A Stone Bowl Engraved with a Rare Hebrew Inscription – “Hyrcanus” – Dating to the Hasmonean Period was Discovered

“Hyrcanus” was a common name at that time, as well as the name of two of the leaders of the Hasmonean dynasty
 
Who was "Hyrcanus" whose name is engraved in Hebrew on a stone bowl from Jerusalem 2,100 years ago? In 2015 a fragment of a bowl fashioned from chalk (a type of limestone) was unearthed in the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeological excavation in the Giv?ati parking lot at the City of David, in the Jerusalem Walls National Park. The vessel was published today and immediately aroused the curiosity of researchers.

According to Dr. Doron Ben-Ami of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Esther Eshel of Bar-Ilan University, "This is one of the earliest examples of chalk vessels to appear in Jerusalem. These stone vessels were extensively used by Jews because they were considered vessels that cannot become ritually unclean".

 The bowl was discovered during an archaeological excavation beneath the foundations of a miqwe dating to the Hasmonean period, which was part of a complex of water installations that were used for ritual bathing. The Giv?ati parking site in the City of David is among the largest excavation areas opened so far in Jerusalem. The excavations at the site, sponsored by the ?Ir David Foundation, have so far uncovered a wealth of artifacts from different periods. Of these, those that arouse special interest are the objects with traces of writing on them, especially when they can be deciphered and read.

 Was Hyrcanus, whose name is engraved on the bowl, a high-ranking person, or perhaps simply an ordinary citizen during the Hasmonean period? According to the researchers, it is difficult to ascertain. Since there are few vessels in the archaeological record of this period which are engraved with names, it is not known whether this type of engraving was a routine act or a special tribute.

"The name Hyrcanus was fairly common in the Hasmonean period," say Dr. Ben-Ami and Prof. Eshel. “We know of two personages from this period who had this name: John Hyrcanus, who was the grandson of Matityahu the Hasmonean and ruled Judea from 135–104 BCE, and John Hyrcanus II, who was the son of Alexander Jannaeus and Salome Alexandra; however, it is not possible to determine if the bowl belonged specifically to either of them”.

About a year ago remains of the Greek (Seleucid) Akra were exposed in the Giv?ati parking lot at the City of David. This was the famous fortress built by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in order to control the city and monitor the activity in the Temple, which was eventually conquered by the Hasmoneans. Interestingly, the bowl was found a short distance from where the remains of the Akra were revealed.

Arctic Inuit, Native American cold adaptations may originate from extinct hominids

In the Arctic, the Inuits have adapted to severe cold and a predominantly seafood diet. After the first population genomic analysis of the Greenland Inuits (Fumagalli, Moltke et al. 2015, Science doi:10.1126/science.aab2319), a region in the genome containing two genes has now been scrutinized by scientists: TBX15 and WARS2. This region is thought to be central to cold adaptation by generating heat from a specific type of body fat, and was earlier found to be a candidate for adaptation in the Inuits.

Now, a team of scientists led by Fernando Racimo, Rasmus Nielsen et al. have followed up on the first natural selection study in Inuits to trace back the origins of these adaptations.

To perform the study, they used the genomic data from nearly 200 Greenlandic Inuits and compared this to the 1000 Genomes Project and ancient hominid DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans. The results, published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, provide convincing evidence that the Inuit variant of the TBX15/WARS2 region first came into modern humans from an archaic hominid population, likely related to the Denisovans.

"The Inuit DNA sequence in this region matches very well with the Denisovan genome, and it is highly differentiated from other present-day human sequences, though we can't discard the possibility that the variant was introduced from another archaic group whose genomes we haven't sampled yet." - said Fernando Racimo, lead author of the study.

The authors found that the variant is present at low-to-intermediate frequencies throughout Eurasia, and at especially high frequencies in the Inuits and Native American populations, but almost absent in Africa. TBX15 is a gene known to affect the human body's response to cold, and is associated with a number of traits related to body fat distribution. The authors speculate that the archaic variant may have been beneficial to modern humans during their expansion throughout Siberia and across Beringia, into the Americas.

The research team also worked to understand the physiological role of the region, which may be of interest to scientists concerned with factors that help determine BMI index and fat metabolism. They found an association between the archaic region and the gene expression of TBX15 and WARS2 in various tissues, like fibroblasts and adipose tissue. They also observed that the methylation patterns in this region in the Denisovan genome are very different from those of Neanderthals and present-day humans. "All this suggests that the introduced variant may have altered the regulation of these genes, thought the exact mechanism by which this occurred remains elusive." - said Racimo, who was a graduate student in UC Berkeley at the time of the study, and now works at the New York Genome Center.

The evidence adds to the remarkable number of recent examples of ancient interbreeding that may have conferred unique adaptive traits to modern humans, either from Neanderthals or Denisovans. And it is the second major example ---the other being the EPAS1 genomic locus (found in the high altitude adaptation of Tibetans) to be passed on from archaic humans into the modern human gene pool.

Polluted river from before Bronze Age

Industrial pollution may seem like a modern phenomenon, but in fact, an international team of researchers may have discovered what could be the world's first polluted river, contaminated approximately 7,000 years ago.

In this now-dry riverbed in the Wadi Faynan region of southern Jordan, Professor Russell Adams, from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo, and his colleagues found evidence of early pollution caused by the combustion of copper. Neolithic humans here may have been in the early stages of developing metallurgy by learning how to smelt.

The research findings, published in Science of the Total Environment, shed light on a turning point in history, when humans began moving from making tools out of stones to making tools out of metal. This period, known as the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, is a transitional period between the late Neolithic or Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age.

"These populations were experimenting with fire, experimenting with pottery and experimenting with copper ores, and all three of these components are part of the early production of copper metals from ores," said Adams. "The technological innovation and the spread of the adoption and use of metals in society mark the beginning of the modern world."

People created copper at this time by combining charcoal and the blue-green copper ore found in abundance in this area in pottery crucibles or vessels and heating the mixture over a fire. The process was time-consuming and labour-intensive and, for this reason, it took thousands of years before copper became a central part of human societies.

Many of the objects created in the earliest phase of copper production were primarily symbolic and fulfilled a social function within society. Attaining rare and exotic items was a way in which individuals attained prestige.

As time passed, communities in the region grew larger and copper production expanded. People built mines, then large smelting furnaces and factories by about 2600 BC.

"This region is home to the world's first industrial revolution," said Adams. "This really was the centre of innovative technology."

But people paid a heavy price for the increased metal production. Slag, the waste product of smelting, remained. It contained metals such as copper, lead, zinc, cadmium, and even arsenic, mercury and thalium. Plants absorbed these metals, people and animals such as goats and sheep ate them, and so the contaminants bioaccumulated in the environment.

Adams believes the pollution from thousands of years of copper mining and production must have led to widespread health problems in ancient populations. Infertility, malformations and premature death would have been some of the effects. Researchers have found high levels of copper and lead in human bones dating back to the Roman period.

Adams and his international team of researchers are now trying to expand the analysis of the effects of this pollution to the Bronze Age, which began around 3200 BC. The Faynan region has a long history of human occupation, and the team is examining the extent and spread of this pollution at the time when metals and their industrial scale production became central to human societies.

Researchers find overwhelming evidence of malaria's existence 2,000 years ago

An analysis of 2,000-year-old human remains from several regions across the Italian peninsula has confirmed the presence of malaria during the Roman Empire, addressing a longstanding debate about its pervasiveness in this ancient civilization.

The answer is in mitochondrial genomic evidence of malaria, coaxed from the teeth of bodies buried in three Italian cemeteries, dating back to the Imperial period of the 1st to 3rd centuries Common Era.

The genomic data is important, say researchers, because it serves as a key reference point for when and where the parasite existed in humans, and provides more information about the evolution of human disease.

"Malaria was likely a significant historical pathogen that caused widespread death in ancient Rome," says evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, director of McMaster's Ancient DNA Centre where the work was conducted.

A serious and sometimes fatal infectious disease that is spread by infected mosquitoes, malaria and its parasite Plasmodium falciparum, is responsible for nearly 450,000 deaths every year, the majority of them children under the age of five.

"There is extensive written evidence describing fevers that sound like malaria in ancient Greece and Rome, but the specific malaria species responsible is unknown," says Stephanie Marciniak, a former post doctoral student in the Ancient DNA Centre and now a postdoctoral scholar at Pennsylvania State University.

"Our data confirm that the species was likely Plasmodium falciparum, and that it affected people in different ecological and cultural environments. These results open up new questions to explore, particularly how widespread this parasite was, and what burden it placed upon communities in Imperial Roman Italy," she says.

Marciniak sampled teeth taken from 58 adults and 10 children interred at three Imperial period Italian cemeteries: Isola Sacra, Velia and Vagnari. Located on the coast, Velia and Isola Sacra were known as important port cities and trading centres. Vagnari is located further inland and believed to be the burial site of labourers who would have worked on a Roman rural estate.

Using techniques developed at McMaster and abroad, researchers mined tiny DNA fragments from dental pulp taken from the teeth. They were able to extract, purify and enrich specifically for the Plasmodium species known to infect humans.

It was a difficult and painstaking process, complicated by the very nature of the disease.

Usable DNA is challenging to extract because the parasites primarily dwell within the bloodstream and organs, including the spleen and liver, which decompose and break down over time--in this instance, over the course of two millennia.

Marciniak, Poinar, and Tracy Prowse from McMaster, alongside Luca Bandioli from the Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome and Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney recovered more than half of the P. falciparum mitochondrial genome from two individuals from Velia and Vagnari.

P. falciparum remains the most prevalent malaria parasite in sub-Saharan Africa and the most-deadly anywhere, responsible for the largest number of malaria-related deaths globally.

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

Prehistoric plant remains highlight diverse origins of cereal domestication

A study from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and the University of Copenhagen shows that the process of cultivation and domestication of cereals occurred at different times across southwest Asia. The analyses of plant remains from archaeological sites dated to around 11,600-10,700 years ago suggest that in regions such as Turkey, Iran and Iraq, legumes, fruits and nuts dominated the diet, whereas cereals were the preferred types of plants in Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Israel. This means that Neolithic plant-based subsistence strategies were regionally diverse and that cereals were not staple foods in all regions.

Recent archaeological studies have suggested that the cultivation of morphologically wild plant species (pre-domestication cultivation), a precursor of agriculture, developed across southwest Asia around 11,600-10,700 years ago, during the co-called Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. In a new study published in PNAS - only for reporters with access to embargoed PNAS content, researchers from the University of the Basque Country and the University of Copenhagen document regional diversity in the types of plant species that were exploited during this period:

"We have studied the available archaeobotanical evidence (charred plant remains) from Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites in southwest Asia dated to approximately 11,600 to 10,700 years ago, and we can conclude that the importance we have hitherto attributed to cereals such as wheat and barley needs to be re-evaluated as other plants such as legumes - e.g. lentils, beans and peas - also played a crucial role during this time period, particularly in the eastern Fertile Crescent, e.g. Iran and Iraq, and southeast Turkey" says postdoc and archaeobotanist Amaia Arranz-Otaegui from the Centre for the Study of Early Agricultural Societies at the University of Copenhagen.

The origins of domesticated cereals

Not only did Neolithic communities from various regions across southwest Asia exploit a different range of plants - and did thus not rely exclusively on cereals - but the evidence also suggests that the different plant exploitation strategies could have contributed to important chronological dissimilarities during the emergence of morphologically domesticated species:

"Our results indicate that in the southern Levant (e.g. modern-day Jordan, Israel, Palestine and southern Syria), cereals were predominant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA, 11,600-10,700 years ago) and domesticated cereals, which eventually became the cornerstones of agriculture, appeared around 10,700-10,200 years ago. But in the eastern Fertile Crescent, where cereals were not commonly exploited during the PPNA, domesticated cereals appear around 400-1000 years later. We know that plant domestication was a process that occurred in multiple regions and involved several plant species, so it is likely that in those regions where cereal exploitation was not common practice, similar management processes involving plants such as legumes could have existed," Amaia Arranz-Otaegui points out.

Mummified remains identified as Egyptian Queen Nefertari

A team of international archaeologists believe a pair of mummified legs on display in an Italian museum may belong to Egyptian Queen Nefertari - the favourite wife of the pharaoh Ramses II.

The team, which included Dr Stephen Buckley and Professor Joann Fletcher from the University of York's Department of Archaeology, used radiocarbon dating, anthropology, palaeopathology, genetics and chemical analysis to identify the remains.

They conclude that "the most likely scenario is that the mummified knees truly belong to Queen Nefertari".

As the favourite wife of the pharaoh Ramses II, Nefertari was provided with a beautifully decorated tomb in the Valley of the Queens to which Professor Fletcher was recently given access.

Although plundered in ancient times, the tomb, first excavated by Italian archaeologists in 1904, still contained objects which were sent to the Egyptian Museum in Turin.

This included a pair of mummified legs which could have been part of a later interment as was often the case in other tombs in the region. But as the legs had never been scientifically investigated, it was decided to undertake the recent study to find out if the legs could actually represent all that remained of one of Egypt's most legendary queens.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, revealed that the legs are those of an adult woman of about 40 years of age.

Dr Buckley's chemical analysis also established that the materials used to embalm the legs are consistent with 13th Century BC mummification traditions, which when taken in conjunction with the findings of the other specialists involved, led to the identification.

Professor Fletcher said: "This has been the most exciting project to be part of, and a great privilege to be working alongside with some of the world's leading experts in this area.

"Both Stephen and myself have a long history studying Egypt's royal mummies, and the evidence we've been able to gather about Nefertari's remains not only complements the research we've been doing on the queen and her tomb but really does allow us to add another piece to the jigsaw of what is actually known about Egyptian mummification."

Plant-based menu of prehistoric man

A tiny grape pip (scale 1mm), left on the ground some 780,000 years ago, is one of more than 9,000 remains of edible plants discovered in an old Stone Age site in Israel on the shoreline of Lake Hula in the northern Jordan valley, dating back to the Acheulian culture from 1.75-0.25 million years ago. The floral collection provides rich testimony of the plant-based diet of our prehistoric ancestors.

While around the world remains of Paleolithic plants are scarce, this unique macro-botanical assemblage has allowed researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University to study the vegetal diet of humans from early-mid-Pleistocene, which is central to understanding the evolution, adaptation and exploitation of the environment by hominins.

The findings were recovered during archeological excavations at the waterlogged site of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, where the earliest evidence of human-controlled fire in western Asia was discovered in recent years.

Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar of the Institute of Archeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who conducted the excavations with colleagues, have long studied findings of hominid occupations in the Levantine Corridor, through which several hominin waves dispersed out of Africa.

In a research paper that will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on December 5, titled "The plant component of an Acheulian diet: a case study from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel", Prof. Goren-Inbar reveals the discovery of the ancient macrobotanical remains, which for the first time indicate to the rich variety of plant assortments and subsistence opportunities that were available to the early humans on the transition from an African-based to a Eurasian diet.

"In recent years we were met with a golden opportunity to reveal numerous remains of fruits, nuts and seeds from trees, shrubs and the lake, alongside the remains of animals and man-made stone tools in one locality," Prof. Goren-Inbar said.

Of the remains found on site, Prof. Goren-Inbar and Dr. Yoel Melamed of the Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar Ilan University have identified 55 species of edible plants, including seeds, fruits, nuts, leaves, stems, roots and tubers.

The findings, many of them minor in size, have been preserved for hundreds of thousands of years thanks to the damp conditions in the vicinity of the site, said Dr. Melamed. The basalts under and in the site were dated by Ar/Ar and the dates were further confirmed by results of paleomagnetic analyses.

"This region is known for the wealth of plants, but what surprised us were the sources of plant food coming from the lake. We found more than 10 species that existed here in prehistoric times but no longer today, such as two types of water nuts, from which seven were edible," explained Dr. Melamed.

The site was submerged under the Jordan River and the Hula Lake in conditions of humidity and lack of oxygen, aided by the fast covering of layers of sediments, in which archaeologists also found stone tools and animal fossils.

Gesher Benot Ya'aqov is also the place where Prof. Goren-Inbar found the earliest evidence of the use of fire in Eurasia (LINK). "The use of fire is very important because a lot of the plants are toxic or inedible. Using fire, like roasting nuts and roots for example, allows the use of various parts of the plant and increases the diversity of the plant component of the Acheulian diet, alongside aquatic and terrestrial fauna," said Prof. Goren-Inbar.

The use of fire and the availability of a diverse range of flora highlight the ability of prehistoric man to adjust to a new environment, to exploit the environment for his own benefit and to colonize beyond Africa.

Neolithic Syrians were first to domesticate cereals

11,000 years ago, a Syrian community began a practice which would change man's relationship with his surroundings forever: the initiation of cereal domestication and, with it, the commencement of agriculture, a process which lasted several millennia. The discoveries, made at the Tell Qarassa North archaeological site, situated near the city of Sweida in Syria, are the oldest evidence of the domestication of three species of cereal: one of barley and two of wheat (spelt and farrow).

The team from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Universities of Cantabria and the Basque Country (both in northern Spain) was led by CSIC's Juan José Ibáñez, and excavated in the area between 2009 and 2010. Scientific investigators from the Universities of Copenhagen and London also collaborated in the study which is published in the latest edition of the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Neolithic man in question lived at a time of huge changes. They gathered wild wheat and barley and gradually began the process of domesticating them. That is to say, they began to build a local economy based around controlling the reproduction of the foods they ate.

The origins of agriculture

Although it was already known that cereal breeding took place in the Near East, it was not known whether the first domesticated cereals appeared in one region or in several regions simultaneously, or, if the first case were true, in which region. "The process began when hunter gatherer communities started collecting wild cereals, leading in turn to these wild cereals being sown, then reaped using sickles. This initial crop husbandry led to the selective breeding of cereal grains. Gradually, domestic traits became more and more dominant", explains Ibañez.

To be precise, it is this work at Tell Qarrassa which allows samples of cereals from the very first phase in the domestication process to be identified. Of all the cereals which were grown at the site, around 30% show domestic traits whilst the remainder continue to show traits which are characteristic of wild cereals.

"We now know that the cereals from Tell Qarassa were sown in autumn and harvested in February and March, before reaching full maturity to prevent the risk- given that they were still partially wild- of heads breaking off and being lost at harvest. The crop was cut close to the ground so as to make full use of the straw and, once collected, it would be thrashed and the grain cleaned in the courtyards outside their homes before being stored inside. Prior to being eaten, the grain was crushed in a mortar and pestle then ground in hand mills", explains the CSIC investigator.

The information obtained at Tell Qarassa shows both the advanced level of technical development of these first farming communities and also that the domestication process of cereals unfolded at varying rates in the different regions of the Near East. "It has yet to be discovered whether the later appearance of domesticated cereals in these regions was due to the use of those cereals originating in the south of Syria which we have been studying, or whether other independent domestication processes took place elsewhere", concludes Ibañez.

Bitumen from Middle East discovered in 7th century buried ship in UK

Middle Eastern Bitumen, a rare, tar-like material, is present in the seventh century ship buried at Sutton Hoo, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 01, 2016 by Pauline Burger and colleagues from the British Museum, UK and the University of Aberdeen.

The seventh century ship found within a burial mound at Sutton Hoo, UK was first excavated in 1939 and is known for the spectacular treasure it contained including jewellery, silverware, coins, and ceremonial armour. The site is thought to be an example of the European ship-burial rites of the time, and also includes a burial chamber where a corpse was likely laid. Fragments of black organic material found in this chamber were originally identified as locally-produced 'Stockholm Tar' and linked to repair and maintenance of the ship. The authors of the present study re-evaluated these previously-identified samples, as well as other tar-like materials found at the site, using imaging techniques and isotopic analysis and found the samples had been originally misidentified.

By comparing the samples from Sutton Hoo to various reference materials, the researchers' analysis revealed that the previously-identified 'Stockholm Tar' lumps actually displayed the molecular and isotopic characteristics of archaeological bitumen, and specifically bitumen from the Middle East rather than from a local British source. Archaeological finds of bitumen from this period in Britain are extremely rare and the authors state that this finding is the first material evidence for trading of Middle Eastern bitumen northwards into the British Isles.

While the original form and purpose of the bitumen could not be discerned from the remaining fragments, the authors suggest that it may have been included deliberately in the burial chamber, possibly the remaining components of ornamental objects adorning the grave, or perhaps included as a prestigious raw material.

 

Analysis of Iron Age ceramics suggests complex pattern of Eastern Mediterranean trade

Cypriot-style pottery may have been locally produced as well as imported and traded in Turkey during the Iron Age, according to a study published November 30, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Steven Karacic from Florida State University, USA, and James Osborne of the University of Chicago, USA.

White Painted and Bichrome Wares are Cypriot-style ceramics produced during the Iron Age that may provide clues about trade in the Eastern Mediterranean at that time. Although these ceramics are often assumed to be imports from Cyprus, excavations in southern Turkey have suggested that some pottery was produced locally, challenging previous assumptions about trade in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The authors of the present study analyzed White Painted and Bichrome Wares recovered from three sites in the Hatay region of Turkey: Tell Tayinat, Çatal Höyük, and Tell Judaidah, using techniques which bombarded the pottery with x-rays and neutrons, providing insight into the chemical elements they contained. Imported and local versions of this pottery had different elemental compositions, which helped the authors determine where this pottery was produced. When compared with existing datasets, the researchers found that Çatal Höyük and Tell Judaidah may only have had access to pottery imported from Cyprus whereas Tell Tayinat may have made Cypriot-style pottery locally as well as importing it.

The authors suggest that feasting practices amongst the affluent in Tell Tayinat may have driven demand for Cypriot-style pottery, resulting in either local potters producing this pottery or Cypriot potters settling in the vicinity. Usually, pottery styles are expected to become increasingly rare the further away they are found from their origin of production, so these findings suggest a complex pattern of exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age.

"We were surprised to find that locally produced Cypriot-style pottery was consumed at Tell Tayinat but not the other sites included in our study," says Karacic. "These results indicate complex social and economic interactions between the Amuq and Cyprus that we are only just beginning to understand for the Iron Age."

Early America: Evidence of original 1620 Plymouth settlement discovered

Students with the remains of Constance the calf.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of Massachusetts Boston
 
Three hundred and ninety-five years after Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts, researchers from UMass Boston's Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research can say they have definitively discovered evidence of the original 1620 Plymouth settlement. Part of the proof involves a calf that UMass Boston students have affectionately named Constance.

For the fourth summer, David Landon, associate director of the Fiske Center, led a group of undergraduate and graduate students in a field school in Plymouth offered through UMass Boston's College of Advancing and Professional Studies. Landon and the students spent five weeks on Burial Hill looking for the site of the original Pilgrim settlement. ​Landon's goal when he started was to find evidence of the original settlement prior to the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 2020. He met his goal four years early, in the first year of a three-year, $200,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant.

Because the original structures weren't built with bricks, the research team couldn't look for foundations. Rather, they had to look for "post and ground construction" -- basically holes for wood, and dirt.

"While we're digging, we're constantly in the process of trying to interpret what we're finding. It really goes to just moving slowly and trying to see if there are any patterns in the flow that we can map out. As soon as that starts, it becomes a slow process. It's about much more than the artifacts -- it's about trying to pin down soil color and trying to understand constructed features that are no longer there," Landon said.

But then Landon's team did start finding 17th century artifacts: 17th century pottery, tins, trade beads, and musket balls -- around that post and ground construction. Landon says the students and researchers were at this point cautiously optimistic that they had found a location inside the settlement walls. And then they found "Constance" -- a calf buried whole in the bottom-most pit. Because native people didn't have domestic cattle, Landon says we know that she lived -- and died -- in the confines of the original Plymouth settlement.

"Constance is a great symbol of this. Oftentimes success in the colony depended on herds of cattle. It became a centerpiece of the economy. So the calf does connect us to that story," Landon said.

Kathryn Ness is the curator of collections at Plimoth Plantation, UMass Boston's partner in this project. She says this discovery is huge.

"Finding evidence of colonial activity inside the original 1620 Plymouth settlement is an incredibly exciting discovery that has the potential to change dramatically our understanding of early European colonization in New England. For the first time, we have proof of where the settlement was located and what kinds of items the Pilgrims owned and used," Ness said. "At Plimoth Plantation, the team's findings will help us further refine our exhibits, as we use archaeological evidence and historical documents as the basis for our portrayal of the past and to ensure that our buildings, activities, and reproduction objects are as accurate as possible. We are looking forward to learning more about their discoveries and seeing what they find next season!"

Landon and more students and researchers will be back next summer.

"We've opened the first window but we want a bigger view. We want the bay window. We want to see if we can find other components," Landon said.

For now, researchers and students are cleaning, labeling, and researching what was found this past summer. They're also going to be trying to figure out how Constance died and why she was buried, rather than eaten.

Israel: 3,800 Year Old Pottery Vessel with the 3-D Image of a Person

The vessel was discovered together with daggers, an axe head and arrowheads that were apparently buried as funerary offerings for one of the respected members of the ancient settlement.

Photographer: Clara Amit

A small extraordinary jug from the Middle Bronze Age was revealed with the assistance of pupils in the Land of Israel and Archaeology matriculation stream in an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeological excavation that was recently conducted in the city of Yehud prior to the construction of residential buildings.


According to Gilad Itach, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “It literally happened on the last day of the excavation when right in front of our eyes and those of the excited students an unusual ceramic vessel c. 18 cm high was exposed that bears the image of a person. It seems that at first the jug, which is typical of the period, was prepared, and afterwards the unique sculpture was added, the likes of which have never before been discovered in previous research. The level of precision and attention to detail in creating this almost 4,000 year old sculpture is extremely impressive. The neck of the jug served as a base for forming the upper portion of the figure, after which the arms, legs and a face were added to the sculpture.  One can see that the face of the figure seems to be resting on its hand as if in a state of reflection”. Itach added, “It is unclear if the figure was made by the potter who prepared the jug or by another craftsman”.

 Efrat Zilber, supervisor responsible for coordinating the Land of Israel and Archaeology matriculation stream in the Ministry of Education emphasized that “the archaeological excavations provide an opportunity for an intensive and direct experience that connects the pupils with our country’s past. An experiential learning experience involving research methods employed in archaeology takes place while revealing the artifacts. The pupils meet experts in a variety of fields who share their knowledge with them, enrich the pupils while also enriching their world”.

 In addition to the unique pottery vessel, other vessels and metal items were found such as daggers, arrowheads, an axe head, sheep bones and what are very likely the bones of a donkey. According to Itach, “It seems that these objects are funerary offerings that were buried in honor of an important member of the ancient community. It was customary in antiquity to believe that the objects that were interred alongside the individual continued with him into the next world. To the best of my knowledge such a rich funerary assemblage that also includes such a unique pottery vessel has never before been discovered in the country”.

 In addition, a variety of evidence regarding the kind of life that existed there 6,000 years ago was exposed – among other things, pits and shafts were revealed that contained thousands of fragments of pottery vessels, hundreds of flint and basalt implements, animal bones, and a churn which is a unique vessel that was widely used in the Chalcolithic period for making butter.

Native Americans raised classic holiday bird

Hundreds of years before the first Thanksgiving, Native Americans were raising and feasting on America's classic holiday meal.

Florida State University Associate Professor of Anthropology Tanya Peres and graduate student Kelly Ledford write in a paper published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports that Native Americans as early as 1200 - 1400 A.D. were managing and raising turkeys.

This is the first time scientists have suggested that turkeys were potentially domesticated by early Native Americans in the southeastern United States.

"In the Americas, we have just a few domesticated animals," Peres said. "Researchers haven't really talked about the possibility of Native Americans domesticating or raising turkeys."

Researchers knew that turkeys had been a part of Native American life long before the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Their feathers were used on arrows, in headdresses and clothing. The meat was used for food. Their bones were used for tools including scratchers used in ritual ceremonies. There are even representations of turkeys in artifacts from the time. An intricately engraved marine shell pendant found at a site in central Tennessee shows two turkeys facing each other.

But this new research indicates turkeys were more than just a casual part of life for Native Americans of that era. Peres and Ledford came across a few curiosities as they examined skeletons of turkeys from archaeological sites in Tennessee that led them to believe that Native Americans were actively managing these fowls.

For one, the groupings researchers worked on had more male turkeys than a typical flock.

In a typical flock of turkeys, there are usually more females, Peres said. But in the flock they examined, they found more remains of males. That would only happen if it were designed that way, she said.

"It appears Native Americans were favoring males for their bones for tools," Peres said. "And they certainly would have favored males for their feathers. They tend to be much brighter and more colorful than the female species. Female feathers tend to be a dull grey or brown to blend in to their surroundings since they have to sit on the nest and protect the chicks."

The other immediately noticeable trait that stood out to Peres and Ledford was that these ancient American gobblers were big boned -- much larger than today's average wild turkey. That could be the result of them being purposefully cared for or fed diets of corn.

"The skeletons of the archaeological turkeys we examined were quite robust in comparison to the skeletons of our modern comparatives," Ledford said. "The domestication process typically results in an overall increase in the size of the animal so we knew this was a research avenue we needed to explore."

Peres and Ledford are working with colleagues at Washington State University to perform a DNA sequencing of these turkeys and also conduct experiments to see what the turkeys were eating. If they were being fed corn, a chemical signature should appear in the remains.

Ledford is also collecting data from additional sites across the southeastern United States to see if this pattern of managing turkeys was consistent across settlements or if it was an isolated practice.

"It might be that not everybody was practicing this, but some people were for sure," Peres said.

Ancient inscribed stone tablet dates to 4th century AD; Earliest 10 Commandments Tablet

The world's earliest-known stone inscription of the 10 Commandments — one of the most important documents in history, and a "National Treasure" of Israel — sold for $850,000 Wednesday evening, Nov. 16 at a public auction of ancient Biblical archaeology artifacts by Heritage Auctions in Beverly Hills, California. The two-foot-square slab of white marble, which weighs almost 115 pounds, is chiseled with 20 lines of letters in Samaritan script, derived jointly from Hebrew and Aramaic.

The tablet likely adorned the entrance of a synagogue destroyed by the Romans between A.D. 400 and 600, or by the Crusaders in the 11th century, Heritage Auctions Director of Ancient Coins & Antiquities David Michaels said. The auction opened with a $300,000 bid, but a war between two phone bidders pushed the auction price to $850,000.

The winning bidder does not wish to be identified at this time.

Although officially deemed a "National Treasure" of Israel, the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) approved export of the piece the United States in 2005 on the condition that it be displayed in a public museum, a condition that still remains in effect," Michaels said.

"The sale of this tablet does not mean it will be hidden away from the public," Michaels said. "The new owner is under obligation to display the tablet for the benefit of the public."

After an introductory dedication and invocation, the tablet lists nine of the 10 commonly known Biblical Commandments from the Book of Exodus, omitting "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (King James translation), and adding one commonly employed by the Samaritan sect exhorting worshippers to "raise up a temple" on Mount Gerizim, the holy mountain of the Samaritans, located near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Based on the letter forms chiseled into the tablet, scholars suspect the stone was probably carved in the late Roman or Byzantine era, circa A.D. 300-500, to adorn the entrance or worship space of a synagogue in or around the modern city of Yavneh, in what now is western Israel. It is unclear when the synagogue was destroyed but scholars suspect it could have occurred when the Samaritan sect was heavily suppressed by the Romans in the mid-400s, by the Byzantines in the 500s, or by the Muslims or Crusaders up to the 12th century.

The tablet was the centerpiece of an offering of Biblical historic artifacts, all thoroughly researched and authenticated, and owned by the Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn, New York. Additional highlights included

a circa 70-200 Common Era nine-spouted Hanukkah lamp, which sold for $17,500.

Archaeologists study earliest recorded human burial site

The highly polished stone adze.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of York
 
Archaeologists have shed new light on the belief systems of early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers after analysing cremated remains and artefacts given as grave offerings from the earliest recorded human burial site in Ireland.

The team says it shows a rare and intimate glimpse of the complex funerary rituals taking place on the banks of the River Shannon at Hermitage, County Limerick, over 9,000 years ago.

The team, led by Dr Aimée Little from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, analysed cremated remains dating from 7530-7320 BC -- the earliest recorded human burial and grave assemblage.

Unusually for such an early burial, the person's body had been cremated and then buried, rather than a more simple form of inhumation.

Polished adze

The site also featured evidence for a grave-marker; a post which would have marked the spot at which the cremated remains were buried long after the event itself.

A highly polished stone adze interred with the remains, thought to represent the earliest known completely polished adze or axe in Europe, was revealed to have been commissioned for burial at the site.

Microscopic analysis of the adze's surface demonstrated a short duration of use, indicating its purpose was for funerary rites.

Funerary rites

It was then intentionally blunted, probably as part of the funerary rites, which the researchers have suggested may have been a ritual act symbolising the death of the individual.

The findings mark Hermitage out as an exceptionally important site for the Early Prehistory of North West Europe.

Dr Little said: "Through technological and microscopic analysis of the polished adze it has been possible to reconstruct the biography of this remarkable grave offering.

"The special treatment of this adze gives us a rare and intimate glimpse of the complex funerary rituals that were taking place graveside on the banks of the River Shannon over 9,000 years ago."

Unprecedented

Dr Ben Elliott added: "The adze is exceptional as we traditionally associate this polished axes and adzes like this with the arrival of agriculture in Europe, around 3000 years later.

"Although polished axes and adzes are known from pre-agricultural sites in Ireland and other parts of Europe, to find such a well-made, highly polished and securely dated example is unprecedented for this period of prehistory."

City dwellers in Middle Ages no worse off than village dwellers

City dwellers in the Middle Ages were probably no worse off than people living in villages. Both groups had very different health risks, is Rachel Schats' conclusion from her research on bone material. 

We often assume that cities in the Middle Ages with their poor hygiene and higher population density had a negative effect on the physical wellbeing of city dwellers. And at the same time a kind of idyllic purity is attributed to the lifestyle of country farming communities. New research by osteoarchaeologist Rachel Schats undermines these assumptions. 'My research shows that rural areas and cities didn't differ very much from one another as far as disease is concerned,' Schats commented.
Bone material
For her dissertation Schats examined the bones of city dwellers from Alkmaar (1448 -- 1572 AD) and rural inhabitants in the West-Frisian community of Blokhuizen (1000 -- 1200 AD) and the flooded village of Klaaskinderkerke (1286 -- 1570 AD) in Zeeland. From the bone material she was able to detect which diseases or shortcomings these people had, what their physical condition had been and what they ate.
Tuberculosis
From Schats' research it became clear that the risks of the city were very different from those of the countryside. She discovered, for example, that at least two of the 189 Alkmaar skeletons had damaged ribs and vertebrae, which could indicate tuberculosis. None of the 173 inhabitants of the country areas suffered from this particular disease. Schats explained, 'As only 10 per cent of TBC patients develop bone damage, you can assume that a lot more of the Alkmaar people suffered from TBC. Presumably the difference with the country was much greater.'
Stress markers
But if you look at the number of stress markers in the bones, you notice how little difference there is between city and country dewllers. Stress remarked, 'These stress markers indicate the degree of malnutrition or disease. Although it is not immediately clear what the diseases are, we do see that these stress markers are equally distributed among the city and country dwellers.'
Tooth decay
The Alkmaar people also had more tooth decay than the villagers in Blokhuizen and Klaaskinderkerke. Schats thinks this has to do with the greater availability of food on the Alkmaar markets. 'Thanks to national and international trade, people who lived in cities had access to more and more carbohydrate products such as fruit, sugar and honey. They may well also have drunk more beer because the city's water was so dirty. All that sugar was bad for their teeth.'
Arthrosis
At the same time, urbanisation probably had a positive effect on the number of typical 'country ailments'. Schats found signs of arthrosis on the upper part of the skeletons of women from country areas, probably caused by the heavy farm work such as milking and churning that they did. The skeletons of city women had fewer signs of arthrosis, probably because they no longer did such heavy annual work.
Isotope research
Finally, Schas was able to deduce from isotope research that the people from Alkmaar ate a lot more marine fish than the villagers from West Friesland. 'The amount of fish available was increasing at the time, and salted herring was particularly popular. A lot of the fish was sold on markets and so was more accessible to the city dwellers.'

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Neanderthal inheritance helped humans adapt to life outside of Africa

As the ancestors of modern humans made their way out of Africa to other parts of the world many thousands of years ago, they met up and in some cases had children with other forms of humans, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Scientists know this because traces of those meetings remain in the human genome. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 10 find more evidence that those encounters have benefited humans over the years.

All told, the new study identifies 126 different places in the genome where genes inherited from those archaic humans remain at unusually high frequency in the genomes of modern humans around the world. We owe our long-lost hominid relatives for various traits, and especially those related to our immune systems and skin, the evidence shows.

"Our work shows that hybridization was not just some curious side note to human history, but had important consequences and contributed to our ancestors' ability to adapt to different environments as they dispersed throughout the world," says Joshua Akey of University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

Akey says it's relatively straightforward today to identify sequences that were inherited from archaic ancestors. Studies show that non-African individuals inherited about 2% of their genomes from Neanderthals. People of Melanesian ancestry inherited another 2% to 4% of their genomes from Denisovan ancestors. But it hasn't been clear what influence those DNA sequences have had on our biology, traits, and evolutionary history.

In the new study, the researchers took advantage of recently constructed genome-scale maps of Neanderthal and Denisovan sequences identified in more than 1,500 geographically diverse people. Their sample included close to 500 individuals each from East Asia, Europe, and South Asia. They also analyzed the genomes of 27 individuals from Island Melanesia, an area including Indonesia, New Guinea, Fiji, and Vanuatu. The researchers were searching for archaic DNA sequences in those human genomes at frequencies much higher than would be expected if those genes weren't doing people any good.

While the vast majority of surviving Neanderthal and Denisovan sequences are found at relatively low frequencies (typically less than 5%), the new analyses turned up 126 places in our genomes where these archaic sequences exist at much higher frequencies, reaching up to about 65%. Seven of those regions were found in parts of the genome known to play a role in characteristics of our skin. Another 31 are involved in immunity.

"The ability to increase to such high population frequencies was most likely facilitated because these sequences were advantageous," Akey explains. "In addition, many of the high-frequency sequences span genes involved in the immune system, which is a frequent target of adaptive evolution."

Generally speaking, the genes humans got from Neanderthals or Denisovans are important for our interactions with the environment. The evidence suggests that hybridization with archaic humans as our ancient ancestors made their way out of Africa "was an efficient way for modern humans to quickly adapt to the new environments they were encountering."

The researchers say they'd now like to learn more about how these genes influenced humans' ability to survive and what implications they might have for disease. They are also interested in expanding their analysis to include geographically diverse populations in other parts of the world, including Africa.

Unpublished & Previously Unknown Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls for Sale in London

Fragments of The Dead Sea Scrolls, considered the "most famous manuscript find of all time" and the "greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century," are currently for public sale for the first time since 1954 through an exhibit in London hosted by Les Enluminures and Shapero Rare Books.

"It seems almost inconceivable in the 21st century that unknown Dead Sea Scrolls could still appear on the market," said Sandra Hindman, owner of Les Enluminures. "Any appearance on the market of unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls is special news. Today they surely rank as one of the most important and revered literary and religious manuscripts in existence."

The present group of five fragments, currently on the market, of which two are fragment sets, are among the so-called "W" fragments. An American owner from the legal heirs of Khalil Iskander Shahin acquired them in 2002, and they are almost certainly from Cave IV. Scrolls from Cave IV were not kept in jars but housed on shelves in ancient-library fashion, identified by dangling tags. Recently completed high-resolution multi-spectral imaging of these fragments has revealed some Hebrew lettering but the texts are have not yet been identified. The images will be studied by the leading Dead Sea Scrolls scholars in Israel and the United States this year, and will be published as early as 2017.

These unpublished and previously unknown fragments will be on exhibit in "2000 Years of Jewish Culture" organized by Les Enluminures and Shapero Rare Books at 32 St. George St., London W1, through November 11. The asking price is $1 million.

Dating from 2,000 years ago, roughly 150 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., The Dead Sea Scrolls were found concealed in 11 caves in the Judaean wilderness around or beside the Dead Sea. Written primarily in Hebrew, the more than 10,000 manuscript fragments are also in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) and Greek. The scrolls include the oldest biblical texts ever found, comprising passages from every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. The only biblical book that is complete is Isaiah, found in a scroll from Cave I, and it is 24 feet long.

Perhaps the most mystifying and intriguing is the Copper Scroll from Cave III, composed on thin sheets of copper metal and containing a sort of treasure map 64 spots where massive amounts of gold and silver treasure are buried in the area around the Dead Sea – still not found and the subject of several fictional thrillers. Along with biblical texts, the scrolls include documents about sectarian regulations, such as the Community Rule, and religious writings that do not appear in the Hebrew Bible. Just why, by whom, and for whom they were written and then buried still remains a subject of lively speculation among scholars.

The best contemporary description of a manuscript in use in Judaea in the period of the Dead Sea Scrolls is actually found in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 4:16-20), which describes Jesus in the synagogue: "He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him; he unrolled the scroll ..." and read, "and he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down," and began to preach.

The caves where the scrolls were buried are numbered I-XI in the order of their discovery between 1947 and 1956. The initial finds from Cave I, along with jars they were housed in, were made by Bedouin shepherds, who brought them eventually to a Syrian Christian dealer in antiquities in Bethlehem, Khalil Iskander Shahin. It is probable that most of the recent discoveries of Dead Sea Scrolls, including the present fragments, are from Cave IV.

This cave is in the cliffs to the southwest of the site of Qumran, from which it is separated by a deep ravine. An old Bedouin is said to have remembered finding the cave as a young man, and his recollections led his younger compatriots to the site, apparently in August 1952. They let themselves down by a rope and entered the cave, where they unearthed the remains of masses of matted manuscript fragments, which they took, as their predecessors had done, to Kando in Bethlehem.

The last publicly prominent sale of Dead Sea Scrolls occurred on June 1, 1954, when four finds from Cave I, including the Isaiah Scroll, were offered for sale privately and advertised in the Wall Street Journal. They were bought immediately by telegram by the state of Israel for $250,000. These items are now in the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The most recent publicly recorded sale of Dead Sea Scrolls was in 2009, when Azusa Pacific University in California acquired five fragments for a price reported in the Los Angeles Times of nearly $2.5 million. Other fragments exist worldwide in public and private collections: the University of Chicago, the Museum of the Bible, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Martin Schøyen in Norway, to name the most significant collections.

Neanderthal genes are slowly being removed by natural selection

The Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago, but little pieces of them live on in the form of DNA sequences scattered through the modern human genome. A new study by geneticists at the University of California, Davis, shows why these traces of our closest relatives are slowly being removed by natural selection.

"On average, there has been weak but widespread selection against Neanderthal genes," said Graham Coop, professor in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, and senior author on a paper describing the work published Nov. 8 in the journal PLOS Genetics. That selection seems to be a consequence of a small population of Neanderthals mixing with a much larger population of modern humans.

Neanderthals split from our African ancestors over half a million years ago, and lived in Europe and Central Asia until a few tens of thousands of years ago. Archaeological discoveries have shown that they had quite a sophisticated culture, Coop said. Thanks to DNA samples retrieved from a number of fossils, we have enough data on the Neanderthal genome to identify their genes among ours.

When modern humans left Africa about 50,000 to 80,000 years ago and spread through Europe and Asia, they interbred with Neanderthals. The first hybrid offspring would have been, on average, a 50-50 mix of modern human and Neanderthal genes, and could then have themselves bred with modern humans, Neanderthals or other hybrids.

So what happened to the Neanderthal DNA? Today, Neanderthal genes are a few percent of the genome of people of European ancestry, a little more common in people of East Asian descent, and almost absent in people of African ancestry.

Coop and postdoctoral researchers Ivan Juric and Simon Aeschbacher devised methods to measure the degree of natural selection acting on Neanderthal DNA in the human genome.

One hypothesis has been that Neanderthals quickly became genetically incompatible with modern humans, so their hybrid offspring were not "fit" in evolutionary terms - they either failed to thrive or were not fertile.

Weak but Widespread Selection Against Neanderthal Genes

The researchers found something different. Rather than showing strong selection against a few Neanderthal genes, they found weak, but widespread selection against many Neanderthal DNA sequences that is slowly removing it from our genome.

Coop said that's consistent with a small, isolated population of Neanderthals mixing with a much larger population of modern humans. Inbreeding in small populations means that genetic variants can remain common even if they're harmful to some degree. But when they mix into a larger population, natural selection starts to act against those variants and weed them out.

"The human population size has historically been much larger, and this is important since selection is more efficient at removing deleterious variants in large populations," Juric said. "Weakly deleterious variants that could persist in Neanderthals could not persist in humans. We think that this simple explanation can account for the pattern of Neanderthal ancestry that we see today along the genome of modern humans."

The findings are consistent with other recently published work. If Neanderthals had been more numerous when modern humans encountered them, we might have a different mix of Neanderthal and human genes, Juric said.

Significant Bronze Age and Akkadian Empire period city discovered in Northern Iraq

Archeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history.

Scientists headed by Professor Peter Pfälzner from the University of Tübingen and Dr. Hasan Qasim from the Directorate of Antiquities in Dohuk conducted the excavation work in Bassetki between August and October 2016. As a result, they were able to preempt the construction work on a highway on this land. The former significance of the settlement can be seen from the finds discovered during the excavation work. The city already had a wall running around the upper part of the town from approx. 2700 BC onwards in order to protect its residents from invaders. Large stone structures were erected there in about 1800 BC. The researchers also found fragments of Assyrian cuneiform tablets dating from about 1300 BC, which suggested the existence of a temple dedicated to the Mesopotamian weather god Adad on this site. There was a lower town about one kilometer long outside the city center. Using geomagnetic resistance measurements, the archeologists discovered indications of an extensive road network, various residential districts, grand houses and a kind of palatial building dating from the Bronze Age. The residents buried their dead at a cemetery outside the city. The settlement was connected to the neighboring regions of Mesopotamia and Anatolia via an overland roadway dating from about 1800 BC.

Bassetki was only known to the general public in the past because of the "Bassetki statue," which was discovered there by chance in 1975. This is a fragment of a bronze figure of the Akkadian god-king Naram-Sin (about 2250 BC). The discovery was stolen from the National Museum in Baghdad during the Iraq War in 2003, but was later rediscovered by US soldiers. Up until now, researchers were unable to explain the location of the find. The archeologists have now been able to substantiate their assumption that an important outpost of Akkadian culture may have been located there.

A Document Mentioning the Name of Jerusalem from the Time of the First Temple for the First Time

A rare and important find was exposed in an enforcement operation initiated by the IAA’s Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery: a document written on papyrus and dating to the time of the First Temple (seventh century BCE) in which the name of the city of Jerusalem is clearly indicated. This is the earliest extra-biblical source to mention Jerusalem in Hebrew writing.

The document, which was illicitly plundered from one of the Judean Desert caves by a band of antiquities robbers and was seized in a complex operation by the IAA’s Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, was presented today (Wednesday) in a press of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Two lines of ancient Hebrew script were preserved on the document that is made of papyrus (paper produced from the pith of the papyrus plant [Cyperus papyrus]). A paleographic examination of the letters and a C14 analysis determined that the artifact should be dated to the seventh century BCE – to the end of the First Temple period. Most of the letters are clearly legible, and the proposed reading of the text appears as follows:

[מא]מת. המלך. מנערתה. נבלים. יין. ירשלמה.
[me-a]mat. ha-melekh. me-Na?artah. nevelim. yi’in. Yerushalima.
From the king’s maidservant, from Na?arat, jars of wine, to Jerusalem

This is a rare and original shipping document from the time of the First Temple, indicating the payment of taxes or transfer of goods to storehouses in Jerusalem, the capital city of the kingdom at this time. The document specifies the status of the sender of the shipment (the king’s maidservant), the name of the settlement from which the shipment was dispatched (Na?arat), the contents of the vessels (wine), their number or amount (jars) and their destination (Jerusalem). Na?artah, which is mentioned in the text, is the same Na?arat that is referred to in the description of the border between Ephraim and Benjamin in Joshua 16:7: “And it went down from Janohah to Ataroth, and to Na?arat, and came to Jericho, and went out at Jordan”.
 
According to Dr. Eitan Klein, deputy director of the IAA’s Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, “The document represents extremely rare evidence of the existence of an organized administration in the Kingdom of Judah. It underscores the centrality of Jerusalem as the economic capital of the kingdom in the second half of the seventh century BCE. According to the Bible, the kings Menashe, Amon, or Josiah ruled in Jerusalem at this time; however, it is not possible to know for certain which of the kings of Jerusalem was the recipient of the shipment of wine”.

Israel Prize laureate and biblical scholar Prof. (Emeritus) Shmuel Ahituv attests to the scientific importance of the document, “It’s not just that this papyrus is the earliest extra-biblical source to mention Jerusalem in Hebrew writing; it is the fact that to date no other documents written on papyrus dating to the First Temple period have been discovered in Israel, except one from Wadi Murabba?at.  Also outstanding in the document is the unusual status of a woman in the administration of the Kingdom of Judah in the seventh century BCE”.

According to Israel Hasson, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "The discovery of the papyrus shows that there are other artifacts of tremendous importance to our heritage that are waiting to be found in the Judean Desert caves. The world’s heritage assets are being plundered on a daily basis by antiquities robbers solely for greed. The state has to mobilize and allocate the necessary resources in order to embark upon a historic operation together with the public, and carry out systematic excavations in all of the Judean Desert caves.”

According to the Minister of Culture and Sport, MK Miri Regev, "The discovery of the papyrus on which the name of our capital Jerusalem is written is further tangible evidence that Jerusalem was and will remain the eternal capital of the Jewish people. It is our duty to take care of the plundering of antiquities that occurs in the Judean Desert, and no less important than this is exposing the deceit of false propaganda as is once again happening today in UNESCO. The Temple Mount, the very heart of Jerusalem and Israel, will remain the holiest place for the Jewish people, even if UNESCO ratifies the false and unfortunate decision another ten times”.

Amir Ganor, director of the IAA’s Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery explained “Organic material, such as documents, particularly delicate paper like papyrus, perish over time due to their sensitivity to moisture. The dry climate of the desert is exceptional in that it facilitates the preservation of documents that provide invaluable information regarding the way of life in antiquity and the early development of religions. The rarity of the finds and their importance are the reasons why the antiquities robbers risk their lives coming to dig in the caves in the desert cliffs. I am glad that we were fortunate to have a role in saving the papyrus, which is an important and special find that bears witness to the historical relationship between the Land of Israel and Jerusalem, and the Jewish people".

According to Pnina Shor, curator and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls project at the Israel Antiquities Authority, “This unique papyrus joins the thousands of scroll fragments for which the Israel Antiquities Authority established dedicated conservation and photographic laboratories where the scrolls are treated using highly sophisticated means and the most advanced documentation and photographic technology available today. With a state-of-the-art camera that was developed based on technology used by NASA which records the Dead Sea Scrolls at a level that replicates the original, it is even possible to see the texture of the plant, skin or parchment on which the ancient documents were written”.

Neanderthals responsible for weakerimmune systems of people with European ancestry

It's long been clear that people from different parts of the world differ in their susceptibility to developing infections as well as chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Now, two studies reported in Cell on October 20 show that those differences in disease susceptibility can be traced in large part to differences at the genetic level directing the way the immune systems of people with European and African ancestry are put together.

The researchers also found that differences between populations have been selected for over time because they conferred advantages to people facing distinct health challenges in the places where they lived. As a result, according to the new evidence, people of African ancestry generally show stronger immune responses than Europeans do.

The discovery suggests that European populations have been selected to display reduced immune responses since our ancestors first made their way out of Africa. Intriguingly, the immune systems of Europeans were partly shaped by the introduction of new genetic variants through interbreeding between some of our early European ancestors and Neanderthals.

"Our findings show that population differences in transcriptional responses to immune activation are widespread, and that they are mainly accounted for by genetic variants that differ in their frequencies between human populations," said Lluis Quintana-Murci of Institut Pasteur and CNRS in Paris, France, who led one of the two studies.

"I was expecting to see ancestry-associated differences in immune response but not such a clear trend towards an overall stronger response to infection among individuals of African descent," added Luis Barreiro of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine in Canada, senior author of the other study.

Quintana-Murci and colleagues used RNA-sequencing to characterize the way that immune cells, known as primary monocytes, derived from 200 people of self-reported African or European ancestry would respond to attack by a bacteria or a virus. The researchers detected many differences in the activity of particular genes in those immune cells both within and between populations. They also discovered that changes in a single gene encoding an important immune receptor lead to decreased inflammation only in Europeans.

The researchers found strong evidence of selection on genes that control the immune response. Their evidence also shows that Europeans "borrowed" some key regulatory variants from Neanderthals, which in particular affect the way their immune systems respond to viral challenges.

Barreiro and colleagues took a similar approach to test for the effects of African versus European ancestry on changes in the activity of immune cells. His group focused on another type of immune cell known as primary macrophages and their response to live bacterial pathogens.

The researchers infected macrophages derived from 80 African and 95 European individuals with either Listeria monocytogenes or Salmonella typhimurium to look for differences in response and related them to ancestry. Their studies identified thousands of genes showing population differences in transcriptional response to infection. They also found that African ancestry is associated with a stronger inflammatory response, which limited the growth of bacteria.

In many cases, the activity of particular genes was tied to a single genetic variant, with strong differences in frequency between European and African populations. The researchers also observed the signature of past selection on those genes and additional evidence for an important role of genetic variants passed on to modern humans from Neanderthals. "This strongly suggests that a diminished inflammatory response has conferred a selective advantage to European populations,"Quintana-Murci said.

"The genetic and molecular basis of ancestry-related differences in disease susceptibility has been a mystery," Barreiro said. "These results provide a first description of differences in immune response and associated genetic basis that might explain differences in susceptibility to disease between people of African and European ancestry. More generally, our results demonstrate how historical selective events continue to shape human phenotypic diversity today, including for traits that are key to controlling infection."

The researchers noted that the two studies made strikingly similar findings despite the fact that they focused on different types of immune cells. They say that more work is now needed to better understand the role of environmental and other factors, including epigenetic changes, in the differences they've observed.

Modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans: more interbreeding than previously thought

Relationships between the ancestors of modern humans and other archaic populations such as Neanderthals and Denisovans were likely more complex than previously thought, involving interbreeding within and outside Africa, according to a new estimator developed by geneticists. Findings were reported at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2016 Annual Meeting in Vancouver, B.C.

In recent years, genetics has led to the revision of many assumptions about archaic populations, explained Ryan J. Bohlender, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and first author on the research. For example, the 2010 release of the Neanderthal genome led to the discovery that Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern Europeans interbred. A few years later, scientists discovered the existence of Denisovans, a population known of only through genetics, through a fossilized sample of DNA.

"My colleagues and I set out to find out what we might share with these ancient populations and how our histories interacted," Dr. Bohlender said. They developed an estimation tool to model these interactions based on parameters such as current estimates of population size and dates when populations separated - how long ago they stopped interbreeding - and look for inconsistencies with information known from genetic studies about the overlap between the modern human genome and those of ancient populations. Compared to previous estimators, this one made increased use of genetic data to cut down on statistical bias. The researchers then allowed estimates of population size and separation dates to vary in a series of simulations, in order to find out if adjusting these parameters better fit the genetic data.

"Using this process, we found that the population in Africa was likely about 50 percent larger than previously thought. We also found that an archaic-modern human separation date of 440,000 years ago was the best fit, suggesting that Neanderthals diverged from our lineage 100,000 years more recently than we thought," Dr. Bohlender said. "We got the same separation date using data from multiple modern human populations, which is a good sign."

In addition, their results suggest that throughout Eurasia, ancient populations interbred less than previously believed, and that - contrary to previous findings - the level of mixing with Neanderthals did not differ significantly between Europe and East Asia.

The findings bring up many new questions, including to what extent the new estimator can be trusted, why it produces results that differ from prevailing estimates, and how to reconcile these differences.

"Overall, our findings confirm the human family tree is more complicated than we think it is," Dr. Bohlender said. "For example, other archaic populations are likely to have existed, like the Denisovans, who we didn't know about except through genetics." They plan to try out simulations with multiple other populations, to see if this adds some clarity to the results.

Dr. Bohlender also believes that more detailed studies of African populations may shed some light. "Africans have been underrepresented in genetics research - they're not as well studied as European and Asian populations, yet they are more diverse genetically than any other group," he said.

From Here the Romans Breached Jerusalem’s City Wall 2,000 Years Ago

Fascinating evidence of breaking through Jerusalem’s Third Wall at the end of the Second Temple period was discovered in an excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting in the city center.

Impressive and fascinating evidence of the battlefield and the breaching of the Third Wall that surrounded Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period was exposed in recent months in the Russian Compound in the city center. The finds were discovered in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted in the location where the new campus of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is slated to be constructed.  During the course of the excavation archaeologists discovered the remains of a tower jutting from the city wall. Opposite the tower’s western facade were scores of ballista and sling stones that the Romans had fired from catapults towards the Jewish guards defending the wall, who were stationed at the top of the tower.

According to Dr. Rina Avner and Kfir Arbib, excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “This is a fascinating testimony of the intensive bombardment by the Roman army, led by Titus, on their way to conquering the city and destroying the Second Temple. The bombardment was intended to attack the sentries guarding the wall and provide cover for the Roman forces so they could approach the wall with battering rams and thereby breach the city’s defenses”.

The historian Josephus, an eye witness to the war, provided many details about this wall. According to him, the wall was designed to protect the new quarter of the city that had developed outside its boundaries, north of the two existing city walls. This quarter was named Beit Zeita. The building of the Third Wall was begun by Agrippa I; however, he suspended its construction so as not to incur the wrath of Emperor Claudius and to dispel any doubts regarding his loyalty. The construction of the Third Wall was resumed some two decades later by the defenders of Jerusalem, as part of fortifying the city and the Jewish rebels’ preparations for the Great Revolt against Rome.

Josephus described in detail the route of the wall that began at Hippicus Tower, which is now identified with David’s Citadel. From there the wall continued north to the enormous Psephinus Tower, which defended the northwestern corner of the city wall. At that point the wall turned east and descended toward the Tomb of Queen Helena, which is identified with the place known as the Tombs of the Kings.

An unresolved debate among researchers has been going from the early twentieth century up until the current excavation as to the identity of the Third Wall and the question concerning Jerusalem’s boundaries on the eve of the Roman onslaught led by Titus. It seems that the new discovery in the Russian Compound is proof of the wall’s existence in this area.
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The excavation findings will be presented in a conference entitled "“New Studies in the archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region” conference ", to be held on Thursday, October 27, 2016, at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Neanderthals gave us HPV16 responsible for most cervical and oral cancers

With recent studies proving that almost everyone has a little bit of Neanderthal DNA in them----up to 5 percent of the human genome--- it's become clear our ancestors not only had some serious hominid interspecies sex going on, but with it, a potential downside: the spread of sexually transmitted infections, or STIs.

For wherever life goes, germs are soon to follow.

In the case of the most common STI, human papillomaviruses (HPVs), almost everyone hosts a number of infections, with strain HPV16 responsible for most cervical and oral cancers.

By reconstructing the ancestry and timing of the family tree of HPV16 in greater detail than ever before, and by comparing the evolutionary histories of viruses and humans, a new pattern has emerged. Now, researchers have generated compelling evidence that HPV16 co-diverged with archaic and modern humans---only to be repopulated at a much later date through their contact by Neanderthals, challenging the assumption that HPV16 co-evolved with modern humans. The study, by Ville Pimenoff at the Catalan Institute of Oncology and Ignacio Bravo at the French National Center for Scientific Research was published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msw214).

During the evolution of HPV16, variants A and B/C/D co-diverged with archaic and modern humans, respectively. When populations of modern humans left Africa and had sexual intercourse with Neanderthals and Denisovans, they were infected by the viral variant that had evolved with archaic humans, and this virus thrived and expanded among modern humans

This scenario finally explains unsolved questions: why human diversity is largest in Africa, while HPV16 diversity is largest in East-Asia, and why the HPV16A variant is virtually absent in Sub-Saharan Africa while it is by far the most common one in the rest world.

"Oncogenic viruses are very ancient," said Ignacio Bravo. "The history of humans is also the history of the viruses we carry and we inherit. Our work suggests that some aggressive oncogenic viruses were transmitted by sexual contact from archaic to modern humans."

They propose that interactions between the host and viral genomes may explain why most humans are exposed to HPVs and cure the infection, while in a few unfortunate cases the infection persists and can lead to cancer. The different degree of archaic ancestry in our genomes could be partly responsible for differential susceptibility to cancer. Since HPVs do not infect bones, current Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes do not contain HPVs. As a next step, the authors hope to trace HPVs sequences in ancient human skin remains as a more direct test of their hypothesis.

New insights on the origins of Greek civilization

When University of Cincinnati researchers uncovered the tomb of a Bronze Age warrior -- left untouched for more than 3,500 years and packed with a spectacular array of precious jewelry, weapons and riches -- the discovery was hailed by experts as "the find of a lifetime."

Now, only a year after archaeologists completed the excavation, new understandings of the artifacts -- particularly the discovery of four golden rings -- and the insights they provide to the origins of Greek civilization may prove to be the team's next big discovery.

Shari Stocker, a senior research associate in UC's Department of Classics, and Jack Davis, the university's Carl W. Blegen chair in Greek archaeology, will reveal the UC-based team's findings from the so-called "Griffin Warrior" grave Thursday, Oct. 6, at The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece.

The husband-and-wife team's highly anticipated lecture is generating worldwide attention, including a feature in the New York Times.

The 'find of a lifetime'

Stocker and Davis, along with other UC staff specialists and students, stumbled upon the remarkably undisturbed and intact tomb last May while excavating near the city of Pylos, an ancient city on the southwest coast of Greece.

Inside they discovered the well-preserved remains of what is believed to have been a powerful Mycenaean warrior or priest in his early- to mid-30s who was buried around 1500 B.C. near the archeological excavation of the Palace of Nestor.

Immortalized in Homer's "Odyssey," the large administrative center was destroyed by fire sometime around 1180 B.C., but remains the best-preserved Bronze Age palace on the Greek mainland. UC archaeologist Carl Blegen first discovered the Mycenaean ruins in 1939, where he unearthed a number of clay tablets written in Linear B script, the earliest known written form of Greek.

The warrior's tomb, hailed by the Greek Culture Ministry as the "most important to have been discovered [in continental Greece] in 65 years," revealed more than 2,000 objects arrayed on and around the body, including four solid gold rings, silver cups, precious stone beads, fine-toothed ivory combs and an intricately built sword, among other weapons.

The skeleton was dubbed the "Griffin Warrior" for the discovery of an ivory plaque adorned with a griffin -- a mythical beast with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle -- buried with him.

The UC excavation is remarkable not just for the unparalleled riches discovered in the warrior-priest's tomb -- to find an unlooted, intact grave is, in itself, a rare and historic feat -- but for what the grave and its bounty reveals about the dawn of the Mycenaean civilization, a transformative period in the Bronze Age.

Unlocking an ancient mystery

A significant number of the artifacts found in the warrior's grave were made by Minoans, a culturally dominant civilization to the Mycenaeans that arose on the large island of Crete, southeast of Pylos. How then, the researchers puzzled, did a man from the Greek mainland accumulate such a large cache of Minoan-made riches?

One longstanding theory is that the Greeks of the Griffin Warrior's era -- dubbed Mycenaean after their principal city, Mycenae -- are thought to have imported or robbed the riches from the affluent non-Greek Minoan civilization on Crete.

"The grave was right around the time the Mycenaeans were conquering the Minoans," explained Stocker. "We know that there were extensive raids and shortly after the date of our grave, Minoan-Crete fell to the Mycenaeans."

But Stocker and Davis say that the artifacts found in the warrior's grave suggest a far greater cultural sharing between the ancient civilizations than just mere plunder. Instead, they insist, the carefully selected and hand-placed items reveal much about the heart of the relationship of the burgeoning mainland Greek culture to the more refined culture of Crete.

History revealed through remarkable rings

The discovery of four gold signet rings bearing highly detailed Minoan iconography offers one of the best examples of this Mycenaean-Minoan cultural transfer and paints a more vivid picture of early Greek society, the researchers say.

The rings -- three of which the researchers are unveiling for the first time on Oct. 6 -- are crafted from multiple sheets of gold and feature iconographical references seen elsewhere in Minoan art and religious culture.

The first ring, revealed after the excavation's completion last fall, shows a scene of a bull leaping -- reminiscent of contests in which toreadors would literally leap over bulls in a show of sport and athletic prowess -- a common motif seen in Minoan imagery.The second ring, the second largest gold signet ring known in the Aegean world, shows five elaborately dressed female figures gathered by a seaside shrine.A third ring depicts a female figure, thought to be a goddess, holding a staff and flanked by two birds atop a mountain glen.The final ring shows a woman presenting a bull's horn offering to a goddess holding a mirror and seated on a high-backed throne atop of which is perched a bird.

Cultural meanings aside, the rings themselves are a remarkable find simply for the elaborate attention to detail and artisan workmanship, say Stocker and Davis.

"They're carving these before the microscope and electric tools," marveled Stocker. "This is exquisite workmanship for something so tiny and old and really shows the skill of Minoan craftsmen."

"It shows a level of superb craftsmanship that just isn't found on these other rings," said Davis, referring to the rings of Minos and Nestor, long the subjects of intense scrutiny by experts who question their authenticities, in part, due to the high level of detail on them.

But the discovery of the Minoan-style rings in a Mycenaean warrior's grave further left the research team scratching their heads: Did the Mycenaeans understand what they were taking from the Minoans and the concepts behind the iconography?

After a year of careful examination of the grave's artifacts, Davis and Stocker now say yes.

"People have suggested that the findings in the grave are treasure, like Blackbeard's treasure, that was just buried along with the dead as impressive contraband," said Davis. "We think that already in this period the people on the mainland already understood much of the religious iconography on these rings, and they were already buying into religious concepts on the island of Crete."

"This isn't just loot," he added. "It may be loot, but they're specifically selecting loot that transmits messages that are understandable to them."

"They're not just going there and robbing a jewelry store," echoed Stocker. "They're thinking about it and selecting specific items for inclusion in the burial."

The researchers point to other items in the grave that reference religious and cultural motifs seen both in the rings and Minoan imagery.

A mirror found above the Griffin Warrior's legs may relate to the fourth ring, in which a seated goddess is portrayed holding a mirror. The mirror's placement in the grave, the researchers theorize, suggest that it holds special significance to the Mycenaeans while the presence of a half-dozen combs suggest a ritual practice of hair-combing before battle.

The bull, a sacred symbol to the Minoans, can also be seen in Mycenaean imagery. In the third ring, a goddess is featured holding a horned staff while the fourth ring shows an offering to the goddess of a bull's horn. The bull is also featured in the first ring, suggesting the horns may have come from a ritualistic slaughtering following a bull-leaping event. Stocker and Davis say it is no coincidence that the Griffin Warrior was found buried with a bronze bull's head staff capped by prominent horns, which were likely a symbol of his power and authority.

A snapshot captured in time

These associations and more, which the researchers plan to further explore in upcoming publications, promise to open new doors into the understanding of the nascent Mycenaean belief system at a transitional time when Minoan works first began to gain importance on the Greek mainland, Davis and Stocker say.

"What this allows us to do gets us beyond just thinking in terms of mere borrowing of prestige items or items to show off for display," explained Davis. "This starts to get us into an understanding of actual beliefs and ideas and an ideology that existed in this time of the formation of the Mycenaean civilization, which is very difficult to get at."

That difficulty is often compounded by the Mycenaeans' practice of group burials for elite members of society. While other grave excavations in Mycenae have yielded even more remarkable riches, the presence of multiple corpses in those graves makes it difficult to determine what items were buried with each individual and why.

The Griffin Warrior's tomb contains just one skeleton, which researchers say allows them to form a better picture of who he was, why these specific items were selected to accompany him on his journey to the underworld and what those discoveries reveal about the dawn of European civilization.

"We have a snapshot here, captured in time, with the objects as they were placed around this guy," said Davis. "We can look at this not from an outside perspective, but from an insider's perspective and imagine why and how they chose to place them in the grave."

Humans occupied South America earlier than previously thought

Ancient artifacts found at an archeological site in Argentina suggest that humans occupied South America earlier than previously thought.

Approximately 13,000 years ago, a prehistoric group of hunter-gathers known as the Clovis people lived in Northern America. Previous research suggests that the Clovis culture was one of the earliest cultures in the Americas. However, more recent research from the Pampas region of Argentina supports the hypothesis that early Homo sapiens arrived in the Americas earlier than the Clovis hunters did.

The evidence for earlier human arrival in the Americas comes from a rich archaeological site in southeastern South America called Arroyo Seco 2. A group of scientists led by Gustavo Politis from CONICET and the Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires present the research in a new PLOS ONE study.

At Arroyo Seco 2, the researchers excavated ancient tools, bone remains from a variety of extinct species, and broken animal bones containing fractures caused by human tools. They used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the mammal bones and analyzed the specimens under a microscope.

The analysis revealed the presence of limb bones from extinct mammals at the site, which may indicate human activities of transporting and depositing animal carcasses for consumption at a temporary camp. The bones of some mammal species were concentrated in a specific part of the site, which could indicate designated areas for butchering activities. Microscopic examination also revealed that some bones contained fractures most likely caused by stone tools. The remains were dated between 14,064 and 13,068 years ago, and the authors hypothesize that Arroyo Seco 2 may have been occupied by humans during that time.

This timeline, along with evidence from other South American sites, indicates that humans may have arrived in southern South America prior to the Clovis people inhabiting the Americas, but after the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum, the last glacial period, which took place 19,000 to 20,000 years ago.

While the characteristics of some of these archaeological materials could be explained without human intervention, the combination of evidence strongly suggests human involvement. Humans' arrival in southern South America 14,000 years ago may represent the last step in the expansion of Homo sapiens throughout the world and the final continental colonization.