their age.

“The science is unequivocal,” Aubert said.

“The youngest Hobbit skeletal remains occur at 60,000 years ago but evidence for their simple stone tools continues until 50,000 years ago. After this there are no more traces of these humans.”

While excavating at the limestone cave of Liang Bua in 2003, archaeologists found bones from diminutive humans unlike any people alive today. The researchers concluded the tiny cave dwellers evolved from an older branch of the human family that had been marooned on Flores for at least a million years. It was thought that this previously unknown population lived on Flores until about 12,000 years ago.

But the site is large and complex and the original excavators dug only a tiny portion of it. Years of further excavation has led to a much clearer understanding of the order of archaeological layers. It is now evident that when the original team collected samples for dating the main layer containing Hobbit bones they mistakenly took them from an overlying layer that is similar in composition, but far younger.

“This problem has now been resolved and the newly published dates provide a more reliable estimate of the antiquity of this species,” Aubert said.

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The Liang Bua cave where the remains of Homo floresiensis were found. Rosino, Wikimedia Commons

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But the mystery of what happened to these creatures remains.

RCHE archaeologist Dr Adam Brumm, who also participated in the study, said Hobbits are likely to have inhabited other Flores caves which may yield more recent signs of their existence. He believes Homo floresiensis probably suffered the same fate that befell Europe’s Neanderthals – our species simply out-competed and replaced them within a few thousand years.

“They might have retreated to more remote parts of Flores, but it’s a small place and they couldn’t have avoided our species for long. I think their days were numbered the moment we set foot on the island.”

Source: Griffith University news release.

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Text in lost language may reveal god or goddess worshipped by Etruscans at ancient temple

Posted on March 30, 2016 by No Author -

SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY—Archaeologists in Italy have discovered what may be a rare sacred text in the Etruscan language that is likely to yield rich details about Etruscan worship of a god or goddess.

The lengthy text is inscribed on a large 6th century BCE sandstone slab that was uncovered from an Etruscan temple.

A new religious artifact is rare. Most Etruscan discoveries typically have been grave and funeral objects.

“This is probably going to be a sacred text, and will be remarkable for telling us about the early belief system of a lost culture that is fundamental to western traditions,” said archaeologist Gregory Warden, co-director and principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which made the discovery.

The slab, weighing about 500 pounds and nearly four feet tall by more than two feet wide, has at least 70 legible letters and punctuation marks, said Warden, professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, main sponsor of the project.

Scholars in the field predict the stele (STEE-lee), as such slabs are called, will yield a wealth of new knowledge about the lost culture of the Etruscans. The Etruscan civilization once ruled Rome and influenced Romans on everything from religion to government to art to architecture.

Considered one of the most religious people of the ancient world, Etruscan life was permeated by religion, and ruling magistrates also exercised religious authority.

The slab was discovered embedded in the foundations of a monumental temple where it had been buried for more than 2,500 years. At one time it would have been displayed as an imposing and monumental symbol of authority, Warden said.

The Mugello Valley dig, specifically the Poggio Colla site, is northeast of Florence, Italy. The slab would have been connected to the early sacred life of the sanctuary there. The architecture then was characterized by timber-framed oval structures pre-dating a large temple with an imposing stone podium and large stone column bases of the Tuscan Doric type, five of which have been found at the site, Warden said.

“We hope to make inroads into the Etruscan language,” said Warden, president and professor of archaeology at Franklin University Switzerland. “Long inscriptions are rare, especially one this long, so there will be new words that we have never seen before, since it is not a funerary text.”

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The Etruscan stele was discovered embedded in the foundations of a monumental temple where it had been buried for more than 2,500 years. Credit: Mugello Valley Project

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The slab, weighing about 500 pounds and nearly four feet tall by more than two feet wide, has at least 70 legible letters and punctuation marks, likely with new words never seen before. Credit: Mugello Valley Project

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Conservation and study of the stele, with full photogrammetry and laser scanning to document all aspects of the conservation process and all details of the inscribed surfaces, is underway in the next few months at the conservation laboratories of the Tuscan Archaeological Superintendency in Florence by experts from the architecture department of the University of Florence. The sandstone, likely from a local source, is heavily abraded and chipped, with one side reddened, possibly from undergoing burning in antiquity. Cleaning will allow scholars to read the inscription.

“We know how Etruscan grammar works, what’s a verb, what’s an object, some of the words,” Warden said. “But we hope this will reveal the name of the god or goddess that is worshiped at this site.” The text will be studied and published by a noted expert on the Etruscan language, Rex Wallace, Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In two decades of digging, Mugello Valley Archaeological Project has unearthed objects about Etruscan worship, beliefs, gifts to divinities, and discoveries related to the daily lives of elites and non-elites, including workshops, kilns, pottery and homes. This wealth of material helps document the ritual activity from the 7th century to the 2nd century BCE, including gold jewelry, coins, the earliest scene of childbirth in western European art, and in the past two seasons, four 6th-century bronze statuettes.

Etruscan scholar Jean MacIntosh Turfa with the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, said the stele discovery will advance knowledge of Etruscan history, literacy and religious practices.

“Inscriptions of more than a few words, on permanent materials, are rare for the Etruscans, who tended to use perishable media like linen cloth books or wax tablets,” Turfa said. “This stone stele is evidence of a permanent religious cult with monumental dedications, at least as early as the Late Archaic Period, from about 525 to 480 BCE. Its re-use in the foundations of a slightly later sanctuary structure points to deep changes in the town and its social structure.”

It would be a rare discovery to identify the Etruscan god or goddess to which the sanctuary was dedicated.

“Apart from the famous seaside shrine at Pyrgi, with its inscribed gold plaques, very few Etruscan sanctuaries can be so conclusively identified,” Turfa said. “A study of the names of the dedicants will yield rich data on a powerful society where the nobility, commoners and even freed slaves could offer public vows and gifts.”

Etruscans were a highly cultured people, but very little of their writing has been preserved, mostly just short funerary inscriptions with names and titles, said archaeologist Ingrid Edlund-Berry, professor emerita, The University of Texas at Austin.

“So any text, especially a longer one, is an exciting addition to our knowledge,” said Edlund-Berry, an expert in Etruscan civilization. “It is very interesting that the stele was found within the walls of the buildings at the site, thus suggesting that it was re-used, and that it represents an early phase at the site.”

The Poggio Colla site is in northern Etruria. Most inscriptions have come from centers further south, Edlund-Berry said.

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The stele was officially reported during a scientific exhibit of the Tuscan Archaeological Superintendency starting March 19, “Shadow of the Etruscans,” in Prato, Italy.

Besides SMU, other collaborating institutions at Mugello Valley Archaeological Project include Franklin and Marshall College, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, the Center for the Study of Ancient Italy at The University of Texas at Austin, The Open University (UK), and Franklin University Switzerland.

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Archaeologists uncover monumental prehistoric structure on island of Menorca

Posted on March 29, 2016 by No Author -

Archaeologists have recently begun revealing the features of an ancient prehistoric stone structure on the Mediterranean island of Menorca in the Balearic Islands, an archipelago near the eastern coast of Spain.

Beginning in 2015, under the direction of archaeologists Montserrat Anglada, Irene Riudavets, and Cristina Bravo, an archaeological team began excavating a newly opened structure at the site, known as Sa Cudia Cremada, a site that is composed of distinctive Iron Age (part of Spain’s prehistoric period) stone structures such as talayots — truncated tower-shaped constructions. The builders were members of the mysterious Talayotic culture, a people who left no written records, but whose architectural legacy dots the Balearic Islands.

“This research project started in 2015, when the team started digging remains of an Iron Age sanctuary, a site that was untouched until we first started digging in August,” said Bravo, one of the lead archaeologists. “The most important finding did not wait too long to be discovered and, during the first field school session one of the students found a large stone slab which was clearly broken and in situ. Its vertical position, its shape and location inside the building helped shed light on the building’s typology: it was a Taula monument.”

Characteristic of the Talayotic culture, the Taula is a large vertical monolith or supporting stone combined with a horizontal one resting on top, forming a large T-shaped monument. “Taula” means table in Catalan, as they were by tradition once thought to be tables used by giants. Now archaeologists suggest they were monuments representing Talayotic deities, occupying central positions in sanctuaries where rituals were performed.

“During archaeological excavations, new architectural elements were located, which are typical from these buildings, such as pilasters abutting the perimeter walls,” reports the archaeological team about the building in which the Taula is located. Also found were several grinding stones and pestles, as well as indigenous pottery, including artifacts from later periods, such as the Punic, Roman, Islamic, and Medieval periods.

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Aerial view of Sa Cudia Cremada’s taula sanctuary after the 1st excavation campaign. Courtesy Sa Cudia Cremada Field School

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Fieldwork at Sa Cudia Cremada’s sanctuary. Courtesy Sa Cudia Cremada Filed School

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One of the taula sanctuaries already excavated in Menorca: the Taula sanctuary at Torralba d’en Salort. Courtesy Sa Cudia Cremada Field School

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The Talayotic culture is a society that flourished on the Gymnesian Islands (the easternmost Balearic Islands) during the Iron Age. Its origins date from the end of the second millennium BC. It is named after the talayots, abundant and emblematic structures from the prehistoric period of the Balearic Islands. Archaeologists are continuing to piece together excavated clues that are still raising more questions than answers, but progress is slowly being made. “Archaeological excavations and research tasks are slow and laborious,” reports the team. “As a consequence, the team has a long way to go to be able to ascertain all these questions and others, which will shed light on the function and significance of this type of unique sanctuary from Mediterranean Prehistory.”

An in-depth feature article about the new excavations at Sa Cudia Cremada will be published in the upcoming Summer 2016 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

Individuals wishing to know more or who may be interested in participating in the excavations may visit the project’s website: http://archaeologysacudia.com/en/ or contact the team at [email protected].

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Teeth from Natufian-hunted gazelles give clues to climate during Eastern Mediterranean Younger Dryas

Posted on March 28, 2016 by No Author -

A team of researchers have concluded that the Younger Dryas, the worldwide climatic downturn between 12,900 and 11,500 BP that many scientists suggest marked a return to glacial conditions, was cool but not as dry as previously thought in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

Led by Gideon Hartman of the University of Connecticut, the researchers developed a new set of seasonal climatic data for the southern Levant using carbon isotope measurements taken from the tooth enamel of gazelles killed by Natufian hunters as evidenced at Early and Late Natufian archaeological sites of the Hayonim and Hilton Tachtit caves in western Galilee, Israel. The values fall before and during the Younger Dryas, and provide a proxy measure for water availability in the area during that time period. The results reveal that, although climate conditions were cooler, consistent with the generally accepted characterization of the Younger Dryas, they were not dryer than the preceding Bølling-Allerød period. The researchers further hypothesize that the cooler conditions prompted the establishment of Natufian settlements in the Jordan Valley, where the warmer, more stable environment created conditions more favorable to higher wild cereal productivity. This, the researchers suggest, may have facilitated the transition to agriculture.

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Above, as exhibited in the Dagon Museum, mortars from Natufian culture and grinding stones from the Neolithic pre-pottery phase. Hanay, Wikimedia Commons

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The Natufian culture thrived from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant, before the advent of agriculture. The Natufians are thought to have been the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region. They were hunters, but they also exploited wild cereals. Some evidence has suggested that they actually cultivated rye at Tell Abu Hureyra, a site that is thought to have provided the earliest evidence of agriculture in the world.

The study* is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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*“Hunted gazelle evidence cooling, but not drying, during the Younger Dryas in the southern Levant,” by Gideon Hartman, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Alex Brittingham, Leore Grosman, and Natalie Munro.

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Ancient Mesopotamian culture vanishing before our eyes

Posted on March 25, 2016 by No Author -

ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA—For thousands of years, the marshes at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq were an oasis of green in a dry landscape, hosting a wealth of wildlife. The culture of the Marsh Arab, or Ma’dan, people who live there is tightly interwoven with the ecosystem of the marshes. The once dense and ubiquitous common reed (Phragmites australis) served as raw material for homes, handicrafts, tools, and animal fodder for thousands of years. Distinctive mudhif communal houses, built entirely of bundled reeds, appear in Sumerian stonework from 5,000 years ago. Now that culture is drying up with the marshes.

Recent decades have brought extreme change to the fertile lands famous for the birth of agriculture and the rise of some of the world’s earliest cities. The sphere of daily life for Marsh Arab women has shrunk as the natural resources they traditionally cultivated have vanished, reports an international team of researchers in “Effects of Mesopotamian Marsh (Iraq) desiccation on the cultural knowledge and livelihood of Marsh Arab women,” published in the March 2016 issue of Ecosystem Health and Sustainability, a joint journal of the Ecological Society of America and Ecological Society of China.

The study* is the first effort to specifically document Marsh Arab women’s cultural relationship to marsh ecological services.

“Imagine the Everglades. The Marsh Arabs used to live in the middle of the water, surrounded by everything green. The fields, the reeds, and the water buffalo were around them. Now they have to walk five, ten kilometers to reach resources. The land is dry and brown,” said study author Nadia Al-Mudaffar Fawzi, an Iraqi marine ecologist who returned from New Zealand to the city of her birth in 2009 to teach and conduct research at the University of Basrah.

Al-Mudaffar Fawzi studies the impact of climate change on biodiversity in the marshes, the Persian Gulf, and the Shatt al-Arab river which connects them. Rising temperatures, falling water volume in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and groundwater pumping is causing the salt water in the Gulf to extend up the Shatt al-Arab, which is formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. Basrah, now the second largest city in Iraq, is on the Shatt al Arab about 70 kilometers downstream of the confluence.

“When I came back in 2009, I knew there were lots of problems with drying of the system. We knew there was big impact on fish production, on water quality in the Shatt al-Arab, and in the north of the Gulf,” said Al-Mudaffar Fawzi.

In her investigations of the water systems, she also grew interested in the social impact of environmental change, and in people’s understandings of the effects of the environment on their lives. Iraq did not have environmental laws until the change of government in 2003, and they remain a low priority in the current chaotic conditions in the country.

“The whole situation in the marshes is completely different from what I saw before, in the ’70s and early ’80s,” she said. “Women used to play a role in the ecological system. They used to work with men in gathering reeds and in fishing, and we would see them in the market when they come and sell their produce, like the fish, and the milk from the buffalo, the cheese and the yogurt that they make.”

Al-Mudaffar Fawzi and her colleagues designed a survey to more formally ask Marsh Arab women about their lives and activities. With the exception of women living on the edge of the Mesopotamia Marshland National Park, created in 2013, where restoration efforts have seen some success, Marsh Arab women reported that their daily lives had narrowed to domestic tasks in the home. Very few women today go out to gather reeds or care for buffalo.

“The older women who were adults before the war would tell us, ‘back then I was out making dung patties, collecting reeds, taking care of buffalo,'” said author Kelly Goodwin, who works with the international NGO Millennium Relief and Development Services. “They say, ‘now I’m just at home’.”

Goodwin interviewed 34 women, ranging in age from teenagers to more than 70 years, in the Hammar Marshes north of the city of Basrah in December 2013-February 2014. More than half the interviewees were over 50. These older women were born and grew to adulthood before the war in the 1980s and destruction of the 1990s. Nearly 60 percent of younger women under 40 described their days as exclusively “domestic.”

We are not teaching our daughters, older women told the researchers, because the water is gone, the ground is dry and there are no reeds to gather. The water is too salty for our buffalo.

Although men and women have separate roles in Marsh Arab culture, traditional women’s work took women outside the home and brought supplementary income to the family through market sales. Women cared for water buffalo and gathered reeds to weave into mats, baskets, pigeon cages and other tools. Women turned high-fat buffalo milk into dairy products, dung into fuel, and raise chickens, cattle, and sheep. They helped cultivate rice, wheat, and dates. Usually women, not men, took fish, dairy, and handicrafts to sell in city markets.

“The marshes were a cultivated landscape, shaped by selective harvest, hunting, fishing, and burning to promote the natural resources that the Marsh Arabs used–much like the precolonial landscape was cultivated by native peoples here in California,” said author Michelle Stevens, a professor California State University in Sacramento. Also like California, Stevens said, climate change modeling predicts a future of hotter summers, accentuated droughts, and shrinking winter snowpacks in Turkey’s Taurus Mountains, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers arise.

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A Marsh Arab (Ma’dan) woman carries freshly cut reeds, the traditional construction material of mats, baskets, and houses in the Mesopotamian Marshes of modern day Iraq. (2014) Credit: Kelly P. Goodwin

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In Iraq, war and ongoing political instability have magnified the problems besieging marshes worldwide, particularly in arid landscapes: pollution and too many demands on the water that sustains them. The marshes enjoyed a burst of recovery the mid-2000s after drying up nearly completely in the previous decade. The influx of water, and resulting dramatic greening, can be seen in images from NASA’s Terra satellite, captured between 2000 and 2010. The resilient reeds returned quickly as the marshes rehydrated.

In the 1990s, former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein deliberately drained the marshes to facilitate oil discovery and to retaliate against tribes that participated in uprisings against his government. Marsh Arabs who had not already fled the front line fighting during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, were forced to leave as the land became barren and dry.

After the Second Gulf War removed Hussein from power, Iraqis tore down the water diversions and returned water to the marshes. Many Marsh Arabs returned to their homeland. The apparent resilience of the ecosystem and the culture of the marshes masked fragility, however. The researchers fear that the Marsh may be approaching a threshold of no return, as the older generation with the wealth of skills needed to flourish in the marshes yields to a younger generation that never had the opportunity for hands-on learning.

Water in the Tigris and Euphrates has dropped to 20 percent of the pre-war volume. The remaining water carries so much salt that it is often undrinkable. Drought in 2007 hit the region hard, reversing many of the restorative gains for the ecosystem. The generation of Marsh Arabs that grew up outside the marshes had no practical experience of living in the marshes, and struggled to adapt to the lifestyle of their parents’ youth.

Goodwin describes the tapwater in Basrah as so salty that a filigree of crystals forms on the surface of dishes as they dry. Increased dependence on groundwater is worsening saltwater intrusion from the Gulf.

Although the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow across the length Iraq, the water comes from outside its borders. Iraq is at the mercy of the water policies of its upstream neighbors Turkey, Syria, and Iran, all of which have intensified water development projects in recent years. The current political instability makes effective diplomacy on water issues difficult.

Recovery of the ecosystem and culture of the marshes will likely depend on diplomatic efforts to secure sufficient water, Al-Mudaffar Fawzi says. In Mesopotamia Marshlands National Park, Iraq’s first national park, restoration practices are emerging that appear to successfully restore social and ecological systems, and could be used as templates for restoration in other areas of the Mesopotamian Marshes. But this cannot be done without water.

The authors recommend that programs be implemented to preserve traditional skills, to develop a market for handicrafts to support women and their families, and to support cultural knowledge. Otherwise, with the passing of the older generation, these remnants of ancient Sumerian knowledge systems and traditional ways of life will soon be lost.

“It was extremely sobering sometimes to see the circumstances some people are living in,” said Goodwin. “Much of the land near Basrah city is desertified.” But visits to the marshes could also be thrilling, she said, and the visit to the restored region was almost magical.

“I really consider it was a privilege to sit with these women, drink tea, and hear their stories,” said Goodwin. “I would have loved to have tangible solutions to take back to them that could encourage the retention of cultural traditions and secure ecological restoration. I think they feel they are forgotten and overlooked. I wish I could tell them that they are not forgotten.”

Source: News release of the Ecological Society of America.

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*Nadia Al-Mudaffar Fawzi, Kelly P. Goodwin , Bayan Mehdi, Michelle L. Stevens (2016) Effects of Mesopotamian Marsh (Iraq) desiccation on the cultural knowledge and livelihood of Marsh Arab women. Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 2(3):e01207. doi: 10.1002/ehs2.1207 Full text open access

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Australopithecus fossils found east of the Great Rift Valley

Posted on March 24, 2016 by No Author -

KYOTO UNIVERSITY—New fossils from Kenya suggest that an early hominid species— Australopithecus afarensis—lived far eastward beyond the Great Rift Valley and much farther than previously thought. An international team of paleontologists led by Emma Mbua of Mount Kenya University and Masato Nakatsukasa of Kyoto University report findings of fossilized teeth and forearm bone from an adult male and two infant A. afarensis from an exposure eroded by the Kantis River in Ongata-Rongai, a settlement in the outskirts of Nairobi.

“So far, all other A. afarensis fossils had been identified from the center of the Rift Valley,” explains Nakatsukasa. “A previous Australopithecus bahrelghazali discovery in Chad confirmed that our hominid ancestor’s distribution covered central Africa, but this was the first time an Australopithecus fossil has been found east of the Rift Valley. This has important implications for what we understand about our ancestor’s distribution range, namely that Australopithecus could have covered a much greater area by this age.”

A. afarensis is believed to have lived 3,700,000-3,000,000 years ago, as characterized by fossils like “Lucy” from Ethiopia.

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Above: A forensic facial reconstruction of A. afarensis based on fossil evidence. Cicero Moraes, Wikimedia Commons

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Stable isotope analysis revealed that the Kantis region was humid, but had a plain-like environment with fewer trees compared to other sites in the Great Rift Valley where A. afaransis fossils had previously appeared. “The hominid must have discovered suitable habitats in the Kenyan highlands. It seems that A. afaransis was good at adapting to varying environments,” notes Nakatsukasa.

The team’s survey also turned up masses of mammal fossils, including a few that probably belong to new species of bovids or baboons.

The authors write that the Kantis site was first noted in a 1991 geological survey. At that time, a farmer said that he and his family had come across fossilized bones from Kantis in the 1970s, although they did not recognize their importance. Following airing of Kenyan television programs on paleontological research, locals gradually started to appreciate the fossils. Since then, Kantis and other sites have been identified thanks to fossil notifications from the local population.

The team welcomes this achievement not only for its academic implications, but also for the benefits to the local community. “Kantis is in the vicinity of Nairobi, a major city,” said Nakatsukasa. “We hope that the discovery of the new site and the fossils will aid in increasing tourism, and in improving educational awareness of the local community.”

Source: Kyoto University news release.

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The paper “Kantis: A new Australopithecus site on the shoulders of the Rift Valley near Nairobi, Kenya” will appear May 2016 in the Journal of Human Evolution, with doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.01.006

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Site in Germany yields human presence over 1 million years ago

Posted on March 23, 2016 by No Author -

The late Early Pleistocene site near Untermassfeld, in Germany, is now well known for a rich array of fauna dating back to about 1.07 million years ago, including simple ‘Mode 1’ (or Oldowan-type) stone tools evidencing early human occupation. Now researchers Günter Landeck and Joan Garcia Garriga report, for the first time, evidence of early human butchery in the form of cut marks on animal bones and intentional hammerstone-related bone breakage. These human-modified bones were recovered in a small faunal subsample excavated from levels with simple ‘Mode 1’ stone tools. The butchered assemblage was found during fieldwork and surveying of ancient riverbanks and channel erosion sediments. The report authors state that the frequent occurrence of butchery traces on bones of large-sized herd animals, such as an ancient species of Bison, may suggest that the early human occupiers of the site had an enhanced need for meat because of changes resulting in a depletion of nutritive plants in winter. The study authors further note that early access to the carcasses before they were consumed by other carnivores made it possible for the early humans to acquire a sufficient amount of meat for subsistence. The researchers conclude that the stone tools and human-altered faunal remains at Untermassfeld provide evidence for the oldest early human settlement at European continental mid-latitudes, or about 50° N.

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A view of the picturesque modern village of Untermassfeld, near which the prehistoric site is located. Winfried Gaenssler, Wikimedia Commons

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Untermassfeld is one among a few sites discovered in Europe that provide evidence of a Lower Pleistocene arrival of early humans in Europe. The findings from these sites have helped to formulate a new perspective on the dispersal pattern and timing of the prehistoric movement of humans, ultimately back to African origins.

The study is published in press in the Journal of Human Evolution.

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Uncovering the Citadel of El Pilar

Posted on March 21, 2016 by No Author -

Walking through this ancient Central American jungle landscape might be a puzzling, yet surprisingly delightful experience for a first-time visitor. You don’t clearly see the well-defined, great stone pyramids, ball-courts, temples, and other monuments so often attributed to great ancient Maya centers. But you see a tropical terrain that is anything but flat. There is a jungle-shrouded mound here, another one over there. A well-planned walking path winds through what one could describe as the Maya version of the Garden of Eden. Like the very first 18th and 19th century explorers of the Maya world, you see what could be ancient structures still hidden beneath their canopy shroud. Some of them have been partially exposed, betraying what might lie beneath, leaving the rest to the imagination. You soon realize that this place is very different than any other encountered in the Maya world. Today, archaeologists call this place El Pilar, which means “watering basin”, named for the abundance of streams around it and below its escarpment.

Divided along the imaginary line between western Belize and northeastern Guatemala, El Pilar is considered the largest site in the Belize River region, boasting over 25 known plazas and hundreds of other structures, covering an area of about 120 acres. Monumental construction at El Pilar began in the Middle Preclassic period, around 800 BCE, and at its height centuries later it supported more than 20,000 people. For three decades, archaeologist Anabel Ford has been exploring and studying this ancient Maya site. She is the Director of the Mesoamerican Research Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Unlike most archaeologists, however, she has taken a unique, highly selective conservation approach to investigating the site. With the exception of a fully exposed Maya house structure, most of the structures at El Pilar have remained completely conserved by design, still covered in their tropical shroud. She calls this ‘archaeology under the canopy’, where the natural environment enveloping the ancient monuments is maintained to protect the fragile structures from the elements. “Living biofilms attack the limestone where exposed, which rapidly deteriorates the vulnerable limestone facades,” she says. “It is tree cover that reduces exposure to sunshine and rain and maintains an even temperature that will preserve the monuments.”

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Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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El Pilar lies below a thick jungle canopy. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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Above and below: Most of the El Pilar structures remain enshrouded in foliage, a natural strategy for conserving its remains. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar Program

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The Citadel

Despite the mask of it’s jungle cloak, Ford and other archaeologists know that El Pilar generally resembles the pattern exhibited by most ancient Maya centers. Years of ground research and surveys have revealed this.

But in 2013, Ford and her colleagues encountered something very different.

“We discovered a completely new component of the greater site that does not meet with any traditional expectations,” said Ford. “It shares nothing in common with Classic Maya centers: no clear open plaza, no cardinal structure orientation, and curiously no evident relationship to the major Classic period site of El Pilar, little more that 500 meters away.”

What Ford is describing is an unseen building, or associated complex of buildings, that was only detected by remote sensing technology—more specifically, a laser application known as LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging—in this instance an airborne remote sensing technique utilizing a helicopter employing laser technology to penetrate the thick vegetation and forest canopy that overlies and enshrouds objects and structures. It is a way of ‘seeing through’ the forest to reveal things otherwise invisible to the naked eye.

LiDAR helped to produce a remarkable map of El Pilar, revealing unexposed Maya architectural and other human-made features that, although still hidden from the naked eye, fit an often-seen pattern. This new set of structures, however, was something new. Dubbed the “Citadel” because of its location perched atop a 380-meter-long by 200-meter-wide ridge, it features concentric terracing and what appear to be defensive ramparts up the ridge. “Based on the LiDAR, we knew that the overall area of the Citadel was approximately 13 hectares from the hilltop to the limits of the lower ramparts” states Ford in her report to the Belize government. It is topped by several structures up to five meters high. Unlike the other complexes below and nearby, it seems by placement to have been isolated from the rest of greater El Pilar.

Never before had Ford seen anything like this in all her years of Maya research. What could it be?

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Above and below: LiDAR images showing the core area of El Pilar, with Citadel to its east (to the right in the picture). Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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Excavation

In a quest to find some answers, Ford returned to the site in 2015 with a small team, this time to do some ‘ground-truthing” and limited excavation to determine construction chronology and the age of the site. After arriving and beginning work, however, they found that they had to sift through extensive damage and debris left by looters. In addition, thick vines and underbrush had to be removed to examine and map the site. Despite this, the archaeologists began to develop a clearer picture of what they were uncovering.

“Covering almost 1 hectare, or about 2.5 acres, with 4-meter-high ramparts encircling a natural hill, the El Pilar ‘Citadel’ presents a remarkable image of construction ingenuity clearly with defense in mind,” said Ford. “While the lower two ramparts were created by the unusual strategy of quarrying into the limestone hill to create vertical faces that are impossible to scale, the upper terraces that make up the apex of the hill appear to be constructed with retaining walls and fill, a technique similar to most Maya monuments.”

“Our field investigations validated the architectural features of three in-line plazas from north to south along the hilltop,” writes Ford in her field report. “The northern plaza shows no evidence of superstructures, while the central (the highest) and southern ones supported ancient buildings, each with one temple and several other platforms.”* Stepped terraces were discovered to the north of the east corner of the North Plaza descending to the upper rampart. The Central Plaza featured the first five-meter tall temple with one platform to the south and one to the east with a small appendage. Immediately adjacent and to its south, the lower South Plaza featured another five-meter tall temple with an attached western platform. Two other small structures were located on the east side of the South Plaza.

The investigations confirmed some earlier LiDAR observations. Said Ford, “the archaeologists discovered that the placement of temples and platforms was not in the expected form that should be aligned in the cardinal directions at the edges of a plaza. Instead, the main central temple, at the highest point of the hill, is squarely in the middle of the plaza and oriented to the east.”

The team painstakingly cleared away the debris of looter’s trenches excavated decades ago into the core of the two temples. At the Central Plaza temple, the highest, archaeologists exposed a massive looter’s trench and shaft that demolished the center to a depth of more than 6 meters and exposed the details of some 10 construction episodes. Plaster floors, walls, stairs, rooms, and charcoal layers make up the sequence the archaeologists are piecing together from the devastation wrought by the looters. A second looter’s trench was discovered in the other temple, located within a southern plaza. Here, “the looter’s excavation destroyed the top of the temple and pried out beautifully dressed stone using picks on elegantly prepared stucco with painted black lines, showing cavalier disregard for the complexity of the ancient architecture,” said Ford. “Walls, doorways, additions, as well as a major plaster floor more than 25 cm think were so thoroughly damaged it is difficult to understand the architectural relationships.”

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Thick vines and underbrush at the Citadel site had to be removed, leaving trees for shade, before further work and mapping could take place. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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The center temple structure before removal of overgrowth and debris. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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Center temple after clearing. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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Mapping the Citadel. Dr. Anabel Ford (left) with Julia Longo, a key member of the special team. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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The Age of the Site

In the 2015 exploratory excavations, much of the work necessarily focused on the temple areas affected by the looters’ trenches, which meant recovering ceramic material and other artifacts discarded by the looters into the backfill of their excavations. Although stratigraphic context could not obviously play a role in this, Ford and colleagues found that most of the recovered material, which represented vessels of bowls, jars and plates, were “consistent with the Preclassic (1000 BC to 250 AD)”. “Slipped vessels were waxy and presented durable surfaces characteristic of the Preclassic,” she reported. “Curiously, there were a few pieces that might be considered Middle Preclassic.”*

Preliminary analysis thus indicates that the Citadel is a Preclassic, or Late Preclassic, construction. But more significant than this is what the finds suggest about the relationship of the Citadel to the rest of the El Pilar center. “More significant,” reports Ford, “is that there was absolutely nothing to represent any of the later Classic (AD 250 – 950) periods. The El Pilar Citadel is firmly placed in the Late Preclassic and suggests a time frame around 250 BC would be probable, the same time the main monuments of El Pilar were expanding. Yet at the Citadel the constructions were left by c. 250 AD.”*

In other words, by Classic period times, when El Pilar was at its height, the Citadel may have been a relic of the past. Either the site was abandoned and unused as obsolete and unimportant since Preclassic times or it may have been left, for perhaps sacred or other reasons, intentionally ‘undefiled’ by later modification or construction.

In any case, clearly it was regarded as something significant at some point in ancient Maya history. The enormous work that had to be expended for the construction of its massive ramparts and associated concentric terraces seem to testify to a defensive work of monumental proportions. Reports Ford: “The rampart rings are the most distinguishing feature of the El Pilar Citadel, giving it an appearance of a bivallate European hill fort. The upper rampart, 14 meters below the Central Plaza at 224 meters, encloses a 20,000 square meter area and the lower, 38 meters below the Central Plaza at 200 meters, encloses approximately a 68,000 square meter area……..these ramparts present 3-4 meter high vertical obstacles with no obvious entry points.”* Ford estimates that their construction would have required the removal of approximately 12,400 cubic meters of earth and stone.

No small feat, that.

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LiDAR image showing more clearly delineated core area of El Pilar, and the Citadel to the far right, east of the core area. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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LiDAR image showing the Citadel with renderings of currently-detected structures and their relative dimensions and locations at the top of the ridge, including the two lower ramparts. Courtesy BRASS/El Pilar

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The Enduring Mystery

Archaeologists are now only beginning to scratch the surface to understand the nature, function, and dating of the site—and its enigmatic relationship (if any) to the Classic period El Pilar core site nearby. Answers to these key questions may help place the Citadel, and El Pilar generally, within the context of ancient Maya civilization and society in general.

The most recent excavations, including the analysis of recovered ceramics and profile maps developed from the initial Citadel ground investigation, however, have provided a few opening round clues and raised new questions. Whatever it is, the hilltop structures were constructed in Late Preclassic times, when the adjacent main site of El Pilar below it to the west was first expanding its monumental structures. Thus far, nothing has been recovered to date the ‘defensive’ ramparts and terracing, so it is not entirely improbable that they could have been built at a later time, such as the Classic period, to protect the site for some unknown reason. So were they constructed to protect the hilltop establishment while it was in use, or were they constructed to protect it as a sacred relic of the past? Finally, no Late Classic material was recovered from the looters’ trenches of the Citadel, the time period when El Pilar witnessed the bulk of its construction—this suggests the Citadel “was not integrated into the Late Classic civic monuments of El Pilar”.*

Ford is the first to suggest that much more work needs to be done before the mysteries of the Citadel can be solved. But a promising start has opened the way for more intensive and refined research.

“What was its significance? How was it used? Why was it isolated?” asks Ford. “There is no doubt we will have a better sense of the place after the investigations.”

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* Anabel Ford, Unexpected Discovery with LiDAR: Uncovering the Citadel at El Pilar in the Context of the Maya Forest GIS, University of California, Santa Barbara, December 2015

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Pushing the Prehistoric Fringe

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Jason Weaver -

For some, July and August in Siberia’s otherwise frigid Taimyr Peninsula could afford tolerable temperatures for walking about. At least that was the case for 11-year-old young explorer Yevgeny Salinder. During the summer of 2012, Yevgeny was living with his parents at the Sopkarga polar meteorological station on the Sopochnaya Karga (SK) Cape, where they were working. About 2,200 miles northeast of Moscow, the Cape is a stark sub-polar alpine landscape with mossy bogs, a moist tundra with waterlogged soils, and a home for the likes of animals like reindeer, wolves, arctic foxes, wolverines and mountain hare. For most of humanity, exploring this area might be at once both severe and exotic. For Yevgeny, however, a day’s adventure hiking about the Cape would not have been extraordinary.

Until he found a dead mammoth along the way.

Preserved for tens of thousands of years where it fell to its death in the permafrost, at least some of its remains were exposed enough by 2012 to have been visible to young Yevgeny on a coastal bluff off the eastern shore of Yenisei Bay—limbs sticking out of the frozen mud where a river enters the Yenisei Bay just 3 kilometers away from his station home.

It was like finding buried treasure.

After his return, he told his parents who, recognizing the potential rarity and import of the discovery, brought it to the attention of those who would know something about such things—like Alexei Tikhonov of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Tikhonov is a zoologist by education, but he is perhaps best known for his recent discoveries and published research related to paleontological finds through various excavations at arctic and subarctic locations. Leading a small team in late September of 2012, Tikhonov carefully excavated the carcass from its natural grave. In the process, more of its features became apparent—a nearly complete mammoth, with the right half of the carcass still retaining soft tissue, including skin, hair, one ear and even male reproductive organs. Weighing in at more than 500 kg, it turned out to be among the best-preserved mammoths ever found. The excavated remains were sent for cold storage in nearby Dudinks and then shipped to St Petersburg in early May of 2013.

A Pleistocene Hunting Scene

The most tantalizing findings, however, did not occur until after the scientists dated the bones and began examining them up close. Now popularly nick-named ‘Zhenya’ after the boy founder, researchers determined that the SK mammoth was about 15 or 16 years old when he died at least 45,000 years ago, based on radiocarbon dating. The likely cause of death—human hunting.

This was revelatory, as up until now no humans were known to have existed in the Arctic this long ago. “The [new Yenisei Bay] site is much older than everything known before in the arctic regions, and it is clearly located farther north from the areas where sites of that age have been found,” said Vladimir Pitulko, also of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who examined the remains in detail. “It is about 20 degrees north (about 1900 km, or 1300 miles) of any site of comparable age…… and this is a big change.”

So how did Pitulko and his colleagues come to suggest that Zhenya met his fate by human hunters?

After closely examining Zhenya’s bones, including the left scapula, several ribs, jugal bone, and right tusk, Pitulko could come to no other conclusion than that they bore marks characteristic of wounds inflicted by a weapon and butchering marks left by stone tools. He knew this because at least one of the marks exhibited features very similar to those he found on a Pleistocene wolf humerus from excavations he conducted at Bunge-Toll in the middle Yana river in the western part of the Yana-Indighirka lowland (in westernmost Western Beringia), years before. The wolf remains had been found among the remains of other Pleistocene megafauna, such as mammoth, bison, reindeer, and rhinoceros. Using high-resolution X-ray computed tomography done by Konstantin Kuper at the Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, Pitulko and colleagues could see a clear bone injury caused by penetration of a sharp implement with a conical tip. “The tool penetrated the bone deeply, taking pieces of cortical pieces inside the bone, which means it was a powerful blow,” said Pitulko. And now, some years later, Zhenya’s bone marks were likewise telling. “One of them was found on the inner side of the jugal bone (cheek bone) which was still attached to the skull. There is no natural or taphonomic reason for such an injury — this was not a bone pathology, it was not the result of carnivore chewing and it was not left by the excavation process — therefore we may expect it to be a result of human contact,” said Pitulko. After X-ray computer tomography conducted by Konstantin Kuper, the researchers were actually able to determine the inflicting weapon’s shape and size, enough to even reconstruct the shape of the tip that penetrated the bone. “It had a thinned symmetric outline and was relatively sharp,” continued Pitulko. “In most cases, bone or ivory weapons have a conical tip that is symmetric and quite acute (~30° to 40°) at the end, but they are [usually] relatively fragile and often break as they penetrate bones. In this case, the tool resisted breaking and inflicted injury on the cranial bones. The blade retained its weapon characteristics and retained enough energy to penetrate the cheekbone surface deeply into the bone. The blow was evidently very powerful and was suffered by the animal from the left back and from top down, which is only possible if the animal was lying down on the ground.” Pitulko suggests that the blow was likely an attempt intended for the base of Zhenya’s trunk, a hunting practice still used by elephant hunters today to cut major arteries and cause mortal bleeding. “This blow becomes necessary,” he maintains, “after the animal has been sufficiently injured, and the SK mammoth (Zhenya) displays numerous injuries in the thoracic area (the ribs and the left scapula). The most remarkable of them is found on the fifth left rib. This is an incision or cut mark left by some sharp tool slicing down. This pattern is very typical on mammoth bones, specifically on ribs, found [for example] at the Yana site.”

Overall, Tikhonov, Pitulko and colleagues suggest a scene where Zhenya was encountered by human hunters about 45,000 years ago, wounded/ brought down and killed, and then butchered immediately thereafter in place. Cut marks clearly made by cutting tools were evidenced on the left scapula and ribs, and even the right tusk showed signs of bone removal of a nature that suggested the possibility that the hunters fashioned ivory cutting tools from Zhenya himself.

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Excavations of the SK mammoth site in late September of 2012 near Sopochnaya Karga weather station at the Yenisei river mouth. Photo by Aleksei Tikhonov

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SK mammoth (‘Zhenya’) unearthed. Sergey Gorbunov is excavating the left side of the carcass in the head area. Photo by Aleksei Tikhonov

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The SK mammoth (‘Zhenya’). Aleksei Tikhonov (in the middle, and his field crew). Photo by S.V.Gorbunov

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Selection of bones collected by Tikhonov at the Bunge-Toll site. Note the wolf humerus (top left) positioned by the injuried side up. Photo Aleksei Tikhonov

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Aleksei Tikhonov (left) and Vladimir Pitulko discussing injury on the jugal bone of the SK mammoth at Zoological Museum (RAS), St Petersburg. Photo by Elena Pavlova

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Cut mark on the SK mammoth 5th left rib. Photo Pavel Ivanov

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Documenting human caused injuries on the SK mammoth scapula at the Institute for the History of Material Culture, RAS, St Petersburg. Pavel Ivanov and Vladimir Pitulko (on the right). Photo by Elena Pavlova

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The Significance and Implications

Paleolithic records of humans in the Eurasian Arctic are relatively scarce. Only a few sites in this region have yielded clues to an early human presence. In mainland arctic Siberia, the site of Berelekh, discovered by Nikolay Vereschagin in the early 70s, was for years the location yielding the oldest evidence for human migration into the arctic regions. It dated to about 13,000 years ago. But in 2001 another site in Siberia, known as Yana, produced evidence of a human presence dating back to about 27,000 -30,000 years. Excavated by archaeologist Vladimir Pitulko, also of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it yielded tools made from rhinoceros horn and mammoth tusk, as well as hundreds of other stone artifacts including choppers, scrapers and other biface implements. “But I never thought that even this was the final age estimate for human migrations into the arctic,” said Pitulko.

So Zhenya and the SK site have buttressed the site researchers’ suggestion that people were present in the central Siberian Arctic by about 45,000 years ago. At this time, according to Pitulko, mammoth hunting by modern humans probably became a critical element in human survival in the harsh environment and landscape of what is today Siberia. Like the modern-day elephant, the mammoth would have provided a critical source of food, fuel (dung, fat, and bones), and raw material for construction and hunting weapons and tools for processing, all the more important in the open landscapes of the Northern Eurasian steppe, which is mostly tree-less. Removed from the hunted dead carcasses of their mammoth prey, “ivory became a substitution for materials used for shafts and points long and strong enough for killing large animals, not necessarily the mammoth,” said Pitulko. “Such tools are found elsewhere in the Upper Paleolithic, and this includes even full-size spears of ivory which are known from [the sites of] Sunghir, European Russia or from Berelekh, Siberia. This innovation became a really important discovery for humans and finally helped them in surviving and settling these landscapes.”

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Worked tip of the SK mammoth tusk. Photo by Pavel Ivanov

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Field study of the bones collected at the Yana site from the Yana mass accumulation of mammoth (August 2012) – looking for human impact. Photo Elena Pavlova

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Pitulko surveying exposures in Yana river. Photo Elena Pavlova

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Thus, according to the researchers’ report, advancements in mammoth hunting likely allowed humans to survive and spread widely across northernmost Arctic Siberia at this time, representing an important cultural shift – one that likely facilitated the arrival of humans in the area close to the Bering land bridge, providing them an opportunity to enter the New World before the Last Glacial Maximum.

“This is especially important for questions related to the peopling of the New World, because now we know that the eastern Siberia up to its arctic limits was populated starting at roughly 50,000 years ago,” says Pitulko. “Until 15,000 years ago, sea-level (though changing) still remained low, which is clear from appropriate dates on terrestrial animals in the New Siberian islands. This presumes that the Bering Land Bridge existed probably most or part of this time, so the New World gate remained open…….The history of the territory which we call Western Beringia is of particular interest since it is close to the Bering Land Bridge area and then everything that was going on in this area is related (or can be related) to the question of the peopling of the New World. Most of the Eurasian north, including Western Beringia, was unglaciated [at this time] and available for humans.”

Could modern humans have crossed over to the New World from here in these early times?

“Probably yes,” says Pitulko.

But did they?

Pitulko recognizes that there is much more work to do, and additional finds that need to be made, before this question can be answered and a conclusive picture of human habitation in these regions can be drawn. In any case, for now, a new stage is set for going forward.

“These finds change our minds about possible options and this is going to provide a new stimulus for further research.”

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Metallic ink used in the Herculaneum scrolls

Posted on March 21, 2016 by No Author -

Analysis of Herculaneum papyrus scroll fragments reveals the use of metallic ink in Greco-Roman literary inscription centuries earlier than previously thought, according to a study*. Scholars of ancient scrolls hold that texts from antiquity, particularly Greek and Latin literary manuscripts produced until the fourth century AD, were largely written in carbon-based ink on papyri, the fibrous structure of which allowed scribes to jettison ruling lines. Vito Mocella and colleagues used nondestructive synchrotron X-ray-based methods to chemically analyze the barely visible black inscriptions on two nearly flat, multilayered papyrus fragments that were found at the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum in the mid-18th century and are housed at the Paris-based Institut de France. The introduction of metal in writing materials is generally dated to fourth-fifth century AD, but the fragments’ high lead concentrations—around 84 µg/cm² and 16 µg/cm²—suggest purposeful use of lead-containing ink, thus ruling out contamination from aqueducts, inkpots, or containers, and pushing back by several centuries the advent of metallic ink for literary inscription in the Greco-Roman period. Spots of concentrated lead likely correspond to the beginnings and ends of the scribes’ pen strokes on the scrolls. Letters on the fragments were bounded by naturally occurring horizontal lines of papyrus fibres that appear to have served as alignment guides for straight-line writing. The lines are likely signatures of cristobalite, a quartz-like mineral found in the papyrus plant. According to the authors, the findings might shape future analysis of unopened Herculaneum scrolls.

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An example of a section of one of the charred/carbonized scrolls found at the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. Wikimedia Commons

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The Herculaneum papyri consist of more than 1,800 papyri found in Herculaneum in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

Source: PNAS subject news release

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* “Revealing metallic ink in Herculaneum papyri,” by Emmanuel Brun et al.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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