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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO—A new fossil ape from an 8.7-million-year-old site in Türkiye is challenging long-accepted ideas of human origins and adding weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago. 

Analysis of a newly identified ape named Anadoluvius turkae recovered from the Çorakyerler fossil locality near Çankırı with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Türkiye, shows Mediterranean fossil apes are diverse and are part of the first known radiation of early hominines – the group that includes African apes (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas), humans and their fossil ancestors. 

The findings are described in a study published today in Communications Biology co-authored by an international team of researchers led by Professor David Begun at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Professor Ayla Sevim Erol at Ankara University. 

“Our findings further suggest that hominines not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests,” said Begun, professor in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at U of T. “The members of this radiation to which Anadoluvius belongs are currently only identified in Europe and Anatolia.” 

The conclusion is based on analysis of a significantly well-preserved partial cranium uncovered at the site in 2015, which includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the brain case. 

“The completeness of the fossil allowed us to do a broader and more detailed analysis using many characters and attributes that are coded into a program designed to calculate evolutionary relationships,” said Begun. “The face is mostly complete, after applying mirror imaging. The new part is the forehead, with bone preserved to about the crown of the cranium. Previously described fossils do not have this much of the brain case.” 

The researchers say Anadoluvius was about the size of a large male chimpanzee (50-60 kg) – very large for a chimp and close to the average size of a female gorilla (75-80 kg) – lived in a dry forest setting, and probably spent a great deal of time on the ground. 

“We have no limb bones but judging from its jaws and teeth, the animals found alongside it, and the geological indicators of the environment, Anadoluvius probably lived in relatively open conditions, unlike the forest settings of living great apes,” said Sevim Erol. “More like what we think the environments of early humans in Africa were like. The powerful jaws and large, thickly enameled teeth suggest a diet including hard or tough food items from terrestrial sources such as roots and rhizomes.” 

The animals that lived with Anadoluvius are those commonly associated with African grasslands and dry forests today, such as giraffes, wart hogs, rhinos, diverse antelopes, zebras, elephants, porcupines, hyaenas and lion-like carnivores. Research shows that the ecological community appears to have dispersed into Africa from the eastern Mediterranean sometime after about eight million years ago. 

“The founding of the modern African open country fauna from the eastern Mediterranean has long been known and now we can add to the list of entrants the ancestors of the African apes and humans,” said Sevim Erol. 

The findings establish Anadoluvius turkae as a branch of the part of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Although African apes today are only known from Africa, as are the earliest known humans, the study’s authors – which also include colleagues at Ege University and Pamukkale University in Türkiye and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in The Netherlands – conclude that the ancestors of both came from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. 

Anadoluvius and other fossil apes from nearby Greece (Ouranopithecus) and Bulgaria (Graecopithecus) form a group that come closest in many details of anatomy and ecology to the earliest known hominins, or humans. The new fossils are the best-preserved specimens of this group of early hominins and provide the strongest evidence to date that the group originated in Europe and later dispersed into Africa. 

The study’s detailed analysis also reveals that the Balkan and Anatolian apes evolved from ancestors in western and central Europe. With its more comprehensive data, the research provides evidence that these other apes were also hominines and means that it is more likely that the whole group evolved and diversified in Europe, rather than the alternative scenario in which separate branches of apes earlier moved independently into Europe from Africa over the course of several million years, and then went extinct without issue. 

“There is no evidence of the latter, though it remains a favorite proposal among those who do not accept a European origin hypothesis,” said Begun. “These findings contrast with the long-held view that African apes and humans evolved exclusively in Africa. While the remains of early hominines are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about seven million years ago. 

“This new evidence supports the hypothesis that hominines originated in Europe and dispersed into Africa along with many other mammals between nine and seven million years ago, though it does not definitively prove it. For that, we need to find more fossils from Europe and Africa between eight and seven million years old to establish a definitive connection between the two groups.” 

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A new face and partial brain case of Anadoluvius turkae, a fossil hominine – the group that includes African apes and humans – from the Çorakyerler fossil site located in Central Anatolia, Türkiye. Sevim-Erol, A., Begun, D.R., Sözer, Ç.S. et al. Above and below: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Excavation of the Anadoluvius turkae fossil, a significantly well-preserved partial cranium uncovered at the Çorakyerler fossil site in Türkiye in 2015. The fossil includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the brain case. Ayla Sevim-Erol

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Çorakyerler excavation site. This vertebrate fossil settlement near Çankırı, Türkiye, is one of the most important humanoid settlements in Eurasia. As a result of nearly 20 years of excavations, Çorakyerlar has taken its place among the important Late Miocene reference localities of Anatolia and Europe with 8 mammalian orders, more than 10 families and 43 species. Ayla Sevim-Erol

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO news release

*A new ape from Türkiye and the radiation of late Miocene hominines, Communications Biology, 23-Aug-2023. 10.1038/s42003-023-05210-5 

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JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ—The diversity of family systems in prehistoric societies has always fascinated scientists. A groundbreaking study by Mainz anthropologists and an international team of archaeologists now provides new insights into the origins and genetic structure of prehistoric family communities.

Researchers Jens Blöcher and Joachim Burger from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have analyzed the genomes of skeletons from an extended family from a Bronze Age necropolis in the Russian steppe. The 3,800-year-old “Nepluyevsky” burial mound was excavated several years ago and is located on the geographical border between Europe and Asia. Using statistical genomics, the family and marriage relationships of this society have now been deciphered. The study was carried out in cooperation with archaeologists from Ekaterinburg and Frankfurt a. M. and was partly financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Russian Science Foundation (RSCF).

The kurgan (burial mound) investigated was the grave of six brothers, their wives, children and grandchildren. The presumably oldest brother had eight children with two wives, one of whom came from the Asian steppe regions in the east. The other brothers showed no signs of polygamy and probably lived monogamously with far fewer children.

Fascinating snapshot of a prehistoric family

“The burial site provides a fascinating snapshot of a prehistoric family,” explains Jens Blöcher, lead author of the study. “It is remarkable that the first-born brother apparently had a higher status and thus greater chances of reproduction. The right of the male firstborn seems familiar to us, it is known from the Old Testament, for example, but also from the aristocracy in historical Europe.”

The genomic data reveal even more. Most women buried in the kurgan were immigrants. The sisters of the buried brothers, in turn, found new homes elsewhere. Joachim Burger, senior author of the study, explains: “Female marriage mobility is a common pattern that makes sense from an economic and evolutionary perspective. While one sex stays local and ensures the continuity of the family line and property, the other marries in from the outside to prevent inbreeding.”

The genomic diversity of the prehistoric women was higher than that of the men

Accordingly, the Mainz population geneticists found that the genomic diversity of the prehistoric women was higher than that of the men. The women who married into the family thus came from a larger area and were not related to each other. In their new homeland, they followed their husbands into the grave. From this the authors conclude that in Nepluyevsky there was both “patrilineality”, i.e. the transmission of local traditions through the male line, and “patrilocality”, i.e. the place of residence of a family is the place of residence of the men.

“Archaeology shows that 3,800 years ago, the population in the southern Trans-Ural knew cattle breeding and metalworking and subsisted mainly on dairy and meat products,” comments Svetlana Sharapova, archaeologist from Ekaterinburg and head of the excavation, adding, “the state of health of the family buried here must have been very poor. The average life expectancy of the women was 28 years, that of the men 36 years.”

In the last generation, the use of the kurgan suddenly stopped and almost only infants and small children were found. Sharapova adds, “it is possible that the inhabitants were decimated by disease or that the remaining population went elsewhere in search of a better life.”

Multiple partners and many children for the putative firstborn son

“There is a global connection between different family systems and certain forms of life-style and economy,” says Blöcher. “Nevertheless, human societies are characterized by a high degree of flexibility.” He adds, “in Nepluyevsky, we find evidence of a pattern of inequality typical of pastoralists: multiple partners and many children for the putative firstborn son and no or monogamous relationships for most others.”

The authors find additional genomic evidence that populations genetically similar to Neplujevsky society lived throughout most of the Eurasian steppe belt. Burger comments: “It is quite possible that the local pattern we found is relevant to a much larger area.” Future studies will show to what extent the “Neplujevsky” model can be verified at other prehistoric sites in Eurasia.

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A skeleton from the Nepluyevsky site. photo/©: Svetlana Sharapova, CC BY-NC-ND

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Article Source: JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITAET MAINZ news release

*Descent, marriage, and residence practices of a 3,800-year-old pastoral community in Central Eurasia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 21-Aug-2023. 10.1073/pnas.2303574120 

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions from Southern California were driven by large-scale fires in an ecosystem made increasingly vulnerable by climate change and human impacts, according to a new study*. The findings, made possible by a new radiocarbon chronology of fossils from the La Brea tar pits, not only provide insights into the dynamics that contributed to Pleistocene extinctions, but inform understandings of modern ecological change. “The conditions that led to the end-Pleistocene state shift in Southern California are recurring today across the western United States and in numerous other ecosystems worldwide,” write the authors, “and understanding the interplay of climatic and anthropogenic changes in driving this past extinction event may be helpful in mitigating future biodiversity loss in the face of similar pressures.”

At the end of the last Ice Age, roughly two-thirds of Earth’s large mammals in most regions worldwide went extinct. This extinction – the largest of the Cenozoic – coincided with both late-Quaternary climate changes and the growth and expansion of human populations across continents. However, the timing, causes, and consequences of the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions have been difficult to understand. Much of what is known about the event is based on fragmentary paleontological records that lack the chronological precision required to compare the timing of species disappearances to archaeological and environmental data. Using the abundant fossils preserved at the La Brea tar pits (Rancho La Brea) – a site that contains a nearly continuous record of Pleistocene megafaunal occupation of the Los Angeles Basin from more than 55,0000 years ago to the Holocene – Frank O’Keefe and colleagues investigated the potential drivers of megafaunal extirpations in Southern California. O’Keefe et al. obtained new AMS radiocarbon dates on 172 megafaunal individuals and developed a high-resolution radiocarbon chronology for the eight most common mammal species at La Brea from 15.6 to 10 thousand years before present (ka). They found that 7 of these species were extinct in the region by 12.9 ka. Then, using local sediment core records, the authors evaluated the timing of these extirpations with regional paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental records, as well as continental-scale analyses of megafaunal extinction and human demographic growth in North America. According to the findings, the disappearance of megafauna at La Brea preceded North American megafaunal extinction by at least 1000 years, preceded the Younger Dryas climate event, and coincided with vegetation change and aridification at the end of the Bølling-Allerød – a brief climatic warming event that occurred between 14.6 and 12.8 ka. Moreover, the records reveal an increase in large-scale fire activity in the region, which the authors estimate was the primary cause of La Brea’s regional megafaunal extinction. In sum, O’Keefe et al. argue that this increase in fire may have resulted from climate change-induced warming and drying in conjunction with mounting impacts of human hunting and burning in an increasingly fire-prone ecosystem.

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—The genetic makeup of most present-day Europeans has resulted mainly from the admixture of three ancestral groups: western hunter-gatherers gradually merged with early farmers who migrated from Anatolia about 8,000 years ago and who were later on joined by Steppe Herders from Eastern Europe, approximately 4,900 years ago.

The initial analysis of the Iceman’s genome revealed genetic traces of these Steppe Herders. However, the refined new results no longer support this finding. The reason for the inaccuracy: the original sample had been contaminated with modern DNA. Since that first study, not only have sequencing technologies advanced enormously, but many more genomes of other prehistoric Europeans have been fully decoded, often from skeletal finds. This has made it possible to compare Ötzi’s genetic code with his contemporaries. The result: among the hundreds of early European people who lived at the same time as Ötzi and whose genomes are now available, Ötzi’s genome has more ancestry in common with early Anatolian farmers than any of his European counterparts.

Ötzi’s Ancestry and Appearance

The research team concludes that the Iceman came from a relatively isolated population that had very little contact with other European groups. “We were very surprised to find no traces of Eastern European Steppe Herders in the most recent analysis of the Iceman genome; the proportion of hunter-gatherer genes in Ötzi’s genome is also very low. Genetically, his ancestors seem to have arrived directly from Anatolia without mixing with hunter gatherer groups,” explains Johannes Krause, head of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and co-author of the study*.

The study also yielded new results about Ötzi’s appearance. His skin type, already determined in the first genome analysis to be Mediterranean-European, was even darker than previously thought. “It’s the darkest skin tone that has been recorded in contemporary European individuals,” explains anthropologist Albert Zink, study co-author and head of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano: “It was previously thought that the mummy’s skin had darkened during its preservation in the ice, but presumably what we see now is actually largely Ötzi’s original skin color. Knowing this, of course, is also important for the proper conservation of the mummy.”

Our previous image of Ötzi is also incorrect regarding his hair: as a mature man, he most likely no longer had long, thick hair on his head, but at most a sparse crown of hair. His genes, in fact, show a predisposition to baldness. “This is a relatively clear result and could also explain why almost no hair was found on the mummy,” says Zink. Genes presenting an increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes were also found in Ötzi’s genome; however, these factors probably did not come into play thanks to his healthy lifestyle.

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Since 2012, which is when Ötzi’s genome was sequenced for the first time, DNA sequencing technologies have advanced enormously. This new study reveals that compared to other contemporary Europeans, Ötzi’s genome had an unusually high proportion of genes in common with those of early farmers from Anatolia, that his skin was darker than previously thought, and that he was likely bald or had little hair on his head when he died. © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Eurac/Marco Samadelli-Gregor Staschitz

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—In two studies*, researchers demonstrate how climate modeling approaches can fill gaps in our understanding of hominin evolution and migration.

Over the last several decades, research efforts into the lives of hominins – humans and their close ancestors – have shifted from identifying fossils and artifacts to understanding the environmental and climate settings in which they lived and how these factors could have influenced hominin evolution and migration. However, like the hominin fossil record, environmental and climate records that accurately capture environmental change and span the period over which hominins evolved and spread across the globe are uncommon and incomplete. Some of these limitations can be addressed through advances in analytical tools, particularly climate and ecosystem models, which can help fill these gaps and provide valuable new insights into hominin migration.

In one study, Vasiliki Margari and colleagues used a deep-sea sediment core, which provided a temperature record for Europe from 800,000 to 1.8 million years ago. Using these data, the authors created a climate envelope model and evaluated the geographic range of hominin species using climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. Margari et al. discovered hominin presence around the Mediterranean before ~1.1 million years ago was characterized by long, stable interglacial conditions with short glacials that would have allowed for hominin establishment and long-term occupation. However, extreme glacial conditions beginning around 1.1 million years ago would likely have made the region too cold for hominins to survive. Margari et al. argue that these extreme conditions likely led to the depopulation of Europe, which could have lasted for several glacial-interglacial cycles.

In another study, Jiaoyang Ruan and colleagues evaluate how climate shifts across central Eurasia during the Pleistocene could have facilitated interbreeding between Denisovans and Neanderthals. Genetic studies have revealed evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia. However, much about these admixture events remains unknown. Here, Ruan et al. developed a species distribution model combining extensive fossil, archaeological, and genetic data with transient coupled general circulation model simulations of global climate and habitat change for the past 400,000 years, which was used to determine the habitat preferences for both Neanderthals and Denisovans. The authors found that, although both species lived in a variety of environments, Neanderthals preferred temperate forests, whereas Denisovans lived in a much wider range of habitats. However, orbitally driven climate shifts in habitat caused the preferred habitats of Denisovans and Neanderthals to overlap, providing opportunities for interbreeding between the two species.

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Figure showing interbreeding between Neanderthals and Denisovans. Made by Axel Timmermann using Paraview software

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By Walter Beckwith

Article Source: AAAS news release

PLOS—A single accessory – an ornate necklace from a child’s grave in ancient Jordan – provides new insights into social complexity of Neolithic culture, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hala Alarashi of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, and the Université Côte d’Azur, France and colleagues.

Body adornments are powerful symbols that communicate cultural values and personal identities, and they are therefore highly valuable in the study of ancient cultures. In this study, Alarashi and colleagues analyze materials that adorned the body of an eight-year-old child buried in a grave at the Neolithic village of Ba’ja in Jordan, dating to between 7400 and 6800 BCE.

The materials in question comprise over 2,500 colorful stone and shell, two exceptional amber beads – the oldest known thus far in the Levant – along with a large stone pendant and a delicately engraved mother-of-pearl ring. Analyzing the composition, craftsmanship, and spatial layout of these items, the authors conclude that they belonged to a single composite multi-row necklace that had since fallen apart. As part of this study, the researchers created a physical reconstruction of the original necklace, which is now on display in the Petra Museum in Southern Jordan.

The multi-row necklace is one of the oldest and most impressive Neolithic ornaments, providing new insights into funerary practices at the time for individuals of apparently high social status. The making of the necklace appears to have involved meticulous work, as well as the import of certain exotic materials from other regions. The study of this necklace reveals complex social dynamics between community members at Ba’ja – including artisans, traders, and high-status authorities who would commission such pieces – which certainly merit further investigation of this Neolithic culture.

The authors add: “Adorning the deceased child, bridging the worlds of life and death: The discovery and reconstruction of an extraordinary necklace from the 9000-year-old village of Ba’ja (Jordan).”

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Final physical reconstruction of the necklace, today exposed at the new museum of Petra in Jordan. Alarashi 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.

*Alarashi H, Benz M, Gresky J, Burkhardt A, Fischer A, Gourichon L, et al. (2023) Threads of memory: Reviving the ornament of a dead child at the Neolithic village of Ba`ja (Jordan). PLoS ONE 18(8): e0288075. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288075

Funding: ArchaeologyHub.CSIC 2022 Internal Research Grant (HA) https://archaeologyhub.csic.es/. H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, grant number 846097 (HA) https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/846097. German Research Foundation (BO 1599/14-1; BO 1599/16-1) (MB, HGG) https://www.dfg.de/en/. Franz-and Eva Rutzen Stiftung Foundation (MB) https://www.deutsches-stiftungszentrum.de/stiftungen/franz-und-eva-rutzen-stiftung. Junta de Andalucía (Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad), under contract P20_01080 (CPO) https://www.juntadeandalucia.es/organismos/universidadinvestigacioneinnovacion.html. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO—An article* published on July 31 in Nature Ecology & Evolution reveals that Luzio, the oldest human skeleton found in São Paulo state (Brazil), was a descendant of the ancestral population that settled the Americas at least 16,000 years ago and gave rise to all present-day Indigenous peoples, such as the Tupi.

Based on the largest set of Brazilian archaeological genomic data, the study reported in the article also offers an explanation for the disappearance of the oldest coastal communities, who built the icons of Brazilian archaeology known as sambaquis, huge mounds of shells and fishbones used as dwellings, cemeteries and territorial boundaries. Archaeologists often refer to these monuments as shell mounds or kitchen middens.

“After the Andean civilizations, the Atlantic coast sambaqui builders were the human phenomenon with the highest demographic density in pre-colonial South America. They were the ‘kings of the coast’ for thousands and thousands of years. They vanished suddenly about 2,000 years ago,” said André Menezes Strauss, an archaeologist at the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP) and principal investigator for the study.

The first author of the article is Tiago Ferraz. The study was supported by FAPESP (projects 17/16451-2 and 20/06527-4) and conducted in partnership with researchers at the University of Tübingen’s Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment (Germany).

The authors analyzed the genomes of 34 samples from four different areas of Brazil’s coast. The fossils were at least 10,000 years old. They came from sambaquis and other parts of eight sites (Cabeçuda, Capelinha, Cubatão, Limão, Jabuticabeira II, Palmeiras Xingu, Pedra do Alexandre and Vau Una).

This material included Luzio, São Paulo’s oldest skeleton, found in the Capelinha river midden in the Ribeira de Iguape valley by a group led by Levy Figuti, a professor at MAE-USP. The morphology of its skull is similar to that of Luzia, the oldest human fossil found to date in South America, dating from about 13,000 years ago. The researchers thought it might have belonged to a biologically different population from present-day Amerindians, who settled in what is now Brazil some 14,000 years ago, but it turns out they were mistaken.

“Genetic analysis showed Luzio to be an Amerindian, like the Tupi, Quechua or Cherokee. That doesn’t mean they’re all the same, but from a global perspective, they all derive from a single migratory wave that arrived in the Americas not more than 16,000 years ago. If there was another population here 30,000 years ago, it didn’t leave descendants among these groups,” Strauss said.

Luzio’s DNA also answered another question. River middens are different from coastal ones, so the find cannot be considered a direct ancestor of the huge classical sambaquis that appeared later. This discovery suggests there were two distinct migrations – into the hinterland and along the coast.

What happened to the sambaqui builders?

Analysis of the genetic material revealed heterogeneous communities with cultural similarities but significant biological differences, especially between coastal communities in the southeast and south.

“Studies of cranial morphology conducted in the 2000s had already pointed to a subtle difference between these communities, and our genetic analysis confirmed it,” Strauss said. “We discovered that one of the reasons was that these coastal populations weren’t isolated but ‘swapped genes’ with inland communities. Over thousands of years, this process must have contributed to the regional differences between sambaquis.”

Regarding the mysterious disappearance of this coastal civilization, comprising the first hunter-gatherers of the Holocene, analysis of the DNA samples clearly showed that, in contrast with the European Neolithic substitution of entire populations, what happened in this part of the world was a change of practices, with a decline in construction of shell middens and the introduction of pottery by sambaqui builders. For example, the genetic material found at Galheta IV (Santa Catarina state), the most emblematic site for the period, has remains not of shells but of ceramics and is similar to the classic sambaquis in this respect.

“This information is compatible with a 2014 study that analyzed pottery shards from sambaquis and found that the pots in question were used to cook not domesticated vegetables but fish. They appropriated technology from the hinterland to process food that was already traditional there,” Strauss said.

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About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

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The investigation that covered four different parts of Brazil carried out analysis of genomic data from 34 fossils, including larger skeletons and the famous mounds of shells and fishbones built on the coast. André Strauss

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Article Source: FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO news release.

*Genomic history of coastal societies from Eastern South America, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 31-Jul-2023. 10.1038/s41559-023-02114-9 

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—“Considering the richness of the grave goods, it is a reasonable assumption that these were royal tombs, even though we do not know much about the form of government practiced in the city at the time. Undoubtedly those buried here were part of the city’s government,” says Peter Fischer, professor of archaeology and leader of the expedition.

The tombs, located outside the 50-hectare Bronze Age city, consist of underground chambers accessed via a narrow passage from the surface. The chambers varied in size, measuring up to 4 x 5 meters.

More than 500 artifacts

The Swedish Söderberg expedition, which has been excavating in Hala Sultan Tekke near the city of Larnaca on the south coast of Cyprus since 2010, has previously found chamber tombs with valuable grave goods. What distinguishes the newly discovered chamber tombs from those previously excavated is the sheer quantity of artifacts and their superb quality.

“We found more than 500 complete artifacts distributed among two tombs. Many of the artifacts consist of precious metals, gems, ivory and high-quality ceramics.”

About half of the artifacts were imported from neighboring cultures. Gold and ivory came from Egypt. Precious stones, such as blue lapis lazuli, dark red carnelian and blue-green turquoise, were imported from Afghanistan, India and Sinai respectively. The tombs also contain amber objects from the Baltic region.

The tombs were discovered using magnetometers, a type of instrument that can produce images showing objects and structures up to two meters beneath the surface.

“We compared the site where broken pottery had been plowed during farming with the magnetometer map, which showed large cavities one to two meters below the surface. This led us to continue investigating the area and to discover the tombs.”

Woman buried with one-year-old

The several well-preserved skeletons in the tombs include that of a woman surrounded by dozens of ceramic vessels, jewelry and a round bronze mirror that was once polished. A one-year-old child with a ceramic toy lay beside her.

“Several individuals, both men and women, wore diadems, and some had necklaces with pendants of the highest quality, probably made in Egypt during the 18th dynasty at the time of such pharaohs as Thutmos III and Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) and his wife Nefertiti.”

Embossed images of bulls, gazelles, lions and flowers adorn the diadems. Most of the ceramic vessels came from what we now call Greece, and the expedition also found pots from Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt.

The grave goods also included bronze weapons, some inlaid with ivory, and a gold-framed seal made of the hard mineral haematite with inscriptions of gods and rulers.

“The vast wealth of the entombed individuals came from the production of copper. Nearby mines in the Troodos Mountains produced copper ore, which was refined in the city. This port city then exported the refined metal in large quantities to neighboring cultures. Copper was an important commodity because, combined with tin, it becomes the hard alloy bronze, which gave its name to the Bronze Age,” says Peter Fischer.

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Detail of the ”Bull Diadem” (c. 1350 BCE). P.M. Fischer

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One of the skeletons with tomb gifts (c. 1350 BCE). P.M. Fischer

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Excavation and recording in progress. P.M. Fischer

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Large Minoan “Octopus Krater” (Crete) (c. 1350 BCE). P.M. Fischer

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Large Mycenaean (Greek) “Chariot krater” (c. 1350 BCE). P.M. Fischer

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Read more about the excavations here:

• Department of Antiquities of Cyprus
• Season 2023 | Swedish Archaeology in Jordan, Palestine and Cyprus, Peter Fischer

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON—Researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in Britain.

The excavations, which took place in Kent and were commissioned in advance of development of the Maritime Academy School in Frindsbury, revealed prehistoric artifacts in deep Ice Age sediments preserved on a hillside above the Medway Valley.

The researchers, from UCL Archaeology South-East, discovered 800 stone artifacts thought to be over 300,000 years old, buried in sediments which filled a sinkhole and ancient river channel, outlined in their research, published in Internet Archaeology.

Amongst the unearthed artifacts were two extremely large flint knives described as “giant handaxes”. Handaxes are stone artefacts which have been chipped, or “knapped,” on both sides to produce a symmetrical shape with a long cutting edge. Researchers believe this type of tool was usually held in the hand and may have been used for butchering animals and cutting meat. The two largest handaxes found at the Maritime site have a distinctive shape with a long and finely worked pointed tip, and a much thicker base.

Senior Archaeologist Letty Ingrey (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: “We describe these tools as ‘giants’ when they are over 22cm long and we have two in this size range. The biggest, a colossal 29.5cm in length, is one of the longest ever found in Britain. ‘Giant handaxes’ like this are usually found in the Thames and Medway regions and date from over 300,000 years ago.

“These handaxes are so big it’s difficult to imagine how they could have been easily held and used. Perhaps they fulfilled a less practical or more symbolic function than other tools, a clear demonstration of strength and skill. While right now, we aren’t sure why such large tools were being made, or which species of early human were making them, this site offers a chance to answer these exciting questions.”

The site is thought to date to a period in the early prehistory of Britain when Neanderthal people and their cultures were beginning to emerge and may even have shared the landscape with other early human species. The Medway Valley at this time would have been a wild landscape of wooded hills and river valleys, inhabited by red deer and horses, as well as less familiar mammals such as the now-extinct straight-tusked elephant and lion.

While archaeological finds of this age, including another spectacular ‘giant’ handaxe, have been found in the Medway Valley before, this is the first time they have been found as part of large-scale excavation, offering the opportunity to glean more insights into the lives of their makers.

Dr Matt Pope (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: “The excavations at the Maritime Academy have given us an incredibly valuable opportunity to study how an entire Ice Age landscape developed over a quarter of a million years ago. A program of scientific analysis, involving specialists from UCL and other UK institutions, will now help us to understand why the site was important to ancient people and how the stone artifacts, including the ‘giant handaxes’ helped them adapt to the challenges of Ice Age environments.”

The research team is now working on identifying and studying the recovered artifacts to better understand who created them and what they were used for.

Senior Archaeologist Giles Dawkes (UCL Institute of Archaeology) is leading work on a second significant find from the site – a Roman cemetery, dating to at least a quarter of a million years later than the Ice Age activity. The people buried here between the first and fourth centuries AD could have been the inhabitants of a suspected nearby villa that may have lain around 850 meters to the south.

The team found the remains of 25 individuals, 13 of which were cremated. Nine of the buried individuals were found with goods or personal items including bracelets, and four were interred in wooden coffins. Collections of pottery and animal bones found nearby likely relate to feasting rituals at the time of burial. Though Roman buildings and structures have been extensively excavated, cemeteries have historically been less of a focus for archaeologists and the discovery of this site offers potentially new insights into the burial customs and traditions of both the Romans who lived at the villa, and those in the nearby town of Rochester.

Jody Murphy, Director of Education at the Thinking Schools Academy Trust said: “We, at Maritime Academy and the Thinking Schools Academy Trust, feel very lucky to be a part of this phenomenal discovery. We take great pride in our connection to our local community and region, with much of our school identity linked to the history of Medway. We look forward to taking advantage of this unique opportunity to teach our young people about these finds, creating a lasting legacy for those who came before us.”

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The largest giant handaxe. Archaeology South-East/ UCL

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ASE Senior Archaeologist Letty Ingrey measures the largest giant handaxe. Archaeology South-East/ UCL

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Archaeologists excavating at the Maritime Academy School site in Frinsdbury. Archaeology South-East/ UCL

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One of the handaxes at the point of discovery on site. Archaeology South-East/ UCL

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON news release

PLOS—Stone tools bear microscopic evidence of ancient plant technology, according to a study published June 30, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hermine Xhauflair of the University of the Philippines Diliman and colleagues.

Prehistoric communities likely made extensive use of plant materials for textiles and cordages, taking advantage of the flexibility and resistance of plant fibers just like modern communities do. However, plant-based materials like baskets and ropes are rarely preserved in the archaeological record, especially in the tropics, so prehistoric plant technology is often rendered invisible to modern science. In Southeast Asia, the oldest artefacts made of plant fibers are around 8,000 years old. In this study, Xhauflair and colleagues identify indirect evidence of much older plant technology.

This evidence comes from stone tools in Tabon Cave, Palawan Philippines dating as far back as 39,000 years old. These tools exhibit microscopic damage accrued during use. Indigenous communities in this region today use tools to strip plants like bamboo and palm, turning rigid stems into supple fibers for tying or weaving. Researchers experimentally followed these plant processing techniques and found that this activity leaves a characteristic pattern of microscopic damage on stone tools. This same pattern was identified on three stone artifacts from Tabon Cave.

This is among the oldest evidence of fiber technology in Southeast Asia, highlighting the technological skill of prehistoric communities going back 39,000 years. This research also demonstrates a method for revealing otherwise hidden signs of prehistoric plant technology. Further study will shed light on how ancient these techniques are, how widespread they were in the past, and whether modern practices in this region are the result of an uninterrupted tradition.

The authors add: “This study pushes back in time the antiquity of fiber technology in Southeast Asia. It means that the Prehistoric groups who lived at Tabon Cave had the possibility to make baskets and traps, but also ropes that can be used to build houses, sail boats, hunt with bows and make composite objects.”

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Fiber technology at Tabon Cave, 39-33 000 years ago. An artistic view based on the latest archaeological data. Drawing by Carole Cheval-Art’chéograph. Made for the exhibition “Trajectories and Movements of the Philippine Identity” curated by Hermine Xhauflair and Eunice Averion. Scientific advising: Hermine Xhauflair. Carole Cheval – Art’chéograph, Xhauflair & Averion, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Xhauflair H, Jago-on S, Vitales TJ, Manipon D, Amano N, Callado JR, et al. (2023) The invisible plant technology of Prehistoric Southeast Asia: Indirect evidence for basket and rope making at Tabon Cave, Philippines, 39–33,000 years ago. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0281415. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281415

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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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SMITHSONIAN—Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History have identified the oldest decisive evidence of humans’ close evolutionary relatives butchering and likely eating one another.

In a new study* published today, June 26, in Scientific Reports, National Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner and her co-authors describe nine cut marks on a 1.45 million-year-old left shin bone from a relative of Homo sapiens found in northern Kenya. Analysis of 3D models of the fossil’s surface revealed that the cut marks were dead ringers for the damage inflicted by stone tools. This is the oldest instance of this behavior known with a high degree of confidence and specificity.

“The information we have tells us that hominins were likely eating other hominins at least 1.45 million years ago,” Pobiner said. “There are numerous other examples of species from the human evolutionary tree consuming each other for nutrition, but this fossil suggests that our species’ relatives were eating each other to survive further into the past than we recognized.”

Pobiner first encountered the fossilized tibia, or shin bone, in the collections of the National Museums of Kenya’s Nairobi National Museum while looking for clues about which prehistoric predators might have been hunting and eating humans’ ancient relatives. With a handheld magnifying lens, Pobiner pored over the tibia looking for bite marks from extinct beasts when she instead noticed what immediately looked to her like evidence of butchery.

To figure out if what she was seeing on the surface of this fossil were indeed cut marks, Pobiner sent molds of the cuts—made with the same material dentists use to create impressions of teeth—to co-author Michael Pante of Colorado State University. She provided Pante with no details about what he was being sent, simply asking him to analyze the marks on the molds and tell her what made them. Pante created 3D scans of the molds and compared the shape of the marks to a database of 898 individual tooth, butchery and trample marks created through controlled experiments.

The analysis positively identified nine of the 11 marks as clear matches for the type of damage inflicted by stone tools. The other two marks were likely bite marks from a big cat, with a lion being the closest match. According to Pobiner, the bite marks could have come from one of the three different types of saber-tooth cats prowling the landscape at the time the owner of this shin bone was alive.

By themselves, the cut marks do not prove that the human relative who inflicted them also made a meal out of the leg, but Pobiner said this seems to be the most likely scenario. She explained that the cut marks are located where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone—a good place to cut if the goal is to remove a chunk of flesh. The cut marks are also all oriented the same way, such that a hand wielding a stone tool could have made them all in succession without changing grip or adjusting the angle of attack.

“These cut marks look very similar to what I’ve seen on animal fossils that were being processed for consumption,” Pobiner said. “It seems most likely that the meat from this leg was eaten and that it was eaten for nutrition as opposed to for a ritual.”

While this case may appear to be cannibalism to a casual observer, Pobiner said there is not enough evidence to make that determination because cannibalism requires that the eater and the eaten hail from the same species.

The fossil shin bone was initially identified as Australopithecus boisei and then in 1990 as Homo erectus, but today, experts agree that there is not enough information to assign the specimen to a particular species of hominin. The use of stone tools also does not narrow down which species might have been doing the cutting. Recent research from Rick Potts, the National Museum of Natural History’s Peter Buck Chair of Human Origins, further called into question the once-common assumption that only one genus, Homo, made and used stone tools.

So, this fossil could be a trace of prehistoric cannibalism, but it is also possible this was a case of one species chowing down on its evolutionary cousin.

None of the stone-tool cut marks overlap with the two bite marks, which makes it hard to infer anything about the order of events that took place. For instance, a big cat may have scavenged the remains after hominins removed most of the meat from the leg bone. It is equally possible that a big cat killed an unlucky hominin and then was chased off or scurried away before opportunistic hominins took over the kill.

One other fossil—a skull first found in South Africa in 1976—has previously sparked debate about the earliest known case of human relatives butchering each other. Estimates for the age of this skull range from 1.5 to 2.6 million years old. Apart from its uncertain age, two studies that have examined the fossil (the first published in 2000 and the latter in 2018) disagree about the origin of marks just below the skull’s right cheek bone. One contends the marks resulted from stone tools wielded by hominin relatives and the other asserts that they were formed through contact with sharp-edged stone blocks found lying against the skull. Further, even if ancient hominins produced the marks, it is not clear whether they were butchering each other for food, given the lack of large muscle groups on the skull.

To resolve the issue of whether the fossil tibia she and her colleagues studied is indeed the oldest cut-marked hominin fossil, Pobiner said she would love to reexamine the skull from South Africa, which is claimed to have cut marks using the same techniques observed in the present study.

She also said this new shocking finding is proof of the value of museum collections.

“You can make some pretty amazing discoveries by going back into museum collections and taking a second look at fossils,” Pobiner said. “Not everyone sees everything the first time around. It takes a community of scientists coming in with different questions and techniques to keep expanding our knowledge of the world.”

This research was supported by funding from the Smithsonian, the Peter Buck Fund for Human Origins Research and Colorado State University.

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View of the hominin tibia and magnified area that shows cut marks. Scale = 4 cm. In a new study published today, June 26, in Scientific Reports, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner and her co-authors describe nine cut marks on a 1.45 million-year-old left shin bone from a relative of Homo sapiens found in northern Kenya. Analysis of 3D models of the fossil’s surface revealed that the cut marks were dead ringers for the damage inflicted by stone tools. This is the oldest instance of this behavior known with a high degree of confidence and specificity. Pobiner first encountered the fossilized tibia, or shin bone, in the collections of the National Museums of Kenya’s Nairobi National Museum while looking for clues about which prehistoric predators might have been hunting and eating humans’ ancient relatives. With a handheld magnifying lens, Pobiner pored over the tibia looking for bite marks from extinct beasts when she instead noticed what immediately looked to her like evidence of butchery. “You can make some pretty amazing discoveries by going back into museum collections and taking a second look at fossils,” Pobiner said. “Not everyone sees everything the first time around. It takes a community of scientists coming in with different questions and techniques to keep expanding our knowledge of the world.” Jennifer Clark

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Nine marks identified as cut marks (mark numbers 1–4 and 7–11) and two identified as tooth marks (mark numbers 5 and 6) based on comparison with 898 known bone surface modifications. Scale = 1 cm. None of the stone-tool cut marks overlap with the two bite marks, which makes it hard to infer anything about the order of events that took place. For instance, a big cat may have scavenged the remains after hominins removed most of the meat from the leg bone. It is equally possible that a big cat killed an unlucky hominin and then was chased off or scurried away before opportunistic hominins took over the kill. Jennifer Clark

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Close-up photos of three fossil animal specimens from the same area and time horizon as the fossil hominin tibia studied by the research team. These fossils show similar cut marks to those found on the hominin tibia studied. The photos show (a) an antelope mandible, (b) an antelope radius (lower front leg bone) and (c) a large mammal scapula (shoulder blade). By themselves, the cut marks do not prove that the human relative who inflicted them also made a meal out of the leg, but Pobiner said this seems to be the most likely scenario. She explained that the cut marks are located where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone—a good place to cut if the goal is to remove a chunk of flesh. The cut marks are also all oriented the same way, such that a hand wielding a stone tool could have made them all in succession without changing grip or adjusting the angle of attack. Briana Pobiner

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3D model of marks 7 and 8 identified as cut marks. Pobiner sent molds of the cuts—made with the same material dentists use to create impressions of teeth—to co-author Michael Pante of Colorado State University. She provided Pante with no details about what he was being sent, simply asking him to analyze the marks on the molds and tell her what made them. Pante created 3D scans of the molds and compared the shape of the marks to a database of 898 individual tooth, butchery and trample marks created through controlled experiments. The analysis positively identified nine of the 11 marks as clear matches for the type of damage inflicted by stone tools. The other two marks were likely bite marks from a big cat, with a lion being the closest match. According to Pobiner, the bite marks could have come from one of the three different types of saber-tooth cats prowling the landscape at the time the owner of this shin bone was alive. Michael Pante

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Article Source: Smithsonian news release.

*Early Pleistocene cut marked hominin fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya, Scientific Reports, 26-Jun-2023. 10.1038/s41598-023-35702-7 

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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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PLOS—Markings on a cave wall in France are the oldest known engravings made by Neanderthals, according to a study published June 21, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jean-Claude Marquet of the University of Tours, France and colleagues.

Research in recent decades has revealed a great deal about the cultural complexity of Neanderthals. However, relatively little is known about their symbolic or artistic expression. Only a short list of symbolic productions are attributed to Neanderthals, and the interpretation of these is often the subject of debate. In this study, Marquet and colleagues identified markings on a cave wall in France as the oldest known Neanderthal engravings.

The cave is La Roche-Cotard in the Centre-Val de Loire of France, where a series of non-figurative markings on the wall are interpreted as finger-flutings, marks made by human hands. The researchers made a plotting analysis and used photogrammetry to create 3D models of these markings, comparing them with known and experimental human markings. Based on the shape, spacing, and arrangement of these engravings, the team concluded that they are deliberate, organized and intentional shapes created by human hands.

The team also dated cave sediments with optically-stimulated luminescence dating, determining that the cave became closed off by infilling sediment around 57,000 years ago, well before Homo sapiens became established in the region. This, combined with the fact that stone tools within the cave are only Mousterian, a technology associated with Neanderthals, is strong evidence that these engravings are the work of Neanderthals.

Because these are non-figurative symbols, the intent behind them is unclear. They are, however, of a similar age with cave engravings made by Homo sapiens in other parts of the world. This adds to a growing body of evidence that the behavior and activities of Neanderthals were similarly complex and diverse as those of our own ancestors.

The authors add: “Fifteen years after the resumption of excavations at the La Roche-Cotard site, the engravings have been dated to over 57,000 years ago and, thanks to stratigraphy, probably to around 75,000 years ago, making this the oldest decorated cave in France, if not Europe!”

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Trine Freiesleben and Jean-Claude discussing the fingerprints and where to take OSL samples. Kristina Thomsen, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Examples of engravings discovered in the Roche-Cotard cave (Indre et Loire – France). On the left, the “circular panel” (ogive-shaped tracings) and on the right the “wavy panel” (two contiguous tracings forming sinuous lines). Jean-Claude Marquet, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Marquet J-C, Freiesleben TH, Thomsen KJ, Murray AS, Calligaro M, Macaire J-J, et al. (2023) The earliest unambiguous Neanderthal engravings on cave walls: La Roche-Cotard, Loire Valley, France. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0286568. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286568

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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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MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY—What connects a fossil found in a cave in northern Laos with stone tools made in north Australia? The answer is, we do. When our early Homo sapiens ancestors first arrived in Southeast Asia on their way from Africa to Australia, they left evidence of their presence in the form of human fossils that accumulated over thousands of years deep in a cave.

The latest evidence from Tam Pà Ling cave in northern Laos, uncovered by a team of Laotian, French, American and Australian researchers and published in Nature Communications, demonstrates beyond doubt that modern humans spread from Africa through Arabia and to Asia much earlier than previously thought.

It also confirms that our ancestors didn’t just follow coastlines and islands. They travelled through forested regions, most likely along river valleys, too. Some then moved on through Southeast Asia to become Australia’s First People.

“Tam Pà Ling plays a key role in the story of modern human migration through Asia but its significance and value is only just being recognised,” says University of Copenhagen palaeoanthropologist Assistant Professor Fabrice Demeter, one of the paper’s lead authors.

Three Australian Universities contributed to the project. Macquarie University and Southern Cross University dated samples using multiple techniques. Flinders University showed that the sediment in the cave had been laid down in distinct layers over tens of thousands of years.

Since the first excavation and the discovery of a skull and mandible in 2009, the cave has been controversial. Evidence of our earliest journeys from Africa into Southeast Asia is usually dominated by island locations such as Sumatra, Philippines and Borneo.

This was before Tam Pà Ling, an upland cave site more than 300 kilometres from the sea in northern Laos, started divulging its secrets. The skull and jawbone were identified as belonging to Homo sapiens who had migrated through the region. But when?

As is usual in questions of human dispersal, the debate comes down to timing. But this evidence was hard to date.

The human fossils cannot be directly dated as the site is a World Heritage area and the fossils are protected by Laotian law. There are very few animal bones or suitable cave decorations to date, and it is too old for radiocarbon dating. This placed a heavy burden on the luminescence dating of sediments to form the backbone of the timeline.

Luminescence dating relies on a light-sensitive signal that is reset to zero when exposed to light but builds up over time when shielded from light during burial. It was originally used to constrain the burial sediments that encased the fossils.

“Without luminescence dating this vital evidence would still have no timeline and the site would be overlooked in the accepted path of dispersal through the region,” says Macquarie University geochronologist Associate Professor Kira Westaway. “Luckily the technique is versatile and can be adapted for different challenges.”

These techniques returned a minimum age of 46,000 years – a chronology in line with the expected timing of Homo sapiens’ arrival in Southeast Asia. But the discovery didn’t end here.

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From 2010 to 2023, annual excavations (delayed by three years of lockdowns) revealed increasingly more evidence that Homo sapiens had passed through en route to Australia. Seven pieces of human skeleton were found at intervals through 4.5 metres of sediment, pushing the potential timeline far back into the realms of the earliest Homo sapiens migrations to this region.

In this study*, the team overcame these issues by creatively applying strategic dating techniques where possible, such as the uranium-series dating of a stalactite tip that had been buried in sediment, and the use of uranium-series dating coupled with electron-spin-resonance dating techniques to two rare but complete bovid teeth, unearthed at 6.5 metres.

“Having direct dating of the fossil remains confirmed the age sequence obtained by luminescence, allowing us to propose a comprehensive and secure chronology for a Homo sapiens presence at Tam Pà Ling,” says Southern Cross University geochronologist Associate Professor Renaud Joannes-Boyau.

The team supported the dating evidence with a detailed analysis of the sediments to assess the origin of the fossils using micromorphology, a technique that examines sediments under a microscope to establish the integrity of the layers. This key component of the new chronology helped establish that there was a consistent accumulation of sedimentary layers over a long period.

“Far from reflecting a rapid dump of sediments, the site represents a consistent and seasonally deposited stack of sediments,” explains Flinders University geoarchaeologist Associate Professor Mike Morley, who worked with PhD students Vito Hernandez and Meghan McAllister-Hayward.

The new chronology revealed there had a been a human presence in this area for more than 56,000 years. Furthermore, the age of the lowest fossil at seven metres – a fragment of a leg bone – provides a timeline for modern human arrival in this region of between 86,000 to 68,000 years ago. This pushes back the arrival time in mainland Southeast Asia by approximately 40,000 years. Although, according to the genetics, these early migrations did not contribute significantly to our modern-day populations.

“This really is the decisive paper for the Tam Pà Ling evidence,” says Associate Professor Westaway. “Finally we have enough dating evidence to confidently say when Homo sapiens first arrived in this area, how long they were there and what route they may have taken.”

Tam Pà Ling cave is very close to the recently discovered Cobra Cave, which was frequented by Denisovans approximately 70,000 years earlier. Despite the previous lack of evidence for early arrival in mainland Southeast Asia, this area might be a previously used dispersal route among our ancestors, long before Homo sapiens.

“We have much to learn from the caves and forests of Southeast Asia,” adds Associate Professor Westaway.

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The extensive excavation pit in Tam Pà Ling reaching from the cave floor down to ~7 m. The deepest pit is found at the rear close to the cave wall. Copyright Vito Hernandez (Flinders University

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The extensive excavation pit in Tam Pà Ling reaching from the cave floor down to ~7 m. Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University

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Taking sediment samples in the excavation pit in Tam Pà Ling cave, the team is with Flinders PhD student Vito Hernandez. Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University

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Looking down into the wide steep entrance of Tam Pà Ling Cave. The excavation pit is visible on the right-hand side. Copyright Kira Westaway (Macquarie University

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Article Source: MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY news release.

*Early presence of Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia by 86–68 kyr at Tam Pà Ling, Northern Laos, Nature Communications, 13-Jun-2023. 10.1038/s41467-023-38715-y 

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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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CNRS—Although the prehistoric site of Eynan-Mallaha in northern Israel has been thoroughly examined since 1955, it still holds some surprises for scientists. Seven prehistoric wind instruments known as flutes, recently identified by a Franco-Israeli team1 , are the subject of an article published on 9 June in Nature Scientific Reports. The discovery of these 12,000-year-old aerophones is extremely rare – in fact, they are the first to be discovered in the Near East. The “flutes”, made from the bones of a small waterfowl, produce a sound similar to certain birds of prey (Eurasian sparrowhawk and common kestrel) when air is blown into them. The choice of bones used to make these instruments was no accident – larger birds, with bigger bones that produce deeper sounds, have also been found at the site. The Natufians, the Near Eastern civilization that occupied this village between 13,000 and 9,700 BC, deliberately selected smaller bones in order to obtain the high-pitched sound needed to imitate these particular raptors. The instruments may have been used for hunting, music or to communicate with the birds themselves. Indeed, it is clear that the Natufians attributed birds with a special symbolic value, as attested by the many ornaments made of talons found at Eynan-Mallaha. The village, located on the shores of Lake Hula, was home to this civilization throughout its 3,000 years of existence. It is therefore of vital importance in revealing the practices and habits of a culture at the crossroads between mobile and sedentary lifestyles, and the transition from a predatory economy to agriculture. This work2 was supported by the Fyssen Fondation and the ministère des Affaires étrangères.

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The seven aerophones discovered at Eynan-Mallaha. © Laurent Davin

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Article Source: CNRS news release

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Notes

1. 1- The team is co-directed by Laurent Davin (post-doctoral researcher at the Fyssen Fondation) and José-Miguel Tejero (University of Vienna, University of Barcelona) and includes scientists from the Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/ministère de la Culture), the laboratoire Technologie et ethnologie des mondes préhistoriques (CNRS/Université Panthéon-Sorbonne/Université Paris Nanterre), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Institute of Archaeology), Israel Antiquities Authority, Virginia Commonwealth University (Department of Forensic Science), École Nationale Vétérinaire (Laboratoire d’Anatomie comparée, Nantes), the laboratoire Archéologies et sciences de l’Antiquité (CNRS/ministère de la Culture/Université Panthéon-Sorbonne/Université Paris Nanterre) and the l’Institut d’ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative (CNRS/Université Aix-Marseille).
2. 2- Excavation of the Eynan-Mallaha site is still ongoing, under the direction of CNRS researcher Fanny Bocquentin and Israel Antiquities Authority researcher Lior Weisbrod.

Bibliography

Bone aerophones from Eynan-Mallaha (Israel) indicate imitation of raptor calls by the last hunter- gatherers in the Levant. Laurent Davin, José-Miguel Tejero, Tal Simmons, Dana Shaham, Aurélia Borvon, Olivier Tourny, Anne Bridault, Rivka Rabinovich, Marion Sindel, Hamudi Khalaily and François Valla. Nature Scientific Reports, June 8 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35700-9 (This link will work when the embargo is lifted)

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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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CNRS—The Zambratija boat in Croatia has stood the test of time, with 7 of its 12-metres still being remarkably well preserved. Dated to between the end of the 12th and the end of the 10th century BC, it is the oldest entirely hand-sewn boat in the Mediterranean. This wreck – a rare example of the ancient shipbuilding tradition of Istria and Dalmatia – will be studied in detail by a Franco-Croatian team from the Centre Camille Jullian (CNRS/AMU) and the Archaeological Museum of Istria (Pula, Croatia). From the 2nd July 2023, a team of divers will remove sections of the boat in the bay of Zambratija1 . Once the pieces have been removed and placed in a bespoke support, the scientists will reconstruct the boat in 3D and precise its construction date, will identify the fibres used for sewing and study the techniques used to shape the wood. Handling relics of this calibre is a delicate affair; therefore, every stage of the process will require the utmost care. Once the analyses have been completed, this exceptional vessel and its components will be desalted in Croatia before heading to Grenoble in 2024, where they will pass through the capable hands of the Arc-Nucléart restoration workshop. It is hoped that the fully-restored boat will one day be exhibited in a new museum dedicated to Istria’s naval maritime heritage in Pula, Croatia.

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Wreck of Zambratija, Istria. Observations on the hull. © Philippe Groscaux/Mission Adriboats/CNRS/CCJ

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Notes

1. 1 Operation carried out as part of Ministry of Europe and foreign Affairs mission “Adriboats – Navires et navigation en Adriatique orientale dans l’Antiquité”, directed by CNRS researcher Giulia Boetto

Article Source: CNRS 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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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Native Americans who lived in present-day central Alaska during the last ice age may have started freshwater fishing by around 13,000 years ago, suggests a new analysis* of ancient DNA and stable isotopes from fish remains. Ancestors of Alaska Natives, many of whose livelihoods still depend on freshwater fish such as salmon, may have started subsistence fishing as a response to fewer food resources during long-term climate change, Ben Potter and colleagues say. Native Americans have relied on freshwater fish for thousands of years, but the origins of fishing in North America have been uncertain. Beringia, a region comprising present-day Alaska and Russia, was largely ice-free during the last ice age and is considered a key gateway to the Americas. Researchers have previously discovered well-preserved fish remains in Beringia, but it has been unclear when and how freshwater fishing began there. To investigate, Potter et al. used a combination of DNA and isotope analyses to identify 1,110 fish specimens recovered from six human settlement sites – including in the Tanana, Kuskokwim, Susitna, and Copper River basins – in what was once eastern Beringia (central Alaska). They identified four main fish taxa – salmon, burbot, whitefish, and northern pike – whose earliest appearances dated to around 13,000 and 11,800 years ago. These findings, along with well-documented fishing records from local Native Alaskans, suggest that early Native Americans may have started fishing as a response to environmental change during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. “Our data collectively suggest that changes in climate and ultimately key mammal resources during the Younger Dryas led to human responses of widening diet breadth to incorporate multiple species of freshwater and anadromous fish, setting a pattern that would be expanded upon later in the Holocene as fish, particularly salmon, became key resources to Alaska Native lifeways,” the authors write.

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USR excavation. Ben Potter

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Mead Excavation. Ben Potter

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Mead articulated burbot vertebrae. Ben Potter

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

Article summary by Nyla Husain

*Freshwater and anadromous fishing in Ice Age Beringia, Science Advances, 2-Jun-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg6802 

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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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UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA—A research team at the University of Cordoba has identified, for the first time, the composition of a Roman perfume more than 2,000 years old thanks tothe discovery of a small vessel of ointment in Carmona.

2,000 years ago, in the Roman city of Carmo, today’s Carmona, in the province of Seville, someone placed a vessel of ointment in a funerary urn. Twenty centuries later, the FQM346 research team at the University of Cordoba, led by Professor of Organic Chemistry José Rafael Ruiz Arrebola, in collaboration with the City of Carmona, has been able to chemically describe the components of a perfume dating from the first century AD. The results were published in the Swiss scientific journal Heritage in an article* in which Ruiz Arrebola, the municipal archaeologist of Carmona, Juan Manuel Román; and UCO researchers Daniel Cosano and Fernando Lafont share the whole technical and scientific process enabling the world to”smell” the bygone Roman Empire.

The residue of the perfume, discovered in 2019 during an archaeological intervention in a mausoleum found during construction of a house on the Calle Sevillat, had been preserved, solidified, inside a vessel carved in quartz, which was still perfectly sealed. As Román explains, it was a collective tomb, possibly belonging to an affluent family and in which, in addition to numerous objects related to funeral rituals (offerings and trousseaus), the cinerary urns of six adult individuals – three women and three men – were found. In one of the urns, made of glass, over the cremated skeletal remains of the deceased (in this case a woman between 30 and 40 years old), a cloth bag had been placed (remains of it having been preserved) containing three amber beads and a small rock crystal (hyaline quartz) flask, carved in the shape of an amphora, containing ointment. Perfume containers used to be made of blown glass and, on very rare occasions, examples have been found made of this material which, owing to its characteristics and difficult carving, due to its hardness, made them very valuable and extremely expensive. In addition to the uniqueness of the receptacle, the truly extraordinary aspect of the find was that it was perfectly sealed, and that the solid residues of the perfume had been preserved inside, which made it possible to carry out this study.

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Ruiz Arrebola stresses that the use of dolomite, a type of carbon, as a stopper, and the bitumen used to seal it, were the key to the magnificent state of preservation of the piece and its contents.

To ascertain what the perfume was made of, different instrumental techniques were used, such as X-ray diffraction and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, among others. According to Ruiz, from the analyses it has been possible to determine that the small cylindrical stopper was made of dolomite (limestone), and that bitumen was used for its perfect fit and airtight seal. With respect to the perfume, two components have been identified: a base or binder, which allowed for the preservation of the aromas, and the essence itself, these findings according with descriptions by none other than Pliny the Elder. In this case, the base was a vegetable oil; possibly, according to some indications reflected in the analysis, olive oil, although this point could not be confirmed with certainty.

And the essence?

According to the results of chemical analyses carried out by the University of Cordoba, Rome smelled of patchouli, an essential oil obtained from a plant of Indian origin, Pogostemon cablin, widely used in modern perfumery, and whose use in Roman times was not known. The monumental characteristics of the tomb where it was found and, above all, the material of which the vessel containing it was made, suggest that it was a highly valuable product.

This study constitutes a breakthrough in the field of Roman perfumery and as regards to the use of patchouli as an essential oil. Further studies are currently being carried out on other unique materials (such as amber, fabrics, and pigments used in the wall paintings) preserved in the Carmona mausoleum. Results are expected soon.

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Place where the ointment was found. University of Córdoba

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA news release

*Archaeometric Identification of a Perfume from Roman Times, Heritage, 23-May-2023. 10.3390/heritage6060236 

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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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Archaeological Park of Pompeii—It was not just the eruption that led to the death of the inhabitants of Pompeii but also the simultaneous earthquake

Turmoil, confusion, attempted escapes and, in the meantime, an earthquake, showers of pumice, volcanic ash and hot gases. This was the inferno of the eruption of AD 79, the living hell in which the inhabitants of the ancient city of Pompeii found themselves, including the two victims whose skeletons were recently discovered during the excavation of the insula of the House of the Chaste Lovers.

They were the victims of an earthquake that accompanied the eruption, discovered beneath a wall that had collapsed between the final phase of the deposition of pumice and prior to the arrival of the pyroclastic flows that buried Pompeii for good.

They provide increasingly clear evidence that, during the eruption, it was not just the collapse of structures associated with the accumulation of pumice or the impact of pyroclastic flows that represented the only dangers to the lives of the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii, as the excavations carried out over the last decades have revealed.

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 started in the morning of an autumnal day although it was only around 1.00 pm that the so-called “Plinian” phase began during which an eruption column formed – dozens of kilometres high – from which fell a shower of pumice. This phase was followed by a series of pyroclastic flows that left deposits of ash and volcanic material when they settled. The volcanic phenomenon killed anyone still sheltering in the ancient city of Pompeii, that lies to the southeast of present-day Naples, ending the lives of at least 15-20% of the population, according to the estimates of archaeologists. The causes of death also included the collapse of buildings, due to an earthquake accompanying the eruption, which proved to be a lethal threat.

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The skeletons were discovered during work to implement safety measures, renovate the roofing and shore up the sides of the excavation of the Insula of the House of the Chaste Lovers, which also involved the excavation of several rooms.

They were found lying on one side in a utility room, probably not in use at the time due to repairs or renovation work underway in the house, where they had taken refuge in search of protection.

The data from initial on-site anthropological analyses – published in the E-journal of the Pompeii excavations – show that both individuals probably died as a result of multiple traumas caused by the collapse of parts of the building.

They were probably two males who were at least 55 years old.

During the removal of the cervical vertebrae and skull of one of the two skeletons, traces emerged of organic matter, probably a bundle of fabric. As well as five elements of glass paste which can be interpreted as the beads of a necklace, six coins were found inside the bundle. Two silver denarii: a Republican denarius, which can be dated to the mid-second century BC, and another more recent denarius which can be identified as a coin minted during the reign of Vespasian. The remaining bronze coins (two sestertii, an ass and a quadrans) also date to the age of Vespasian and were therefore recently-minted.

“The discovery of the remains of these two Pompeians in the context of the construction site in the Insula of the Chaste Lovers shows how much there is still to discover about the terrible eruption of AD 79 and confirms the necessity of continuing scientific investigation and excavations. Pompeii is an immense archaeological laboratory that has regained vigor in recent years, astonishing the world with the continuous discoveries brought to light and demonstrating Italian excellence in this sector,” states the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano.

“Modern excavation techniques help to shed light on the inferno that over two days descended on Pompeii and led to the complete destruction of the city, killing many of its inhabitants: men, women and children. Using analysis and the latest methodologies, we can gain an insight into the final moments of those who lost their lives,” emphasises Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the Park Director. “During one of the discussions on the site, while the skeletons were being recovered, one of the archaeologists, gesturing towards the victims they were excavating, uttered a phrase that remained engrained in my memory and arguably encapsulates the history of Pompeii, when he stated, ‘this is who we are’. At Pompeii, the progress in archaeological techniques always reminds us of the human dimension of the tragedy. Indeed, it reveals it even more clearly.”

Several objects came to light in the room where the bodies lay, such as a upright amphora leaning against the wall in the corner near to one of the bodies and a collection of vessels, bowls and jugs stacked against the end wall. The most striking aspect is the evidence for the damage to the two walls, probably caused by the earthquakes that accompanied the eruption. Part of the south wall of the room collapsed, crushing one of the men whose raised arm offers a tragic image of his vain attempt to protect himself from the falling masonry. The conditions of the west wall demonstrate the tremendous force of the earthquakes that took place at the same time as the eruption: the entire upper section was detached and fell into the room, crushing and burying the other individual.

The adjoining room has a stone kitchen counter, which was temporarily out of use in AD 79: a pile of powdered lime waiting to be used for building purposes was found on the surface of the counter, suggesting that repair work was being carried out nearby at the moment of the eruption. A series of Cretan amphorae, originally used for transporting wine, were found alongside the wall of the kitchen. Above the kitchen counter were traces of a domestic shrine in the form of a fresco which appears to depict the household gods (lares) and a pot partly set into the wall which may have been used as a container for religious offerings. Next to the kitchen, there is a long narrow room with a latrine, the contents of which flowed into a drain beneath the street.

The scientific details of the excavation can be explored further through the articles published in the E-Journal of Pompeii – which can be downloaded from the official Park website www.pompeiisites.org – a new digital platform aimed at the scientific community and the general public and designed to provide information and preliminary reports concerning excavation, research and restoration projects in the Park.

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Above and below: The remains of the victims and their context as excavated by archaeologists in Pompeii. Archaeological Park of Pompeii

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Article Source: Archaeological Park of Pompeii press 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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UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER—New evidence for the presence of ancient lakes in some of the most arid regions of South Africa suggests that Stone Age humans may have been more widespread across the continent than previously thought.

Research jointly led by the University of Leicester argues that more archaeological work in the interior regions of South Africa – a country renowned for its globally-significant archaeological record – may reveal more about our ancient ancestors and their movements. The researchers’ conclusions have been published in the journal PNAS.

South Africa’s Stone Age archaeological record, particularly for the last 150,000 years has been the subject of a great deal of investigation, not least due to the presence of several remarkable coastal caves and rock shelter records. However, the presence of humans, and the resources available to them in the vast interior regions of the country have thus far remained much more enigmatic.

New research by an international team of researchers from South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France suggests several large bodies of water were sustained in the now arid South African interior during the last Ice Age, particularly 50,000-40,000 years ago, and again 31,000 years ago. Importantly, the group were able to model how much water was required to fill these palaeo-lakes, allowing the climatic changes necessary to create lakes, and the resulting impacts on the region’s hydrology, flora and fauna, to be reconstructed.

Their findings paint a picture of a diverse and fertile region that would have been capable of supporting hunter-gatherer communities of the time.

Team member Dr Andrew Carr from the University of Leicester School of Geography, Geology and the Environment said: “This is currently the best evidence for when these lakes existed. This region has been something of a gap on the map, climatically and archaeologically. We know humans were present at times during the last ice age, as archaeological materials are scattered across the landscape surface. This new work hints at when and why humans used this landscape.

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“These areas look inhospitable today, but were seemingly much less so at times in the past, and this has implications for when and how groups of people used the landscape and potentially how they were connected and exchanged ideas.

“It also tells us something about the sensitivity of ecosystems and environments to global climatic change. You can see how these desert landscapes can respond in quite significant ways to global climate changes, and understand how the human species responded and how adaptable it would have been.”

The scientists studied three lakes from the arid western interior of South Africa to as far east as Kimberley. As well as dating shorelines using radiocarbon and luminescence dating methods, they estimated the lake sizes and capacities. Computer models of regional hydrology showed that the conditions necessary to create the studied lakes would have led to widespread changes in the region’s many (presently ephemeral) rivers and lakes as the water table rose.

Dr Carr added: “The next step is to start to look for sites where we can do more direct dating of the occurrence of stone tools in this region. The work shows that at times the region offered a range of resources, and the archaeological ‘gap on the map’ is much more likely to reflect the lack of sites preserving deep archaeological deposits.

“The region is quite challenging for archaeology as most materials lie in the open on the desert surface with no stratigraphic context – hence it’s very difficult to know how long it’s been there.”

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View across a now-dry lakebed near Swartkolkvloer. During the last glacial period this and adjacent basin supported what are believed to have been perennial lakes, some up to 60 feet in depth. Brian Chase

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Andrew Carr collecting sediment samples dating to the Last Glacial Maximum from the dry lakebed at Swartkolkvloer. Brian Chase

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Brian Stewart surveying the extensive scatters of stone artifacts observed along the margin of a now-dry lakebed near Swartkolkvloer. Brian Chase

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This research received funding from the National Geographic Society and the University of the Free State.

*Paleolakes and socioecological implications of last glacial “greening” of the South African interior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15-May-2023. 10.1073/pnas.2221082120 

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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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