After 3,500 Years More than 100 Impressive and Intact Ancient Cultic Vessels were Found

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A natural hollow in the bedrock that was exposed in archaeological excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority prior to the installation of the northern gas pipeline by the Israel Natural Gas Lines Company, at the foot of Tel Qashish (Tell el Qassis), did not cease to provide ancient surprises. For two weeks archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority excavated the contents of the rock-hollow and removed from it more than 100 intact cultic vessels and other extraordinary items that are c. 3,500 years old. Again and again, every time the excavators thought they reached the bottom of the cavity a new and fascinating layer of complete vessels was discovered beneath the one that was previously dismantled.



In the past the ancients would descend into the rock-hollow by way of two broad, hewn steps. Inside the cavity whole vessels were found piled one atop the other and other vessels were broken by those that had been placed upon them. Among the finds that were recovered: a cultic vessel that was used for burning incense, a sculpted face of a woman that was part of a cultic cup used in dedicating a libation to a god, goblets and bowls with high bases and tableware that was intended for eating and drinking. Other vessels that were found had been brought from Mycenae in Greece, including a storage vessel for precious oils – evidence of the ancient trade relations that existed with Greece.

According to archaeologists Uzi Ad and Dr. Edwin van den Brink, the excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, this is an extremely rare discovery. Until now no such pits as these have been found from 3,500 years ago. It is also extraordinary to find scores of vessels that are in such a good state of preservation. In most excavations fragments of pottery vessels are found, whereas here the vessels were removed from the rock-hollow intact. Each object was removed with the greatest of care, was drawn and documented and revealed beneath it a wealth of other finds. The vessels are numbered and their precise location in the heap is recorded for future research. According to the archaeologists, it is obvious that considerable time and thought were invested in the placement of the vessels in the rock-hollow, as evidence by the different kinds of vessels that were buried separately.




Archaeologists van den Brink and Ad have various theories regarding the purpose of the rock-hollow.“It would appear that the vessels were used in a pagan cult that worshipped idols. During this period it was customary that each city had a temple of its own where special cultic vessels were used”.

At the end of the Late Bronze Age (the Canaanite period) the region was invaded, including Tel Qashish, which was destroyed by a fierce conflagration, along with nearby Tel Yoqneʽam. Therefore, one of the theories is that the vessels were buried in order to protect them from the impending destruction.

Another possibility is that the cultic vessels that were employed in the rituals practiced in the temple were buried after they were no longer used. Since these artifacts were part of the ritual ceremonies a special place was allocated for them and unlike other vessels they were not discarded in the garbage.




The Israel Antiquities Authority plans on presenting these special artifacts to the public this coming year, in an exhibition within the framework of the twentieth anniversary of its establishment. Notification about the opening of the exhibition will be announced separately.

Early modern humans had a mighty bite:

By Bob Beale
June 22, 2010


The robust jaws and formidable teeth of some of our ancestors and ape cousins may suggest that humans are wimps when it comes to producing a powerful bite: but a new study has found the opposite is true, with major implications for our understanding of diet in ancestral humans.

The surprise findings suggest that early modern humans did not necessarily need to use tools and cooking to process high-nutrient hard foods, such as nuts - and perhaps less tough foods such as meat - but may have lost an ability to eat very tough items, such as tubers or leaves.

In the first comparison of its kind, Australian researchers have found that the lightly built human skull has a far more efficient bite than those of the chimp, gorilla and orang-utan, and of two prehistoric members of our family, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus boisei.

They found that modern humans can achieve relatively high bite forces using less-powerful jaw muscles. In short, the human skull does not have to be as robust because, for any given bite force, the sum of forces acting on the human skull is much less.

These results also explain the apparent inconsistency of very thick tooth enamel in modern humans - a feature typically associated with high bite forces in other species. Thick enamel and large human tooth roots are well adapted to take high loads when biting.

The study appears in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B by a team led by Dr Stephen Wroe, of the Computational Biomechanics Research Group in the UNSW's School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. They used sophisticated three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis to compare digital models of actual skulls that had been CAT-scanned.

The technique, adapted from engineering, provides a highly detailed view of where stresses occur in materials under loads designed to mimic actual scenarios. Wroe's team has previously used this approach to study the jaw mechanics of living and extinct species as varied as the great white shark and the sabre-toothed tiger.

These result calls into question previous suggestions that the evolution of a less robust skull in modern humans involved a trade-off for a weaker bite or was necessarily a response to behavioural changes, such as switching to softer foods or more processing of foods with tools and cooking. It has also been suggested that human jaw muscles were reduced to make way for a larger brain.

"However plausible those ideas may seem they have been based on very little by way of comparative data: for example, there are no actual records of bite force collected from living members of any other ape species, " says Dr Wroe. "It turns out that we don't have a wimpish bite at all - it is very efficient and powerful.

"When we're biting down in vertical plane, at the back of the jaw our bite is about 40-50% more efficient than it is for all great apes. It's even more efficient when biting at the front of the jaw.

"We've only looked at two extinct hominins in this study, but, for our size, we humans are comparable in terms of maximum bite force to these fossil species, which include ‘nutcracker man', renowned for its particularly massive skull and jaw muscles. Size matters, but efficiency matters more - and humans are very efficient biters.

"Importantly though, our study focuses on the generation of peak bite forces over short time spans. The jaws of other species may be better adapted to maintain chewing over long periods. This means that although humans are up there with great apes in their ability to quickly crack open a hard item, such as a large nut, or process less tough foods, such as meat, they may be less well adapted to process tough material, such as leaves or bamboo, which requires sustained chewing over a long period".

Separation between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens might have occurred 500,000 years earlier

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The separation of Neardenthal and Homo sapiens might have occurred at least one million years ago, more than 500.000 years earlier than previously believed after DNA-based analyses. A doctoral thesis conducted at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana) -associated with the University of Granada-, analysed the teeth of almost all species of hominids that have existed during the past 4 million years. Quantitative methods were employed and they managed to identify Neanderthal features in ancient European populations.

The main purpose of this research –whose author is Aida Gómez Robles- was to reconstruct the history of evolution of Human species using the information provided by the teeth, which are the most numerous and best preserved remains of the fossil record. To this purpose, a large sample of dental fossils from different sites in Africa, Asia and Europe was analysed. The morphological differences of each dental class was assessed and the ability of each tooth to identify the species to which its owner belonged was analysed.

The researcher concluded that it is possible to correctly determine the species to which an isolated tooth belonged with a success rate ranging from 60% to 80%. Although these values are not very high, they increase as different dental classes from the same individual are added. That means that if several teeth from the same individual are analysed, the probability of correctly identifying the species can reach 100%.

Aida Gómez Robles explains that, from all the species of hominids currently known "none of them has a probability higher than 5% to be the common ancestor of Neardenthals and Homo sapiens. Therefore, the common ancestor of this lineage is likely to have not been discovered yet".

Computer Simulation

What is innovative about this study is that computer simulation was employed to observe the effects of environmental changes on morphology of the teeth. Similar studies had been conducted on the evolution and development of different groups of mammals, but never on human evolution.

Additionally, the research conducted at CENIEH and at the University of Granada is pioneer –together with recent studies based on the shape of the skull- in using mathematical methods to make and estimation of the morphology of the teeth of common ancestors in the evolutionary tree of the human species. "However, in this study, only dental morphology was analysed. The same methodology can be used to rebuild other parts of the skeletum of that species, which would provide other models that would serve as a reference for future comparative studies of new fossil finds."

To carry out this study, Gómez Robles employed fossils from a number of archaeological-paleontological sites, such as that of the Gran Colina and the Sima de los Huesos, located in Atapuerca range (Burgos, Spain), and the site of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. She also studied different fossil collections by visiting international institutions as the National Museum of Georgia, the Institute of Human Paleontology and the Museum of Mankind in Paris, the European Research Centre Tautavel (France), the Senckenberg Institute Frankfurt, the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and the Museum of Natural History in New York and Cleveland.

Although the results of this research were disclosed in two articles published in one of the most prestigious journals in the field of human evolution, Journal of Human Evolution (2007 and 2008), they will be thoroughly presented within a few months.

3.6 million-year-old relative of 'Lucy' discovered

Early hominid skeleton confirms human-like walking is ancient

Scientists from The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Kent State University, Case Western Reserve University, Addis Ababa University and Berkeley Geochronology Center were part of an international team that discovered and analyzed a 3.6 million-year-old partial skeleton found in Ethiopia. The early hominid is 400,000 years older than the famous "Lucy" skeleton. Research on this new specimen indicates that advanced human-like, upright walking occurred much earlier than previously thought. The discovery and results from this initial analysis will be published this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The partial skeleton belongs to "Lucy's" species, Australopithecus afarensis. It was found in the Woranso-Mille area of Ethiopia's Afar region by a team led by first author Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Curator and Head of physical anthropology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The partial skeleton was excavated over five years after the discovery of a fragment of the lower arm bone in 2005. The excavation recovered the most complete clavicle and one of the most complete shoulder blades ever found in the human fossil record.

The specimen was nicknamed "Kadanuumuu" (kah-dah-nuu-muu) by the authors. "Kadanuumuu" means "big man" in the Afar language and reflects its large size. The male hominid stood between 5 to 5 ½ feet tall, while "Lucy" stood at about 3 ½ feet.

"This individual was fully bipedal and had the ability to walk almost like modern humans," said Haile-Selassie. "As a result of this discovery, we can now confidently say that 'Lucy' and her relatives were almost as proficient as we are walking on two legs, and that the elongation of our legs came earlier in our evolution than previously thought."

Co-author Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy, Kent State University professor of anthropology, explained, "The new specimen tells us much more about the pelvis, thorax, and limb proportions than 'Lucy' was able to alone."

Rabbinic dreams during Late Antiquity

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Dreams have always held significance for human beings through the ages, and dreaming has been associated with a multitude of different notions. The idea of dreams functioning as a link between humans and the divine has been particularly common. According to a thesis in religious studies from the University of Gothenburg, this notion is also found within Judaism from the period of Late Antiquity.

"The rabbis interpreted dreams using the same methods that they used to interpret the Bible. Texts and dreams were interwoven, for example stories in the religious documents tell of rabbis dreaming that they are reading verses from the Bible. Jewish prayers and dream rituals also recommend recitation of Scriptural verses as a way of dealing with bad dreams; the good text functioning as a kind of weapon against the evil dream," explains author of the thesis, Erik Alvstad.

The belief that gods and other divine forces convey knowledge and insights to humans through dreams is highlighted in many of the accounts of dreams that readers come across in ancient literary works, such as the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bible, the works of Homer and the Icelandic sagas. Dream interpretation, prayers and rituals to ward off evil dreams, as well as methods that could be employed in order to encourage good dreams through the power of suggestion, also occurred in ancient cultures.

And in the central text of rabbinic Judaism, the Talmud, we find a wealth of literary material linked to the phenomenon of dreaming. One aspect of particular interest in the Jewish dream culture is that the rabbis, the scholarly elite within the Jewish culture, appear to have made systematic attempts to subordinate dreams to the authority of the Bible, or Torah.

"In the capacity of God's revelation to the Jewish people, the Torah was regarded as the royal road to knowledge about how to live your life, as well as a source of insights about hidden secrets. But while the Torah was regarded as the most important link between man and God, dreams continued to attract attention: People had dreams and they speculated about where the dreams came from, what they might mean and whether they might be 'true'," says Erik Alvstad.

According to Erik Alvstad, the central role of text and textual practices within the culture had major consequences for the way in which dreams were regarded. By examining literary material of various genres in the rabbinic documents, he shows that the late ancient rabbis systematically associated the dream with the text.

"There's a kind of competition between the Torah, the central revelation given to the Jewish people on one unique occasion, and the dream as an alternative and more peripheral, yet at the same time continuing form of revelation. This is a circumstance that the rabbis express through the maxim: "Dreams are a sixtieth part of prophecy." The rivalry is also reflected in the polemical stories about conflicts between rabbis and professional dream interpreters about authority and social influence," says Erik Alvstad.

Constraining the reign of ancient Egypt

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Radiocarbon dating helps to nail down the chronology of kings, researchers say

For several thousands of years, ancient Egypt dominated the Mediterranean world—and scholars across the globe have spent more than a century trying to document the reigns of the various rulers of Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Now, a detailed radiocarbon analysis of short-lived plant remains from the region is providing scientists with a long and accurate chronology of ancient Egyptian dynasties that agrees with most previous estimates but also imposes some historic revisions.

Although previous chronologies have been precise in relative ways, assigning absolute dates to specific events in ancient Egyptian history has been an extremely contentious undertaking. This new study tightly constrains those previous predictions, especially for the Old Kingdom, which was determined to be slightly older than some scholars had believed. The study will also allow for more accurate historical comparisons to surrounding areas, like Libya and Sudan, which have been subject to many radiocarbon dating techniques in the past.

Christopher Bronk Ramsey and colleagues from the Universities of Oxford and Cranfield in England, along with a team of researchers from France, Austria and Israel, collected radiocarbon measurements from 211 various plants—obtained from museum collections in the form of seeds, baskets, textiles, plant stems and fruits—that were directly associated with particular reigns of ancient Egyptian kings. They then combined their radiocarbon data with historical information about the order and length of each king's reign to make a complete chronology of ancient Egyptian dynasties.

Their research will be published in the June 18 issue of Science, the peer-reviewed journal published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

"My colleague, Joanne Rowland, went to a lot of museums, explaining what we were doing and asking for their participation," Bronk Ramsey said. "The museums were all very helpful in providing material we were interested in—especially important since export of samples from Egypt is currently prohibited. Fortunately, we only needed samples that were about the same size as a grain of wheat."

The researchers' new chronology does indicate that a few events occurred earlier than previously predicted. It suggests, for example, that the reign of Djoser in the Old Kingdom actually started between 2691 and 2625 B.C. and that the New Kingdom began between 1570 and 1544 B.C.

Bronk Ramsey and his colleagues also found some discrepancies in the radiocarbon levels of the Nile Valley, but they suggest that these are due to ancient Egypt's unusual growing season, which is concentrated in the winter months.

For the most part, the new chronology simply narrows down the various historical scenarios that researchers have been considering for ancient Egypt.

"For the first time, radiocarbon dating has become precise enough to constrain the history of ancient Egypt to very specific dates," said Bronk Ramsey. "I think scholars and scientists will be glad to hear that our small team of researchers has independently corroborated a century of scholarship in just three years."

New analysis on problems between archaeology and pharaonic chronology, based on radiocarbon dating

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In a just published article in Science magazine (June 18, 2010), Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev presents novel implications related to new developments in the radiocarbon dating of Pharaonic Egypt.

The article reports that, for the first time, it is possible to relate the Minoan Santorini eruption with Egyptian Historical Chronology solely on the basis of radiocarbon dates. Thus, it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Moreover, conventional association of Egyptian history with archaeological phases at Tell el-Dab'a, the ancient capital of the Hyksos, located in the northeastern region of the Nile delta, do not fit in terms of radiocarbon dating.

Bruins is a researcher in the University's Department of Man in the Desert at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research and is affiliated with the Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. His research focuses on the 2nd millennium B.C.

"Major problems exist here in relation to the Santorini eruption between archaeological dating, radiocarbon dating and association between archaeological strata in the field and Egyptian Historical Chronology," said Bruins.

A Stone Age Axe in an Iron Age Tomb

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"If one finds something once, it's accidental. If it is found twice, it's puzzling. If found thrice, there is a pattern," the archaeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte say.

In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300.

"In the late Iron Age glass was the most common material for making pearls, and therefore glass pearls are often found in men's and women's graves from this period. The women wore the pearls in a cord around the neck and brought more pearls with them into the grave than men did. The discovery of the seven pearls made us assume that it was a woman's grave we investigated," Hemdorff says.

"But then we suddenly found a stone axe. It was in the same layer of soil as some of the pearls. The axe is from the Stone Age and more than a thousand years older than the pearls! It is a so-called greenstone axe. All the other indicators suggested that the cairn was from the Iron Age and belonged to a buried woman. So why was there an old axe from the Stone Age in the grave?," the archaeologist asks.

During the last three years documented discoveries of artifacts have been made that are typical for the Stone Age -- marks from flint, flint fragments, quartz, axes, etc. in younger burial mounds.

"Unfortunately this documentation did not begin until the 1970s. Up to that date neither archeologists nor grave robbers were aware of these objects. They were just seen as unimportant and without archeological value. It is only now that we are beginning to have enough data for analysis, and we have made many enough discoveries of Stone Age artifacts in younger graves to say that they make a clear pattern," Thäte says.

She points to a good example from Sogndal in Sogn og Fjordane where a stone axe was found in an untouched stone coffin from the 5th century.

"The axe must have been placed there intentionally. Other finds in Scandinavia make this pattern even clearer. In Halland in Sweden they have found a burial site consisting of almost one hundred graves from the late Iron Age where one has registered processed flint objects in nearly every grave," Hemdorff says.

Starting with the finds around the grave at Avaldsnes and taking the other finds into account, it is not likely that the axe ended up in the grave by accident. Why was it deposited there?

The researchers say that people back in the Iron Age had a conscious relationship to objects from earlier times that connected them to their past.

"People probably considered old objects as a heritage from their ancestors. Recycling of old burial mounds for new graves is an indication of this relationship. The idea was that the mounds were memories from a distant past, and written sources indicate that recycling of mounds had a double function. Apart from providing a grave for the dead they also legitimized property and rights. People asserted their control over an area by burying their family in a gravesite belonging to their ancestors," Thäte explains.

The archeologists think that people in pre-history were superstitious and that the axe was deposited in the grave as a part of the burial ritual.

"People believed that the lightning created thunderstones and that individuals who owned such stones would not be hit by the lightning," Hemdorff says.

The idea of a rock falling from the sky caused by lightning is known all over the world. It is certainly found in Roman times and it is connected to objects like meteors, flint stone axes and petrified sea urchins.

"According to folklore a flint axe might protect against lightning and function as a kind of charm," Thäte says.

In Northern Europe the old idea of the thunder god Thor, who throws his hammer when lightning strikes, is common property. It was alive all the way up to the 19th century.

"Thor's mission was to protect gods and people against evil and chaos and it was therefore believed that Thor's rocks protected houses and people. Two things seem to be important when choosing thunderstones: The form had to be similar to an axe or a hammer, that is a ground stone or flint, or the stone had to have "flaming" properties, which flint and quartz have," Hendorff says.

"Both the form of the axe and the flint stones to make fire may be associated with fertility. Thor's hammer is clearly linked to fertility and prosperity. The hammer is a phallus fertilizing the soil, which gives it apotropaic quality, i.e. it has the ability to protect against evil and accidents," Thäte explains.

Since people imagined that thunderstones fell to the ground in connection with lightning, it is possible that the rocks incorporated some of the qualities of lightning or had the power to create a bright light.

"Here is a clear pattern once more. We find old artifacts made of flint in the younger burial mounds. Flint had a strong symbolic power. The stones created fire and were seen as important objects. They can also symbolize the power of lightning," Hemdorff says.

World's Oldest Leather Shoe Found in Armenia

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A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has been found in a cave in Armenia.



Credit: Image courtesy of University College Cork

The 5,500 year old shoe, the oldest leather shoe in the world, was discovered by a team of international archaeologists and their findings will publish on June 9th in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE.

The cow-hide shoe dates back to ~ 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer's foot. It contained grass, although the archaeologists were uncertain as to whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, a precursor to the modern shoe-tree perhaps? "It is not known whether the shoe belonged to a man or woman," said lead author of the research, Dr Ron Pinhasi, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland "as while small (European size 37; US size 7 women), the shoe could well have fitted a man from that era." The cave is situated in the Vayotz Dzor province of Armenia, on the Armenian, Iranian, Nakhichevanian and Turkish borders, and was known to regional archaeologists due to its visibility from the highway below.

The stable, cool and dry conditions in the cave resulted in exceptional preservation of the various objects that were found, which included large containers, many of which held well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots and other edible plants. The preservation was also helped by the fact that the floor of the cave was covered by a thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal over the objects, preserving them beautifully over the millennia!

"We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700 years old because they were in such good condition," said Dr Pinhasi. "It was only when the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford, UK, and in California, US that we realised that the shoe was older by a few hundred years than the shoes worn by Ötzi, the Iceman."

Three samples were taken in order to determine the absolute age of the shoe and all three tests produced the same results. The archaeologists cut two small strips of leather off the shoe and sent one strip to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford and another to the University of California -Irvine Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility. A piece of grass from the shoe was also sent to Oxford to be dated and both shoe and grass were shown to be the same age.

The shoe was discovered by Armenian PhD student, Ms Diana Zardaryan, of the Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, in a pit that also included a broken pot and wild goat horns. "I was amazed to find that even the shoe-laces were preserved," she recalled. "We couldn't believe the discovery," said Dr Gregory Areshian, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, US, co-director who was at the site with Mr Boris Gasparyan, co-director, Institute of Archaeology, Armenia when the shoe was found. "The crusts had sealed the artefacts and archaeological deposits and artefacts remained fresh dried, just like they were put in a can," he said.

The oldest known footwear in the world, to the present time, are sandals made of plant material, that were found in a cave in the Arnold Research Cave in Missouri in the US. Other contemporaneous sandals were found in the Cave of the Warrior, Judean Desert, Israel, but these were not directly dated, so that their age is based on various other associated artefacts found in the cave.

Interestingly, the shoe is very similar to the 'pampooties' worn on the Aran Islands (in the West of Ireland) up to the 1950s. "In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of this shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse region," said Dr Pinhasi.

"We do not know yet what the shoe or other objects were doing in the cave or what the purpose of the cave was," said Dr Pinhasi. "We know that there are children's graves at the back of the cave but so little is known about this period that we cannot say with any certainty why all these different objects were found together." The team will continue to excavate the many chambers of the cave.

Humans Evolved Because They Were Hot?

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Site of Human Evolution Was Scorching

If you think summer in your hometown is hot, consider it fortunate that you don't live in the Turkana Basin of Kenya, where the average daily temperature has reached the mid-90s or higher, year-round, for the past 4 million years.

The need to stay cool in that cradle of human evolution may relate, at least in part, to why pre-humans learned to walk upright, lost the fur that covered the bodies of their predecessors and became able to sweat more, Johns Hopkins University earth scientist Benjamin Passey said.

"The 'take home' message of our study," said Passey, whose report appears this week in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "is that this region, which is one of the key places where fossils have been found documenting human evolution, has been a really hot place for a really long time, even during the period between 3 million years ago and now when the ice ages began and the global climate became cooler."

Passey, an assistant professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the university's Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, says that conclusion lends support to the so-called "thermal hypothesis" of human evolution.

That hypothesis states that our pre-human ancestors gained an evolutionary advantage in walking upright because doing so was cooler (when it is sunny, the near-surface air is warmer than air a few feet above the ground) and exposed their body mass to less sunlight than did crawling on all fours. The loss of body hair (fur) and the ability to regulate body temperature through perspiration would have been other adaptations helpful for living in a warm climate, according to the hypothesis.

"In order to figure out if (the thermal hypothesis) is possibly true or not, we have to know whether it was actually hot when and where these beings were evolving," he said. "If it was hot, then that hypothesis is credible. If it was not, then we can throw out the hypothesis."

Evaluating whether the ancient Turkana Basin climate was, in fact, the same scorching place it is today has been difficult up until now because there are very few direct ways of determining ancient temperature. Efforts to get a handle on temperatures 4 million years ago through analysis of fossil pollen, wood and mammals were only somewhat successful, as they reveal more about plants and rainfall, and less about temperature, according to Passey.

Passey, however, previously was part of a team at the California Institute of Technology that developed a geochemical approach to the "temperature problem." The method involves determining the temperatures of carbonate minerals that form naturally in soil (including a sedimentary rock called "caliche" and hard pan, which is a dense layer of soil, usually found below the uppermost topsoil layer) by examining "clumps" of rare isotopes. (Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have different masses due to differences in the number of neutrons they contain.)

In the case of soil carbonates common in the Turkana Basin, the amount of rare carbon-13 bonded directly to rare oxygen-18 provides a record of the temperature during the initial formation of the mineral. It told the team that soil carbonates there formed at average soil temperatures between 86 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to the conclusion that average daytime air temperatures were even higher. In other words, it was hot way back then in northeastern Kenya.

"We already have evidence that habitats in ancient East Africa were becoming more open, which is also hypothetically part of the scenario for the development of bipedalism and other human evolution, but now we have evidence that it was hot," Passey said. "Thus, we can say that the 'thermal hypothesis' is credible."

Study finds genetic links among Jewish people

Using sophisticated genetic analysis, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and New York University School of Medicine have published a study indicating that Jews are a widely dispersed people with a common ancestry. Jews from different regions of the world were found to share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and that date back to ancient times.

The study also provides the first detailed genetic maps of the major Jewish subpopulations, a resource that can be used to study the genetic origins of disease. The findings appear in the June 3 online issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

"This study provides new genomic information that can benefit not only those of Jewish ancestry, but the population at large," said co-author Edward Burns, M.D., executive dean and professor of pathology and of medicine at Einstein. "By providing a comprehensive genetic fingerprint of various Jewish subpopulations, it can help us understand genetic links to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other common diseases."

To better understand the ways in which current Jewish groups are related, Dr. Burns and his colleagues, including principal investigator Harry Ostrer, M.D., professor of pediatrics, pathology and medicine at NYU, performed a genome-wide analysis of the three major groups formed by the Diasporas (the scattering of Jews into Europe, and throughout the Middle East): Eastern European Ashkenazim; Italian, Greek, and Turkish Sephardim; and Iranian, Iraqi, and Syrian Mizrahim Jews.

A total of 237 participants were recruited from Jewish communities in the metropolitan New York region, Seattle, Athens, Rome and Israel. Subjects were included only if all four grandparents came from the same Jewish community. The results were compared with a genetic analysis of 418 people from non-Jewish groups around the world.

The researchers found that Jews from the major Diaspora groups formed a distinct population cluster, albeit one that is closely related to European and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations. Each of the Diaspora groups also formed its own cluster within the larger Jewish cluster. Further, each group demonstrated Middle-Eastern ancestry and varying degrees of mixing with surrounding populations. The genetic analysis showed that the two major groups, Middle Eastern Jews and European Jews, diverged from each other approximately 2,500 years ago.

The study also demonstrated that the history of Jewish people could be found in their genomes. The two major groups, Middle Eastern Jews and European Jews, were timed to have diverged from each other approximately 2500 years ago. Southern European populations show the greatest proximity to Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Italian Jews, reflecting the large-scale southern European conversion and admixture known to have occurred over 2,000 years ago during the formation of the European Jewry. An apparent North African ancestry component was also observed as was present in the Sephardic groups potentially reflecting gene flow from Moorish to Jewish populations in Spain from 711 to 1492. The structure of the genomes of Ashkenazi Jewish populations indicates a severe bottleneck followed by expansion during the 19th century when the Jewish population in western and eastern Europe increased about twice as fast as the non-Jewish population. This has been referred to as "the demographic miracle." Within every Jewish group, there was a high degree of relatedness between any two of its members. For Ashkenazi Jews, the relatedness was similar to what one might observe for fifth cousins.

The genetic, cultural and religious traditions of contemporary Jewish people originated in the Middle East over three thousand years ago. Since that time, Jewish communities have migrated from the Middle East into Europe, North Africa and across the world. The migration of Jews to new locales is known as the Diaspora. This study shows that although Jewish people experienced genetic mixing with surrounding populations, they retained a genetic coherence along with a religious one.

"Previous genetic studies of blood group and serum markers suggested that Jewish groups had Middle Eastern origin with greater genetic similarity between paired Jewish populations," says senior study author, Dr. Harry Ostrer, professor of pediatrics, pathology and medicine and director of the Human Genetics Program at NYU Langone Medical Center. "More recent studies of Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA have pointed to founder effects of both Middle Eastern and local origin, yet, the issue of how to characterize Jewish people as mere coreligionists or as genetic isolates that may be closely or loosely related remained unresolved."

"The study supports the idea of a Jewish people linked by a shared genetic history," said Dr. Ostrer. "Yet the admixture with European people explains why so many European and Syrian Jews have blue eyes and blond hair."

"The goal of the study was to determine a genomic baseline," said lead author Gil Atzmon, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein. "With this established, we'll be able to more easily identify genes associated with complex disorders like diabetes that are determined by multiple variants across the genome. Armed with this information, we will be better positioned to treat patients."

“Brain Food” in Early Human Ancestors’ Diet

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A team of scientists now know what may have helped fuel the evolution of the human brain two million years ago. Archaeologists working in Kenya unearthed evidence that our human ancestors ate a wide variety of animals including fish, turtles and even crocodiles. Based on analyses of animal bones and stone tools they excavated, the research team found that our early ancestors incorporated aquatic “brain food” in their diet.

“These aquatic foods are really important sources of the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and docosahexaenoic acid that are so critical to human brain growth,” said co-author and paleoanthropologist Dr. Richmond. “Finding these foods in the diets of our early ancestors suggests they may have helped to lift constraints on brain size and fuel the evolution of a larger brain.”

The discovery of such a diverse animal diet is important because early human brain size increased dramatically after two million years ago. Growing a large brain requires an enormous investment in calories and nutrients and places considerable costs on the mother and developing infant. Anthropologists have long considered meat in the diet as key to the evolution of a larger brain. However, until now, there was no evidence that human ancestors this long ago had incorporated into their diets animal foods, from lakes and rivers, rich in brain nutrients.

A team of scientists from Kenya, the United States, the U.K., Australia and South Africa discovered a 1.95 million year-old site in northwestern Kenya in 2004. Preservation of the excavated site was so remarkable that the team was able to develop a detailed reconstruction of the environment. Over four years, the scientists excavated literally thousands of fossilized bones and stone tools, and were able to determine that at least 10 individual animals, and perhaps many more, were butchered by early humans at this site. Many of these bones showed evidence of cut marks made by early human ancestors as a result of using sharp stone tools to cut meat from the bones or crush long bones to access the fat-rich bone marrow.

“At sites of this age we often consider ourselves lucky if we find any bone associated with stone tools, but here we found everything from small bird bones to hippopotamus leg bones,” said archeologist David Braun of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who was the lead author on the research.

Gaining access to smaller animals like turtles and fish may have allowed these early humans to increase the protein in their diet without the danger of interacting with dangerous carnivores, such as lions and hyenas. These early humans were relatively small and not well suited to compete with the large carnivores that lived at that time. Stumbling upon brain-fueling food may have been a fortunate side effect of finding foods at lakes and rivers.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. The project was directed by Jack Harris of Rutgers University and represents a collaborative effort between National Museums of Kenya and a host of international institutions. Paleontologist Marion Bamford of the University of Witswatersrand in South Africa identified fossilized plant remains that revealed the wet and possibly marshy environment in which these early humans were living. Lead zooarchaeologist Jack McCoy of Rutgers University identified bones of various animals including turtles, fish, crocodiles and large antelopes that ended up as the meals of these early humans. Dr. Richmond of GW took part in fossil identification and analyzing how the findings were important for human evolution.

The site, known to the archaeologists by the moniker FwJj 20, is located in the northern part of the Koobi Fora research area on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in Marsabit District, Kenya. The presence of overlying layers of volcanic ash helped the team pin down the age of the site. Geologists on the team, Naomi Levin of John Hopkins University and Andrew Herries of the University of New South Wales, Australia, were able to use a combination of techniques to estimate the age of the site as close to 1.95 million years. David Braun and his international team will return to northern Kenya to find more answers to questions about the diets of our earliest ancestors.

The article, “Early hominin diet included diverse terrestrial and aquatic animals 1.95 Ma in East Turkana, Kenya,” will appear in the May 31, 2010, issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS