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Ancient human DNA from the Tibetan Plateau shows Tibetan ancestry was shaped by a rich history

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Researchers have characterized the DNA of 89 ancient individuals from the Tibetan Plateau, some of whom lived as early as about 5,100 years ago, revealing population differences across time and space that helped to shape the unique gene pool of present-day Tibetans. The ancestry of the Tibetan Plateau is of interest to many researchers, including those seeking to understand the origins of many Tibetans’ genetic adaptations to the plateau’s harsh environments and high altitudes. One example is the EPAS1 allele carried by many Tibetans, which is likely an adaptation to lower oxygen levels found at high elevation and is thought to have originated from archaic humans known as Denisovans. This study* shows that frequencies of the EPAS1 allele increased over about the last 2,800 years on the Tibetan Plateau, with an especially sharp increase over about the past 700 years. Recent studies have explored the shared ancestry between present-day Tibetans and ancient Tibetans who lived along the Himalayan arc near Nepal as early as 3,400 years ago, but these analyses were limited in geographic and temporal scope. Now, Hongru Wang and colleagues have analyzed DNA from the remains of 89 ancient Tibetan individuals dating from about 5,100 to 100 years ago at 29 sites across the Tibetan Plateau. They identified stark genetic differences between populations occupying the northeastern, southeastern, and southern regions of the plateau as recently as about 2,500 years ago. Subsequent genetic shifts suggest that human migrations and interactions within and between highland and lowland populations may have influenced genetic mixing over time. “We show that the unique ancestry in present-day plateau populations can be found in ancient individuals across the entire Tibetan Plateau, extending as far back as 5,100 [years before present],” Wang et al. write. “The largest genetic shifts are caused by the mixture of populations from different regions of the plateau, potentially associated with large-scale political shifts related to the expansion and collapse of major state-level societies in historical times.”

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Tibetan Plateau composite image from NASA photos. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release.

Cyprus’s copper deposits created one of the most important trade hubs in the Bronze Age

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—The coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. This has been shown by excavations led by researchers from the University of Gothenburg. Their study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science confirms the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of international trade in the Mediterranean.

“We have found huge quantities of imported pottery in Hala Sultan Tekke, but also luxury goods made of gold, silver, ivory and semi-precious gemstones which show that the city’s production of copper was a trading commodity in high demand,” says Peter Fischer, emeritus professor at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Gothenburg and the leader of the excavations.

The Swedish Cyprus Expedition is a research project that began in 1927 to map the island’s archaeological history. The most recent expedition led by Peter Fischer at Hala Sultan Tekke, near the modern-day city of Larnaca on the south coast of Cyprus, started in 2010 and has continued for 13 seasons. The excavations have shown that the city covered at least 25 hectares, 14 of which comprised its centre, surrounded by a city wall. The Expedition has also found objects from this period scattered over an even larger area. 

“Our investigations and excavations show that Hala Sultan Tekke was larger than was previously thought, covering an area of some 25 to 50 hectares, which is a big city by that period’s standards. Usually, settlements at this time and in this area covered only a few hectares,” says Peter Fischer.

During the Bronze Age, Cyprus was the largest copper producer around the Mediterranean. This metal alloyed with tin formed the basis for making bronze which was then used for casting tools, weapons and jewellery before iron started being used.

“Remains in the city show extensive copper production in the form of smelting furnaces, cast moulds and slag. The ore from which the copper was extracted was brought into the city from mines in the nearby Troodos Mountains. The workshops produced a lot of soot and were placed in the north of the city so that the winds mainly from the south would blow the soot and the stench away from the city. Today, this type of production would be impossible, since the production process generates waste products such as arsenic, lead and cadmium, but at that time people did not know how dangerous the process was,” says Peter Fischer.

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Large quantities of imported goods
The central location of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean and a well-protected harbour created very favourable conditions for lively trade in Hala Sultan Tekke. Large quantities of imported goods in the form of pottery, jewellery and other luxury goods from neighbouring regions such as modern-day Greece, Türkiye, the Middle East and Egypt, as well as longer-distance imports from Sardinia, the Baltic Sea region, Afghanistan and India have been found. These finds show that the city was one of the largest trade hubs in the period 1500–1150 BC and was of great importance during the initial period of international trade in the area.

In addition to copper, highly sought-after purple-dyed textiles were also produced. The dye came from purple dye murex species from which the mucus that produced the purple dye was extracted. The city also produced and exported pottery with characteristic painted motifs of humans, animals and plants. The researchers refer to the artist behind these painted motifs as the ‘Hala Sultan Tekke painter’. 

“The great thing about the many pottery finds is that we can assist our colleagues around the Mediterranean and beyond. No pottery has the same spread as the coveted Cypriot pottery during this period. By finding locally made pottery that we can date in the same layer as other imported pottery that was previously difficult to date, we can synchronise these and help colleagues date their finds,” says Peter Fischer.

The name of the Bronze Age city comes from the expedition having initially named the site after the mosque, Hala Sultan Tekke, which now stands close to the excavation site. Trade flourished in the city for almost 500 years, but like several other sophisticated Bronze Age civilisations around the Mediterranean, Hala Sultan Tekke collapsed just after 1200 BC. The prevailing hypothesis was that the ‘Sea Peoples’ invaded the eastern Mediterranean around this time, destroying its cities and bringing the Bronze Age civilisations to an end.

“In the past, it was thought that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were the sole explanation. Our research in recent years has given more nuance to this explanation. For example, there are now new interpretations of written sources from this period in Anatolia (modern-day Türkiye), Syria and Egypt, which tell of epidemics, famine, revolutions and acts of war by invading peoples. In addition, our investigations indicate that a deterioration in the climate was a contributing factor. All of this may have had a domino effect, that people in search of better living conditions moved from the central Mediterranean towards the south-east, thus coming into conflict with the cultures in modern-day Greece, on Cyprus and in Egypt,” concludes Peter Fischer. 

The study entitled Interregional trade at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus: Analysis and chronology of imports is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X22003856

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Copper slag from one of the city’s workshops. Photograph by T. Bürge

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Imported goods from Sardinia (1), Italy (2), Crete (3), Greece (4), Türkiye (5), Israel (6), Egypt (7), Iraq (8), necklace with beads and a scarab (Ramesses II) from Egypt, Afghanistan and India (9) have all been found in Hala Sultan Tekke. Photographs T. Bürge

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Article Source: University of Gothenburg news release.

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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.

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Uncovering the ritual past of an ancient stone monument in Saudi Arabia

PLOS—A comprehensive analysis of an archaeological site in Saudi Arabia sheds new light on mustatils—stone monuments from the Late Neolithic period thought to have been used for ritual purposes. Melissa Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, Perth, and colleagues, in conjunction with The Royal Commission for AlUla present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on March 15, 2023.

Built around 7,000 years ago, mustatils are rectangular, low-walled, stone structures that range from 20 to 600 meters in length. Researchers first discovered them in the 1970s, and more than 1,600 mustatils have now been discovered, primarily concentrated in northern Saudi Arabia.

Recent excavations in the city of AlUla suggest that mustatils were used for ritualistic purposes involving placement of animal offerings. Now, Kennedy and colleagues have conducted an extensive excavation at a mustatil located 55 east of AlUla. This mustatil is 140 meters long and is constructed from local sandstone.

The researchers’ analysis included identification of 260 fragments of animal skulls and horns, primarily from domestic cattle, as well as from domestic goats, gazelle, and small ruminants. Nearly all of these remains were clustered around a large upright stone interpreted to be a betyl. Radiocarbon dating suggested that the betyl is one of the oldest identified in the Arabian Peninsula, and the bones provide some of the earliest evidence for domestication of cattle in the northern Arabia.

This study also uncovered evidence for several phases of offerings at the mustatil, as well as interment of an adult male human, suggesting that the site may have been the destination of repeated pilgrimages.

Taking all the new data into consideration, the researchers suggest that ritualistic belief and economic factors were more closely intertwined for Neolithic people in northwest Arabia than previously thought, and that this entanglement was shared over a broad geographic area.

The authors add: “The ritual deposition of animal horns and upper cranial element within the mustatil suggests a profound intersection of belief and economic life-ways in the Late Neolithic of Northern Arabia. The incorporation of these two facets suggests a deeply rooted ideological entanglement, one which was shared over a vast geographic distance, indicating a far more interconnected landscape and culture than had previously been supposed for the Neolithic period in north-west Arabia.”

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Main architectural features of a mustatil. Kennedy et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Spatial relationships between the main and secondary chamber. Kennedy et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Kennedy M, Strolin L, McMahon J, Franklin D, Flavel A, Noble J, et al. (2023) Cult, herding, and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia: Excavations at a mustatil east of AlUla. PLoS ONE 18(3): e0281904. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281904

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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.

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Stone flakes made by nut-cracking macaques resemble early human tools, challenging some assumptions in paleoanthropology

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Stone flakes made unintentionally by modern long-tailed wild macaques in Thailand (Macaca fascicularis) while cracking nuts strongly resemble those described as being made intentionally by early hominins more than one million years ago, according to a new analysis. Tomos Proffitt and colleagues’ findings* challenge archaeologists’ current characterization of the emergence of intentional tool production in our earliest human ancestors. Efforts to find evidence for the evolutionary uniqueness of humans from other primates often involve explorations of how and when our ancestors began intentionally producing tools. Ongoing studies into the origins of intentional tool production rely on a set of criteria to infer how the tools could have been made – such as the presence of similar repeated fracture patterns. However, modern primates have also been observed to use stone tools for nut cracking, digging, and other activities. The resemblance of some tools used by primates to early hominin tools has led many to speculate that similar behavior could have been a precursor to intentional tool production by hominins. To explore further, Proffitt et al. collected and analyzed 1,119 artifacts from 40 macaque nut-cracking locations on Ya Noi Island in Lobi Bay, Thailand, that resembled different stone flakes, fragments, hammerstones, and anvils. They compared these with Oldowan and Lomekwian artifacts previously recovered from sites in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia which had been associated with intentional tool use by our ancestors as long as 3.3 million years ago. The researchers found that fracture patterns from modern macaque flakes fell within the same range as many of the prehistoric flakes, and that the former could replace up to 70% of Oldowan flakes before statistical differences could be observed. “The results of this study demonstrate that a fundamental reassessment of how we define and identify this uniquely hominin behavior in the archaeological record is still needed,” the researchers conclude.

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A sharp-edged flake accidentally produced by a long-tailed macaque during nut cracking. Proffitt et al, 2023; Technological Primates Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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Examples of sharp edged flakes produced unintentionally by long-tailed macaques. Proffitt et al, 2023; Technological Primates Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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Example of a long-tailed macaque using a stone tool to access food. Lydia V. Luncz

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release

The colors on these ancient pots hint at the power of an empire

FIELD MUSEUM—Color plays a huge role in our lives — the hues we wear and decorate with are a way for us to signal who we are, where we’re from, and what we care about. And it’s been that way for a long time. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, archaeologists compared the colors on pieces of ancient Peruvian pottery. They found that potters across the Wari empire all used the same rich black pigment to make ceramics used in rituals: a sign of the empire’s influence.

The Wari empire spread over Peru’s highlands and coastal areas from 600-1050 CE. “People sometimes think of the Inka as the first big empire in South America, but the Wari came first,” says Luis Muro Ynoñán, the study’s corresponding author and a research associate and former postdoctoral scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago. 

The Wari didn’t leave behind a written record (or at least a system similar to the one we use now). “Since they didn’t use writing, material culture — things like pottery — would have been an important means for conveying social and political messages,” says Muro Ynoñán. “The visual impact of these objects would have been super powerful.” Even little details, like using the correct shade of a color, could help signify an object’s importance and legitimacy as a part of the empire.

“I remember seeing some of these Wari-influenced pots as an undergraduate archaeology student in Peru, they’re fascinating,” says Muro Ynoñán. “The rich black color on them is very distinctive, I’ve been obsessed with it for years.” Muro Ynoñán finally got to pursue his interest in the pigment in-depth during his postdoctoral position at the Field Museum. 

He and his co-authors, including Donna Nash, an adjunct curator at the Field and associate professor and head of anthropology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, examined pottery from different regions under Wari influence, focusing on the chemical makeup of the black pigment used. 

The exact formulation of pigments varied from site to site, but overall, there was one striking similarity: many of  the Wari pots examined in the study used black pigment made from minerals containing the element manganese. 

“Some of the sites, specifically in northern Peru,used a different recipe for black, using iron- and calcium-rich minerals, before the Wari arrived, but after the Wari took over, they switched to the manganese-based recipes,” says Muro Ynoñán. The shift makes the authors suspect that the Wari empire asserted some sort of “quality control” over the pottery produced in different regions, perhaps even supplying artisans with the “correct” black pigment. “In general, black minerals are relatively easy to obtain from the valleys we looked at,” says Muro Ynoñán. But just any old black mineral didn’t fit the official Wari look — instead, he thinks that artisans may have been supplied with the manganese-bearing minerals from the Wari capital to produce the right shade of black.

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The changes in hue are subtle, but Muro Ynoñán says that the symbolic meaning of using “Wari black” may have been very important. “In general in the Andean region, the color black is related to the ancestors, to the night, to the passage of time. In Wari times, the color was likely important for imposing a specific Wari ideology to the communities they conquered.”

While the colors on Wari pottery might indicate imperial control, the ceramics from different regions do maintain their own local character. “Local potters had a lot of flexibility in producing hybrid material culture, combining the Wari imperial style and decoration with their own,” says Muro Ynoñán. The ceramics were unified by the use of black pigments that were controlled and put in circulatation  by the Wari empire through its imperial trade channels, but from there, artists could put their own spin on their work.

“One thing I hope people will take away from this study is that every beautiful artifact you see in a museum was made by real people who were very intelligent and possessed specific technologies to achieve their goals,” says Nash, co-author of the study. “Further, these people shared technologies and made choices. Artisans talked to each other and learned from each other, but sometimes multiple ways of doing things, such as creating black lines and decoration on a decorated pot, co-existed.These different approaches to the same problem may have persisted because of wealth or class differences, but it may have been that some people were willing to try new things, while others preferred their traditions.”

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A ceramic vessel from the Moche region of northern Peru with Wari-influenced pigments and decoration techniques. Photo courtesy of the Field Museum anthropology collections (FM 2959.171668)

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Article Source: Field Museum news release

Analysis of ancient skeletons reveals earliest likely evidence for human horseback riding

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Studying the skeletal remains of five people who lived roughly 4,500 to 5,000 years ago in the ancient Yamnaya culture, now recovered from archaeological sites in modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, anthropologists have documented telltale signs of physical stress incurred by horseback riding – possibly marking the earliest known evidence for horses being used as transportation. The findings bridge an important gap between the first evidence for horse domestication (likely for meat and milk) about 5,500 years ago, and the first use of horse-drawn chariots roughly 4,000 years ago. The adoption of horses to traverse long distances shaped modern human history by accelerating exploration, trade, and warfare. But when this key transition first occurred has remained unclear. Bits, leads, and other riding equipment are scarce in ancient archaeological sites, and a lack of well-preserved domesticated horse skeletons has stymied the analysis of physical stresses to the animals. Martin Trautmann and colleagues instead looked for evidence in the skeletal remains of 24 individuals excavated from sites in southeastern Europe, noting that lifelong riding would likely take an observable toll on the human body. Building on the concept of “horsemanship syndrome,” a collection of symptomatic skeletal alterations likely to impact habitual horseback riders, the researchers developed a set of six specific indicators, including changes and/or damages to the femurs, vertebrae, and pelvic bones. Of the 24 individuals studied – most of Yamnaya origin, but some from adjacent cultures – nine showed at least four of these six characteristics, marking them as likely horseback riders. Of these, five individuals exhibited at least five of the six characteristics, with one well-preserved skeleton from Strejnicu, Romania, evincing all six symptoms. “Together, our findings provide a strong argument that horseback riding was already a common activity for some Yamnaya individuals as early as [~5,000 years ago],” Trautmann et al. write.

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Map of the Yamnaya and Afanasievo overall distribution in Eurasia, situation of approximately 5000 years ago. 
Trautmann et al., Sci. Adv. 9, eade2451 (2023)

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View of the kurgan in Malomirovo during the archaeological excavation in June 2021 in the context of its wider landscape of Upper Thrace in Bulgaria. Michał Podsiadło

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Overview of the archaeological excavations of a Yamnaya kurgan in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. Michał Podsiadło

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Yamnaya grave (no. 17) of a horse rider discovered in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. He was a man of 65-75 years old when he died. Michał Podsiadło

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Detail of the horse rider discovered in Malomirovo, Bulgaria. He displays the typical burial custom of the Yamnaya. The radiocarbon date puts him into the 30th century BC. Michał Podsiadło

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release.

Genomic study of indigenous Africans paints complex picture of human origins and local adaptation

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA—Africa, where humans first evolved, today remains a place of remarkable diversity. Diving into that variation, a new analysis of 180 indigenous Africans from a dozen ethnically, culturally, geographically, and linguistically varied populations by an international scientific team offers new insights into human history and biology, and may inform precision medicine approaches of the future.

The work clarifies human migration histories, both historical and more recent, and provides genetic evidence of adaptation to local environments, manifested through traits such as skin color, heart and kidney development, immunity, and bone growth.

The findings, published in the journal Cell and led by University of Pennsylvania researchers, also have implications for understanding health conditions common in people of African ancestry. And, because African populations have been underrepresented in genomic studies, the investigation significantly expands what is known about human genetic diversity. The investigation turns up millions of new genomic variants known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)—differences in one “letter” of the DNA sequence—including many that appear to play roles in health, laying the groundwork for a broader swath of people to benefit from precision medicine based on individual differences.

“There is a lack of knowledge about genomic variation in African populations, particularly in ethnically diverse populations,” says Sarah Tishkoff, a Penn Integrates Knowledge University professor at Penn and senior author on the work. “We focus on populations who practice more traditional lifestyles, live in remote areas that can be difficult to access, and some of whom have never been studied from this perspective before.”

Origins and migrations

Researchers obtained complete genome sequences for 180 individuals—15 from each of 12 indigenous populations. The study is the first to perform rigorous whole-genome sequencing of such a genetically diverse mix of African groups.

“From the perspective of an African physician-scientist, our work demonstrates the importance of long-term scientific collaborations and highlights the urgent need to include more African populations in genetic studies,” says Alfred Njamnshi, a professor at Cameroon’s University of Yaoundé I and a study coauthor. “If all humans came out of Africa, as increasing evidence suggests, it would simply be expected that more effort and resources will be put into studying human genetics in Africans, so as to better understand not only human genetics but human physiology and pathology in general, the basis for more precise human medicine.”

The 12 populations practice, or practiced until recently, traditional livelihoods: farming, livestock herding, or hunting and gathering. Together, they include representatives from each of the four different language families present in Africa: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoesan.

Placing the new genome sequences from these African populations in context with other, previously sequenced genomes from populations across the globe, the research team crafted a worldwide family tree.

“Inferring African demographic history is very challenging because the history is so complex,” Tishkoff says. “But, with our models, based on shared patterns of genomic variation, you can infer when populations shared a common ancestor, even when accounting for gene flow—populations migrating in and out and interbreeding.”

When the team allowed for gene flow in their models, they found that the southern African Khoesan-speaking group, the San, as well as Central African, rainforest-dwelling hunter-gatherers appeared at the root of the tree. “That’s a very novel result,” Tishkoff says. Previous analyses had pointed to only the San as descending from the most ancient populations.

They also found that the San and Central Africa hunter-gatherer groups split from one another, and from other known populations, more than 200,000 years ago.

Population ancestry models turned up evidence of a now-extinct “ghost” population that may have intermixed with other groups at the time. “We don’t have ancient DNA from fossils because they don’t preserve well in an African environment, but one explanation is there could have been mixing with an archaic population,” Tishkoff says.

The findings add support to linguistics-backed theories of population structure. Linguists have debated whether Khoesan-speaking groups—whose languages share click consonants but are highly distinct in their other features—were truly closely related. According to genomic results, though these groups diverged tens of thousands of years ago, there is evidence that all of them may have shared a common origin in East Africa, and shared more recent gene flow, during the last 10,000 years.

“What we propose is that there may have been an East African origin for these click-speaking groups, and maybe even the rainforest hunter-gatherers as well, though they’ve since lost their original language and adopted the language of the neighboring Bantu-speaking populations,” says Tishkoff. “The groups may have split in different directions, with the Hadza and the Sandawe (Khoesan speakers from Tanzania) staying local and the San (Khoesan speakers from Botswana) moving south.” However, analysis of modern and ancient DNA indicates that there has been gene flow between the ancestors of the Hadza and Sandawe and the ancestors of the San, which could potentially explain some similarities in their language. 

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Newly understood human genetic diversity

The newly sequenced genomes identified 32 million SNPs, including more than 5 million that had never before been cataloged.

“The 32 million SNPs that were analyzed have just shed a new light on the importance of extending genetic studies in regions that have been previously marginalized around the globe,” says study co-author Thomas B. Nyambo of Kampala International University in Tanzania. “This is the way forward in the elucidation of evolutionary trends and their implication in tailored diagnostics and therapeutics.”

When the research team cross-referenced the previously identified SNPs with those in a widely used database used for clinical studies, they discovered many of the variants found in the African individuals in the study had been classified as pathogenic.

“This does not mean African populations have more ‘pathogenic’ variants,” says Shaohua Fan, a lead study author who completed a postdoc at Penn and is now at China’s Fudan University. “Rather, it emphasizes a strong need to include ethnically diverse populations in human genetic studies, especially because rarity is one criteria for determining a variant’s pathogenicity in clinical studies.”

In other words, some of these variants may have been miscategorized as associated with disease only because they were so uncommon in other populations, such as Europeans, which dominate these clinical databases.

“Comprehensively assessing genetic variants has been used as a strategy to study human disease and provides tremendous power to identify new loci associated with disease susceptibility and progression,” says Sununguko Wata Mpoloka of the University of Botswana. “Including understudied indigenous populations like those from Botswana in such studies will contribute tremendously to an understanding of precision medicine and could lead to tailormade drugs specific to such populations.”

Some of these variants may indeed play a meaningful role in health and disease. To get at these associations, the researchers not only compared mutations to existing databases and published studies, but also looked to see whether the variations occurred in the coding regions for proteins or in regions that could regulate gene expression for biologically relevant pathways and processes. They also looked for versions of a mutation, known as alleles, that occur at significantly different frequencies in different populations. These differences may arise because the alleles play a role in local adaptation to diverse environments and are positively selected, presumably because they confer some advantage to the people who carry them.

Several notable variants emerged from these analyses. In the San population of southern Africa, for example, the team found high numbers of SNPs near the PDPK1 gene, which had been shown by other scientists to play a role in pigmentation in mice. “Based on prior studies in our lab, we know that the San have relatively light skin color compared with other African populations,” says Yuanqing Feng, a postdoctoral researcher in the Tishkoff lab and a study co-author. “Thus, we hypothesized that SNPs near PDPK1 may affect pigmentation in humans.”

To generate mechanistic evidence for that hypothesis, the researchers tested the effect of one of these SNPs—shown to be common in the San—in skin cells grown in a petri dish. They found that inhibiting the region containing the variant altered expression levels of PDPK1 and reduced the levels of the skin pigment melanin in the lab-grown skin cells.

Other connections with health and function emerged from the study. The team’s analysis found a large number of variants near genes associated with bone growth in the Central African hunter-gatherers. These groups are known for their short stature, which is believed to be advantageous for the thick rainforest environment where they live. In pastoralist populations from East Africa, the team discovered enrichment for variants near genes that play a role in kidney development and function, possibly an adaptation to living in arid conditions. And in the Hadza hunter-gatherers in East Africa, they found a unique enrichment of variants near genes that play a role in heart development.

“My lab is now following up with some of these genes to see whether we can learn about the genetics of heart muscle development,” says Tishkoff. “If we understand how these genes are regulated, that could give us a clue as to why some people have a tendency toward cardiovascular disease. To understand abnormal function, you first have to understand normal function, and we speculate that there’s something about these individuals’ lifestyles—having to walk incredibly long distances, for example—that might make it advantageous to have certain changes in how the heart develops and functions.”

In addition, the researchers found gene variants related to blood pressure control in people with Nilo-Congo ancestry, West African groups that share ancestry with people from whom most African Americans are descended. “There’s a high incidence of hypertension and diabetes in people of African ancestry in the United States, and that’s largely due to socioeconomic factors,” Tishkoff says. “But there could be some genetic risk factors that, together with the environment in which they live, influence their risk for disease. Some of these could be adaptive in an African environment but maladaptive in a U.S. environment.”

These new datapoints may one day help inform precision medicine approaches that rely on understanding how genetics and other individual differences affect people’s disease risk, response to drugs, and more.

“There’s a huge amount of genomic variation in Africa that has not yet been well characterized,” Tishkoff adds. “We want to make sure all populations benefit from the genomics revolution, and we want to promote health equity, and therefore we need to include more diverse populations in these studies.”

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With the help of a local translator, Simon Thompson (in blue plaid shirt) from Sarah Tishkoff’s lab and Dawit Wolde-Meskel (in yellow shirt), a collaborator from Addis Ababa University, explain the research project on African population genetics to the Argobba population in Ethiopia. New findings from a study of 12 diverse groups in Africa shed new light on the origin of modern humans, ancient and more recent migrations, and local adaptation. Courtesy of the Tishkoff Laboratory

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Sarah Tishkoff is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology and a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor with appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine’s Department of Genetics and Department of Medicine and the School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Shaohua Fan is a professor at China’s Fudan University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Tishkoff lab at Penn.

Yuanqing Feng is a postdoctoral researcher in the Tishkoff lab at Penn.

Alfred Njamnshi is a professor of neurology and neuroscience at Cameroon’s University of Yaoundé I.

Thomas B. Nyambo is a member of the Department of Medical Biochemistry at Kampala International University in Tanzania. 

Sununguko Wata Mpoloka is an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Botswana.

In addition to Tishkoff, Fan, Feng, Njamnshi, Nyambo, and Mpoloka, the study authors were: Penn Medicine’s Matthew E. B. Hansen, Marcia Beltrame, Alessia Ranciaro, Jibril Hirbo, and William Beggs; Stanford University’s Jeffrey P. Spence; University of Michigan’s Jonathan Terhorst; University of California, Berkeley’s Neil Thomas and Yun Song; Kampala International University’s Thomas Nyambo; University of Botswana’s Gaonyadiwe George Mokone; University of Yaoundé I’s Charles Folkunang; and Addis Ababa University’s Dawit Wolde Meskell and Gurja Belay.

Fan and Spence were co-first authors and Tishkoff was senior and corresponding author.

The study was supported primarily by the National Institutes of Health (grants GM134957, AR076241, and GM134922), the American Diabetes Association (Grant 1-19-VS-02), and the Penn Skin Biology and Diseases Resource-based Center (funded by NIH Grant AR069589 and the Perelman School of Medicine).

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Bronze Age well contents reveal the history of animal resources in Mycenae, Greece

PLOS—A large Bronze Age debris deposit in Mycenae, Greece provides important data for understanding the history of animal resources at the site, according to a study* published March 1, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jacqueline Meier of the University of North Florida and colleagues.

Animals were an important source of subsistence and symbolism at the Late Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece, as evidenced by their depictions in art and architecture, but more research is needed on the animals that actually lived there. In this study, researchers performed a detailed analysis of a large deposit of animal remains inside a well within Petsas House, a household in Mycenae that also included a ceramics workshop.

Excavations into the well recovered ceramics, metal, stone, and other materials alongside abundant animal remains, the most common of which were remains from pigs, sheep and goats, cattle, and dogs. Based on the study of the condition of these animal remains, including evidence that many of these animals were used as food, in association with the other finds, especially pottery, the researchers reconstruct that this well was used to collect debris post destruction.

The contents of the well vary across the vertical layers within it, indicating variation in the source formation processes and in the availability of animal resources, both locally sourced and externally provided. These changes might also reflect hardships in the wake of a natural disaster, as the debris within the well appears to have come from cleanup efforts after a destructive earthquake.

The dog remains were more intact than those of the farm animals, and were deposited in the well at a different time. The authors believe this to be tentative evidence that dogs may have been treated differently in death than other animals.

This study demonstrates how detailed analysis of animal remains in well-preserved assemblages can provide insights into social dynamics of ancient settlements. Further investigation into this site will potentially elucidate patterns of food provisioning, trading, and responses to natural disasters at this important archaeological locality.

The authors add: “This study presents new insights about ancient animals recovered from the renowned archaeological site of Mycenae in Greece—a major political center in the Late Bronze Age, famous for references in Homer’s Iliad. Research at Petsas House, a domestic building in Mycenae’s settlement used in large part as a ceramics workshop, revealed how the remains of meaty meals and pet dogs were cleaned and disposed of in a house well following a major destructive earthquake. Study of the archaeologically recovered bones, teeth, and shells from the well yielded a more nuanced picture of the diverse and resilient dietary strategies of residents than previously available at Mycenae.”

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The Petsas Well, with bones highlighted. Meier et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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*Meier JS, Price GC, Shelton K (2023) “Well” off in animals: A taphonomic history of faunal resources and refuse from a well feature at Petsas House, Mycenae (Greece). PLoS ONE 18(3): e0280517. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280517

Article Source: PLOS news release

Waxing and waning of environment influences hominin dispersals across ancient Iran

GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY—A world-first model of paleoclimate and hydrology in Iran has highlighted favorable routes for Neanderthals and modern human expansions eastwards into Asia. 

Published in PLOS ONE, the findings* reveal for the first time that multiple humid periods in ancient Iran led to the expansions of human populations, opening dispersal route across the region, and the possible interactions of species such as Neanderthals and our own Homo sapiens.  

Professor Michael Petraglia, a key researcher in the study, said historic humid periods resulted in massive changes to ecosystems and led the team to identify large lakes in areas that were formerly deserts.  

“Conversely, during glacial periods this increased aridity would have led to the expansion of deserts, led to contractions, and the isolation of hominin populations,” said Professor Petraglia, who is the Director of Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution.  

“This cycle of wetting and drying is shown for the first time in Iran.” 

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The research team, led by PhD candidate Mohammad Javad Shoaee from the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Germany, found that during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5, a warm, humid period beginning roughly 130,000 years ago, lakes and rivers enabled two pathways for human groups.  

One was a northern route through the Alborz and Kopet Dagh Mountains and north of the Dasht-I Kavir desert. The other route, first identified here, ran south along the Zagros Mountains before extending eastwards towards Pakistan and Afghanistan.  

The researchers also found evidence for a potential northern route during MIS 3, beginning about 57,000 years ago, which, given artifacts attributed to multiple tool making groups, could have permitted interactions between modern humans and Neanderthals. 

“These findings highlight the importance of Iran for our species’ dispersals out of Africa and ultimately around the globe,” said Professor Petraglia.  

“As in other regions long considered too arid for early human occupations, such as the Arabian Peninsula, recent palaeoclimatic research is changing how we understand the human story and the role that changing climates have played.” 

“We recognized a new southern route along the Zagros Mountains and extending eastwards towards Pakistan and Afghanistan. We found evidence for a potential northern route during MIS 3, which would have permitted hominin movements and species interactions in Southwest Asia,” Shoaee said. 

To find out how human groups made their way into Iran, the team developed the first spatially comprehensive, high resolution palaeohydrological model for Iran.  

They then compared their model, which showed when and where water was available, to the distribution of previously documented archaeological sites.  

The result was a clear relationship between the availability of water and the evidence of human presence.  

Not only does the current study help to explain the presence of previously documented sites, it also serves as a guide for future archaeological surveys in the region.  

“Our paleohydrological analyses identified 145,354km of rivers and 115 paleolakes calculated from 6380 paleolake deposits. Only a handful of these paleolakes have so far been studied,” Shoaee said.  

By focusing on regions where water once made human occupations possible, Professor Petraglia said “researchers could maximize the potential of finding archaeological sites”.   

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Upland terrain in the Zagros Mountains during Spring demonstrating the ‘greening’ of landscapes. Griffith University

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Stone tools recovered during a recent survey of the Central Zagros Mountains, indicating that this zone would have been a favorable habitat for human occupations in humid periods. Griffith University

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Steel was already used in Europe 2900 years ago

UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG—A study* by an international and interdisciplinary team headed by Freiburg archaeologist Dr. Ralph Araque Gonzalez from the Faculty of Humanities has proven that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2900 years ago. Using geochemicalanalyses, the researchers were able to prove that stone stelae on the Iberian peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age feature complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. This was backed up by metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region (Rocha do Vigio, Portugal, ca. 900 BCE) that showed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel. The result was also confirmed experimentally by undertaking trials with chisels made of various materials: only the chisel made of tempered steel was suitably capable of engraving the stone. Until recently it was assumed that it was not possible to produce suitable quality steel in the Early Iron Age and certainly not in the Final Bronze Age, and that it only came to be widespread in Europe under the Roman Empire. “The chisel from Rocha do Vigio and the context where it was found show that iron metallurgy including the production and tempering of steel were probably indigenous developments of decentralized small communities in Iberia, and not due to the influence of later colonization processes. This also has consequences for the archaeological assessment of iron metallurgy and quartzite sculptures in other regions of the world,” explains Araque Gonzalez. The study ‘Stone-working and the earliest steel in Iberia: Scientific analyses and experimental replications of final bronze age stelae and tools’ has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Iberian pillars of siliceous quartz sandstone could only be worked with tempered steel

The archaeological record of Late Bronze Age Iberia (c. 1300-800 BCE) is fragmentary in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula: sparse remains of settlement and nearly no detectable burials are complemented by traces of metal hoarding and remains of mining activities. Taking this into account, the western Iberian stelae with their depictions of anthropomorphic figures, animals and selected objects are of unique importance for the investigation of this era.

Until now, studies of the actual rocks from which these stelae were made to gain insights into the use of materials and tools have been the exception. Araque Gonzalez and his colleagues analyzed the geological composition of the stelae in depth. This led them to discover that a significant number of stelae was not as had been assumed made of quartzite, but silicate quartz sandstone. “Just like quartzite, this is an extremely hard rock that cannot be worked with bronze or stone tools, but only with tempered steel,” says Araque Gonzalez.

Chisel discovery and archaeological experiment confirm use of steel

Analysis of an iron chisel found in Rocha do Vigio showed that Iberian stonemasons from the Final Bronze Age had the necessary tools. The researchers discovered that it consisted of heterogeneous yet astonishingly carbon-rich steel. To confirm their findings, the researchers also carried out an experiment involving a professional stonemason, a blacksmith and a bronze caster, and attempted to work the rock that the pillars were made of using chisels of different materials. The stonemason could not work the stone with either the stone or the bronze chisels, or even using an iron chisel with an untempered point. “The people of the Final Bronze Age in Iberia were capable of tempering steel. Otherwise they would not have been able to work the pillars,” concludes Araque Gonzalez as a result of the experiment.

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Using geochemicalanalyses, the researchers were able to prove that stone stelae on the Iberian peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age feature complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. This was backed up by metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region that showed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel. Rafael Ferreiro Mählmann (A), Bastian Asmus (B), Ralph Araque Gonzalez (C-E). University of Freiburg

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Project website with further information and videos: https://www.experimentalarchaeology.uni-freiburg.de/

Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG news release

*https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440323000201?via%3Dihub

 

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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.

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Earliest likely evidence for bow and arrow use in Europe 54,000 years ago found in southern France

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—In Grotte Mandrin, a rock shelter in southern France, researchers have discovered what could be the earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow technology used in Europe by modern humans around 54,000 years ago. The findings hint that these weapons may have been critical to modern humans’ advantage over Neanderthals during their first migrations into Neanderthal territory. Projectile weapons like bows and arrows and spear throwers are thought to have appeared abruptly among modern humans in Eurasia during the Upper Paleolithic period roughly 45,000 years ago. Such advanced weaponry is believed to have given modern humans leverage over Neanderthals, but its origins and sophistication have remained unclear. A recent study at the Grotte Mandrin site, located near the Rhône River valley in southern France, uncovered 54,000-year-old dental remains from modern humans, which suggests that humans arrived in the area some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. (See below for a link to a related study published in Science Advances, co-authored by the authors of the current study.) Now, Laure Metz and colleagues have identified hundreds of 54,000-year-old artifacts from the same site that have telltale signs of past use as projectile weaponry. The researchers recovered 852 artifacts resembling well-defined points, blades, and flakes, many of which display wear patterns indicative of having been thrusted or thrown (percussive motion) or used to saw or cut (pressure motion). In total, they identified 383 objects with such patterns, including 196 with signs of percussive wear – primarily on points, micropoints, and nanopoints. These findings suggest that projectile weaponry such as the bow and arrow could have been mastered during, rather than after, modern humans’ incursion into Neanderthal territory. “The use of these advanced technologies may be of crucial importance in the understanding of the remarkable expansion of the modern populations,” Metz et al. write.

A 2022 study published in Science Advances, co-authored by the authors of the current study, reported that 54,000-year-old hominin dental fossils were found at the Grotte Mandrin site – indicating that modern humans arrived in Neanderthal territories some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496

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View of arrcheological excavations at the entrance of the Grotte Mandrin. Philippe Psaila

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Dr. Ludovic Slimak showing a flint point made by the first modern humans n Europe. Philippe Psaila

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Tiny points made by Homo sapiens 54.000 years ago and used as arrowhead. Laure Metz/Ludovic Slimak

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A horse mandibular and a Neronian point appearing on the archeological layer E (Neronian) from Grotte Mandrin. Ludovic Slimak

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Archaeologists uncover early evidence of brain surgery in Ancient Near East

BROWN UNIVERSITY—PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Archaeologists know that people have practiced cranial trephination, a medical procedure that involves cutting a hole in the skull, for thousands of years. They’ve turned up evidence that ancient civilizations across the globe, from South America to Africa and beyond, performed the surgery.

Now, thanks to a recent excavation at the ancient city of Megiddo, Israel, there’s new evidence that one particular type of trephination dates back to at least the late Bronze Age.

Rachel Kalisher, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, led an analysis of the excavated remains of two upper-class brothers who lived in Megiddo around the 15th century B.C. She found that not long before one of the brothers died, he had undergone a specific type of cranial surgery called angular notched trephination. The procedure involves cutting the scalp, using an instrument with a sharp beveled edge to carve four intersecting lines in the skull, and using leverage to make a square-shaped hole.

Kalisher said the trephination is the earliest example of its kind found in the Ancient Near East.

“We have evidence that trephination has been this universal, widespread type of surgery for thousands of years,” Kalisher said. “But in the Near East, we don’t see it so often — there are only about a dozen examples of trephination in this entire region. My hope is that adding more examples to the scholarly record will deepen our field’s understanding of medical care and cultural dynamics in ancient cities in this area.”

Kalisher’s analysis, written in collaboration with scholars in New York, Austria and Israel, was published on Wednesday, Feb. 22, in PLOS ONE. 

Two brothers, up close

Israel Finkelstein, who co-authored the study* and serves as director of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa, said that 4,000 years ago, Megiddo stood at and controlled part of the Via Maris, an important land route that connected Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. As a result, the city had become one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the region by about the 19th century B.C., with an impressive skyline of palaces, temples, fortifications and gates. 

“It’s hard to overstate Megiddo’s cultural and economic importance in the late Bronze Age,” Finkelstein said.

According to Kalisher, the two brothers whose bones she analyzed came from a domestic area directly adjacent to Megiddo’s late Bronze Age palace, suggesting that the pair were elite members of society and possibly even royals themselves. Many other facts bear that out: The brothers were buried with fine Cypriot pottery and other valuable possessions, and as the trephination demonstrates, they received treatment that likely wouldn’t have been accessible to most citizens of Megiddo.

“These brothers were obviously living with some pretty intense pathological circumstances that, in this time, would have been tough to endure without wealth and status,” Kalisher said. “If you’re elite, maybe you don’t have to work as much. If you’re elite, maybe you can eat a special diet. If you’re elite, maybe you’re able to survive a severe illness longer because you have access to care.”

In her analysis, Kalisher spotted several skeletal abnormalities in both brothers. The older brother had an additional cranial suture and an extra molar in one corner of his mouth, suggesting he may have had a congenital syndrome such as Cleidocranial dysplasia. Both of the brothers’ bones show minor evidence of sustained iron deficiency anemia in childhood, which could have impacted their development. 

Those developmental irregularities could explain why the brothers died young, one in his teens or early 20s and the other sometime between his 20s and 40s. But Kalisher said it’s more likely that the two ultimately succumbed to an infectious disease. A third of one brother’s skeleton, and half of the other brother’s, shows porosity, legions and signs of previous inflammation in the membrane covering the bones — which together suggest they had systemic, sustained cases of an infectious disease like tuberculosis or leprosy. 

Kalisher said that while some skeletal evidence points to leprosy, it’s tough to deduce cases of leprosy using bones alone. She’s currently working with researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to conduct DNA analyses of specific lesions in the bones. If they find bacterial DNA consistent with leprosy, these brothers will be among the earliest documented examples of leprosy in the world.

“Leprosy can spread within family units, not just because of the close proximity but also because your susceptibility to the disease is influenced by your genetic landscape,” Kalisher said. “At the same time, leprosy is hard to identify because it affects the bones in stages, which might not happen in the same order or with the same severity for everyone. It’s hard for us to say for sure whether these brothers had leprosy or some other infectious disease.”

It’s also difficult to know, Kalisher said, whether it was the disease, the congenital conditions or something else that prompted one brother to undergo cranial surgery. But there’s one thing she does know: If the angular notched trephination was meant to keep him alive, it didn’t succeed. He died shortly after the surgery — within days, hours or perhaps even minutes.

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Digging into medical history

Despite all the evidence of trephination uncovered over the last 200 years, Kalisher said, there’s still much archaeologists don’t know. It’s not clear, for example, why some trephinations are round — suggesting the use of some sort of analog drill — and some are square or triangular. Nor is it clear how common the procedure was in each region, or what ancient peoples were even trying to treat. (Doctors today perform a similar procedure, called a craniotomy, to relieve pressure in the brain.) Kalisher is pursuing a follow-up research project that will investigate trephination across multiple regions and time periods, which she hopes will shed more light on ancient medical practices.

“You have to be in a pretty dire place to have a hole cut in your head,” Kalisher said. “I’m interested in what we can learn from looking across the scientific literature at every example of trephination in antiquity, comparing and contrasting the circumstances of each person who had the surgery done.”

Aside from enriching colleagues’ understanding of early trephinations, Kalisher said she hopes her analysis also shows the general public that ancient societies didn’t necessarily live by “survival of the fittest” principles, as many might imagine. 

“In antiquity, there was a lot more tolerance and a lot more care than people might think,” Kalisher said. “We have evidence literally from the time of Neanderthals that people have provided care for one another, even in challenging circumstances. I’m not trying to say it was all kumbaya — there were sex- and class-based divisions. But in the past, people were still people.”

In addition to Kalisher and Finkelstein, other authors of the analysis included Melissa Cradic from the University at Albany; Matthew Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem; and Mario Martin from the University of Haifa and University of Innsbruck. The study’s associated excavation was funded by the Shmunis Family Foundation. 

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Left: Trephination with refit excised cranial piece. Right: Both extant pieces found during analysis. Rachel Kalisher et al

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a-b: Magnified edges of the trephination, each with a 2 mm scale bar. c: All four edges of the trephination, scale bar is 1 cm. d: Reconstructed location of trephination on head. Rachel Kalisher et al

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Back to the time of the first Homo Sapiens with a futuristic clock, the new Radiocarbon 3.0

UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA—It is called Radiocarbon 3.0: it is the newest method developments in radiocarbon dating, and promises to reveal valuable new insights about key events in the earliest human history, starting with the interaction between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals in Europe. This is shown by the combination of updated radiocarbon pretreatment, the latest AMS instrumental advances, and the application of the Bayesian model coupled with the new IntCal20, including the Kauri floating tree-ring section.

These important findings – published in the journal PLOS ONE – are the result of extensive research work, coordinated by Professor Sahra Talamo, director of the BRAVHO Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Bologna. Two international radiocarbon experts from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland) collaborated to the research as well as the isotope expert at Simon Fraser University (Canada).

The new publication presents an advanced evaluation and discussion of two earlier, widely recognized publications (Hublin et al. Nature 2020; Fewlass et al. Nature Eco&Evo 2020), focused on the earliest Homo Sapiens in Europe and their temporal relationship with Neanderthals. The crucial challenge is high temporal resolution chronology, which so far was severely limited by the low number of dates per site, low resolution of the Radiocarbon calibration curve, and limited Bayesian modelling.

In this new publication, these central aspects are addressed in a new, fully integrated way: (1) Only dates of samples pretreated in the state-of-the-art methodology are considered, (2) the most recent advances in the AMS Radiocarbon measurement technique are applied, and (3) Radiocarbon calibration is now based on a section of high-resolution Glacial tree-ring chronologies in the age range of 44,000 and 41,000 calendar years BP (Before 1950 AD).

The concise amalgamation of these three aspects, called Radiocarbon 3.0, leads to a new level of temporal interrelation between Homo Sapiens at the site of Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, and, for the first time, a link between the respective presence of modern humans to climatic events (warm and cold phases) in the Glacial, documented in Greenland ice cores.

“Using Radiocarbon 3.0, we were able to reconstruct more accurately the movements of ancient hominids, which occurred at major European archaeological sites, during different climatic phases,” says Sahra Talamo, professor at the University of Bologna’s Department of Chemistry “Giacomo Ciamician” and first author of the study. “Thanks to this kind of analyses, it is therefore possible to obtain new valuable information on the evolution of the earliest human settlements and the resilience of hominids in different climatic phases, all of which may have contributed to the global spread of Homo Sapiens.”

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Radiocarbon is the most widely applied dating method in archaeology, especially in studies of human evolution. In recent decades, it has enabled scholars around the world to make important advances in reconstructing the chronology of key events in our history. However, this method – based on the detection of a radioactive isotope of carbon, Carbon-14, in the organic samples studied – does not always allow us to obtain sufficiently precise and accurate dates to fully understand the important processes of human evolution, e.g., the interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. The challenge was therefore to expand the capabilities of radiocarbon, increasing its high temporal resolution chronology.

Two new Bayesian models were constructed, using the direct dates of Homo Sapiens at Bacho Kiro, and Neanderthal dates of Vindija, Croatia, and Fonds-de-Foret, Belgium. Only the high-precision dates of Bach Kiro allow to assign the presence of Homo Sapiens at this site during the cold phase of GS 12 (Fig. 2 in the paper).

“In this study, we have shown that the human occupation at Bacho Kiro did not occur at once, but there were three different occupations (one around 44,650 to 44,430, one at 44,200 to 43,420 and one at 43110 to 42700 cal BP) or two different one (one around 44,650 to 44,430, one at 44,310 to 43,710 cal BP), depending on the 14C dates considered and the Bayesian model used,” explains Talamo.

At present, both scenarios could be supported because it is not yet known whether the Initial Upper Paleolithic may have lasted longer in Bacho Kiro than in the Levant or may have overlapped temporally with the Protoaurignacian dispersal.

“Moreover, obtaining a small 14C error in a time period around 42,000 years ago is a key point of radiocarbon 3.0,” explains Lukas Wacker, at the ETH Zurich and co-author of the paper. “The better this error interval is defined and obtained, the more accurate the final age calibration process will be”.

“In this paper, we have demonstrated the potential and advantages, both in terms of temporal and environmental accuracy, of discussing chronologies obtained from 14C ages with the same tight error intervals,” says Bernd Kromer at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and co-author of the paper. “In addition, the extent of the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) is constrained better by the new models, compared to the previous publications” (Fig. 3 in the paper).

“Our exercise shows that using radiocarbon 3.0 we are able to accomplish the definitive high resolution of European key archaeological sites during recurrent climate fluctuations, and model the human and faunal species’ responses from a diachronic perspective,” explains Michael Richards at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and co-author of the paper. “This is the way to promote knowledge exchange between archaeology, palaeoclimatology, geochronology, and geosciences in general, all essential disciplines in the study of the human past.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE under the title “Back to the future: the advantage of studying key events in human evolution using a new high-resolution radiocarbon method.” It was carried out by an international research team, led by Prof. Sahra Talamo (University of Bologna), including Bernd Kromer (University of Heidelberg, Germany), Michael P. Richards (Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Lukas Wacker (ETH Zurich, Switzerland).

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Professor Sahra Talamo, director of the BRAVHO Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Bologna and first author of the study. University of Bologna

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Article Source: UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA news release

2.9-million-year-old butchery site reopens case of who made first stone tools

SMITHSONIAN—Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens College, CUNY, as well as the National Museums of Kenya,  Liverpool John Moores University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

The study*, published today, Feb. 9, in the journal Science, presents what are likely to be the oldest examples of a hugely important stone-age innovation known to scientists as the Oldowan toolkit, as well as the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals. Though multiple lines of evidence suggest the artifacts are likely to be about 2.9 million years old, the artifacts can be more conservatively dated to between 2.6 and 3 million years old, said lead study author Thomas Plummer of Queens College, research associate in the scientific team of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program

Excavations at the site, named Nyayanga and located on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya, also produced a pair of massive molars belonging to the human species’ close evolutionary relative Paranthropus. The teeth are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains yet found, and their presence at a site loaded with stone tools raises intriguing questions about which human ancestor made those tools, said Rick Potts, senior author of the study and the National Museum of Natural History’s Peter Buck Chair of Human Origins.

“The assumption among researchers has long been that only the genus Homo, to which humans belong, was capable of making stone tools,” Potts said. “But finding Paranthropus alongside these stone tools opens up a fascinating whodunnit.”

Whichever hominin lineage was responsible for the tools, they were found more than 800 miles from the previously known oldest examples of Oldowan stone tools—2.6-million-year-old tools unearthed in Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia. This greatly expands the area associated with Oldowan technology’s earliest origins. Further, the stone tools from the site in Ethiopia could not be tied to any particular function or use, leading to speculation about what the Oldowan toolkit’s earliest uses might have been.

Through analysis of the wear patterns on the stone tools and animal bones discovered at Nyayanga, Kenya, the team behind this latest discovery shows that these stone tools were used by early human ancestors to process a wide range of materials and foods, including plants, meat and even bone marrow.

The Oldowan toolkit includes three types of stone tools: hammerstones, cores and flakes. Hammerstones can be used for hitting other rocks to create tools or for pounding other materials. Cores typically have an angular or oval shape, and when struck at an angle with a hammerstone, the core splits off a piece, or flake, that can be used as a cutting or scraping edge or further refined using a hammerstone.

“With these tools you can crush better than an elephant’s molar can and cut better than a lion’s canine can,” Potts said. “Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand-new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.”

Potts and Plummer were first drawn to the Homa Peninsula in Kenya by reports of large numbers of fossilized baboon-like monkeys named Theropithecus oswaldi, which are often found alongside evidence of human ancestors. After many visits to the peninsula, a local man named Peter Onyango working with the team suggested they check out fossils and stone tools eroding from a nearby site that was ultimately named Nyayanga after an adjacent beach.

Beginning in 2015, a series of excavations at Nyayanga returned a trove of 330 artifacts, 1,776 animal bones and the two hominin molars identified as belonging to Paranthropus. The artifacts, Plummer said, were clearly part of the stone-age technological breakthrough that was the Oldowan toolkit.

Compared to the only other stone tools known to have preceded them—a set of 3.3-million-year-old artifacts unearthed at a site called Lomekwi 3, just west of Lake Turkana in Kenya—Oldowan tools were a significant upgrade in sophistication. Oldowan tools were systematically produced and often fashioned using what is known as “freehand percussion,” meaning the core was held in one hand and then struck with a hammerstone being wielded by the opposing hand at just the right angle to produce a flake—a technique that requires significant dexterity and skill.

By contrast, most of the artifacts from Lomekwi 3 were created by using large stationary rocks as anvils, with the toolmaker either banging a core against the flat anvil stone to create flakes or by setting the core down on the anvil and striking it with a hammerstone. These more rudimentary modes of fabrication resulted in larger, cruder and more haphazard-looking tools.

Over time, the Oldowan toolkit spread all the way across Africa and even as far as modern-day Georgia and China, and it was not meaningfully replaced or amended until some 1.7 million years ago when the hand-axes of the Acheulean first appeared.

As part of their study, the researchers conducted microscopic analysis of wear patterns on the stone tools to determine how they were used, and they examined any bones seen to exhibit potential cut marks or other kinds of damage that might have come from stone tools.

The site featured at least three individual hippos. Two of these incomplete skeletons included bones that showed signs of butchery. The team found a deep cut mark on one hippo’s rib fragment and a series of four short, parallel cuts on the shin bone of another. Plummer said they also found antelope bones that showed evidence of hominins slicing away flesh with stone flakes or of having been crushed by hammerstones to extract marrow.

The analysis of wear patterns on 30 of the stone tools found at the site showed that they had been used to cut, scrape and pound both animals and plants. Because fire would not be harnessed by hominins for another 2 million years or so, these stone toolmakers would have eaten everything raw, perhaps pounding the meat into something like a hippo tartare to make it easier to chew.

Using a combination of dating techniques, including the rate of decay of radioactive elements, reversals of Earth’s magnetic field and the presence of certain fossil animals whose timing in the fossil record is well established, the research team was able to date the items recovered from Nyayanga to between 2.58 and 3 million years old.

“This is one of the oldest if not the oldest example of Oldowan technology,” Plummer said. “This shows the toolkit was more widely distributed at an earlier date than people realized, and that it was used to process a wide variety of plant and animal tissues. We don’t know for sure what the adaptive significance was but the variety of uses suggests it was important to these hominins.”

The discovery of teeth from the muscular-jawed Paranthropus alongside these stone tools begs the question of whether it might have been that lineage rather than the Homo genus that was the architect of the earliest Oldowan stone tools, or perhaps even that multiple lineages were making these tools at roughly the same time.

The excavations behind this study offer a snapshot of the world humans’ ancestors inhabited and help illustrate the ways that stone technology allowed these early hominins to adapt to different environments and, ultimately, give rise to the human species.

“East Africa wasn’t a stable cradle for our species’ ancestors,” Potts said. “It was more of a boiling cauldron of environmental change, with downpours and droughts and a diverse, ever-changing menu of foods. Oldowan stone tools could have cut and pounded through it all and helped early toolmakers adapt to new places and new opportunities, whether it’s a dead hippo or a starchy root.”

This research was supported by funding from the Smithsonian, the Leakey Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the City University of New York, the Donner Foundation and the Peter Buck Fund for Human Origins Research.

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Nyayanga site in July 2014 prior to excavation. Tan and reddish brown sediments are late Pliocene deposits where Oldowan tools and fossils were later excavated.  T.W.Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Index map showing location of Nyayanga Oldowan site on the Homa Peninsula in southwestern Kenya.  J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Nyayanga site being excavated in July 2016.  J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Fossil hippo skeleton and associated Oldowan artifacts at the Nyayanga site in July 2016.  T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Oldowan flake lying directly on a hippo shoulder blade fossil at the Nyayanga site.  T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Examples of an Oldowan percussive tool, core and flakes from the Nyayanga site.  (Top row) Percussive tool found in 2016. (Second row from top) Oldowan core found in 2017.  (Bottom rows) Oldowan flakes found in 2016 and 2017.  T.W.
Plummer, J.S. Oliver, and E. M. Finestone, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Paranthropus molars recovered from Nyayanga site. Left upper molar (top) was found on the surface at the site, and the left lower molar (bottom) was excavated.  S. E. Bailey, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

 

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The skull of Paranthropus boisei, known as KNM ER 406, photographed at the Nairobi National Museum in August 2012. Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons

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Paranthropus – forensic facial reconstruction. Drawing made by Cicero Moraes and 3D scanning of the skull by Dr. Moacir Elias Santos. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History news release

*Expanded geographic distribution and dietary strategies of the earliest Oldowan hominins and Paranthropus, Science, 9-Feb-2023. 10.1126/science.abo7452

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AlUla exhibits the first known reconstruction of a Nabataean woman from the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra

AlUla, Saudi Arabia, 6 February 2023: A team of archaeologists, academics and specialists in the fields of forensic science and modelmaking has completed the first known digital and physical reconstruction of a Nabataean woman discovered at Hegra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was once a vibrant city for this North Arabian kingdom which dominated the historic Incense Road. The Nabataean woman is known as Hinat, and is thought to have been a prominent woman who died around the first century BCE and lay for over 2,000 years in a Hegra tomb. 

The reconstruction is now being displayed at the Hegra Welcome Centre in AlUla. Hinat’s return comes in the 15th year since Hegra was inscribed as the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Saudi Arabia. UNESCO’s citation at the time said the site “bears outstanding witness to important cultural exchanges in architecture, decoration, language use and the caravan trade”1.

Thanks to the Hinat reconstruction, Hegra continues to bear witness to important cultural moments. And the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) expects many more important advances in coming years as the painstaking work of archaeology across the AlUla area diligently uncovers the secrets of the past. 

AlUla has at its heart an oasis and valley that has hosted successive communities and civilizations from its earliest occupants to its residents today. An important hub on epic routes of trade – including in valuable incense, spices and other luxury commodities – it has vestiges from virtually every major period from prehistory to the present day including the site of Hegra, a significant city of the Nabataean Kingdom. 

By the first century BCE, Hegra under the Nabataeans had eclipsed nearby Dadan as the key stopping point on trade routes linking southern Arabia to Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Mada’in Salih Archaeological Project began its archaeological work at the Hegra site in 2002. 

Hinat, as she is affectionately known by the archaeologists who discovered her, was excavated from one of Hegra’s monumental tombs in 2008. Excavations of the tomb revealed around 80 individuals interred there, and the pathology suggests at least some were blood relations. The majority were disarticulated but Hinat’s skeleton was near complete. The inscription on the tomb reads: “This is the tomb that Hinat daughter of Wahbu made for herself and her children and descendants forever”. This inscription emphasises the importance of women in Nabataean Hegra society, who owned property and had the financial means to commission their own tombs. 

Mada’in Salih Archaeological Project Co-Director Laïla Nehmé and project anthropologist Nathalie Delhopital led the selection of an appropriate skull, with sufficient preservation to ensure adequate information for successful reconstruction.

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A one-day scientific roundtable event, drawing together leading experts on Hegra, the Nabataeans and the archaeology of AlUla, saw a lively discussion around the likely appearance of Hinat, her potential status in society, and what she may have worn. This established the scientific boundaries and guidance for the accuracy and character of the reconstruction and resulted in the writing of a profile with reference imagery for clothing, hair and jewelry. They were joined by a multidisciplinary production team, bringing together expertise in forensic anthropology and reconstruction, and physical modelmaking. 

Dr Helen McGauran, Heritage Curatorial Expert at RCU, who led the RCU-facilitated initiative, said: “Through pioneering efforts such as this, which bring together professional rigor and careful artistic interpretation, we are able to deepen our understanding of the lives and culture of the Nabataeans – a civilization that has gifted the world the extraordinary site of Hegra, and continues to be a source of knowledge and inspiration.” 

Leila Chapman, Narrative Experience Expert at RCU, added: “The opportunity for our visitors to come face to face with a Nabataean woman at the actual site of Hegra – where she lived, and was honored by her family – is hugely exciting. We are especially excited that AlUla’s people will see this recreation of their ancient ancestor.” 

RCU-supported archaeological research and conservation teams continue to shed new light on the history of the region and lay the intellectual foundation of the Kingdoms Institute, a hub of archaeological knowledge being established at AlUla. The ‘Living Museum’ of these discoveries can be explored in person in AlUla and online at livingmuseum.com. 

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Hinat at the Welcome Center. Courtesy Royal Commission for AlUla

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Article Source: Royal Commission for AlUla news release

About the Royal Commission for AlUla 

The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) was established by royal decree in July 2017 to preserve and develop AlUla, a region of outstanding natural and cultural significance in north-west Saudi Arabia. RCU’s long-term plan outlines a responsible, sustainable, and sensitive approach to urban and economic development, that preserves the area’s natural and historic heritage, while establishing AlUla as a desirable location to live, work, and visit. This encompasses a broad range of initiatives across archaeology, tourism, culture, education, and the arts, reflecting a commitment to meeting the economic diversification, local community empowerment, and heritage preservation priorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program.

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Early human migration into North America along Pacific coast

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Models and paleoceanographic data reveal climatically favorable intervals when humans could have traversed the Cordilleran coastal corridor during the terminal Pleistocene Epoch, according to a study. Human dispersal pathways from Beringia into North America continue to be debated. Summer Praetorius and colleagues analyzed new records of sea ice variations and synthesized previously published reconstructions of sea ice, sea surface temperature, salinity, and ice-rafted debris from marine sediment cores in the North Pacific Ocean. The model results showed that the average strength of the Alaska Current more than doubled along the Southeast Alaska margin during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), compared with modern conditions. The accelerated currents might have impeded southward seafaring migration. In addition, Gulf of Alaska shorelines had extensive seasonal sea ice during the LGM, which was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. The results suggest that environmentally favorable time periods for coastal migration after glacial retreat events include two spans: from 24,500 to 22,000 years ago and between 16,400 and 14,800 years ago. During these periods, regional climate conditions may have provided both winter sea ice and summer kelp ecosystems for year-round marine resource diversity, which may have facilitated human dispersal along the Cordilleran coastal corridor. Together, the data help discern major climate and oceanographic changes that may have facilitated and impeded human migration during the terminal Pleistocene Epoch.

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Pacific northwest coast. Mrs. Brown, Pixabay

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Article Source: PNAS news release

The chemistry of mummification – Traces of a global network

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN, Munich/Tübingen, 01.02.2022 —Exactly100 years ago, the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered, complete with his world-famous mummy. Since then, researchers have learned a lot about how the ancient Egyptians prepared bodies for mummification. Until now, however, too little was known about how they ultimately made the bodies of the deceased immortal by embalming them. A German-Egyptian team of researchers has now been able to gain completely new insights into the chemistry of embalming. Their findings* were published in Nature.

In collaboration with the National Research Center in Cairo, a team of researchers from LMU Munich and the University of Tübingen has analyzed chemical residues in vessels from an embalming workshop in Saqqara – not far from the pyramid of Unas – that was not discovered until 2016. “We were able to do all the scientific analyses ourselves in Egypt,” says LMU archeologist Philipp Stockhammer. And Maxime Rageot from the University of Tübingen adds: “For that we must thank Ramadan Hussein, who discovered and led the excavation for the DFG Saqqara Saite Tombs Projects, and who sadly died unexpectedly in the spring.”

In the newly discovered workshop, experts mummified the dead in the seventh and sixth century BC. For the Egyptologists, being able to recover numerous vessels used so long ago by skilled craftsmen was a tremendous stroke of luck. Better still, the vessels were labeled with their previous contents, and some even had instructions for use. “We have known the names of many of these embalming ingredients since ancient Egyptian writings were deciphered,” says Susanne Beck from the University of Tübingen, who is leading the excavation. “But until now, we could only guess at what substances were behind each name.”

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Embalming – Specific substances for certain parts of the body

Analyzing the chemical residue in the vessels has now allowed the molecular remains of those substances that were once used in a given vessel to be isolated and identified. As the mystery unraveled, there were a number of surprises. Maxime Rageot, archeologist at the University of Tübingen and head of the analysis project, reveals one of them: “The substance labeled by the ancient Egyptians as antiu has long been translated as myrrh or frankincense. But we have now been able to show that it is actually a mixture of widely differing ingredients that we were able to pick apart with the aid of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.” The antiu used in Saqqara was a blend of cedar oil, juniper/cypress oil and animal fats.

These insights facilitate a re-reading of familiar texts about ancient Egyptian embalming. Comparing the identified substances with the labels on the vessels has now, for the first time, enabled the team of researchers to determine exactly what substances were used to embalm certain parts of the body. Pistachio resin and castor oil, for example, were used only for the head. “What really surprised us was that the bulk of the substances used for embalming were not from Egypt itself. Some of them were imported from the Mediterranean region and even from tropical Africa and Southeast Asia,” says LMU archeologist Philipp Stockhammer, who funded the research with his ERC Starting Grant.

Besides pistachio resin, cedar oil and bitumen – all probably from the Levant – the researchers also found residues of dammar gum and elemi resin. These two substances in particular show how globalized trade relationships had already become nearly 3,000 years ago. While the resin of the elemi tree came to Egypt from tropical Africa or Southeast Asia, the dammar tree to this day still grows solely in tropical Southeast Asia. Tremendous effort thus evidently went into sourcing very specific chemical substances for the embalming process. “Ultimately, Egyptian mummification probably played an important role in the early emergence of global networks,” Rageot says. “Large quantities of these exotic resins were needed.” Stockhammer agrees: “Thanks to all the inscriptions on the vessels, we will in the future be able to further decipher the vocabulary of ancient Egyptian chemistry that we did not sufficiently understand to date.”

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Egyptian mummy. Meelimello, Pixabay

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Article Source: LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN news release

First solid scientific evidence that Vikings brought animals to Britain

Durham University—Archaeologists have found what they say is the first solid scientific evidence suggesting that Vikings crossed the North Sea to Britain with dogs and horses.

Research led by Durham University, UK, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, examined human and animal remains from Britain’s only known Viking cremation cemetery at Heath Wood, in Derbyshire.

Scientists looked at strontium isotopes contained within the remains. Strontium is a natural element found in different ratios across the world and provides a geographical fingerprint for human and animal movements.

Their analysis showed that within the context of the archaeology, one human adult and several animals almost certainly came from the Baltic Shield area of Scandinavia, covering Norway and central and northern Sweden, and died soon after arrival in Britain.

The researchers say this suggests that Vikings were not only stealing animals when they arrived in Britain, as accounts from the time describe, but were also transporting animals from Scandinavia, too.

As the human and animal remains were found in the remnants of the same cremation pyre, the researchers believe the adult from the Baltic Shield region may have been someone important who was able to bring a horse and dog to Britain.

The analysed remains are associated with the Viking Great Army, a combined force of Scandinavian warriors that invaded Britain in AD 865.

The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Lead author Tessi Löffelmann, a doctoral researcher jointly working in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, and the Department of Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, said: “This is the first solid scientific evidence that Scandinavians almost certainly crossed the North Sea with horses, dogs and possibly other animals as early as the ninth century AD and could deepen our knowledge of the Viking Great Army.

“Our most important primary source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, states that the Vikings were taking horses from the locals in East Anglia when they first arrived, but this was clearly not the whole story, and they most likely transported animals alongside people on ships.

“This also raises questions about the importance of specific animals to the Vikings.”

The researchers analyzed strontium ratios in the remains of two adults, one child and three animals from the Heath Wood site.

Strontium occurs naturally in the environment in rocks, soil and water before making its way into plants. When humans and animals eat those plants, strontium replaces calcium in their bones and teeth.

As strontium ratios vary in different parts of world the geographical fingerprint of the element found in human or animal remains can help show where they came from or settled.

Strontium ratios in one of the adults and the child showed that they could have been from the area local to the Heath Wood cremation site, southern or eastern England or from Europe, including Denmark and south-west Sweden which were outside of the Baltic Shield region.

But the remains of the other adult and all three animals – a horse, a dog and what the archaeologists say was possibly a pig – had strontium ratios normally found in the Baltic Shield area.

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While the researchers say their findings suggest the horse and dog were transported to Britain, it may be that the pig fragment was a piece from a game or another talisman or token brought from Scandinavia, rather than a live pig. The remains had also been cremated and buried under a mound, which the researchers say could be a link back to Scandinavian rituals at a time when cremation was absent in Britain.

Research co-author Professor Janet Montgomery, in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, said: “Our study suggests that there are people and animals with different mobility histories buried at Heath Wood, and that, if they belonged to the Viking Great Army, it was made up of people from different parts of Scandinavia or the British Isles.

“This is also the first published strontium analysis on early medieval cremated remains from Britain and shows the potential that this scientific method has to shed further light on this period in history.”

The research team also included archaeologists from the University of York, UK, who excavated the Heath Wood cemetery between 1998 and 2000, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

Professor Julian Richards, of the Department of Archaeology, University of York, who co-directed the excavations at the Heath Wood Viking cemetery, said: “The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Norman cavalry disembarking horses from their fleet before the Battle of Hastings, but this is the first scientific demonstration that Viking warriors were transporting horses to England two hundred years earlier.

“It shows how much Viking leaders valued their personal horses and hounds that they brought them from Scandinavia, and that the animals were sacrificed to be buried with their owners.”

The research was funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (Northern Bridge) funding, the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and The Rosemary Cramp Fund and the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, both Durham University.

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Viking burial mound at Heath Wood being excavated. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York.

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Cremated animal and human bone from the Heath Wood Viking cemetery. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York

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Fragment of a sampled cremated horse radius/ulna from burial mound 50 at Heath Wood. Credit: Jeff Veitch, Durham University.

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Clasp from the Viking warrior’s shield found during the original excavations in 1998-2000. The clasp was found in the same grave as the human and animal remains analysed during the latest research. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York.

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Decorated hilt guard from the Viking warrior’s sword. The sword was found in the same grave as the human and animal remains analysed during the latest research. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York.

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Article Source: Durham University news release

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About the Arts and Humanities Research Council

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, funds internationally outstanding research across all arts and humanities. This includes research which supports important UK economic sectors such as the creative and digital industries, creative practice and arts in all its forms. Our research also explores complex social and cultural issues that underpin our understanding of our interaction with society, ourselves and the natural world. We invest in research which places humanity at the heart of today’s biggest questions and their answers. 

About Durham University        

Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.    

We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.    

We conduct boundary-breaking research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2023).     

We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).    

For more information about Durham University visit: www.durham.ac.uk/about-us/  

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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.

__________________________________

Straight-tusked elephant bones hint at routine hunting and butchering by Neanderthals

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—New evidence* suggests that straight-tusked elephants, the largest terrestrial mammals of their time, were hunted and butchered by Neanderthal groups that were larger and less mobile than previously thought. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser and colleagues discovered telltale signs via cutmarks on 125,000-year-old skeletal remains excavated from central Germany more than 25 years ago. From 1985 to 1996, a team of researchers uncovered the remains of more than 70 of these elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) from a site near Halle, Germany called Neumark-Nord 1, which constitutes the largest known assemblage of P. antiquus. Although these remains have been studied extensively, researchers have so far been unable to confirm speculations that Neanderthals – who also inhabited Eurasia during that period – may have hunted or scavenged the giant creatures. Now, Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. have identified cutmarks on skeletal remains from the Last Interglacial that suggest these elephants were routinely hunted and butchered by Neanderthals. By evaluating bone surfaces under a microscope and reviewing what was already known about the remains, the researchers inferred that Neanderthals methodically cut, hacked, and extracted parts of the animal, leaving distinct markings on the bone surfaces. With male elephants weighing as much as 12 tons, butchering an animal of this size must have involved multiple tools and butchers, taken days to complete, and yielded copious amounts of meat that could have lasted for up to 3 months for as many as 25 people, the researchers say. They speculate that Neanderthals must have lived more stationary lifestyles in larger units than commonly supposed. In a related Focus, Britt Starkovich notes that “It is increasingly clear that Neanderthals were not a monolith and, unsurprisingly, had a full arsenal of adaptive behaviors that allowed them to succeed in the diverse ecosystems of Eurasia for over 200,000 years.”

Summary author: Nyla Husain

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Deep cut marks on the heel bone of a male elephant (Individual E24), ~50 years of age at death. Easily visible with the naked eye, the longest cut mark in the center of the picture is c. 4 cm. Disarticulation of foot bones enabled access to the rich fat deposits in the elephant’s foot cushions. Wil Roebroeks, Leiden

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Cut marks on a foot bone of an elephant (Individual E30), made by stone tools during disarticulation of the foot (Scale bar = 5 mm). Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser/Lutz Kindler, MONREPOS

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Dr. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser (height 160 cm) next to a life-sized reconstruction of an adult male straight-tusked elephant (P. antiquus), in the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle, Germany. Lutz Kindler, MONREPOS

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release

Mastodons were hunted in pre-Clovis times with bone projectile points

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Bone fragments recovered from the rib of an American mastodon found in present-day Washington state suggest that this extinct Ice Age megafauna was hunted by Paleo-Americans using bone projectile points 13,900 years ago – some 900 years before the well-known Clovis point emerged. Michael Waters and colleagues have identified a thin, smooth, pointed object through a digital reconstruction of the bone fragments – a finding consistent with a human-made projectile point. The discovery follows a 2011 study published in Science, co-authored by members of the same research group, that described the original discovery of the bone fragments: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1207663

Summary author: Nyla Husain