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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—Scientists have pieced together an early human habitat for the first time, and life was no picnic 1.8 million years ago.

Our human ancestors, who looked like a cross between apes and modern humans, had access to food, water and shady shelter at a site in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. They even had lots of stone tools with sharp edges, said Gail M. Ashley, a professor in the Rutgers Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences.

But “it was tough living,” she said. “It was a very stressful life because they were in continual competition with carnivores for their food.”

During years of work, Ashley and other researchers carefully reconstructed an early human landscape on a fine scale, using plant and other evidence collected at the sprawling site. Their pioneering work was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The landscape reconstruction will help paleoanthropologists develop ideas and models on what early humans were like, how they lived, how they got their food (especially protein), what they ate and drank and their behavior, Ashley said.

Famous paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey discovered the site in 1959 and uncovered thousands of animal bones and stone tools. Through exhaustive excavations in the last decade, Ashley, other scientists and students collected numerous soil samples and studied them via carbon isotope analysis.

The landscape, it turned out, had a freshwater spring, wetlands and woodland as well as grasslands.

“We were able to map out what the plants were on the landscape with respect to where the humans and their stone tools were found,” Ashley said. “That’s never been done before. Mapping was done by analyzing the soils in one geological bed, and in that bed there were bones of two different hominin species.”

The two species of hominins, or early humans, are Paranthropus boisei – robust and pretty small-brained – and Homo habilis, a lighter-boned species. Homo habilis had a bigger brain and was more in sync with our human evolutionary tree, according to Ashley.

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 Gail M. Ashley, a professor in Rutgers University’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Credit: Courtesy of Gail M. Ashley

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Both species were about 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall, and their lifespan was likely about 30 to 40 years.

Through their research, the scientists learned that the shady woodland had palm and acacia trees. They don’t think the hominins camped there. But based on the high concentration of bones, the primates probably obtained carcasses elsewhere and ate the meat in the woods for safety, Ashley said.

In a surprising twist, a layer of volcanic ash covered the site’s surface, nicely preserving the bones and organic matter, said Ashley, who has conducted research in the area since 1994.

“Think about it as a Pompeii-like event where you had a volcanic eruption,” she said, noting that a volcano is about 10 miles from the site. The eruption “spewed out a lot of ash that completely blanketed the landscape.”

On the site, scientists found thousands of bones from animals such as giraffes, elephants and wildebeests, swift runners in the antelope family. The hominins may have killed the animals for their meat or scavenged leftover meat. Competing carnivores included lions, leopards and hyenas, which also posed a threat to hominin safety, according to Ashley.

Paleoanthropologists “have started to have some ideas about whether hominins were actively hunting animals for meat sources or whether they were perhaps scavenging leftover meat sources that had been killed by say a lion or a hyena,” she said.

“The subject of eating meat is an important question defining current research on hominins,” she said. “We know that the increase in the size of the brain, just the evolution of humans, is probably tied to more protein.”

The hominins’ food also may have included wetland ferns for protein and crustaceans, snails and slugs.

Scientists think the hominins likely used the site for a long time, perhaps tens or hundreds of years, Ashley said.

“We don’t think they were living there,” she said. “We think they were taking advantage of the freshwater source that was nearby.”

Source:  Rutgers University

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE—As polar ice caps melted at the end of the last Ice Age about 8,500 years ago, the global sea level rose and Panama’s Pearl Islands were isolated from the mainland. A new archaeological study by a team including a Smithsonian scientist shows that several thousand years later pre-Columbian colonists hunted a dwarf deer to extinction on an island called Pedro González.

The settlers arrived on the 14-hectare island by sea 6,200 years ago and stayed for a maximum of eight centuries, farming maize and roots, fishing, gathering palm fruits and shellfish and hunting deer, opossums, agoutis, iguanas and large snakes–the major predators.

“When I was washing the animal bones from the first test cut in 2008, out fell a deer ankle bone called a calcaneum,” said Richard Cooke, archaeologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and co-author of the study. “It was so tiny that I realized we had come across a population that had probably dwarfed through isolation.”

The Pearl Archipelago, named for rich pearl beds encountered by early Spanish explorers, lies about 16 miles off Panama’s Pacific coast. The islands are perhaps best known as the location of several seasons of the TV series, Survivor. As Darwin discovered in the Galapagos, islands are hotbeds of evolution. Through time, animals isolated from mainland populations commonly undergo a reduction in size compared to their mainland relatives due to competition for limited food resources. In the case of the dwarf deer, this must have occurred between the time when the island was isolated from the mainland and the time when the settlers arrived.

Adult deer living on Pedro González island 6,000 years ago weighed less than 22 pounds, about as much as a beagle. Collagen fingerprint studies by Manchester University biochemist Mike Buckley infer that deer bones on the island were not from the tiny red brocket deer, corzo in Spanish, found in Panama today. Deer bones on the island represent a different group of deer, which includes white-tailed deer and some gray brocket populations found in South America. Only DNA studies will confirm to which deer clade the island deer belong. Buckley found that the 6,000-year-old deer bones belong to the same lineage as a larger deer still found on San José island, 5 miles to the south in the Pearl Archipelago. Why it survived there is an unresolved mystery.

About 2,500 fragments of deer bones corresponding to 22 individuals were found in the 4-meter-deep trash heap (midden) that built up in a large hollow near the coast. Some deer bones had cuts indicating butchering, such as disarticulation and slicing meat from the bone, or had the marks of human teeth. Others had been burned or smashed to get at the marrow. Antlers and long bones were often cut for making everyday tools and ornaments. Hunting appears to have been indiscriminate, including adults as well as juveniles.

The number of deer bones decreased in the youngest layer of the midden, and those of older adults were absent, suggesting that the species was becoming scarcer and life expectancies lower. No deer bones were found in later layers left by pottery-using people after 2,300 years ago, indicating that the species had become extinct on Pedro González by then.

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 Bones of dwarf deer show butchering marks. Archaeologists on Pedro González Island in the Bay of Panama were surprised to find bones of a dwarf deer in a 6,000-year-old waste pile of island residents who apparently hunted the deer to extinction.  Credit: STRI

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The history of this tiny deer illustrates just how vulnerable island species can be. The loss of the Pedro González dwarf deer may inspire conservation of the population still found on the neighboring island.

Source: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute subject news release.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA BARBARA—In a middle-class tomb just east of the Nile River in what was Upper Nubia, a woman offers a glimpse of how two met civilizations met, mingled and a new pharaonic dynasty arose. Her tomb was Egyptian, but she was buried in the Nubian style—placed in a flexed position on her side and resting on a bed. Around her neck she wore amulets of the Egyptian god Bes, the protector of households.

The Nubian woman is, according to Stuart Tyson Smith, a professor of archaeology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, a prime example of “cultural entanglement,” the process by which colonizing powers and indigenous people influence one another and change over time.

In a paper published in American Anthropologist, Michele Buzon of Purdue University and Smith explore cultural identity and transformation in the ancient village of Tombos in what is now northern Sudan. “Entanglement and the Formation of Ancient Nubian Napatan State” details the findings from Smith and Buzon’s excavations of cemeteries in Tombos, which became an important colonial hub after the Egyptians conquered Nubia around 1500 BCE.

“You get this really interesting entangled culture blending different elements in really different ways, but also there seems to be a lot of individual choice involved,” Smith explained. “It’s not just a matter of the two cultures mash up and then you get this new hybrid thing that’s consistent. There seems to be a lot of individual choice—whether or not you want a Nubian bed and/or an Egyptian coffin and/or to be wrapped like a mummy or whether or not you want an Egyptian-style amulet and/or Nubian ivory jewelry.”

Smith and Buzon, an associate professor of anthropology whose focus is bioarchaeology, are in their second year of excavations at Tombos as part of a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. Earlier fieldwork at the site was funded by a previous NSF grant and grants from the National Geographic Society, the Schiff-Giorgini Foundation, the Brennan Foundation and private donations. Their excavations are centered in graves from the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 BCE) and the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070-615 BCE).

By measuring craniofacial features, Buzon is able to establish biological relationships and mixing between Nubians and Egyptians at Tombos. By analyzing skeletons, burial practices and contents of the graves, Smith and Buzon have been able to piece together a period of shifting cultural identities that led to the Nubian conquest of Egypt and the 25th Dynasty of Egypt (Napatan Period c. 750-650). Indeed, the shift was so complete the Nubians presented themselves as more culturally authentic Egyptian than the rulers they overthrew.

“We’re looking at the social dynamic from which those Nubian pharaohs emerged,” Smith explained, “and how that blended culture might have contributed to the cultural dynamic that allowed the pharaohs to come in, not just as conquerors, but as the legitimate restorers of the proper order of things in a decadent time. That’s exactly how they presented it.”

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 The face of a statue of king Shebitku or Shabataka of the Nubian 25th dynasty of Egypt. Shebitku was succeeded in power after his death by Taharqa.  Flop Eared Mule, Wikimedia Commons

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Smith and Buzon’s work also upends much conventional thinking about the dynamics of conquest. The graves of Tombos show that rather than the Egyptians simply imposing their will on the Nubians, which Smith calls “the old model,” cultural entanglement was a much more potent force shaping both cultures. Intermarriage and cultural pluralism in colonial Nubia gave rise to a new identity and the development of the Nubian pharaohs.

“What we’re looking at is a more nuanced model of Egyptian and Nubian culture entangling, and how individual choices drive this kind of ethnic and cultural change, and ultimately enable these Nubian pharaohs to take over,” Smith said. “The local people, and the colonists coming from Egypt who become locals over time, are driving the trajectory of the civilization as much as larger policies of colonial Egypt or, later on, these emerging pharaohs. That goes over very well with the local population. They like that idea. It’s not just Egypt imprinting their culture on Nubia; the local people are really influencing things and making it possible for the Nubians to eventually rule Egypt.”

Source: University of California, Sanata Barbara, news release.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

In February, it is the height of summer in New Norfolk, Tasmania. Although, at an average of 77 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, one can walk leisurely around without breaking a sweat in its characteristically cool temperate climate. Located in this Australian island state’s southeastern region, the town of over 5500 residents straddles both sides of the Derwent River, which runs through the valley by the same name. It is set within a backdrop of high hills dotted with gum trees. Walking along this river, one is likely to hear Kookaburras calling as they flutter from gum tree to gum tree, and at dusk or dawn, one might perhaps encounter an Eastern Grey Kangaroo. 

The Asylum

Anciently, the banks of the Derwent around New Norfolk were covered by forests, and there is evidence of human habitation in the area — Australian Aboriginals — going back many thousands of years. But the town of New Norfolk was born in Australia’s colonial era, when groups of settlers, including convicts conscripted to do the hard work of building, arrived from the British Isles and other points in early colonial Australia beginning in the early 19th century. The town still features many of the structures and traces of that bygone era, including an almost forgotten complex known as Willow Court, a large group of buildings that served as a mental health institution from 1827 to 2000 and now under archaeological investigation by a team headed by Dr. Heather Burke of Flinders University. Originally named the New Norfolk Insane Asylum, it was built to care for the free people and convicts transported to Tasmania under the direction of the British government. Today its remains are only a decaying reminder of its past.

“Institutions like Willow Court are the physical remains of the forced labor economy that modern Australia emerged from,” said Kate Leonard, an archaeologist who helped to investigate the site remains. “Even the early structures of Willow Court, such as the Barracks Building, were built with convict labor. The evidence of this can be seen in the arrow-marked convict made bricks that are visible underneath the flaking plaster.”

Leonard came to New Norfolk for a few weeks as a volunteer to help with the investigations, which involved mapping the site’s features, conducting geophysical surveys, and cataloguing stored artifacts in anticipation of future excavations. It was part of an ambitious global project she hatched to volunteer her knowledge and skills to work at no less than 12 projects in 12 countries in 12 months. New Norfolk is the second stop on her Global Archaeology  journey.

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 The barracked bulding of Williow Court as it appears today. Courtesy K. Leonard

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Kate Leonard doing a geophysical survey. Courtesy K. Leonard

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 Kate Leonard busy with artifact cataloguing. Courtesy K. Leonard

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 A convict-made brick. Courtesy K. Leonard

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The Legacy

Along the way at Willow Court, Leonard also encountered some tantalizing traces of history literally written on its walls.

“I had the opportunity to do a full survey of the graffiti that littered the inside and outside of the original Willow Court Barracks, whose construction was completed in 1834,” she said. “The graffiti was a mix of modern vandalism and the handiwork of inmates. I became absorbed with the search for the early writing on the walls and window sills, photographing it and making notes on location, condition and context. With my teammate I also continued to photograph the wall of the B Ward building (also known as Bronte).”

Her work in this area will result in a graffiti catalogue, something that the site investigators have long wanted to produce. The record could help shed some light on the unwritten history of inmate life. 

Site investigators hope that the ongoing investigations will ultimately help paint a clearer picture of a sad, hard but important slice of life in this early colonial place. “Although I was aware of Australia’s Convict Era and had some general knowledge of the severity of the penal system in place, the mental health repercussions had never crossed my mind,” added Leonard. “The journey in convict ships, physical punishment and mental punishment (such as solitary and silent confinement of prisoners in places like Port Arthur and Cascades Female Factory), and forced hard labor tested the limits of all the convicts minds and some were irreparably damaged by their experiences.”

Leonard notes, however, that despite the hardships, “many of the convicts served their sentences and then moved forward with their lives as free citizens of the colony.”

“These men and women persevered through transportation, hard labor and foul, disease ridden, heavily over-populated prisons to become the foundation of modern Tasmania. The stories of those sent to Tasmania during the convict era are not easy to hear, but that is exactly why they should be told: they are a key part of what shaped Australia and its resilient people.”

Popular Archaeology will be following and reporting on Leonard’s worldwide experiences periodically throughout 2016 as she hops from one location to another.

Readers interested in reading about and supporting her self-directed Global Archaeology crowdfunded project can learn more at gofundme.com/globalarchaeology.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

WELLCOME TRUST SANGER INSTITUTE—The first complete sequences of the Y chromosomes of Aboriginal Australian men have revealed a deep indigenous genetic history tracing all the way back to the initial settlement of the continent 50 thousand years ago, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology today (25th February 2016).

The study by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and collaborators at La Trobe University in Melbourne and several other Australian institutes, challenges a previous theory that suggested an influx of people from India into Australia around 4-5 thousand years ago. This new DNA sequencing study focused on the Y chromosome, which is transmitted only from father to son, and found no support for such a prehistoric migration. The results instead show a long and independent genetic history in Australia.

Modern humans arrived in Australia about 50 thousand years ago, forming the ancestors of present-day Aboriginal Australians. They were amongst the earliest settlers outside Africa. They arrived in an ancient continent made up of today’s Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, called Sahul, probably thousands of years before modern humans arrived in Europe.

Five thousand years ago, dingos, the native dogs, somehow arrived in Australia, and changes in stone tool use and language around the same time raised the question of whether there were also associated genetic changes in the Australian Aboriginal population. At least two previous genetic studies, one of which was based on the Y chromosome, had proposed that these changes could have coincided with mixing of Aboriginal and Indian populations about 5 thousand years ago.

Anders Bergstrom, first author on the paper at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: “We worked closely with Aboriginal Australian communities to sequence the Y chromosome DNA from 13 male volunteers to investigate their ancestry. The data show that Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes are very distinct from Indian ones. These results refute the previous Y chromosome study, thus excluding this part of the puzzle as providing evidence for a prehistoric migration from India. Instead, the results are in agreement with the archaeological record about when people arrived in this part of the world.”

Dr John Mitchell, Associate Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, explained: “Clearly there is keen interest in the Aboriginal community to explore their genetic ancestry and without them this study would not be possible – our first step was to return their results to them, before the scientific article was published. This collaboration in genome sequencing, to explore their ancient history, was made possible by years of engagement beforehand with Aboriginal communities.”

Further study is needed to answer questions such as how the dingo did get to Australia and why other people such as the seafaring Polynesians didn’t settle on the continent. Expanding the genetic analyses beyond the Y chromosome and to the whole genome will also be necessary to completely rule out external genetic influences on the Aboriginal Australian population before the very recent times.

Lesley Williams, who was responsible for the liaison with the Aboriginal community, said: “As an Aboriginal Elder and cultural consultant for this project I am delighted, although not surprised, that science has confirmed what our ancestors have taught us over many generations, that we have lived here since the Dreaming.”

Dr Chris Tyler Smith, group leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute added: “By fully sequencing and analysing Y-chromosomal DNA, we have been able to trace ancient human migrations and inform living people about their ancestry. We are using the latest technology to genetically unearth our ancient history – something that has only become possible in the last decade. We look forward to further collaborations to understand more of this unique heritage.”

Source: News release of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Cover image, top left: Mr Sober88, Wikimedia Commons

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

PRAIRIE RESEARCH INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, Champaign, IL— Dr. Thomas E. Emerson and Dr. Kristin M. Hedman from the Illinois State Archaeological Survey-Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois present a new case for Cahokia’s demise. The new theory was published in Southern Illinois University Press’ volume, Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies. Emerson and Hedman contributed a chapter to the volume entitled, The Dangers of Diversity: The Consolidation and Dissolution of Cahokia, Native North America’s First Urban Polity, that explores internal divisions that led to the collapse of Cahokia.

The archaeologists claim internal conflict by social, political, ethnic, and religious factions are a more reasonable description of events that led to Cahokia’s collapse than environmental causes, as is the popular theory. They present new bioarchaeological evidence that demonstrates that as many as one-third of the Cahokian residents were immigrants and that these immigrants likely represented groups that were culturally, ethnically, and perhaps linguistically distinct from local populations. Emerson clarifies further:

“There is no smoking gun if you want to pin Cahokia’s dissolution on environmental factors. …It makes more sense, given the heterogeneous population with differences in language, and social, religious, and political cultures to look to internal dissension at Cahokia as the underlying reason…”

Emerson and Hedman go on to say that Cahokia does not have a clear history of significant environmental degradation that can be linked to dissolution.

“Cahokia may be an interesting example of political experiment in the unification of social and ethnic diversity that failed – probably by design.”

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 Artist’s rendition of Cahokian people. Credit: Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

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Letting the Past Speak

Hedman and Emerson claim the remains of the inhabitants of Cahokia have a story to tell. Archaeologists have been able to gather information about the lifestyle, diet, health and place of birth of those buried at Cahokia. This information provided vital clues in assessing factors involved in the final demise of Cahokia.

For the past 15 years, ISAS archaeologists have studied curated collections from Greater Cahokia. Evidence from osteological and isotopic analyses and radiocarbon dating was used to establish temporal and cultural context and to assess the population that once occupied the urban center of Cahokia This newly acquired data and reevaluation of existing documentation are continuing to offer new insights about the people of Cahokia and what may have caused the demise of America’s first city.

Source: News release of the Prairie Research Institute.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

Plant molecular fossils reveal details of an early human habitat at Olduvai Gorge, including the critical freshwater and plant resources available to early humans, according to a study conducted by an international team led by Clayton Magill of the Geological Institute in Zurich, Switzerland*. Fossil evidence showing how early humans coexisted with critical plant and water resources is scant. As a result, how such local resources affected early human evolution remains unclear. To study the meter-scale spatial distribution of these resources, Magill and colleagues excavated 71 buried soil samples across a 25,000-square-meter area at a nearly 2-million-year-old Olduvai Gorge archaeological site. Different types of plants each have their own characteristic chemical biomarkers preserved in the soil. The authors analyzed these biomarkers to distinguish between co-occurring plant types. The biomarker evidence indicated a varied landscape containing different types of vegetation, including the presence of a woodland thicket near a small freshwater wetland, all surrounded by an open grassland landscape. This finding suggests that early humans living at Olduvai Gorge had reliable and easy access to potable water, edible plants, and aquatic animals. The thicketed area delineated by biomarkers also contained butchered animal bones and early human remains. According to the authors, early humans may have brought animal remains and food from the surrounding grasslands or wetlands to the wooded habitat, which may have provided protection and access to freshwater.

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 View of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Noel Feans, Wikimedia Commons

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

Source: Edited and adapted from the subject PNAS press release.

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*“Dietary options and behavior suggested by plant biomarker evidence in an early human habitat,” by Clayton R. Magill et al.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

Some scientists are now saying that many of the Iron Age fort remains that dot the landscape of Western Europe show evidence that they were intentionally set afire by their makers, not by the destructive intentions of attacking enemies in combat.

Led by Fabian Wadsworth of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany, a team of scientists experimented with Darley Dale sandstone, widely used in Iron Age (generally 1200 BC to 100 AD) forts, by firing samples and analyzing the results. The results duplicated the effects recorded in samples known from the vitrified forts known to exist across Western Europe. Vitrification is the fusing and resultant hardening or strengthening of the component elements of materials subjected to high levels of heat. 

The results and the proposed explanation for the vitrification observed in Iron Age forts challenges the long-held assumption that all of the forts that showed these characteristics were likely evidence of destructive intentions by outside forces in the context of combat. According to the authors, the study actually lends new credence to a long-dismissed hypothesis that at least some of the forts were intentionally set ablaze by their makers in order to fortify the walls.

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 Remains of the Wincobank hill fort in the district of Sheffield, England, cited as an example in the study for a vitrified Iron Age fort. Martin Speck, Wikimedia Commons  

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 Remains of Iron Age fort, Kinnoull Hill Perth, Scotland. Aaron Bradley, Wikimedia Commons

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Wadsworth and colleagues add, however, that the lithology of individual Iron Age forts across Europe should be studied to determine the susceptibility of each to this effect when fired.  

The study* is published in detail as an open-access article in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

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*Fabian B. Wadsworth, et. al, Friendly fire: Engineering a fort wall in the Iron Age, Journal of Archaeological Science, Vol. 67, March 2016, pp. 7 – 13.  

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Two remarkable discoveries that are shedding light on human beginnings in Africa; a traveling exhibit and an archaeological site that show how knowledge is more valuable than gold; a Spanish cave and a unique burial that are offering a tantalizing glimpse on the lives of Ice Age hunter-gatherers in Europe; the stunning visual reconstruction of an ancient Roman town; enlightening new finds at a remarkably well-preserved site of ancient Hellenistic-Roman culture overlooking the Sea of Galilee; rare finds that are shedding light on occult practices among ancient Greeks in Sicily; and an overview of the overwhelmingly rich archaeological heritage of Britain. Find it on Amazon.com.

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM—Archaeologists from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem revealed in Israel a prehistoric village, dated around 12,000 years ago, in excavations in the fertile Jordan Valley.

The site, named NEG II, is located in Nahal (wadi) Ein-Gev, at the middle of the perennial stream that flows west to the Sea of Galilee.

A series of excavations on site revealed an abundance of findings, including human burial remains, flint tools, art manifestations, faunal assemblage, ground stone and bone tools. The excavated area revealed an extensive habitation with deep cultural deposits (2.5 to 3 meters deep) and the site is estimated as covering roughly 1200 m2.

Surprisingly, the village differs markedly from others of its period in Israel. The findings encapsulate cultural characteristics typical of both the Old Stone Age—known as the Paleolithic period—and the New Stone Age—known as the Neolithic period.

“Although attributes of the lithic tool kit found at NEG II places the site chronologically in the Paleolithic period, other characteristics – such as its artistic tradition, size, thickness of archaeological deposits and investment in architecture – are more typical of early agricultural communities in the Neolithic period,” said Dr. Leore Grosman, from the Institute of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who led the excavations.

“Characterizing this important period of potential overlap in the Jordan Valley is crucial for the understanding of the socioeconomic processes that marked the shift from Paleolithic mobile societies of hunter-gatherers to Neolithic agricultural communities,” added Dr. Grosman.

The Paleolithic period is the earliest and the longest period in the history of mankind. The end of this period is marked by the transition to settled villages and domestication of plants and animals as part of the agricultural life-ways in the Neolithic period.

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 Above, a bird’s-eye view of excavation site NEG II in the Jordan Valley. Credit: Austin (Chad) Hill ©Leore Grosman

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 Above, excavations of revealed buildings of a Natufian village. Credit: Dr. Leore Grosman

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In a research paper, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the archeologists described the village as one of the latest settlements in the Levant region of the Late Natufian – the last culture of the Paleolithic period.

The Natufian culture (about 15,000-11,500 years B.P.) is known from sites all over the Levant – from the Negev and the Sinai in the south to Syria and Lebanon in the north.

NEG II was occupied in the midst of the cold and dry global climatic event known as the Younger Dryas (12,900-11,600 years B.P.), where temperature declined sharply over most of the northern hemisphere. Affected by climatic changes, Late Natufian groups in the Mediterranean zone became increasingly mobile and potentially smaller in size.

However, excavations at NEG II show that groups in the Jordan Valley became more sedentary and potentially larger in size.

“The buildings represent at least four occupational stages and the various aspects of the faunal assemblage provide good indications for site permanence. In addition, the thick archaeological deposits, the uniformity of the tool types and the flint knapping technology indicate intensive occupation of the site by the same cultural entity,” said Dr. Grosman.

Researchers say that this shift in settlement pattern could be related to greater climatic stability due to a lesser effect of the Younger Dryas in the region, higher cereal biomass productivity and better conditions for small-scale cultivation.

These factors had provided the ingredients necessary to taking the final steps toward agriculture in the southern Levant, researchers say.

“It is not surprising that at the very end of the Natufian culture, at a suite of sites in the Jordan Valley, that we find a cultural entity that bridges the crossroads between Late Paleolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers,” said Dr. Grosman.

Source: The Hebrew Univerist of Jerusalem news release.

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A study completed by scientists in France has concluded that, based on an examination of a key skull specimen attributed to Homo floresiensis, the cranial features do not support its attribution to the modern human species, Homo sapiens.

Antoine Balzeau of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, along with co-author Philippe Charlier of UVSQ/Paris-Descartes University, performed a medical study of skull Liang Bua 1 (LB1), considered to be the holotype find of Homo floresiensis, by conducting micro-CT examination of the cranial vault thickness and cranial structure arrangements of the skull. What they found was that the skull did not bear such traits common to modern humans, but featured traits more characteristic of ancient hominins such as Homo erectus, an extinct species of human thought to be the first human species to spread globally out of Africa. 

Homo floresiensis, otherwise popularly known as “hobbit” due to its diminutive build and characteristic feet and thought by many to be a possible extinct species of human, became a media sensation in 2003 after its discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores by a joint Australian-Indonesian team of archaeologists looking for evidence of the original human migration of Homo sapiens from Asia to Australia. Still steeped in controversy and scholarly debate, the remains consist of the partial skeletons of nine individuals, including one complete skull, referred to as LB1. An individual “hobbit” would have stood only about 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in height, with a small brain, more akin to that of an ancient hominin. Most tantalizing was the finding that the remains dated to relatively recent times (possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago). Recovered alongside the skeletal remains were stone tools ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago.

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 Cave where the remains of Homo floresiensis were discovered in 2003, Lian Bua, Flores, Indonesia.  Rosino, Wikimedia Commons

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 Cast of LB1 skull. Ryan Somma, Wikimedia Commons

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Some scientists have suggested upon examination that the “hobbit” represented a modern human group that suffered from microcephaly and disease, resulting in the physical characteristics featured in the recovered fossil remains. Other studies, however, have not supported this hypothesis, and this latest publication advances additional findings supporting the suggestion that the fossils do not exhibit pathological features and are indeed those of an extinct human species.

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

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*Antoine Balzeau and Phillipe Charlier, What do cranial bones of LB1 tell us about Homo floresiensis? Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 93, April 2016, pp. 12-24.

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COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY—Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Using several different methods of DNA analysis, an international research team has found what they consider to be strong evidence of an interbreeding event between Neanderthals and modern humans that occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than any other such event previously documented.

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BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY—BINGHAMTON, NY – Analysis of artifacts found on the shores of Rapa Nui, Chile (Easter Island) originally thought to be used as spear points reveal that these objects were likely general purpose tools instead, providing evidence contrary to the widely held belief that the ancient civilization was destroyed by warfare.

According to Carl Lipo, professor of anthropology at Binghamton University and lead on the study, the traditional story for Rapa Nui holds that the people, before Europeans arrived, ran out of resources and, as a result, engaged in massive in-fighting, which led to their collapse. One of the pieces of evidence used to support this theory is the thousands of obsidian, triangular objects found on the surface, known as mata’a. Because of their large numbers and because they’re made of sharp glass, many believe the mata’a to be the weapons of war that the ancient inhabitants of the island used for interpersonal violence

Lipo and his team analyzed the shape variability of a photo set of 400-plus mata’a collected from the island using a technique known as morphometrics, which allowed them to characterize the shapes in a quantitative manner. Based on the wide variability in shape of the mata’a and their difference from other traditional weapons, the team determined that the mata’a were not used in warfare after all, as they would have made poor weapons.

“We found that when you look at the shape of these things, they just don’t look like weapons at all,” said Lipo. “When you can compare them to European weapons or weapons found anywhere around the world when there are actually objects used for warfare, they’re very systematic in their shape. They have to do their job really well. Not doing well is risking death.”

“You can always use something as a spear. Anything that you have can be a weapon. But under the conditions of warfare, weapons are going to have performance characteristics. And they’re going to be very carefully fashioned for that purpose because it matters…You would cut somebody {with a mata’a], but they certainly wouldn’t be lethal in any way.”

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Above, images of various mata’a. Credit: Carl Lipo, Binghamton University

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 Above, a map of the Pacific Islands showing Rapa Nui. Credit: Carl Lipo, Binghamton University

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According to Lipo, this evidence strongly supports the idea that the ancient civilization never experienced this oft-theorized combat and warfare, and that the belief that the mata’a were weapons used in the collapse of the civilization is really a late European interpretation of the record, not an actual archeological event.

“What people traditionally think about the island as being this island of catastrophe and collapse just isn’t true in a pre-historic sense. Populations were successful and lived sustainably on the island up until European contact,” said Lipo.

Lipo and his team believe that the mata’a are found all over the landscape because they were actually cultivation tools used in ritual tasks like tattooing or domestic activities like plant processing.

“We’ve been trying to focus on individual bits of evidence that support the collapse narrative to demonstrate that really there’s no support whatsoever for that story,” he said. “Sort of a pillar of the broader study is the fact that this is an amazing society that really was successful. It just doesn’t look like success to us because we see fields that are rock, we think catastrophe, and in fact it’s actually productivity.”

The paper, “Weapons of war? Rapa Nui mata’a 1 morphometric analyses” was published in Antiquity.

Source: Binghamton University news release.

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Cover image, tope left: Sunset view from Easter Island. Gallardoval, Wikimedia Commons

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Two remarkable discoveries that are shedding light on human beginnings in Africa; a traveling exhibit and an archaeological site that show how knowledge is more valuable than gold; a Spanish cave and a unique burial that are offering a tantalizing glimpse on the lives of Ice Age hunter-gatherers in Europe; the stunning visual reconstruction of an ancient Roman town; enlightening new finds at a remarkably well-preserved site of ancient Hellenistic-Roman culture overlooking the Sea of Galilee; rare finds that are shedding light on occult practices among ancient Greeks in Sicily; and an overview of the overwhelmingly rich archaeological heritage of Britain. Find it on Amazon.com.