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UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI—The exceptional excavation of a Stone Age burial site was carried out in Majoonsuo, situated in the municipality of Outokumpu in Eastern Finland. The excavation produced microscopically small fragments of bird feathers, canine and small mammalian hairs, and plant fibres. The findings gained through soil analysis are unique, as organic matter is poorly preserved in Finland’s acidic soil. The study*, led by Archaeologist Tuija Kirkinen, was aimed at investigating how these highly degraded plant- and animal-based materials could be traced through soil analysis.

During the Stone Age in Finland, the deceased were interred mainly in pits in the ground. Little of the organic matter from human-made objects have been preserved in Stone Age graves in Finland, but it is known, on the basis of burial sites in the surrounding regions, that objects made of bones, teeth and horns as well as furs and feathers were placed in the graves.

Teeth and arrowheads found in the red ochre grave

The Trial Excavation Team of the Finnish Heritage Agency examined the site in 2018, as it was considered to be at risk of destruction. The burial place was located under a gravelly sand road in a forest, with the top of the grave partially exposed. The site was originally given away by the intense colour of its red ochre. Red ochre, or iron-rich clay soil, has been used not only in burials but also in rock art around the world.

In the archaeological dig at the burial site, only a few teeth were found of the deceased, on the basis of which they are known to have been a child between 3 and 10 years of age. In addition, two transverse arrowheads made of quartz and two other possible quartz objects were found in the grave. Based on the shape of the arrowheads and shore-level dating, the burial can be estimated to have taken place in the Mesolithic period of the Stone Age, roughly 6,000 years before the Common Era.

What made the excavation exceptional was the near-complete preservation of the soil originating in the grave. A total of 65 soil sample bags weighing between 0.6 and 3.4 kilograms were collected, also comparison samples were taken from outside the grave. The soil was analyzed in the archaeology laboratory of the University of Helsinki. Organic matter was separated from the samples using water. This way, the exposed fibres and hairs were identified with the help of transmitted-light and electron microscopy.

Oldest feather fragments found in Finland

From the soil samples, a total of 24 microscopic (0.2–1.4 mm) fragments of bird feathers were identified, most of which originated in down. Seven feather fragments were identified as coming from the down of a waterfowl (Anseriformes). These are the oldest feather fragments ever found in Finland. Although the origin of the down is impossible to state with certainty, it may come from clothing made of waterfowl skins, such as a parka or an anorak. It is also possible that the child was laid on a down bed.

In addition to the waterfowl down, one falcon (Falconidae) feather fragment was identified. It may have originally been part of the fletching of the arrows attached to the arrowheads, or, for example, from feathers used to decorate the garment.

Dog or wolf hairs?

Besides the feathers, 24 fragments of mammalian hair were identified, ranging from 0.5 to 9.5 mm in length. Most of the hairs were badly degraded, making identification no longer possible. The finest discoveries were the three hairs of a canine, possibly a predator, found at the bottom of the grave. The hairs may also originate, for example, in footwear made of wolf or dog skin. It is also possible a dog was laid at the child’s feet.

“Dogs buried with the deceased have been found in, for example, Skateholm, a famous burial site in southern Sweden dating back some 7,000 years,” says Professor Kristiina Mannermaa, University of Helsinki.

“The discovery in Majoonsuo is sensational, even though there is nothing but hairs left of the animal or animals – not even teeth. We don’t even know whether it’s a dog or a wolf,” she says, adding: “The method used, demonstrates that traces of fur and feathers can be found even in graves several thousands of years old, including in Finland.”

“This all gives us a very valuable insight about burial habits in the Stone Age, indicating how people had prepared the child for the journey after death”, says Kirkinen.

The soil is full of information

Also found were three fragments of plant fibres, which are preserved particularly poorly in the acidic Finnish soil. The fibres were what are known as bast fibres, meaning that they come from, for example, willows or nettles. At the time, the object they were part of may have been a net used for fishing, a cord used to attach clothes, or a bundle of strings. For the time being, only one other bast fibre discovery dating back to the Mesolithic Stone Age is known in Finland: the famed Antrea Net on display in the National Museum of Finland, laced with willow bast fibres.

A fibre separation technique was developed in the study*, and is already being applied in subsequent studies. The project has demonstrated the great information value of soil extracted from archaeological sites.

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An artist’s impression of the child buried in Majoonsuo during their life. Tom Bjorklund

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Location of Majoonsuo. Johanna Roiha

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The red-ochre burial site of the child in Majoonsuo. Kristiina Mannermaa

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI news release.

*Preservation of microscopic fur, feather, and bast fibers in the Mesolithic ochre grave of Majoonsuo, Eastern Finland, PLoS ONE, 27-Sep-2022. 10.1371/journal.pone.0274849 

The study is part of the ERC-funded project entitled Animals Make Identities (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/animals-make-identities) headed by Kristiina Mannermaa.

The study was published in the PlosONE series. In addition to Kirkinen and Mannermaa, contributing to the study were Olalla López-Costas and Antonio Martínez Cortizas from the EcoPast research group at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Sanna P. Sihvo, Hanna Ruhanen and Reijo Käkelä from the Helsinki University Lipidomics Unit (HiLIPID), Marja Ahola and Johanna Roiha from the discipline of archaeology at the University of Helsinki, Jan-Erik Nyman, Esa Mikkola and Janne Rantanen from the Archaeological Field Services unit of the Finnish Heritage Agency and Esa Hertell from the museums of the City of Lappeenranta.

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In the jungles of Central America, one can spot the otherwise inconspicuous Theobroma cacao, or cacao tree, by its small, somewhat bulbous, yellow-orange watermelon-shaped fruit hanging away from its body. Like most other plants that constitute the complex mix of the tropical mosaic, it assumes its own oblivion amidst the forest ecology.

But mention the name to local residents of these forest zones, and to scientists and scholars who explore and study the culture and history of this region, and you will learn that this tree plant is imbued with a special significance. Its prime produce, the cacao (or cocoa) bean, was historically, at least among the ancient Maya, used as a valuable currency of commerce, and cacao, the bean’s best known derivative, is today an important export for the production of chocolate. For decades, archaeologists and other scholars have also uncovered evidence of its use through detection of the biomarkers of its residue on highly decorative ceramic objects in ancient Maya elite ceremonial contexts, suggesting its use as an important ceremonial drink among the Maya elite. 

A recent study*, however, is showing that the drink was not the exclusive domain of the ancient Maya privileged classes. Recently, researchers examined 54 ceramic sherds sampled from a cross-section of archaeological contexts in the area of El Pilar, a major Maya center that straddles both sides of the border between Guatemala and Belize. The artifacts were found in both Late Classic (600 to 900 CE) residential and civic contexts, although much of the tested sample represented wares belonging to residential spaces of the general population surrounding and associated with the center. All artifacts were tested for the presence of theophylline, a distinct drug/chemical marker for cacao in this region. 

According to the study results, positive traces for cacao were detected for all forms of ceramic material, not only drinking vessels. The chemical traces were thus also found in mixing bowls, storage jars and serving plates, and the distribution of the evidence was spread across a variety of archaeological contexts, including both elite/public spaces and domestic residential sites. “We conclude that cacao biomarkers are common in many Late Classic contexts, and can be recognized in all basic domestic vessel forms, across every landform in the El Pilar area, in residential units of every status and, of course, in civic centers,” report the study authors in the paper, published September 26, 2022 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.* “……..We interpret the identification of cacao in vessels belonging to people of all walks of life as confirmation that cacao’s prestige was consumed by all in Maya society………Formal celebrations recognized in regal formats were cultural features that must have included everyone.”*  

About El Pilar

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

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The Maya house site Tzunu’un at the ancient Maya city center El Pilar. Congobongo1041, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

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More detailed information about the study can be obtained in the published report.

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*Ford, Anabel, et. al., New light on the use of Theobroma cacao by Late Classic Maya, September 26, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121821119.

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PENN MUSEUM, PHILADELPHIA—In partnership with an Iraqi excavation team, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology have unearthed intricate rock carvings that are 2,700 years old at Nineveh, a site on the east side of the Tigris River, inside the city of Mosul in Northern Iraq. Now, with support from the ALIPH Foundation, they are working to carefully reconstruct the ancient city’s Mashki Gate—one of the many Mesopotamian monuments that were destroyed by militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Through a community-led excavation, conservation, and restoration project funded by the Penn Museum, an international team of archaeologists found seven marble reliefs depicting finely chiseled war scenes, mountains, grape vines, and palm trees—a monumental and meaningful find amid the area’s cultural destruction. Skillfully carved with exceptional details, these remarkable ancient panels will remain in Iraq, with plans for building a visitor center at Nineveh, advancing research and understanding of ancient Mesopotamian history for generations to come.

One of the biggest discoveries since the 19th century, these superbly preserved reliefs date back to an Assyrian king who ruled Nineveh from 705 to 681 BCE. Known for his military campaigns, including one referenced in the Bible, King Sennacherib constructed 18 similar gates surrounding the city, but the Mashki Gate, the “Gate of the Watering Places,” was important for its direct access to the Tigris.

Reconstructed in the 1970s by the Nineveh Inspectorate of Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, this prominent monument is located on the main north-south highway, easily visible from the west side of the Tigris. The gate symbolizes Mosul’s deep history and continues to be an important shared site for Christians, Jewish people, and Muslims. In 2016, during their occupation of Iraq, ISIS militants used a bulldozer to destroy the gate—a deliberate attempt to erase the cultural memory of Iraq’s Assyrian heritage.

Yet amid the chaos and conflict, these seven reliefs survived, buried in an area that had not yet been excavated—until now.

A team of scholars and archaeologists worked in partnership with the Iraqi excavation team to restore this piece of Iraq’s cultural heritage: Field Director Dr. Michael D. Danti, the director for Penn’s Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program; Dr. Richard L. Zettler, associate curator-in-charge of the Penn Museum’s Near East Section and associate professor in the Penn School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; Dr. Ali al-Jabbouri, the former dean of the University of Mosul’s College of Archaeology; Dr. John MacGinnis from the University of Cambridge; and Dr. Darren P. Ashby, Program Manager of the Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program.

“What we’re trying to do is preserve cultural diversity and protect cultural freedom of expression in a way that meets the expectations and priorities of both the local community and the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage,” says Dr. Danti, who is also a consulting scholar at the Penn Museum.

Their goal is to conserve ancient Nineveh as a massive archaeological site within a modern city, moving it towards becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site to ensure its future preservation, as well as to promote sustainability for the people of East Mosul.

“For an archaeologist, a discovery of this magnitude is an honor, a serious responsibility. In a way, Mashki Gate is a symbol of international hope and cross-cultural collaboration. Out of the ashes, a phoenix rises,” Dr. Danti adds.

“These are the first Assyrian reliefs to have come out of the ground in 75 years at least,” Dr. Zettler explains. “This discovery adds new data and ultimately advances the understanding of Neo-Assyrian history in ancient Mesopotamia.”

“We are thrilled by the ongoing conservation of this incredibly rare and historic find,” says Dr. Christopher Woods, Williams Director at the Penn Museum and the Avalon Professor of the Humanities at Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, who specializes in ancient Mesopotamian languages and civilizations. “Encouraged by the Nineveh Inspectorate of Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to expand our cultural heritage work and Neo-Assyrian archaeological research in their region, the Penn Museum is excited to be collaborating in this international effort towards post-conflict reconciliation.”

In their previous cultural heritage work, Dr. Zettler and Dr. Danti have had a long history of collaborating with Iraqi officials to restore sites in various stages of disrepair, including Taq-i Kisra, a major landmark south of Baghdad. During the coming months, excavations at Mashki Gate will continue through the chambers that remain unexplored, while the team works to conserve the ancient reliefs, preparing to share them with the world. 

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Discovered in northern Iraq, this marble relief shows a high-ranking captive of the Assyrians during a military campaign—
part of a larger scene illustrating a fortified Assyrian military encampment. Photo: Penn Museum.

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The remarkably preserved reliefs discovered at the Mashki Gate in Nineveh offer exquisite detail. Photo-Penn Museum

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Penn’s Dr. Michael Danti cleans one of the seven ancient reliefs found at Nineveh. Photo-Penn Museum

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Article Source: Penn Museum news release.

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About the Penn Museum

Home to over a million extraordinary objects, the Penn Museum has been highlighting our shared humanity across continents and millennia since 1887. In expanding access to archaeology and anthropology, the Penn Museum builds empathy and connections between cultures through experiences online and onsite in our galleries.

The Penn Museum is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm. For information, visit www.penn.museum, call 215.898.4000, or follow @PennMuseum on social media.

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AlUla, Saudi Arabia, 24 October 2022: New peer-reviewed research into ancient stone-built animal traps, known as ‘desert kites’, reveals sophisticated and extensive hunting of wild animals from the Late Neolithic and shows the ingenuity and perhaps collaborative nature of the region’s peoples in the past.

The structures were named ‘kites’ by aviators in the 1920s because, observed from above, their form is reminiscent of old-fashioned children’s kites with streamers.  However, the origins and function of these huge, monumental structures had been a matter of debate.

Dr Remy Crassard, a leading expert on desert kites, notes that they are some of the largest ancient structures of their era. The oldest kites, in southern Jordan, have been dated to 7000 BCE. The age of newly found kites in north-west Arabia is still being determined but appears to straddle the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age (5000–2000 BCE). Dr Crassard – who, besides being affiliated with France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), is a co-director of the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project, which is sponsored by RCU and its strategic partner Afalula (France’s Agency for the Development of AlUla) – estimates that 700 to 800 kites were known 20 years ago compared to about 6,500 now, with the number still growing. 

Based on recent research conducted in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Armenia and Kazakhstan, Dr Crassard’s team affirms that kites were used for hunting and not for domestication, that they “mark a profound change in human strategies for trapping animals”, and that “the development of these mega-traps made a spectacular human impact on the landscape”. Kites may have led to hunting well beyond subsistence levels, related to “an increase in symbolic behaviour related to food production and social organisation”. Some wild species such as gazelles might have altered their migratory routes as a result, and other species might have been hunted to extinction.

In Saudi Arabia, research led by Rebecca Repper of the University of Western Australia’s RCU-sponsored team, Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – Al Ula, detected 207 previously unknown kites in AlUla County. These are especially concentrated on the Harrat ‘Uwayrid, an upland area with an extinct volcano. The team found that a distinct type of V-shaped kite was the dominant form in their study area, in contrast to kites found elsewhere in the region. Kites have been described in a variety of shapes, including V, ‘sock’, ‘hatchet’ and W-shaped. 

Regardless of form, all kites in the region have driving lines of low stone walls that converge to funnel animals towards a trap such as a pit or precipice. On average, the driving lines of the AlUla kites are approximately 200m long. However, elsewhere they can stretch for kilometres. Ms Repper says the shorter length shows the local knowledge of the hunters, who placed the traps in areas where existing landscapes naturally restricted animal movements. Kite placement also suggests that the hunters had an intimate knowledge of prey movements.

While kites recorded in the AlUla region tended to funnel prey towards a sudden precipice, kites elsewhere often end in concealed pits, in which hundreds of animals could be killed during a single hunt. This difference could be an adaptation to the local geography or an evolution of trap hunting.

The aerial archaeology team’s research in the region complements work by Dr Crassard, who contributed data on the kites of Khaybar to a recently published study led by Dr Olivier Barge (CNRS) on the relative chronology of kite types. In Khaybar, two types of kites have been distinguished: traditionally defined desert kites and rudimentary proto-kites, which do not have a well-defined enclosure surrounded by traps or pits. The team suggests that the proto-kites might have been a precursor to desert kites. The more complex kites may reflect less opportunistic and more formalized hunting techniques.

Dr Rebecca Foote, Director of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Research for RCU, said: “These studies add to our growing understanding of the rich cultural heritage of the people of north-west Arabia, in this case more on prehistoric practices. The recent studies expand on our earlier discoveries of the Neolithic period in the region, including the construction of large-scale ritual structures known as mustatils. As we embark on the autumn season of RCU-supported archaeological fieldwork, with teams from KSA, France, Australia, Germany and beyond, we look forward to many more insightful findings as part of our ambitious plan to create a global hub of archaeological research and conservation in AlUla.”

That hub, the Kingdoms Institute, is currently active as a research organization, with plans to open a physical presence at AlUla by 2030. The RCU-sponsored research in and around AlUla is adding to the knowledge base that will inform the Kingdoms Institute. RCU expects the institute to become a prime destination by the time AlUla is receiving 2 million visitors a year in 2035. 

Dr Ingrid Périssé Valéro, Director of Archaeology and Heritage for Afalula, said: “The recording of these new kites in AlUla and Khaybar opens up important perspectives on the origins, development and diffusion of these hunting structures, which marked a significant milestone in the history of human evolution and mankind’s relationship with the natural environment. The groundbreaking research from these international teams, including work by France’s expert Dr Rémy Crassard, combines the results of satellite image analysis and fieldwork, which is the only way to provide precise dating and function by analysing the material associated with these structures. Without a doubt, the ongoing research will be a landmark in prehistorical studies.”

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A kite in the Khaybar area of north-west Saudi Arabia. New archaeological findings on kites show the ingenuity of the region’s peoples in the past. (Diaa Albukaai and Kévin Guadagnini, Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project/RCU/Afalula/CNRS)

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A kite in Khaybar. These ancient hunting traps were named ‘kites’ by aviators in the 1920s because, from above, they resemble old-fashioned children’s kites. (Diaa Albukaai and Kévin Guadagnini, Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project/RCU/Afalula/CNRS)

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This and the following photograph show an ancient ‘kite’ in a sandstone landscape in AlUla County, north-west Saudi Arabia. The walls of this kite extend about 300 metres across a mesa … (Don Boyer/RCU/AAKSAU)

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… leading to a sudden precipice over which hunters drove prey including gazelles and ibex. (David Kennedy/RCU/AAKSAU).

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The recent research is detailed in the following:

• ‘The Use of Desert Kites as Hunting Mega Traps: Functional Evidence and Potential Impacts on Socioeconomic and Ecological Spheres’ by Rémy Crassard, et al, published in Journal of World Prehistory. Project sponsored by CNRS and French National Research Agency.

• ‘Kites of AlUla County and the Ḥarrat ‘Uwayriḍ, Saudi Arabia’ by Rebecca Repper, et al, published in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. Project sponsored by RCU.

• ‘New Arabian desert kites and potential proto-kites extend the global distribution of hunting mega-traps’ by Olivier Barge, et al, published in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Khaybar data in this article results from the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project. 

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Article Source: HK Strategies and Royal Commission for ALULa

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About 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 cultural heritage, while establishing AlUla as a desirable location to live, work, and visit. This encompasses a broad range of initiatives across archaeology, tourism, education,  the arts, nature and more, reflecting a commitment to meeting the economic diversification, local community empowerment, and heritage preservation priorities of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 programme. 

About Afalula (French Agency for the Development of AlUla)

The French Agency for the Development of AlUla (Afalula) was founded in Paris in July 2018 following an intergovernmental agreement signed by France and Saudi Arabia in April of that year. Afalula aims to support its Saudi partner, The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), in the co-construction of the economic, touristic and cultural development of AlUla, a region located in north-west Saudi Arabia which benefits from outstanding natural and cultural heritage. The agency’s mission is to mobilise French knowledge and expertise and to gather the finest operators and companies in the fields of archaeology, museography, architecture, environment, tourism, hospitality, infrastructure, education, security, equestrianism, agriculture, botany and the sustainable management of natural resources.

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If you liked this, you may like the newly published feature article in Popular Archaeology: Lost Worlds of Arabia.

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CNRS—Old grimoires, even for the most Cartesian minds, often contain coveted secrets, such as the fragments of an ancient astronomical treatise lost for centuries: the Hipparchus Star Catalogue. Written between 170 and 120 BC by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, it is the oldest known attempt to determine the precise position of fixed stars by associating them with numerical coordinates.

Until now, this text was known only through the writings of Claudius Ptolemy, another ancient astronomer who composed his own catalogue nearly 400 years after Hipparchus. Researchers from the Centre Léon Robin de recherche sur la pensée antique (CNRS/Sorbonne Université) and their British colleague from Tyndale House in Cambridge have just deciphered the descriptions of four constellations from Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue.

This discovery comes from the Codex Climaci Rescriptus¹  ‒ a book made up of parchments that were erased and then rewritten on, also known as a palimpsest. In the past, this Codex contained an astronomical poem in ancient Greek with, among elements of commentary on the poem, fragments of Hipparchus’ Catalogue. This palimpsest text, erased in medieval times, has been revealed through multispectral imaging² by teams from the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library, the Lazarus Project and the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The fragments of the Star Catalogue are the oldest known to date and bring major advances in its reconstruction. Firstly, they refute a widespread idea that Claudius Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue is merely a “copy” of Hipparchus’ as the observations of the four constellations are different. Furthermore, Hipparchus’ data are verified to the nearest degree, which would make his catalogue much more accurate than Ptolemy’s, even though it was composed several centuries earlier.

For the research team this major discovery sheds new light on the history of astronomy in antiquity and on the beginnings of the history of science. Above all, it illustrates the power of advanced techniques, such as multispectral imaging, whose application on illegible palimpsests could save numerous lost texts on philosophy, medicine or horticulture from oblivion.

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A folio from the Codex Climaci Rescriptus. © Peter Malik

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Article Source: CNRS news release.

Notes

1. ¹ The Codex Climaci Rescriptus is kept at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC (USA) and probably comes from the monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai (Egypt), one of the oldest active monasteries in the world. It is composed of folios from a Greek manuscript of the fifth or sixth century AD.
2. ² Multispectral imaging consists of measuring the light reflected by an object at different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, using artificial lighting and high dynamic range sensors. The data collected is then processed to extract relevant information, such as traces of erased writing, presented in the form of images.

Bibliography

New Evidence for Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue Revealed by Multispectral Imaging. Victor Gysembergh, Peter J. Williams and Emanuel Zingg. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 18 October 2022. DOI:10.1177/00218286221128289

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UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER—If you’ve taken care of an infant, you know how important it is to find ways to multitask. And, when time is short and your to-do list is long, humans find ways to be resourceful—something caregivers have apparently been doing for a very, very long time.

The authors of a new article published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory* argue that they have found evidence of the use of baby carriers 10,000 years ago at the Arma Veirana site in Liguria, Italy. The research, led by Arizona State University’s Claudine Gravel-Miguel, PhD, also includes the University of Colorado Denver’s Jamie Hodgkins, PhD, an Associate Professor of Anthropology, and a co-principal investigator on the excavation of Arma Veirana.

Because material used to make the first baby carriers does not preserve well in the archaeological record and because prehistoric baby burials are very uncommon, evidence for prehistoric baby carriers is extremely rare. The site—which includes the oldest documented burial of a female infant in Europe, a 40- to 50-days-old baby, nicknamed Neve—has both. Researchers used innovative analytical methods to extract hard-to-obtain information about perforated shell beads found at the site.

The study used a high-definition 3D photogrammetry model of the burial combined with microscopic observations and microCT scan analyses of the beads to document in detail how the burial took place and how the beads were likely used by Neve and her community in life and in death.

The results of this research show that the beads were likely sewn onto a piece of leather or cloth that was used to wrap Neve for her burial. This decoration contained more than 70 small, pierced shell beads and four big, pierced shell pendants, the likes of which have yet to be found elsewhere. Most of the beads bear heavy signs of use that could not have been produced during Neve’s short life, demonstrating they were handed down to her as heirlooms.

“Given the effort that had been put into creating and reusing these ornaments over time, it is interesting that the community decided to part with these beads in the burial of such a young individual, said Gravel-Miguel. “Our research suggests that those beads and pendants likely adorned Neve’s carrier, which was buried with her.”

Relying on ethnographic observations of how baby carriers are adorned and used in some modern hunter-gatherer societies, this research suggests that Neve’s community may have decorated her carrier with beads in order to protect her against evil. However, it is possible that her death signaled that those beads had failed, and it would have been better to bury the carrier rather than reuse it.

“Infant burials are so rare, and this one had so many beads,” said Hodgkins. “Being able to look at the use wear and positioning of the ornaments around the infant to determine that these beads were handed down and the infant was wrapped in a way that matches the form of a baby carrier is truly a unique glimpse into the past, giving us  a connection to this tragic event that happened so long ago.”

Learn More: This new research about Neve contributes to the growing literature of prehistoric childcare and the likely use and reuse of beads to protect individuals and maintain the social links within a community. Neve’s remains were found in 2017 in a cave located in Liguria, Italy. The ongoing study of this rare infant burial provides insight into customs and daily life of the early Mesolithic period. To read more, click here. 

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Team of researchers including Claudine Gravel-Miguel from Arizona State University, Jamie Hodgkins from the University of Colorado Denver work at the excavation of Arma Veirana. University of Colorado Denver

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER news release.

About University of Colorado Denver

The University of Colorado Denver is the state’s premier public urban research university and equity-serving institution. Globally connected and locally invested, CU Denver partners with future-focused learners and communities to design accessible, relevant, transformative educational experiences for every stage of life and career. Across seven schools and colleges in the heart of downtown Denver, our leading faculty inspires and works alongside students to solve complex challenges through boundary-breaking innovation and impactful research and creative work. As part of the state’s largest university system, CU Denver is a major contributor to the Colorado economy, with 2,000 employees and annual economic impact of $800 million. For more information, visit www.ucdenver.edu.

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—The first Neanderthal draft genome was published in 2010. Since then, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have sequenced a further 18 genomes from 14 different archaeological sites throughout Eurasia. While these genomes have provided insights into the broader strokes of Neanderthal history, we still know little of individual Neanderthal communities.

To explore the social structure of Neanderthals, the researchers turned their attention to southern Siberia, a region that has previously been very fruitful for ancient DNA research – including the discovery of Denisovan hominin remains at the famous Denisova Cave. From work done at that site, we know that Neanderthals and Denisovans were present in this region over hundreds of thousands of years, and that Neanderthals and Denisovans have interacted with each other – as the finding of a child with a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother has shown.

First Neanderthal community

In their new study, the researchers focused on the Neanderthal remains in Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves, which are within 100 kilometers of Denisova Cave. Neanderthals briefly occupied these sites around 54,000 years ago, and multiple potentially contemporaneous Neanderthal remains had been recovered from their deposits. The researchers  successfully retrieved DNA from 17 Neanderthal remains – the largest number of Neanderthal remains ever sequenced in a single study.

Chagyrskaya Cave has been excavated over the last 14 years by researchers from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences. Besides several hundred thousand stone tools and animal bones, they also recovered more than 80 bone and tooth fragments of Neanderthals, one of the largest assemblages of these fossil humans not only in the region but also in the world.

The Neanderthals at Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov hunted ibex, horses, bison and other animals that migrated through the river valleys that the caves overlook. They collected raw materials for their stone tools dozens of kilometers away, and the occurrence of the same raw material at both Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves also supports the genetic data that the groups inhabiting these localities were closely linked.

Previous studies of a fossil toe from Denisova cave showed that Neanderthals inhabited the Altai mountains considerably earlier as well, around 120,000 years ago. Genetic data shows though, that the Neanderthals from Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves are not descendants of these earlier groups, but are closer related to European Neanderthals. This is also supported by the archaeological material: the stone tools from Chagyrskaya Cave are most similar to the so-called Micoquian culture known from Germany and Eastern Europe.

The 17 remains came from 13 Neanderthal individuals – 7 men and 6 women, of which 8 were adults and 5 were children and young adolescents. In their mitochondrial DNA, the researchers  found several so-called heteroplasmies that were shared between individuals. Heteroplasmies are a special kind of genetic variant that only persists for a small number of generations.

The easternmost Neanderthals

Among these remains were those of a Neanderthal father and his teenage daughter. The researchers also found a pair of second degree relatives: a young boy and an adult female, perhaps a cousin, aunt or grandmother. The combination of heteroplasmies and related individuals strongly suggests that the Neanderthals in Chagyrskaya Cave must have lived – and died – at around the same time.

“The fact that they were living at the same time is very exciting. This means that they likely came from the same social community. So, for the first time, we can use genetics to study the social organization of a Neanderthal community,” says Laurits Skov, who is first author on this study.

Another striking finding is the extremely low genetic diversity within this Neanderthal community, consistent with a group size of 10 to 20 individuals. This is much lower than those recorded for any ancient or present-day human community, and is more similar to the group sizes of endangered species at the verge of extinction.

However, Neanderthals didn’t live in completely isolated communities. By comparing the genetic diversity on the Y-chromosome, which is inherited father-to-son, with the mitochondrial DNA diversity, which is inherited from mothers, the researchers could answer the question: Was it the men or the women who moved between communities? They found that the mitochondrial genetic diversity was much higher than the Y chromosome diversity, which suggests that these Neanderthal communities were primarily linked by female migration. Despite the proximity to Denisova Cave, these migrations do not appear to have involved Denisovans – the researchers found no evidence of Denisovan gene flow in the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals in the last 20,000 years before these individuals lived.

“Our study provides a concrete picture of what a Neanderthal community may have looked like”, says Benjamin Peter, the last author of the study. “It makes Neanderthals seem much more human to me.”

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Chagyrskaya Cave, Siberia. Bence Viola

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A Neanderthal father and his daughter. Tom Bjorklund

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release.

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*Genetic insights into the social organization of Neanderthals, Nature, 19-Oct-2022. 10.1038/s41586-022-05283-y 

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For most of us, ancient Troy brings to mind a besieged, almost mythical legendary city that in the end finally fell in a dramatic, fiery and violent battle to the Achaeans, a massive Aegean military force assembled and executed, according to the ancient Greek author Homer, for one purpose — to force the return of Helen, the (from the Achaean perspective) abducted wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus. 

Scholars suggest that, beyond Homer’s myth and legend, there was a historical basis for the city. Many of them identify the archaeological remains excavated at the Hisarlik hill or tell near the northwest coast of modern day Turkey as evidence for the storied city. The first excavations began in 1871 with Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert. The combination of succeeding excavations eventually revealed nine major layers and 46 strata, the first and earliest dating to the Early Bronze Age and the latest to the Byzantine era. 

But recent investigations are showing that the city, contrary to its popular conception as a magnificent, isolated enclave at the edge of the Aegean, was actually part of a much larger civilization and culture. 

“A recently published scientific study argues that Troy was not an isolated outpost on the wrong – non-European – side of the Aegean Sea,” writes Eberhard Zangger, a Swiss geoarchaeologist who has devoted many years of research on ancient settlements in western Turkey. “Instead,” Zangger suggests, “the city was embedded in a long-lasting and influential culture, which, however, has hardly been investigated so far.”

In his recently published article, “Ancient Troy and its Neighbors: Acknowledging the Luwian Culture at Last”, Zangger relates the efforts of 33 archaeological excavations and 30 archaeological surveys that have resulted in a catalog of 477 settlements representing a culture that “is not indicated on maps”. Troy, he postulates, was a part of this ancient civilization and culture. Moreover, he suggests that this culture may have played a major role among the “Sea Peoples” who are hypothesized by some scholars to have contributed to the great Late Bronze Age collapse. 

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The excavated walls of ancient Troy. Ebru Sargın L.,Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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More about the research can be obtained in the article, Ancient Troy and its Neighbors: Acknowledging the Luwian Culture at Last, published in the fall 2022 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Were Neanderthals carnivores? Scientists have not yet settled the question. While some studies of the dental tartar of individuals from the Iberian Peninsula appear to show that they were major consumers of plants, other research carried out at sites outside Iberia seem to suggest that they consumed almost nothing but meat. Using new analytical techniques on a molar belonging to an individual of this species, researchers¹ have shown that the Neanderthals at the Gabasa site in Spain appear to have been carnivores.

To determine an individual’s position in the food chain, scientists have until now generally had to extract proteins and analyze the nitrogen isotopes present in the bone collagen. However, this method can often only be used in temperate environments, and only rarely on samples over 50,000 years old. When these conditions are not met, nitrogen isotope analysis is very complex, or even impossible. This was the case for the molar from the Gabasa site analysed in this study.

Given these constraints, Klevia Jaouen, a CNRS researcher, and her colleagues decided to analyze the zinc isotope ratios present in the tooth enamel, a mineral that is resistant to all forms of degradation. This is the first time this method has been used to attempt to identify a Neanderthal’s diet. The lower the proportions of zinc isotopes in the bones, the more likely they are to belong to a carnivore. The analysis was also carried out on the bones of animals from the same time period and geographical area, including carnivores such as lynxes and wolves, and herbivores like rabbits and chamois. The results showed that the Neanderthal to whom this tooth from the Gabasa site belonged was probably a carnivore who did not consume the blood of their prey.

Broken bones found at the site, together with isotopic data, indicate that this individual also ate the bone marrow of their prey, without consuming the bones, while other chemical tracers show that they were weaned before the age of two. Analyses also show that this Neanderthal probably died in the same place they had lived in as a child.

Compared to previous techniques, this new zinc isotope analysis method makes it easier to distinguish between omnivores and carnivores. To confirm their conclusions, the scientists hope to repeat the experiment on individuals from other sites, especially from the Payre site in south-east France, where new research is under way.

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A first molar from a Neanderthal, analyzed for this study.
© Lourdes Montes

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Excavation work at the Gabasa site, Spain.
© Lourdes Montes

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Article Source: CNRS news release

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Notes

1. ¹ In France, the work involved scientists from the Geosciences Environment Toulouse Laboratory (CNRS/CNES/IRD/UT3 Paul Sabatier), and the Geology Laboratory of Lyon: Earth, Planets, Environment (CNRS/UCBL1), together with teams from the University of Zaragoza, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, and the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz.

A Neandertal dietary conundrum: new insights provided by tooth enamel Zn isotopes from Gabasa, Spain. Klervia Jaouen, Vanessa Villalba Mouco, Geoff M. Smith, Manuel Trost, Jennifer Leichliter, Tina Lüdecke, Pauline Méjean, Stéphanie Mandrou, Jérôme Chmeleff, Danaé Guiserix, Nicolas Bourgon, Fernanda Blasco, Jéssica Mendes Cardoso, Camille Duquenoy, Zineb Moubtahij, Domingo C. Salazar Garcia, Michael Richards, Thomas Tütken, Jean Jacques Hublin, Pilar Utrilla and Lourdes Montes, PNAS, the 17th of october. DOI :2021-09315RR

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FRONTIERS—The cities of the ancient Maya in Mesoamerica never fail to impress. But beneath the soil surface, an unexpected danger lurks there: mercury pollution. In a review article in Frontiers in Environmental Science, researchers conclude that this pollution isn’t modern: it’s due to the frequent use of mercury and mercury-containing products by the Maya of the Classic Period, between 250 and 1100 CE. This pollution is in places so heavy that even today, it pose a potential health hazard for unwary archeologists.

Lead author Dr Duncan Cook, an associate professor of Geography at the Australian Catholic University, said: “Mercury pollution in the environment is usually found in contemporary urban areas and industrial landscapes. Discovering mercury buried deep in soils and sediments in ancient Maya cities is difficult to explain, until we begin to consider the archeology of the region which tells us that the Maya were using mercury for centuries.”

Ancient anthropogenic pollution

For the first time, Cook and colleagues here reviewed all data on mercury concentrations in soil and sediments at archeological sites across the ancient Maya world. They show that at sites from the Classical Period for which measurements are available –  Chunchumil in today’s Mexico, Marco Gonzales, Chan b’i, and Actuncan in Belize, La Corona, Tikal, Petén Itzá, Piedras Negras, and Cancuén in Guatemala, Palmarejo in Honduras, and Cerén, a Mesoamerican ‘Pompeii’, in El Salvador –mercury pollution is detectable everywhere except at Chan b’i.

Concentrations range from 0.016 ppm at Actuncan to an extraordinary 17.16 ppm at Tikal. For comparison, the Toxic Effect Threshold (TET) for mercury in sediments is defined as 1 ppm.

Heavy users of mercury

What caused this prehistoric mercury pollution? The authors highlight that sealed vessels filled with ‘elemental’ (ie, liquid) mercury have been found at several Maya sites, for example Quiriqua in Guatemala, El Paraíso in Honduras, and the former multi-ethnic megacity Teotihuacan in Central Mexico. Elsewhere in the Maya region, archeologists have found objects painted with mercury-containing paints, mainly made from the mineral cinnabar.

The authors conclude that the ancient Maya frequently used cinnabar and mercury-containing paints and powders for decoration. This mercury could then have leached from patios, floor areas, walls, and ceramics, and subsequently spread into the soil and water.

“For the Maya, objects could contain ch’ulel, or soul-force, which resided in blood. Hence, the brilliant red pigment of cinnabar was an invaluable and sacred substance, but unbeknownst to them it was also deadly and its legacy persists in soils and sediments around ancient Maya sites,” said co-author Dr Nicholas Dunning, a professor at the University of Cincinnati.

As mercury is rare in the limestone that underlies much of the Maya region, they speculate that elemental mercury and cinnabar found at Maya sites could have been originally mined from known deposits on the northern and southern confines of the ancient Maya world, and imported to the cities by traders.

Health hazards and the ‘Mayacene’

All this mercury would have posed a health hazard for the ancient Maya: for example, the effects of chronic mercury poisoning include damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, and liver, and cause tremors, impaired vision and hearing, paralysis, and mental health problems. It’s perhaps significant that one of the last Maya rulers of Tikal, Dark Sun, who ruled around 810 CE, is depicted in frescoes as pathologically obese. Obesity is a known effect of metabolic syndrome, which can be caused by chronic mercury poisoning.

More research is needed to determine whether mercury exposure played a role in larger sociocultural change and trends in the Maya world, such as those towards the end of the Classic Period.

Co-author Dr Tim Beach, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said: “We conclude that even the ancient Maya, who barely used metals, caused mercury concentrations to be greatly elevated in their environment. This result is yet more evidence that just like we live today in the ‘Anthropocene’, there also was a ‘Maya anthropocene’ or ‘Mayacene’. Metal contamination seems to have been effect of human activity through history.”  

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Ancient Maya remains at Palenque. Connectingdots, Pixabay

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Article Source: Frontiers news release.

*Environmental legacy of pre-Columbian Maya mercury, Frontiers in Environmental Science, 23-Sep-2022.  10.3389/fenvs.2022.986119 

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Almost three hundred years after the Romans left, scholars like Bede wrote about the Angles and the Saxons and their migrations to the British Isles. Scholars of many disciplines, including archaeology, history, linguists and genetics, have debated what his words might have described, and what the scale, the nature and the impact of human migration were at that time.

New genetic results* now show that around 75 percent of the population in Eastern and Southern England was made up of migrant families whose ancestors must have originated from continental regions bordering the North Sea, including the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. What is more, these families interbred with the existing population of Britain, but importantly this integration varied from region to region and community to community.

“With 278 ancient genomes from England and hundreds more from Europe, we now gained really fascinating insights into population-scale and individual histories during post-Roman times”, says Joscha Gretzinger, a lead author of the study. “Not only do we now have an idea of the scale of migration, but also how it played out in communities and families.” Using published genetic data from more than 4,000 ancient and 10,000 present-day Europeans, Gretzinger and colleagues identified subtle genetic differences between the closely related groups inhabiting the ancient North Sea region.

Migrants intermixed with the local population

Upon arrival, the migrants intermixed with the local population. In one case, in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery from Buckland near Dover, researchers were able to reconstruct a family tree across at least four generations and identify the point in time when migrants and locals intermarried. This family showed a large degree of interaction between the two gene pools. Overall, the researchers witnessed burials of prominent status across the studied cemeteries of both local and migrant origin.

The interdisciplinary team consisting of over 70 authors was able to integrate archaeological data with these new genetic results, which revealed that women of immigrant origin were buried with artifacts more often than women of local origin, especially considering items such as brooches and beads. Interestingly, men with weapons were found to have both genetic origins equally often. These differences were locally mediated with prominent burials or wealthy graves seen across the range of origins. For example, a woman buried with a complete cow in Cambridgeshire was genetically mixed, with majority local ancestry.

Duncan Sayer, archaeologist from the University of Central Lancashire and a lead author of the study says, “We see considerable variation in how this migration affected communities. In some places, we see clear signs of active integration between locals and immigrants, as in the case of Buckland near Dover, or Oakington in Cambridgeshire. Yet in other cases, like Apple Down in West Sussex, we see that people with immigrant and local ancestry were buried separately in the cemetery. Perhaps this is evidence of some degree of social separation at this site.”

Impact of this historic migration on present-day English people

With the new data, the team could also consider the impact of this historic migration today. Notably the present-day English derive only 40 percent of their DNA from these historic continental ancestors, whereas 20 to 40 percent of their genetic profile likely came from France or Belgium. This genetic component can be seen in the archaeological individuals and in the graves with Frankish objects found in early Medieval graves, particularly in Kent.

“It remains unclear whether this additional ancestry related to Iron Age France is connected to a few punctuated migration events, such as the Norman conquest, or whether it was the result of centuries-long mobility across the English Channel”, says Stephan Schiffels, lead senior author of the study. “Future work, specifically targeting the medieval period and later will reveal the nature of this additional genetic signal.

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An early Anglo-Saxon grave with pottery vessel, brooches and a Roman Spoon. This grave 66 from Oakington Cambridgeshire contained a woman of mixed ancestry. © Duncan Sayer, University of Central Lancashire

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Archaeologists excavate a complicated triple burial while working at Oakington Cambridgeshire. These three women were not related to each other, and each had a different proportion of WBI (Western Britain and Ireland) and CNE (Continental North European) ancestry. © Duncan Sayer, University of Central Lancashire

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N.Y. – A Cornell University researcher is using cutting-edge statistical analysis to narrow down the time range for one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the Holocene epoch — and settle one of modern archaeology’s longstanding disputes.

The eruption on the Greek island of Santorini, traditionally known as Thera, is considered a pivotal event in the prehistory of the Aegean and East Mediterranean region.

By parsing available data and combining it with cutting-edge statistical analysis, Sturt Manning, professor of archaeology, has zeroed in on a narrow range of dates for the eruption. His modeling identified the most likely range of dates to be: between about 1609–1560 BCE (95.4% probability), or about 1606–1589 BCE (68.3% probability).

Archeologists in the early 20th century theorized the volcano erupted around 1500 BCE, during the Egyptian New Kingdom period, and created a history around this assumption. But beginning in the 1970s, advances in radiocarbon dating threw that timeline into chaos.

“This has been the single most contested date in Mediterranean history for over 40 years,” said Manning. “I’m hoping with this paper people may suddenly go, ‘You know what, this actually limits and defines the problem in a way that we’ve never been able to do before, and narrows it down to where, usefully, we can say it’s in the Second Intermediate Period. So, we should start writing a different history.’”

The new timeline synchronizes the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean while also ruling out several ancillary theories, such as the idea that the Thera eruption was responsible for destroying Minoan palaces on the coast of Crete as the first excavator of Akrotiri, Spyridon Marinatos, proposed in 1939.

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Landsat image of the caldera left by the ancient Thera eruption. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: CORNELL UNIVERSITY news release.

*“Second Intermediate Period Date for the Thera (Santorini) Eruption and Historical Implications,” published Sept. 20 in PLOS ONE.

Cover Image, Top Left: Volcanic eruption, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA—A new research conducted by two paleontologists at the University of Malaga has just revealed that human evolution uniquely combines an increase in brain size with the acquisition of an increasingly juvenile cranial shape.

This paper, which has been published in the scientific journal PeerJ, is the result of a line of research that the UMA started in 2015 supplemented with the analysis of four new hominid crania of specimens that were discovered at a later time: Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus prometheus, Homo naledi and Homo longi. Moreover, the research adds juvenile samples of modern species of great apes.

Furthermore, this research brings an innovative approach to the interpretation of hominization in terms of embryonic development, which refers to changes in the start or end timing of the developmental processes, as well as to differences in the rhythm of these processes between an ancestral species and another derived species.

Cranial evolution: humans and apes

Thanks to these new analyses, they could verify that the representatives of the genus Homo, as well as the australopithecines –our close relatives in the evolution– share with orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees a negative growth of the neurocranium –the cranial vault, which measures brain development, grows at a slower pace than the rest of the cranium– and a positive one in the splanchnocranium –the dimensions of the face, which correlate with the size of dentition, grow faster throughout development.

“This means that bigger crania present higher relative sizes in the face and more reduced sizes in the cranial vault”, explain the professors of the Faculty of Science Juan Antonio Pérez Claros and Paul Palmqvist, authors of this paper.

Greater brain development

Both experts point out that while the cranial evolution of australopithecines followed the same scaling during development as apes, in humans a series of lateral transpositions also occurred.

“The developmental trajectory of the genus Homo turned to a new starting point, where adults retained the characteristics of the infant crania of the ancestral species”, they say.

As they explain, these changes entailed a “juvenilization” of cranial proportions, a process known as paedomorphosis (“child-shape”), which enabled a greater brain development in our evolutionary lineage compared to other species.

Finally, this research demonstrated that the cranium of Homo naledi, despite being a relatively recent species in the fossil record of human evolution –less than 300,000 years–, show proportions that are similar to those of the first representatives of the human species, the Homo habilis, which are more than two million years old.

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Photographic representation of the four new hominid crania analyzed in the paper. University of Malaga

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Paleontologists at the University of Malaga show changes in the development of the dimensions, based on the analysis of four new hominid fossils. University of Malaga

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA news release.

*Pérez-Claros, J.A. & Palmqvist, P. (2022). Heterochronies and allometries in the evolution of the hominid cranium: a morphometric approach using classical anthropometric variables. PeerJ, 25-Aug-2022. 10.7717/peerj.13991 

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UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE—A new article* provides insights in the life and craftsmanship of the earliest modern humans in Europe around 40 thousand years ago, allowing an important glimpse into how early Homo sapiens adapted to their environment on the newly populated continent. The study, which was published in Nature: Scientific Reports’, reports on recent excavations in western Romania at Româneşti, one of the most important sites in southeastern Europe associated with the earliest Homo sapiens. The excavation was led by archaeologist Dr Wei Chu from the University of Cologne (Germany) and Leiden University (Netherlands) with contributions by Dr Jacopo Gennai from the University of Cologne (Germany) and University of Pisa (Italy).

Many early Homo sapiens fossils have been found in southeastern Europe, presumably because they first entered the continent through the Balkan Peninsula. Still, few Homo sapiens fossils have been found in association with cultural remains. Româneşti, however, offers numerous artifacts and is therefore an important window into observing how the first European Homo sapiens coped with their new environments.

The researchers found that artifacts at Româneşti were geared towards producing highly standardized chipped stone bladelets that could have been used as inserts for arrows or spears. Also, particular grindstones might have been used to straighten wooden shafts, suggesting that Româneşti was a kind of a projectile workshop. This is further corroborated by microscopic analyses of the artifact surfaces, which demonstrate that most of them were not used. This suggests that the site may have been used as a place for manufacturing tools that were later transported offsite.

Thousands of artifacts, some of which must have been carried to the site from over 300 km away based on geochemical evidence, combined with evidence for onsite fire use demonstrate that Româneşti was an important place in the landscape. Apparently, the early Homo sapiens of the area repeatedly returned to it.

The results of the large lithic assemblages and their high-quality contexts from the new excavations at Româneşti indicate changes in the ways Homo sapiens subsisted compared to Neanderthals, helping to explain their success. ‘Nearby contemporary fossils indicate that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals were interbreeding, but we still don’t know what that means for the ways in which their mutual lifestyles were changing and how we can see that in their archaeological remains,’ said Dr Jacopo Gennai of the University of Cologne’s Institute of Archaeology. ‘The next step is to try to elaborate on the relationship of these early Homo sapiens to earlier Neanderthals.’

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Homo sapiens are thought to have entered or passed through the Balkans when entering present-day Europe. OudsidEscape, Pixabay

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY—If evolutionary biologist Terence D. Capellini were to rank the body parts that make us quintessentially human, the pelvis would place close to the top.

After all, its design makes it possible for humans to walk upright on two legs (unlike our primate cousins) and it makes it possible for mothers to give birth to babies with large heads (therefore big brains). On an anatomical level, the pelvis is well understood, but that knowledge starts to break down when it comes to how and when this uber-important structure takes its shape during development.

A new study from Capellini’s lab is changing that. Published in Science Advances, the work shows when during pregnancy the pelvis takes shape and identifies the genes and genetic sequences that orchestrate the process. The work can one day shed light on the genetic origin of bipedalism and open the door for treatments or predictors of hip joint disorders, like hip dysplasia and hip osteoarthritis.

“This paper is really focused on what all humans share, which are these changes to the pelvis that allowed us to walk on two legs and allowed us to give birth to a large fetal head,” said Capellini, a newly tenured Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and senior author on the study.

The study shows that many of the features essential for human walking and birth form around the 6- to 8-week mark during pregnancy. This includes key pelvic features unique to humans, like its curved and basin-like shape. The formation happens while bones are still cartilage so they can easily, curve, rotate, expand, and grow.

The researchers also saw that as other cartilage in the body begins to turn into bone this developing pelvic section stays as cartilage longer, so it has time to form properly.

“There appears to be a stalling that happens and this stalling allows the cartilage to still grow, which was pretty interesting to find and surprising,” Capellini said. “I call it a zone of protection.”

The researchers performed RNA sequencing to show which genes in the region are actively triggering the formation of the pelvis and are stalling ossification, which normally turns softer cartilage to hard bone. They identified hundreds of genes that are turned either on or off during the 6- to 8-week mark to form the ilium in the pelvis, the largest and uppermost bones of the hip with blade-like structures that curve and rotate into a basin to support walking on two legs.

Compared to chimpanzees and gorillas, the shorter and wider reorientation of our pelvic blades make it so humans don’t have to shift the mass of our weight forward and use our knuckles to walk or balance more comfortably. It also helps increase the size of the birth canal. Apes on the other hand have much narrower birth canals and more elongated ilium bones.

The researchers started the study by comparing these differences in hundreds of skeletal samples of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. The comparisons demonstrated the striking effects that natural selection has had on the human pelvis, the ilium in particular.

To see when the ilium and pelvic elements forming the birth canal began to take shape, the researchers examined 4- to 12-week-old embryos under a microscope with the consent of people who had legally terminated their pregnancies. The researchers then compared samples from the developing human pelvis’ with mouse models to identify the on and off switches triggering the formation.

The work was led by Mariel Young, a former graduate researcher in Capellini’s lab who graduated in 2021 with her Ph.D. The study was a collaboration between Capellini’s lab and 11 other labs in the U.S. and around the world. Ultimately, the group wants to see what these changes mean for common hip diseases.

“Walking on two legs affected our pelvic shape, which affects our disease risk later,” Capellini said. “We want to reveal that mechanism. Why does selection on the pelvis affect our later disease risk of the hip, like osteoarthritis or dysplasia. Making those connections at the molecular level will be critical.”

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Kellepics, Pixabay

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Article Source: Harvard University news release.

*The developmental impacts of natural selection on human pelvic morphology, Science Advances, 17-Aug-2022. 10.1126/sciadv.abq4884 

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGY AND GENETICS (MPI-CBG)—The question of what makes modern humans unique has long been a driving force for researchers. Comparisons with our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, therefore provide fascinating insights. The increase in brain size, and in neuron production during brain development, are considered to be major factors for the increased cognitive abilities that occurred during human evolution. However, while both Neanderthals and modern humans develop brains of similar size, very little is known about whether modern human and Neanderthal brains may have differed in terms of their neuron production during development. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden now show that the modern human variant of the protein TKTL1, which differs by only a single amino acid from the Neanderthal variant, increases one type of brain progenitor cells, called basal radial glia, in the modern human brain. Basal radial glial cells generate the majority of the neurons in the developing neocortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for many cognitive abilities. As TKTL1 activity is particularly high in the frontal lobe of the fetal human brain, the researchers conclude that this single human-specific amino acid substitution in TKTL1 underlies a greater neuron production in the developing frontal lobe of the neocortex in modern humans than Neanderthals.

Microscopy picture of a dividing basal radial glial cell, a progenitor cell type that generates neurons during brain development. Modern human TKTL1, but not Neandertal TKTL1, increases basal radial glia and neuron abundance.
Pinson et al., Science 2022 / MPI-CBG

Only a small number of proteins have differences in the sequence of their amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – between modern humans and our extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. The biological significance of these differences for the development of the modern human brain is largely unknown. In fact, both, modern humans and Neanderthals, feature a brain, and notably a neocortex, of similar size, but whether this similar neocortex size implies a similar number of neurons remains unclear. The latest study of the research group of Wieland Huttner, one of the founding directors of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, carried out in collaboration with Svante Pääbo, director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and Pauline Wimberger of the University Hospital Dresden and their colleagues, addresses just this question. The researchers focus on one of these proteins that presents a single amino acid change in essentially all modern humans compared to Neanderthals, the protein transketolase-like 1 (TKTL1). Specifically, in modern humans TKTL1 contains an arginine at the sequence position in question, whereas in Neanderthal TKTL1 it is the related amino acid lysine. In the fetal human neocortex, TKTL1 is found in neocortical progenitor cells, the cells from which all cortical neurons derive. Notably, the level of TKTL1 is highest in the progenitor cells of the frontal lobe.

Modern human TKTL1, but not Neandertal TKTL1, leads to more neurons in embryonic mouse neocortex
Anneline Pinson, the lead author of the study and researcher in the group of Wieland Huttner, set out to investigate the significance of this one amino acid change for neocortex development. Anneline and her colleagues introduced either the modern human or the Neandertal variant of TKTL1 into the neocortex of mouse embryos. They observed that basal radial glial cells, the type of neocortical progenitors thought to be the driving force for a bigger brain, increased with the modern human variant of TKTL1 but not with the Neandertal variant. As a consequence, the brains of mouse embryos with the modern human TKTL1 contained more neurons.

More neurons in the frontal lobe of modern humans
After this, the researchers explored the relevance of these effects for human brain development. To this end, they replaced the arginine in modern human TKTL1 with the lysine characteristic of Neanderthal TKTL1, using human brain organoids – miniature organ-like structures that can be grown from human stem cells in cell culture dishes in the lab and that mimic aspects of early human brain development. “We found that with the Neanderthal-type of amino acid in TKTL1, fewer basal radial glial cells were produced than with the modern human-type and, as a consequence, also fewer neurons,” says Anneline Pinson. “This shows us that even though we do not know how many neurons the Neanderthal brain had, we can assume that modern humans have more neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain, where TKTL1 activity is highest, than Neanderthals.” The researchers also found that modern human TKTL1 acts through changes in metabolism, specifically a stimulation of the pentose phosphate pathway followed by increased fatty acid synthesis. In this way, modern human TKTL1 is thought to increase the synthesis of certain membrane lipids needed to generate the long process of basal radial glial cells that stimulates their proliferation and, therefore, to increase neuron production.

“This study implies that the production of neurons in the neocortex during fetal development is greater in modern humans than it was in Neandertals, in particular in the frontal lobe,” summarizes Wieland Huttner, who supervised the study. “It is tempting to speculate that this promoted modern human cognitive abilities associated with the frontal lobe.”

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF MOLECULAR CELL BIOLOGY AND GENETICS news release.

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has uncovered intriguing new insights into the diet of people living in Neolithic Britain and found evidence that cereals, including wheat, were cooked in pots.

Using chemical analysis of ancient, and incredibly well-preserved pottery found in the waters surrounding small artificial islands called crannogs in Scotland, the team were able to discern that cereals were cooked in pots and mixed with dairy products and occasionally meat, probably to create early forms of gruel and stew. They also discovered that the people visiting these crannogs used smaller pots to cook cereals with milk and larger pots for meat-based dishes.  

The findings are reported today in the journal Nature Communications.

Cereal cultivation in Britain dates back to around 4000 BCE was probably introduced by migrant farmers from continental Europe. This is evidenced by some, often sparse and sporadic, recovery of preserved cereal grains and other debris found at Neolithic sites.

At this time pottery was also introduced into Britain and there is widespread evidence for domesticated products like milk products in molecular lipid fingerprints extracted from the fabric of these pots. However, with exception for millet, it has not yet been possible to detect molecular traces of accompanying cereals in these lipid signatures, although these went on to become a major staple that dominates the global subsistence economy today.

Previously published analysis of Roman pottery from Vindolanda [Hadrian’s Wall] demonstrated that specific lipid markers for cereals can survive absorbed in archaeological pottery preserved in waterlogged conditions and be detectable through a high-sensitivity approach but, importantly this was ‘only’ 2,000 years old and from contexts where cereals were well-known to have been present. The new findings reported now show that cereal biomarkers can be preserved for thousands of years longer under favourable conditions.

Another fascinating element of this research was the fact that many of the pots analysed were intact and decorated which could suggest they may have had some sort of ceremonial purpose. Since the actual function of the crannogs themselves is also not fully understood yet (with some being far too small for permanent occupation) the research provides new insights into possible ways these constructions were used.

During analysis, cereal biomarkers were widely detected (one third of pots), providing the earliest biomolecular evidence for cereals in absorbed pottery residues in this region.

The findings indicate that wheat was being cooked in pots, despite the fact that the limited evidence from charred plant parts in this region of Atlantic Scotland points mainly to barley. This could be because wheat is under-represented in charred plant remains as it can be prepared differently (e.g., boiled as part of stews), so not as regularly charred or because of more unusual cooking practices.

Cereal markers were strongly associated with lipid residues for dairy products in pots, suggesting they may have been cooked together as a milk-based gruel.

The research was led by Drs Simon Hammann* and Lucy Cramp at the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology.

Dr Hammann said: “It’s very exciting to see that cereal biomarkers in pots can actually survive under favourable conditions in samples from the time when cereals (and pottery) were introduced in Britain. Our lipid-based molecular method can complement archaeobotanical methods to investigate the introduction and spread of cereal agriculture.”

Dr Cramp added: “This research gives us a window into the culinary traditions of early farmers living at the northwestern edge of Europe, whose lifeways are little understood. It gives us the first glimpse of the sorts of practices that were associated with these enigmatic islet locations.”

Crannog sites in the Outer Hebrides are currently the focus of the four-year Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Islands of Stone’ project, directed by two of the papers’ authors (Duncan Garrow from the University of Reading and Fraser Sturt from the University of Southampton) along with Angela Gannon, Historic Environment Scotland.

Professor Garrow said: “This research, undertaken by our colleagues at the University of Bristol, has hugely improved our knowledge of these sites in many exciting ways. We very much look forward to developing this collaborative research going forwards.”

The next stage of the research at the University of Bristol is an exploration of the relationship between these islets and other Neolithic occupation sites in the Hebridean region and beyond as well as more extensive comparative study of the use of different vessel forms through surviving lipid residues. These questions form part of an on-going Arts and Humanities Research Council/South-West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership-funded PhD studentship.

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A substantial sherd of Early Neolithic pottery, as found on the loch bed at Loch Bhogastail. Dan Pascoe

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One of the first pots to be discovered, an Unstan Bowl from Loch Arnish (photo: Chris Murray). Previously published in: Garrow, D., & Sturt, F. (2019). Neolithic crannogs: Rethinking settlement, monumentality and deposition in the Outer Hebrides and beyond. Antiquity, 93(369), 664-684. doi:10.15184/aqy.2019.41. Chris Murray

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Photo reconstruction of one of the pots from Loch Langabhat. Mike Copper

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Article Source: University of Bristol news release

Dr Hammann is now based at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen, Germany.

*Neolithic culinary traditions revealed by cereal, milk and meat lipids in pottery from Scottish crannogs, Nature Communications, 6-Sep-2022. 

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Paris, France 7th of September 2022: a magnificent 800 kilogram, 2.3-metre-tall statue of an ancient Lihyanite king unearthed by archaeologists working in the Dadan region of AlUla, Saudi Arabia, goes on display for the world to see at the Louvre Museum in Paris. As part of a far-reaching cultural collaboration and intergovernmental exchange partnership signed between Saudi Arabia and France, the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) is loaning the imposing sandstone statue to the iconic institution in the French capital from September for a period of five years.

AlUla is located in a fertile valley, at the ancient crossroads of the incense and aromatic caravan routes leading from the south of the Arabian Peninsula to Egypt, Mesopotamia and the shores of the Mediterranean. Around 2.800 years ago the ancient civilization of  Dadan was located here. It was one of the most important trade route stations. Around the second half of the 1st millennium BCE, it was ruled by the kings of the Lihyan tribe, who retained power for several centuries.

Several colossal statues – believed to depict kings and priests – were discovered between 2005 and 2007 during archaeological excavations of the sanctuary of Dadan, led by King Saud University. One of these statues, called the ‘Monumental Statue’, which is now on loan at the Louvre, shows exceptional craftsmanship. The statue’s smooth surface with intricate details showing the muscles of the torso, abdomen, and the remains of the limbs displays characteristic elements of the Lihyanite school of sculpture. These features indicate the statue’s distinct local character and reflects the early artistic influence of Ancient Egypt or Greece.

The five-year loan is an important step to close a critical historical gap in the Louvre’s near-east collection, given that the Arabian Peninsula is under-represented in most of the Museum. This display highlights the archaeological discoveries and preservation work carried out at AlUla by the RCU. AlUla is home to 200,000 years of human history, and an important part of it can now be shared with the Louvre’s international audience through this long-term loan.

The statue was restored in France in 2010 in the context of the Roads of Arabia exhibition through a selection of 300 works, most of which had never been seen before outside their country of origin. Entitled “Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the exhibition artifacts were presented at the Louvre at that time. During this exhibition visitors were offered  an unprecedented glimpse into the various cultures that inhabited the territory of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from prehistoric times to the dawn of the modern era.

Since its establishment in 2017, RCU has overseen a wide range of archaeological projects, with finds of great importance to regional and global history made by an international team of experts. This exhibition is the beginning of what is hoped to be great collaborations between the RCU and major French institutions of heritage, research, and education.

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The Monumental Stature dates from the 5th – 3rd centuries BCE. Courtesy RCU

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The statue within its exhibit space. The statue is thought to depict a Lihyanite king. Courtesy RCU

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Article Source: Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) news release.

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Across three studies, Iosif Lazaridis, David Reich, and colleagues present a comprehensive genomic history of the so-called “Southern Arc,” a region spanning southeastern Europe and Western Asia and long considered to be the “cradle of Western civilization.” The analysis, which examined newly sequenced ancient DNA from more than 700 individuals across the region, reveals a complex population history from the earliest farming cultures to post-Medieval times. Until relatively recently, much of the ancient history of the Southern Arc – stories concerning its people and populations – have been told through archaeological data and the thousands of years of historical accounts and texts from the region. However, innovations in sequencing ancient DNA have provided a new source of historical information. Here, in three separate studies, Lazaridis et al. use ancient DNA from the remains of 777 humans to build a detailed genomic history of the Southern Arc from the Neolithic (~10,000 BCE) to the Ottoman period (~1700 CE). The findings provide an account of complex migrations and population interactions that have shaped the region for thousands of years and suggest that the earlier reliance on modern population history and ancient writings and art have provided an inaccurate picture of early Indo-European cultures.

The first study: “The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe,” presents the new dataset and focuses analysis on the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages (roughly 5000 to 1000 BCE). This analysis revealed large genetic exchanges between the Eurasian Steppe and the Southern Arc and provides new insights into the formation of the Yamnaya steppe pastoralists and the origin of Indo-European language. The second study: “Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia,” presents the first ancient DNA from Pre-Pottery Neolithic Mesopotamia from the epicenter of the region’s Neolithic Revolution. The findings suggest that the transition between Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic phases of Neolithic Anatolia was associated with two distinct pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland. The third study: “A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia,” focuses on ancient DNA analysis during the period of recorded history in the Southern Arc, elucidating the not-well-understood demographics and geographic origins of groups like the Myceneans, Urartians, and Romans.

“The studies by Lazaridis et al. represent an important milestone for ancient genomic research, providing a rich dataset and diverse observations that will drive the next iteration of interpretations of the human history of West Eurasia,” write Benjamin Arbuckle and Zoe Schwandt in a related Perspective. Although the authors note that Lazaridis et al. have produced an “astounding dataset, unimaginable in its scale just a decade ago,” Arbuckle and Schwandt highlight the challenges and limitations of the interpretations, suggesting that many of the narratives explored across the three studies reflect a Eurocentric worldview.

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High aerial view of the Karashamb Necropolis, Armenia. Pavel Avetisyan and Varduhi Melikyan

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Painted vessel-urn from Trench 1, Areni-1 cave, Armenia. Dina Zardaryan

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Basilica of St. Neophytos (in Lake İznik, İznik/ Nikaia, Turkey; Roman/Byzantine period). Constructed in the 4th c. after the First Council of Nicaea convened by Roman Emperor Constantine, the Basilica was erected to honor St. Neophytos who was martyred in 303 AD. The Basilica was submerged underwater after an earthquake in the 8th c. AD. Nine individuals from the Basilica were, based on their DNA, of likely local Anatolian origin, and two genetic outlier individuals of probable Levantine descent. Mustafa Şahin

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Karnut, Tomb 6 (Kura Araxes culture, Early Bronze Age, Armenia). Levon Aghikyan

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Article Source: AAAS news release

*The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe, Science, 26-Aug-2022. 10.1126/science.abm4247 

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