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UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES—Recent research has hypothesized that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1.

Babylonian clay model showing a nude couple on a couch engaged in sex and kissing. Date: 1800 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum

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.

PLOS—The oldest scale plans of human made mega structures are reported in the open access journal PLOS ONE on May 17, 2023. The engravings, dated to between 7,000 and 8,000 years old, depict nearby desert kites, vast structures used to trap animals. The ability to transpose large space onto a small, two dimensional surface represents a milestone in intelligent behavior, and boosts understanding of how kites were conceived and built.

Desert kites were first spotted by airplanes in the 1920s. They are sophisticated archaeological structures made up of walls up to 5km long which converge in an enclosure to trap animals bordered by pits. Such structures are visible as a whole only from the air, yet this calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.

Rémy Crassard of CNRS, Université Lyon, and colleagues, report* two engravings that represent kites in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. In Jordan, the Jibal al-Khasabiyeh area has eight kites. A stone with a representation carved with stone tools measuring 80 cm long and 32 cm wide was found nearby and dated to around 7,000 years ago. Zebel az-Zilliyat in Saudi Arabia has two pairs of visible kites 3.5km apart. Here a massive to-scale engraving measuring 382 cm long, 235 cm wide was excavated and the depiction was reportedly pecked rather than carved, possibly with hand picks. This was dated to around 8,000 years ago.

Plans like these would have been needed by the constructors as the whole layout is impossible to grasp without seeing it from the air. Until now, evidence for plans of large structures has been seen in rough representations, but these designs are extremely precise.

Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. These examples are the oldest known plans to scale in human history.

The authors add: “The oldest known plans to scale in human history are reported in our study. The engravings, dated to between 8,000 and 9,000 years old, were discovered in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. They depict nearby desert kites that were human-made mega structures used to trap wild animals. Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. The ability to transpose large space onto a small, two dimensional surface represents a milestone in intelligent behavior. Such structures are visible as a whole only from the air, yet this calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.”

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Landscape of Saudi Arabia where the engravings have been found. Olivier Barge, CNRS. CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLoS ONE news release

*Crassard R, Abu-Azizeh W, Barge O, Brochier JÉ, Preusser F, Seba H, et al. (2023) The oldest plans to scale of humanmade mega-structures. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0277927. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277927

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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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Popular Archaeology Magazine is collaborating with professional tour companies and operators to develop and initiate new specialized international travel opportunities for premium subscribers.  Designed as special educational experiences, they will generally focus on archaeology, but will also include exposure to architecture and art. Developed as public field seminars, these experiences will employ professional academic lecturers and researchers who will lead seminar participants through lectures and on-site discussions, providing travelers with in-depth perspectives that cannot be obtained through traditional tours. All field seminars, usually one to two weeks in length, will take place in countries that have exciting and engaging archaeological sites and collections, as well as other cultural treasures representing human achievement and life-ways. The first field seminar opportunity has been filled and will take place July 10 — July 26, 2023 in Africa, which will include the countries of Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa, focusing on the important sites and collections related to human origins and human evolution. The next opportunity will take place in the fall of 2024, taking travelers to northern Spain to visit the cultural and archaeological sites in Barcelona, Burgos, the Atapuerca caves, other iconic prehistoric human cave sites, and Bilbao on the northern coast. There is the possibility that other opportunities will arise for departures to other countries earlier than the fall of 2024. These experiences will feature formal lecture sessions as well as on-site lecture/discussions. Other planned opportunities will take travelers to:

— Greece and the Cycladic islands, including Crete   

— Egypt    

— Saudi Arabia  

— Italy  

— Belize and Guatemala (Ancient Maya)  

— Peru 

— Israel and Jordan 

— Turkey

— United Kingdom

Other destinations will be added in time. If you have a special interest in any of the destinations thus far mentioned, please email populararchaeology@gmail.com and let us know your interest, and if you have a destination interest that is not listed, please feel free to suggest one or more for our consideration. As mentioned, these opportunities are open to all premium subscribers, but if you are not a premium subscriber and you wish to participate, becoming a premium subscriber is easy and will only require a nominal $9.00 annual payment.

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Homo species – particularly Homo sapiens­ – were uniquely equipped to adapt to highly diverse environmental conditions and landscape mosaics, according to a new study*, which may have enabled our species and that of our closely related ancestors to survive and thrive in highly fluctuating Pleistocene environments. Homo sapiens are the only surviving hominin species today. However, whether this is because our species was uniquely successful at adapting to Pleistocene environments, because we outcompeted other contemporary Homo species through unique physiological or social adaptations, or because we simply outlived others by chance remains largely unknown. Although challenging to understand, the connection between hominins and their ecological environment, particularly how Homo species adapted to environmental change and extremes and how this affected survival and migration from Africa and into Eurasia, is central to finding these answers. Combining a transient 3-million-year Earth system-biome model simulation (BIOME4) with archaeological and fossil data for 6 different Homo species, Elke Zeller and colleagues investigated the preferred environmental conditions of the different hominin species, whether biome preferences changes in time or diversity across the Pleistocene, and how these choices affected hominin adaptation. Zeller et al.’s analysis shows that early African hominins, including H. habilis and H. ergaster, predominantly lived in open and dry grassland environments. H. erectus, upon leaving the African continent, settled in a much more broad suite of environments, including temperate forested regions. This trend continued for more recent species, like H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis, who were able to adapt to colder habitats. According to the findings, H. sapiens were able to occupy the most extreme environments, such as deserts and tundra, an ability that suggests the development of unparalleled cognitive abilities, allowing them to exploit habitat diversity and diverse food resources. Overall, the study reveals a pattern of Homo species preferentially selecting and adapting to areas with more diverse habitats over the last 3 million years.

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Homo sapiens (left) and Homo erectus (right) were the two most successful ‘globetrotters’ among the hominins. Left image: Zpanpana, Right image: Emőke Dénes. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: AAAS article by Walter Beckwith

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.

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Ancient DNA from pre-Hispanic northern and central Mexico reveals population continuity during a period of drastic environmental change, according to a new study*, and provides new insights into the region’s complex and rich demographic history. Before European colonization, present-day Mexico was home to various civilizations across two main cultural areas: Aridoamerica in the north, inhabited mainly by hunter-gatherers, and Mesoamerica in the central and southern regions, where large agriculture-based cultures flourished. The distinction between these two regions has generally been based on cultural characteristics, subsistence strategies, and ecological features. Archeological evidence suggests that the border between these two regions shifted southward between 900-1300 CE due to multidecadal droughts, allegedly driving populations replacement in central Mexico by Aridoamerican peoples and perhaps the abandonment of some Mesoamerican cities. The nature of these societal changes, however, is poorly understood and based solely on archaeological evidence. While studying the genetic variation of these ancient populations could help clarify uncertainties, ancient genomic data for pre-Hispanic populations in Mexico are significantly lacking. Viridiana Villa-Islas and colleagues address this knowledge gap and present shotgun genome-wide data from 12 individuals and 27 mitochondrial genomes from 8 pre-Hispanic archaeological sites across Mexico, including 2 located at the shifting border between Aridoamerica and Mesoamerica. Contrary to archaeological data, Villa-Islas et al. revealed population continuity spanning the period of megadroughts and a broad preservation of the genetic structure across present-day Mexico for the last 2300 years – one that can still be observed in modern Indigenous populations. In addition, the authors also identify a contribution to pre-Hispanic populations of northern and central Mexico from two ancient unsampled “ghost” populations, demonstrating that the demographic events that gave rise to Aridoamerican and Mesoamerican populations are more complex than previously thought. In a related Perspective, Bastien Llamas and Xavier Roca-Rada highlight the study’s ethical and sustainable approach to paleogenomics. “The study of Villa-Islas et al. is a remarkable example of this approach because it targets a Global South region and is led and conducted by (predominantly) local researchers,” they write. “This is a considerable departure from collaboration between local scholars and laboratories from the Global North, which requires the export of samples and often leads to the relocation of local students and early-career researchers to the Global North for training.”

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Above and below: Pre-Hispanic buildings at the Toluquilla Archaeological Site in Sierra Gorda, Querétaro, Mexico. Elizabeth Mejía Pérez Campos

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Article Source: AAAS news release. By Walter Beckwith

*Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico, Science, 12-May-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6142

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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 SOUTHAMPTON—A study* by an international team of researchers, led by the University of Southampton, has given an intriguing glimpse of the hunting habits and diets of Neanderthals and other humans living in western Europe.

The scientists examined chemical properties locked inside tooth enamel to piece together how pre-historic people lived off the land around the Almonda Cave system, near Torres Novas in central Portugal almost 100 thousand years ago.

Their findings, published in the journal PNAS, show Neanderthals in the region were hunting fairly large animals across wide tracts of land, whereas humans living in the same location tens of thousands of years later survived on smaller creatures in an area half the size.

Strontium isotopes in rocks gradually change over millions of years because of radioactive processes. This means they vary from place to place depending on the age of the underlying geology. As rocks weather, the isotopic ‘fingerprints’ are passed into plants via sediments, and make their way along the food chain – eventually passing into tooth enamel.

In this study, archaeologists used a technique which laser samples enamel and makes thousands of individual strontium isotope measurements along the growth of a tooth crown. Samples were taken from two Neanderthals, dating back about 95,000 years, and from a more recent human who lived about 13,000 years ago, during the Magdalenian period.

The scientists also looked at isotopes in the tooth enamel of animals found in the cave system. Alongside strontium, they measured oxygen isotopes, which vary seasonally from summer to winter. This enabled them to establish not only where the animals ranged across the landscape, but in which seasons they were available for hunting.

The team showed that the Neanderthals, who were targeting large animals, could have hunted wild goat in the summer, whereas horses, red deer and an extinct form of rhinoceros were available all year round within about 30km of the cave. The Magdalenian individual showed a different pattern of subsistence, with seasonal movement of about 20km from the Almonda caves to the banks of the Tagus River, and a diet which included rabbits, red deer, wild goat and freshwater fish.

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The researchers approximated the territory of the two different human groups, revealing contrasting results. The Neanderthals obtained their food over approximately 600 km², whereas the Magdalenian  individuals occupied a much smaller territory of about 300 km².

Lead author, Dr Bethan Linscott who conducted the research while at the University of Southampton and who now works at the University of Oxford said: “Tooth enamel forms incrementally, and so represents a time series that records the geological origin of the food an individual ate.

“Using laser ablation, we can measure the variation of strontium isotopes over the two or three years it takes for the enamel to form. By comparing the strontium isotopes in the teeth with sediments collected at different locations in the region, we were able to map the movements of the Neanderthals and the Magdalenian individual. The geology around the Almonda caves is highly variable, making it possible to spot movement of just a few kms.”

Co-author, Professor Alistair Pike of the University of Southampton, who supervised the research said: “This study shows just how much science has changed our understanding of archaeology in the past decade. Previously, the lives and behaviours of past individuals was limited to what we could infer from marks on their bones or the artefacts they used. Now, using the chemistry of bones and teeth, we can begin to reconstruct individual life histories, even as far back as the Neanderthals.”

Co-author, Professor João Zilhão of the University of Lisbon, who led the excavation of the Almonda caves said: “The difference in the territory size between the Neanderthal and Magdalenian individuals is probably related to population density. With a relatively low population, Neanderthals were free to roam further to target large prey species, such as horses, without encountering rival groups.  By the Magdalenian period, an increase in population density reduced available territory, and human groups had moved down the food chain to occupy smaller territories, hunting mostly rabbits and catching fish on a seasonal basis.”

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A Neanderthal premolar tooth from the Almonda cave system, Portugal, seen from different angles. Isotopes of strontium were used to track the movement of this individual over the 2 to 3 years the enamel took to form. João Zilhão

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Part of a mandible of an extinct species of Rhinoceros hunted by Neanderthals around the landscape of the Almonda Caves, Portugal. Isotopic analysis showed Rhinoceros were present all year round within about 30km of the caves. José Paulo Ruas

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*Reconstructing Middle and Upper Palaeolithic human mobility in Portuguese Estremadura through laser ablation strontium isotope analysis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8-May-2023. 10.1073/pnas.2204501120 

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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.

CELL PRESS—Scientists have used mitochondrial DNA to trace a female lineage from northern coastal China to the Americas. By integrating contemporary and ancient mitochondrial DNA, the team found evidence of at least two migrations: one during the last ice age, and one during the subsequent melting period. Around the same time as the second migration, another branch of the same lineage migrated to Japan, which could explain Paleolithic archeological similarities between the Americas, China, and Japan. The study* appears May 9 in the journal Cell Reports.

“The Asian ancestry of Native Americans is more complicated than previously indicated,” says first author Yu-Chun Li, a molecular anthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “In addition to previously described ancestral sources in Siberia, Australo-Melanesia, and Southeast Asia, we show that northern coastal China also contributed to the gene pool of Native Americans.”

Though it was long assumed that Native Americans descended from Siberians who crossed over the Bering Strait’s ephemeral land bridge, more recent genetic, geological, and archaeological evidence suggests that multiple waves of humans journeyed to the Americas from various parts of Eurasia.

To shed light on the history of Native Americans in Asia, a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences followed the trail of an ancestral lineage that might link East Asian Paleolithic-age populations to founding populations in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and California. The lineage in question is present in mitochondrial DNA, which can be used to trace kinship through the female line.

The researchers scoured over 100,000 contemporary and 15,000 ancient DNA samples from across Eurasia to eventually identify 216 contemporary and 39 ancient individuals belonging to the rare lineage. By comparing the accumulated mutations, geographic locations, and carbon-dated age of each of these individuals, the researchers were able to trace the lineage’s branching path. They identified two migration events from northern coastal China to the Americas, and in both cases, they think that the travelers probably set dock in America via the Pacific coast rather than by crossing the inland ice-free corridor (which would not have opened at the time).

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The first radiation event occurred between 19,500 and 26,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheet coverage was at its greatest and conditions in northern China were likely inhospitable for humans. The second radiation occurred during the subsequent deglaciation or melting period, between 19,000 and 11,500 years ago. There was a rapid increase in human populations at this time, probably due to the improved climate, which may have fueled expansion into other geographical regions.

The researchers also uncovered an unexpected genetic link between Native Americans and Japanese people. During the deglaciation period, another group branched out from northern coastal China and traveled to Japan. “We were surprised to find that this ancestral source also contributed to the Japanese gene pool, especially the indigenous Ainus,” says Li.

This discovery helps to explain archeological similarities between the Paleolithic peoples of China, Japan, and the Americas. Specifically, the three regions share similarities in how they crafted stemmed projectile points for arrowheads and spears. “This suggests that the Pleistocene connection among the Americas, China, and Japan was not confined to culture but also to genetics,” says senior author Qing-Peng Kong, an evolutionary geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Though the study focused on mitochondrial DNA, complementary evidence from Y chromosomal DNA suggests that male ancestors of Native Americans also lived in northern China at around the same time as these female ancestors.

This study adds another piece to the puzzle that is Native American ancestry, but many other elements remain unclear. “The origins of several founder groups are still elusive or controversial,” says Kong. “Next, we plan to collect and investigate more Eurasian lineages to obtain a more complete picture on the origin of Native Americans.”

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Graphical abstract showing ice age migration routes from northern coastal China to the Americas and Japan. Li et al.

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Article Source: CELL PRESS news release

*Cell Reports, Li and Gao et al. “Mitogenome evidence shows two radiation events and dispersals of matrilineal ancestry from Northern Coastal China to the Americas and Japan” https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(23)00424-2 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112413

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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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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study* reconstructs the mobility patterns of Neanderthals and modern humans during Paleolithic times in present-day Portugal. Strontium isotope analysis of tooth enamel can be used to reconstruct mobility patterns and associated behaviors of early humans. Traditional strontium isotope analysis has been limited by low sampling resolution. Bethan Linscott and colleagues used laser ablation multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to produce sequential, high-resolution strontium isotope data from the tooth enamel of two Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and one Upper Paleolithic anatomically modern human from Torres Novas, Portugal. Geological strontium isotope compositions in the study area vary significantly over short distances, allowing the authors to reconstruct fine-scale mobility patterns of individuals. The authors also produced sequential strontium and oxygen isotope data from associated fauna to reconstruct the individuals’ subsistence behaviors. The results suggest that the Neanderthal individuals foraged across a territory of approximately 600 square kilometers. The results for the Upper Paleolithic individual are consistent with limited, seasonal movement along the 20-kilometer-long right bank of the Almonda River valley, representing a subsistence territory of approximately 300 square kilometers. The authors suggest that the decrease in territory size was due to increased population density. According to the authors, the results demonstrate the potential of high-resolution, laser ablation strontium isotope analysis for reconstructing the mobility and subsistence strategies of past human populations.

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Neanderthal premolar. João Zilhão

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Almonda Spring and entrance to Galeria da Cisterna archaeological site. João Zilhão

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Reconstructing Middle and Upper Paleolithic human mobility in Portuguese Estremadura through laser ablation strontium isotope analysis,” by Bethan Linscott et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8-May-2023. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204501120

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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—The first modern humans spread across Europe in three waves during the Paleolithic, according to a study* published May 3, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ludovic Slimak of the CNRS and University of Toulouse III, France.

The archaeological record of Paleolithic Europe leaves many open questions regarding the nature of the arrival of modern humans into the region and the nature of how these newcomers interacted with the resident Neanderthal populations. In this study, Slimak compared records of stone tool technology across western Eurasia to document the sequence of early human activity in the region.

This study primarily focused on comparative analysis of tens of thousands of stone tools from two sites: Ksar Akil in Lebanon and Grotte Mandrin in France, that recently revealed the earliest Sapiens migration in Europe dating to 54,000 years old. The study analyzed their precise technical connections with the earliest modern technologies in the continent. The author identifies a similar sequence of three technological phases in both regions, suggesting three distinct waves of migration of Homo sapiens across Europe.

These trans-Mediterranean technological connections allow for a reinterpretation of the pattern of human arrival in Europe and its precise relations with the Levantine region. Further examination of these apparent phases of human migration will establish a clearer picture of the sequence of events as Homo sapiens spread across the region and, in doing so, gradually replaced Neanderthals.

Slimak adds: “Until 2022, it was believed that Homo sapiens had reached Europe between the 42^nd and 45^th millennium. The study shows that this first Sapiens migration would actually be the last of three major migratory waves to the continent, profoundly rewriting what was thought to be known about the origin of Sapiens in Europe. Chatelperronian culture, one of the first modern traditions in western Europe and since then attributed to Neanderthals, should in fact signal the second wave of Homo sapiens migration in Europe, impacting deeply our understanding of the cultural organization of the last Neanderthals.”

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The paper provides evidence for 3 distinct waves of early migration of Sapiens in Europe from the East Mediterranean coast. The image shows 3 technical traditions of each of these Sapiens migrations. Phase 1, around the 54th millennium, is represented by the Neronian/Initial Upper Paleolithic; phase 2 by the Châtelperronian/Early Upper Paleolithic around the 45th millennium, and phase 3 by the Protoaurignacian/Southern Early Ahmarian around the 42nd millennium. Ludovic Slimak, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Grotte Mandrin (the rock at the center of the picture) in Mediterranean France records the earliest migration of Sapiens in all Europe. Ludovic Slimak, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: A PLoS ONE news release

*Slimak L (2023) The three waves: Rethinking the structure of the first Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0277444. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277444

Cover Image, Top Left: View of caves of Grotte Mandrin, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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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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PNAS NEXUS—An AI model has been developed to automatically translate Akkadian text written in cuneiform into English. Hundreds of thousands of clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform and dating back as far as 3,400 BCE, have been found by archeologists, far more than could easily be translated by the limited number of experts who can read them. Shai Gordin and colleagues present a new machine learning model that can automatically translate Akkadian cuneiform into English. Two versions of the model were trained. One version translates the Akkadian from representations of the cuneiform signs in Latin script (transliterations). Another version of the model translates from unicode representations of the cuneiform signs. The first version, using Latin transliteration, gave more satisfactory results in this study, achieving a score of 37.47 in the Best Bilingual Evaluation Understudy 4 (BLEU4), a test of the level of correspondence between machine and human translation of the same text. The program is most effective when translating sentences of 118 or fewer characters. In some of the sentences, the program produced “hallucinations”—output that was syntactically correct in English but not accurate to the Akkadian meaning. But in the majority of cases, the translation would be usable as a first-pass at the text. The authors propose that machine translation can be used as part of a “human-machine collaboration,” in which human scholars correct and refine the models’ output.

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Cuneiform tablet: letter of Sin-sharra-ishkun to Nabopolassar. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: PNAS NEXUS news release

*Translating Akkadian to English with neural machine translation, PNAS Nexus, 2-May-2023. 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad096 

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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—The Picts of Scotland who have long intrigued and have been ascribed exotic origins in fact descended from indigenous Iron Age society and were genetically most similar to people living today in Scotland, Wales, North Ireland and Northumbria. Adeline Morez of Liverpool John Moores University and Linus Girdland-Flink of the University of Aberdeen report these findings in a new study* published April 27 in the journal PLOS Genetics.

The Picts, who inhabited early medieval Scotland from about 300-900 AD, formed the first documented kingdoms of eastern Scotland, but have often been a subject of mystery due to the lack of historical and archaeological evidence and due to their enigmatic symbol tradition inscribed on stone. In their new study, Morez and Girdland-Flink sampled Pictish burials to extract genomes to explore how the Picts are related to other cultural groups in Britain. They sequenced DNA from two individuals from central and northern Scotland that dated from the fifth to the seventh century AD. They compared the resulting high-quality genomes to more than 8,300 previously published ancient and modern genomes.

The analysis revealed that Picts descended from local Iron Age populations, who lived across Britain before the arrival of mainland Europeans. Additionally, the researchers found genetic similarities between the Picts and present-day people living in western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria. Medieval traditions, including from the time of the Picts themselves, had ascribed exotic origins to the Picts including them coming from Thrace (north of the Aegean Sea), Scythia (eastern Europe), or isles north of Britain, but the new research suggests much less sensational origins.

A further analysis of DNA sequenced from seven individuals interred in a Pictish cemetery showed that the individuals did not share a common ancestor on their mother’s side. This finding suggests that females may have married outside their own social group and runs counter to older speculation, such as that mentioned by the great English scholar Bede, that the Picts were matrilineal; that they had had a society based on kinship through the mother’s lineage.

The new findings support current archaeological theories that Picts descended from Iron Age people in Britain. The study also provides novel insights into the genetic relationships that existed amongst Pictish individuals buried in cemeteries together and between ancient Picts and present-day groups in the United Kingdom.

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Detail of a stone carved Pictish monument. F Lamiot, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: A PLOS news release

*Morez A, Britton K, Noble G, Günther T, Götherström A, Rodríguez-Varela R, et al. (2023) Imputed genomes and haplotype-based analyses of the Picts of early medieval Scotland reveal fine-scale relatedness between Iron Age, early medieval and the modern people of the UK. PLoS Genet 19(4): e1010360. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010360

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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—For 41,000 years human beings have been visiting the Cave of Nerja; for a few of them, it has been exploited as a tourist attraction, and for almost the same amount of time, the object of scientific study. Throughout its history, and even today, it continues to stun visitors and researchers from around the world.

The latest surprise from the cave, located in the province of Malaga, was just published in Scientific Reports by an international team including researchers from the University of Córdoba; Marian Medina, currently at the University of Bourdeux; Eva Rodríguez; and José Luis Sachidrián, a Professor of Prehistory and the scientific director of the Cave of Nerja. Together they have managed to demonstrate that humanity has been present in Nerja for some 41,000 years, 10,000 years earlier than previously believed, and that it is Europe’s cave featuring Paleolithic Art in Europe with the highest number of confirmed and recurrent visits to its interior during Prehistory. 

Specifically, this new work has managed to document 35,000 years of visits, in 73 different phases, which, according to their calculations, means that human groups entered the cave approximately every 35 years. This level of precision has been made possible thanks to the use of the latest techniques dating the coals and remains of fossilized soot on the stalagmites of the Nerja Cave. This is what has been called “smoke archaeology,” a new technique developed by the main author of the work, Marián Medina, from Córdoba’s Santa Rosa district, an honorary researcher at that city’s university, who has been reconstructing European prehistory for more than a decade by analyzing the remnants of torches, fires and smoke in Spanish and French caves.

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With the enthusiasm of one who loves what she does, Medina explains that the information that Transmission Electron Microscopy and Carbon-14 dating techniques can provide on man’s rituals and ways of life is impressive. In this last work 68 datings are presented, 48 totally new, of the deepest areas of the cave, featuring Paleolithic Art, and evidence of chronocultures never previously recorded has been found. 

In addition, these “fire archaeologists” know how to interpret, based on the information detected under the microscope, the way in which the torches were moved, inferring from it the symbolic and scenographic use that humans of 40,000 years ago made of fire. “The prehistoric paintings were viewed in the flickering light of the flames, which could give the figures a certain sense of movement and warmth,” explains Medina, who also underscores the funerary use of the Nerja Cave in the latter part of Prehistory, for thousands of years. “There is still much it can reveal about what we were like,” she says.

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María Medina in the Navarro Cave (Malaga). University of Cordoba

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Interior view of Nerja caves. Luzzyacentillo, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA news release

*Medina-Alcaide, M.Á., Vandevelde, S., Quiles, A. et al. 35,000 years of recurrent visits inside Nerja cave (Andalusia, Spain) based on charcoals and soot micro-layers analyses. Sci Rep 13, 5901 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32544-1

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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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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Polynesian peoples are renowned for their advanced sailing technology and for reaching the most remote islands on the planet centuries before the Europeans reached the Americas. Through swift eastward migrations that are now well covered by archaeological research, Polynesian societies settled virtually every island from Samoa and Tonga to Rapa Nui/Easter Island in the east, Hawai’i in the north, and Aotearoa/New Zealand in the south. But little is known about Polynesian migrations west of the 180th meridian.

In order to better understand the relationship between these Polynesian societies of the western Pacific, Melanesia and Micronesia – often referred to as “Polynesian Outliers” – a multidisciplinary team of researchers analysed the geochemical signature of stone artifacts collected in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and the Caroline Islands between 1978 and 2019. An international research team, led by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, was able to identify the geological origin of these artifacts after comparing their geochemical and isotopic compositions with reference datasets of natural rocks and archaeological quarries in the region.

The connection to the Polynesian homeland

Adzes are versatile cutting tools comparable to axes. Among the eight adzes or adze fragments the researchers analyzed, six were sourced to the same large fortified quarry complex of Tatagamatau on Tutuila Island (American Sāmoa), which is located more than 2,500 kilometers away in the Polynesian homeland. “Tatagamatau adzes were among the most disseminated items across West and East Polynesia, and the sourcing of Taumako and Emae adzes suggest bursts of long-distance mobility towards the Outliers similar to those that led to the settlement of East Polynesia”, says lead author Aymeric Hermann, researcher at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and associate researcher at the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Hermann points out that the transportation of such socially valued items – often passed down for generations among Polynesian chiefly families – suggests carefully planned voyages, rather than accidental landfalls.

The geochemical investigation of stone artifacts from the Polynesian Outliers also provides critical information on inter-island transfers between the Polynesians and their neighbors in the western Pacific, specifically between the Banks Islands and Central Vanuatu, and between the Bismarck and the Caroline Islands. The team highlights that such inter-island contacts are signals that Polynesian sailors might have played an important role in the reappraisal of long-distance mobility and in the distribution of specific material culture items and technologies such as shell adzes, back-strap loom, and obsidian points among the mosaic of Pacific Island societies in the western Pacific during the last millennium A.D. “A recent study describes an obsidian stemmed point as a chiefly heirloom found on Kapingamarangi Island with a geochemical signature matching an obsidian source on Lou Island in the Admiralties: this is an exciting find that echoes our identification of a basalt flake from mainland New Britain on that same atoll”, adds Hermann.

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Long-distance mobility in the past

In the Pacific region, geochemical sourcing has been particularly successful at locating sources of stone artifacts and tracing the transport of specific items across distant islands and archipelagos. Such material evidence of long-distance inter-island voyaging shows that Pacific Island societies were never completely isolated from one another. These patterns of interaction are central to our understanding of the deeply intertwined history of cultural systems in the Pacific.

In this study, atomic emission spectroscopy and mass spectrometry were used to measure concentration of oxides, trace elements and ratios of radiogenic isotopes in order to identify geological provenances with a high level of accuracy. Thanks to the collaboration of experts in archaeology, geochemistry and data science, a cutting-edge approach to geochemical sourcing was developed, which involves the use of computer-assisted comparisons with open-access databases.

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Emae Island in Central Vanuatu. © Aymeric Hermann

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release

*Artefact geochemistry demonstrates long-distance voyaging in the Polynesian Outliers, Science Advances, 21-Apr-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.adf4487 

 

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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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SCIENTIFIC REPORTS—The contents of six sealed ancient Egyptian animal coffins — which were imaged using a non-invasive technique — are described in a study published in Scientific Reports.

The mummification of animals was a widespread practice in ancient Egypt and previous research has suggested that some mummified animals were believed to be physical incarnations of deities, while others may have represented offerings to deities or have been used in ritual performances.

Daniel O’Flynn and colleagues imaged the contents of six sealed animal coffins using neutron tomography — a technique that creates images of objects based on the extent to which neutrons emitted by a source can pass through them — after previous attempts to study the coffins with x-rays were unsuccessful. All six of the coffins are made of copper compounds. The authors note that it is rare for such coffins to still be sealed. Three of the coffins, topped with lizard and eel figures as well as loops, have been dated to between 500 and 300 BCE and were discovered in the ancient city of Naukratis. A fourth coffin, topped by a lizard figure, has been dated to between 664 and 332 BCE and was discovered in the ancient city of Tell el-Yehudiyeh. The two other coffins, topped with part-eel, part-cobra figures with human heads, have been dated to between approximately 650 and 250 BCE and are of unknown origin.

The authors identified bones in three of the coffins, including an intact skull with dimensions similar to those of a group of wall lizards containing species that are endemic to North Africa, as well as evidence of broken-down bones in a further two coffins. They also identified textile fragments within three coffins that were possibly made from linen, which was commonly used in Ancient Egyptian mummification. They propose that linen may have been wrapped around the animals before they were placed in the coffins. The authors found lead within the three coffins without loops, which they suggest may have been used to aid weight distribution within two of them and to repair a hole found in the other. They speculate that lead may have been selected due to its status in ancient Egypt as a magical material, as previous research has proposed that lead was used in love charms and curses. The authors did not identify additional lead within the three coffins topped with loops. They suggest that the loops may have been used to suspend these lighter coffins from shrine or temple walls or from statues or boats used during religious processions, while the heavier lead-containing coffins without loops may have been used for different purposes.

The findings provide further insight into the manufacture and use of animal coffins in ancient Egypt.

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Ancient Egyptian animal coffin, British Museum. Gary Todd, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS news release

*Neutron tomography of sealed copper alloy animal coffins from ancient Egypt, Scientific Reports, 20-Apr-2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30468-4

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.

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM—The Allard Pierson is launching an international study of twelve mummy portraits, two from its own collection and ten from partner museums in Europe, with the help of advanced analysis techniques. The aim of the study is to learn more about how and where the portraits were made. Initiated by the Allard Pierson, the study is being undertaken in collaboration with the NICAS (Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science+) and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The twelve mummy portraits will be displayed along with twenty other specimens in the exhibition Face to Face: The People Behind Mummy Portraits at the Allard Pierson, starting on 6 October 2023. This is the first exhibition of Ancient Egyptian mummy portraits in the Netherlands.

Mummy portraits (head and shoulders) are painted on wooden panels that are placed over the faces of mummified persons after the body has been treated and wrapped. They were made during Roman times in Egypt and date from the first to the fourth centuries AD. These are the earliest known painted works of realistic portraiture that we know of. Around 1,100 are in existence around the world, five of them at the Allard Pierson.

The main goal of the study is to find out more about how the portraits were made and what materials were used. For a long time, such portraits were mostly viewed from an art-historical and culture-historical perspective, but research into how they were made has gained importance in recent decades. That can tell us something about where the maker got the wood and pigments, about alterations to the portrait, but above all about the individual depicted, the deceased.

Because the researchers use various non-invasive analysis techniques, the mummy portraits do not need to be touched during the research and no sampling is necessary. This research starts in April in collaboration with the NICAS, whose partners include the Rijksmuseum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The study includes analyses of paint layers, pigments and other materials both on and beneath the surface of the mummy portraits.

The exhibition draws on current knowledge of mummy portraiture and the provisional results of the above-mentioned material and technical research, which runs until June 2024. The Allard Pierson is working on this project with research partners in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, and relies on the expertise of around fifty international museum partners who together make up the APPEAR network (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis and Research project), which includes the Allard Pierson and which is coordinated by the J. Paul Getty Museum.

“The exhibition Face to Face: The People Behind Mummy Portraits is made possible by the Mondriaan Fund, Turing Foundation, the Zandee Fund and the NICAS.”

About the Allard Pierson

The Allard Pierson collects, manages, researches and puts on display precious and important cultural heritage from antiquity to today. We make this material available to everybody, in the service of science and society, for the purpose of education and inspiration. We do this as part of the University of Amsterdam, from the heart of the historical city.

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APM10998, portrait of a woman, 300-400 CE, tempera(?) on wood, height 33.6 cm, possibly from Er-Rubayat. Allard Pierson

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APM08133, portrait of a woman, 300-400 CE, tempera(?) on linen, width 14 cm, possibly Sakkara. Allard Pierson

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Article Source: Universiteit Van Amsterdam 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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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Rising sea levels and coastal flooding contributed to the abandonment of Viking settlements in Greenland, according to a study. Vikings occupied Greenland from around 985 CE until they abandoned their settlements around the middle of the 15th century. However, the factors that drove the abandonment of Greenland are unclear. Marisa Borreggine and colleagues used published geomorphological and paleoclimate data to model ice sheet growth and sea-level rise in Greenland during the Viking occupation to explore the influence of coastal inundation on settlement abandonment. Viking occupation of Greenland coincided with the transition from the Medieval Warm Period, around 900–1250 CE, to the Little Ice Age, around 1250–1900 CE. During the Little Ice Age, the Greenland Ice Sheet advanced toward the ocean. Geophysical modeling suggested that crustal subsidence and the increasing gravitational attraction between the ocean and the growing ice sheet would have driven an estimated 3-meter rise in sea level near the ice margin and resulted in the shoreline retreating by hundreds of meters. Archaeological evidence suggested that many Viking sites in Greenland were near the shorelines of glacially carved fjords, rendering them particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise. According to the authors, local sea-level rise was a previously overlooked yet major contributor to the Viking abandonment of Greenland.

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Simulated seas level in Southern Greenland showing ice (blue to white gradient), Viking sites (green dots), and areas of flooding (blue). Konstantin Latychev

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*“Sea-level rise in Southwest Greenland as a contributor to Viking abandonment,” by Marisa Borreggine et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17-Apr-2023.  10.1073/pnas.2209615120 

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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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AlUla, Saudi Arabia, 17 April 2023—As part of its Journey Through Time master plan, the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) will further expand the accommodation offering in AlUla with Dar Tantora by The House Hotel, an immersive and authentic hospitality experience in AlUla Old Town. Dar Tantora will also house a pool and spa as well as a restaurant and café. 

RCU is developing the 30-room landmark property by restoring several historical mud-brick buildings using contemporary engineering methods and time-honored techniques. The development will showcase the Old Town village as a vibrant cultural hub. The rooms will be adorned with traditional décor, furniture and artistic accents, incorporating storytelling elements that capture the area’s intangible heritage. Local artisans received specialized training to participate in the restoration endeavors.

The project reflects RCU’s comprehensive efforts to revive AlUla Old Town with tourism as the engine of development and job creation. RCU is driven by an ongoing commitment to innovation and sustainability in its comprehensive regeneration efforts, including the Sustainability Charter that governs each project’s economic, social and environmental impacts. For delivering on this vision, AlUla Old Town was recognized by the United Nations World Tourism Organization as a “Best Tourism Village” in 2022.

.John Northen, Vice President- Head of Hotels and Resorts, Royal Commission for AlUla, said, “Dar Tantora by The House Hotel will allow guests to live the rich heritage of the AlUla Old Town historical village. Steeped in the past yet embracing progress, this hotel encapsulates RCU’s vision for a diverse range of accommodations as we continue to deliver on our plans for more than 5,000 keys by 2030.” 

“We take immense pride in operating Dar Tantora by The House Hotel, a location that seamlessly weaves AlUla Old Town’s cultural legacy with the comfort of modern luxury. At Kerten Hospitality, our dedication to delivering exceptional guest experiences resonates with RCU’s objective of creating harmonious communities, and we eagerly look forward to playing a significant role in the region’s development.” Said Marloes Knippenberg, CEO, Kerten Hospitality. 

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Above and below: Spaces of the Dar Tantora by The House Hotel. Courtesy Royal Commission for AlUla

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Remains of Old Town AlUla. Pteropus conspicillatus, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons

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About the Royal Commission for AlUla

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

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—A punctured bone fragment found at an Upper Paleolithic site in Gavà, Spain could have been used as a hide-piercing tool to make clothing and other leather works around 39,600 years ago, anthropologists say. Luc Doyon and colleagues suggest that the leather punch board, likely used by Aurignacians, precedes the arrival of eyed bone needles in Europe by around 15,000 years. Punctured bone artifacts discovered from the European early Upper Paleolithic period are thought to have been produced by Aurignacian hunter-gatherers, who used an array of tools to make jewelry, artwork, and other instruments. Puncture marks have typically been interpreted as decorations or notation systems, but few studies have explored other possible functions. Now, Doyon et al. have performed a series of experiments to demonstrate that the 39,600-year-old punctured bone fragment, found at Terrasses de la Riera dels Canyars in Gavà, Spain, was likely used as a leather punch board. To reproduce punctures observed on the 10-centimeter-long artifact, trained experimenters used various tools to apply pressure to Bos taurus short ribs under leather hides. This helped researchers to identify that burins were likely used as stitching chisels to prick the hides and, in so doing, puncture the bone underneath. After further analysis of the artifact’s punctures – some aligned and some randomly clustered – experimenters reproduced aligned, evenly-spaced punctures on the short ribs. After comparing these reproductions with the artifact, the researchers deduced that groups of punctures must have been made over different sessions, with some purposely aligned and equidistant to produce holes for stitching leather pieces together. “The evidence from Canyars indicates that an effective pricking technique was well established in Southern Europe at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic,” the authors write. “We argue that this innovation documents a previously unrecorded tipping point in cultural adaptation favoring modern-human niche expansion.”

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A 39,600-year-old leather punch board from Canyars, Gavà, Spain. Francesco d’Errico and Luc Doyon

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

*A 39,600-year-old leather punch board from Canyars, Gavà, Spain, Science Advances, 12-Apr-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.adg0834 

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PLOS—Archaeological sites along the Libyan shoreline are at risk of being damaged or lost due to increasing coastal erosion, according to a study published April 12, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kieran Westley and Julia Nikolaus of Ulster University, UK and colleagues.

The Cyrenaican coast of Eastern Libya, stretching from the Gulf of Sirte to the current Egypt-Libya border, has a long history of human occupation back to the Palaeolithic era, and it therefore hosts numerous important and often understudied archaeological sites. However, the coastline also experiences high rates of erosion which threatens to damage or even erase many of these important sites. Detailed assessments of coastal erosion and vulnerability of archaeological sites are available for other important coastlines, but not yet for this one.

This study combined historical and modern records of the Cyrenaican shoreline using aerial and satellite imagery and field observation to assess patterns of coastal erosion near important archaeological sites. Near the sites of Apollonia, Ptolemais, and Tocra, they identified extensive shoreline erosion and increasing rates of erosion in recent years, likely linked to human activities such as sand mining and urbanization. Their results show that current rates of coastal erosion are already a major problem for these sites and are likely to increase in the future with further human activities and rising sea levels due to climate change, putting these sites at risk of progressive damage and loss of valuable historical information.

The authors stress the need for detailed management and mitigation plans to protect these sites, as well as the need for increased awareness of the factors that exacerbate coastal erosion. They also urge further research to investigate other sites along this and other Mediterranean coastlines to assess the full extent to which our understanding of human history is threatened by coastal erosion.

The authors add: “The impact of erosion here is considerable and could get worse in the future. Our research highlights the critical need to support our Libyan colleagues in mitigating the damage to these endangered and irreplaceable heritage sites.”

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Recent drone image (2022) showing damage to archaeological structures at the ancient harbor of Apollonia (Eastern Libya) caused by coastal erosion. Saad Buyadem, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Present-day erosion impacts at Apollonia. A) Erosion of the Roman road (decumanus) in front of the Byzantine installations. B) eroding edge in front of the Byzantine Installations and Roman bath. C) eroding edge in front of the insula. Also indicated is the stretch of backshore where undocumented buildings and mosaics are eroding out. D) Example of a mosaic floor exposed by backshore erosion (photos A and D: 2019, S. Buyadem; photos B and C: 2021, F. El-Gumati). Westley et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Westley K, Nikolaus J, Emrage A, Flemming N, Cooper A (2023) The impact of coastal erosion on the archaeology of the Cyrenaican coast of Eastern Libya. PLoS ONE 18(4): e0283703. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283703

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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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