5,000 years ago, the Yamnaya culture migrated into Europe from the
Caspian steppe. In addition to innovations such as the wagon and dairy
production, they brought a new language - Indo-European - that replaced
most local languages the following millennia. But local cultures also
influenced the new language, particularly in southern Scandinavia, where
Neolithic farmers made lasting contributions to Indo-European
vocabulary before their own language went extinct, new research shows.
Most historical linguists agree that words such as 'wheel', 'wagon',
'horse', 'sheep', 'cow', 'milk' and 'wool' can be attributed to the
Yamnaya people who migrated into Europe from the Caspian steppe 5,000
years ago. The nomadic and pastoral Yamnayans introduced their material
culture to the local peoples through a new language known as
Proto-Indo-European, from which most European languages descend.
However, not all words in the European languages are of
Proto-Indo-European origin, linguists say; there are words for flora and
fauna, which must have been incorporated into Indo-European from local
cultures. But where could such cultural exchange have taken place?
According to a new study published in American Journal of Archaeology by archaeologist Rune Iversen and linguist Guus Kroonen from the University of Copenhagen, southern Scandinavia 2,800 BC provides an ideal setting for such an exchange:
"The archaeological evidence tells us that between 2,800 and 2,600
BC two very different cultures co-existed in southern Scandinavia: there
was the local, Neolithic culture known as the Funnel Beaker Culture
with its characteristic funnel-shaped ceramics and collective burial
practices and the new Single Grave Culture influenced by the Yamnaya
culture. The Funnel Beaker Culture was eventually superseded by the
Single Grave Culture, but the transition took hundreds of years in the
eastern part of southern Scandinavia, and the two cultures must have
influenced each other during this time, "says archaeologist Rune
Iversen, who has specialised in this particular transitional period.
This is a schematic impression of how the different
Indo-European branches may have absorbed lexical items (circles) from
previously spoken languages in the linguistically complex setting of
Europe from the third millennium BC.
Credit
University of Copenhagen
Peas, beans, turnips and shrimps
Historical linguist Guus Kroonen points to a number of words for
local flora and fauna and important plant domesticates that the incoming
speakers of Indo-European could not have brought with them to southern
Scandinavia.
"There is a cluster of words in European languages such as Danish,
English, and German - the Germanic languages - which stand out because
they do not conform to the established sound changes of Indo-European
vocabulary. It is words like sturgeon, shrimp, pea, bean and turnip that
cannot be reconstructed to the Proto-Indo-European ancestor," Guus
Kroonen explains and adds:
"This tells us that these words must have entered Indo-European
after it had spread from the Caspian steppe to the various parts of
Europe. In other words: the new Single Grave Culture is likely to have
adopted much farming and hunting terminology from the local Funnel
Beaker Culture that inhabited southern Scandinavia and Denmark till
around 2,600 BC. When Indo-European in Northern Europe developed into
Proto-Germanic, the terminology for local flora and fauna was preserved,
which is why we know and can study the terms today."
Guus Kroonen adds that this farming terminology may be vestiges of a
now extinct language spoken by the people who initially brought farming
to Europe from Anatolia 9,000-6,000 years ago.
A genomic analysis of ancient human remains from KwaZulu-Natal
revealed that southern Africa has an important role to play in writing
the history of humankind. A research team from Uppsala University,
Sweden, the Universities of Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand, South
Africa, presents their results in the September 28th early online issue
of Science.
The team sequenced the genomes of seven individuals who lived in
southern Africa 2300-300 years ago. The three oldest individuals dating
to 2300-1800 years ago were genetically related to the descendants of
the southern Khoe-San groups, and the four younger individuals who lived
500-300 years ago were genetically related to current-day South African
Bantu-speaking groups.
"This illustrates the population replacement
that occurred in southern Africa", says co-first author Carina
Schlebusch, population geneticist at Uppsala University.
Because the boy from Ballito Bay was of hunter-gatherer descent,
living at a time before migrants from further north in Africa reached
South African shores, his DNA could be used to estimate the split
between modern humans and earlier human groups as occurring between 350
000 and 260 000 years ago.
"This means that modern humans emerged
earlier than previously thought", says Mattias Jakobsson, population
geneticist at Uppsala University, who headed the project together with
Marlize Lombard from the University of Johannesburg.
The 350 000 to 260 000 years estimate also coincides with the
Florisbad skull, who was a contemporary of the small-brained Homo naledi
in South Africa. "It now seems that at least two or three Homo species
occupied the southern African landscape during this time, which also
represents the early phases of the Middle Stone Age", says Lombard.
Cumulatively, the fossil, ancient DNA and archaeological records
indicate that the transition from archaic to modern humans might not
have occurred in only one place in Africa. Instead, regions including
southern and northern Africa (as recently reported) probably played a
role.
"Thus, both palaeo-anthropological and genetic evidence
increasingly points to multiregional origins of anatomically modern
humans in Africa, i.e. Homo sapiens did not originate in one place in
Africa, but might have evolved from older forms in several places on the
continent with gene flow between groups from different places", says
Carina Schlebusch.
These findings from South Africa shed new light on our species'
deep African history and show that there is still much more to learn
about our process of becoming modern humans. The results of this study
also emphasise that the interplay between genetics and archaeology has
an increasingly important role to play.
The authors estimate the divergence among modern humans to have
occurred between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago, based on the ancient
Stone Age hunter-gatherer genomes. The deepest split time of 350,000
years ago represents a comparison between an ancient Stone Age
hunter-gatherer boy from Ballito Bay on the east coast of South Africa
and the West African Mandinka.
"This means that modern humans emerged
earlier than previously thought", says Mattias Jakobsson, population
geneticist at Uppsala University who headed the project together with
Stone Age archaeologist Marlize Lombard at the University of
Johannesburg.
The fossil record of east Africa, and in particular the Omo and
Herto fossils have often been used to set the emergence of anatomically
modern humans to about 180,000 years ago. The deeper estimate for modern
human divergence at 350,000-260,000 years ago coincides with the
Florisbad and Hoedjiespunt fossils, contemporaries of the small-brained
Homo naledi in southern Africa.
"It now seems that at least two or three
Homo species occupied the southern African landscape during this time
period, which also represents the early phases of the Middle Stone Age",
says Marlize Lombard. It will be interesting to see in future if we
find any evidence of interaction between these groups.
"We did not find any evidence of deep structure or archaic
admixture among southern African Stone Age hunter-gatherers, instead, we
see some evidence for deep structure in the West African population,
but that affects only a small fraction of their genome and is about the
same age as the deepest divergence among all humans", says Mattias
Jakobsson.
The authors also found that all current-day Khoe-San populations
admixed with migrant East African pastoralists a little over a thousand
years ago. "We could not detect this widespread East African admixture
previously since we did not have an un-admixed San group to use as
reference. Now that we have access to ancient DNA of people who lived on
the landscape before the East African migration, we are able to detect
the admixture percentages in all San groups. The admixture percentages
in the Khoekhoe, historically identified as pastoralists, are higher
than previously estimated", says Carina Schlebusch.
Of the Iron Age individuals, three carry at least one Duffy null
allele, protecting against malaria, and two have at least one
sleeping-sickness-resistance variant in the APOL1 gene. The Stone Age
individuals do not carry these protective alleles. "This tells us that
Iron Age farmers carried these disease-resistance variants when they
migrated to southern Africa", says co-first author Helena Malmström,
archaeo-geneticist at Uppsala University.
Marlize Lombard said that "archaeological deposits dating to the
time of the split by 350,000-260,000 years ago, attest to South Africa
being populated by tool-making hunter-gatherers at the time.
Although
human fossils are sparse, those of Florisbad and Hoedjiespunt are seen
as transitional to modern humans." These fossils may therefore be
ancestral to the Ballito Bay boy and other San hunter-gatherers who
lived in southern Africa 2000 years ago.
The transition from archaic to modern humans might not have occurred
in one place in Africa but in several, including southern Africa and
northern Africa as recently reported. "Thus, both palaeo-anthropological
and genetic evidence increasingly points to multiregional origins of
anatomically modern humans in Africa, i.e. Homo sapiens did not
originate in one place in Africa, but might have evolved from older
forms in several places on the continent with gene flow between groups
from different places", says Carina Schlebusch.
"It is remarkable that we can now sequence entire genomes of ancient
human remains from tropical areas, such as the southeast coast of South
Africa", says Helena Malmström. This is promising for our several
ongoing investigations in Africa.
Cumulatively these findings shed new light on our species' deep
African history and show that there is still much more to learn about
our process of becoming modern humans and that the interplay between
genetics and archaeology has an increasingly important role to play.
At the British Museum this autumn (14
September 2017 – 14 January 2018), discover an ancient
culture that was buried in the Siberian permafrost for thousands of years. The
BP exhibition Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia will reveal the history of
these powerful nomadic tribes who thrived in a vast landscape stretching from
southern Russia to China and the northern Black Sea. The Scythians were
exceptional horsemen and warriors, and feared adversaries and neighbours of the
ancient Greeks, Assyrians and Persians between 900 and 200 BC. This exhibition
will tell their story through exciting archaeological discoveries and perfectly
preserved objects frozen in time. This will be the first major exhibition to
explore the Scythians in the UK in 40 years. Many of the objects on display date
b ack over 2,500 years. They are exceptionally well preserved as they come from
burial mounds in the high Altai mountains of southern Siberia, where the frozen
ground prevented them from deteriorating.
Over 200 outstanding objects will reveal
all aspects of Scythian life, including a major loan in collaboration with the
State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, and other generous loans from the
National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ashmolean Museum and the Royal
Collection. Some are star pieces which are displayed in the permanent galleries
and Treasury of the State Hermitage Museum and others have never been loaned
to the UK before.
Objects preserved by the permafrost include multi-coloured
textiles, fur-lined garments and accessories, unique horse headgear and tattooed
human remains. Tattooing was common among the Scythians and incredible
examples were preserved in the frozen tombs. This art shows natural and
mythical animals with heavily contorted bodies, often in close combat, and we
have examples of exceptionally well - preserved early tattooed remains on loan
from the State Hermitage Museum.
Life in the Siberian landscape was tough and
there was heavy competition for survival. The Scythians developed a fearsome set
of weapons: pointed battle - axes and short swords for close combat and
powerful bows for long-distance archery. Painted wooden shields, armour and a
helmet have su rvived from the ancient tombs.
The Scythians were skilled
horsemen and they took their beloved horses with them to the grave so that they
could carry on in the afterlife. Favourite horses were specially adorned for
this and wore elaborate costumes, with masks, saddle pendants and covers for
the mane and tail, which were intended to trans form them into mythical beasts.
This exhibition will
explore who the Scythians were, how they appeared, what they wore, who they
traded with and what they ate and drank. Perfectly preserved seeds have been
found in some tombs and were part of a Scythian ritual involving the deliberate
inhalation of the smoke from charred hemp.
The fifth century BC Greek historian
Herodotus described how Scythians ‘howled with pleasure’ when they inhaled the
smoke and how it was employed in cleansing rituals and for pain relief. A
reconstruction in the exhibition shows an ancient brazier together with the hemp seeds and the felt hood which was put over the top like a miniature tent.
There
are stunning pieces of gold jewellery, gold applique to adorn clothes, wooden
drinking bowls, and a highly decorated leather bag even containing remarkably
well - preserved lumps of cheese that are over 2,000 years old. There was a two
- way influence between the culture of the Scythians and their settled ‘civilised
’ neighbours.
Many objects in this exhibition show evidence of cultural
interaction, from Scythian wine - drinking learnt from the ancient Greeks and
Persians, through ancient Greek craftsmen who depicte d archers in Scythian
dress, and the gold objects in the Achaemenid Oxus Treasure in the British
Museum’s collection that are influenced by Scythian art. In about the second
century BC the Scythians disappeared and were replaced by other nomadic powers.
The exhibition concludes with an exploration of what happened afterwards and
takes a look at life in southern Siberia in the early centuries AD. These
objects are also spectacularly well preserved, but through extreme dryness rather
than extreme cold. Haunting painted clay death masks decorated to resemble the
tattooed faces of the deceased are shown alongside beautiful clothing and the
reconstructed log - cabin tomb chamber in which they were discovered. The
growing application of archaeological science is unlocking clues to the past,
and new results from collaborative work by the British Museum and the State Hermitage
Museum will be included in the exhibition.
Name one civilization located in the
Americas that pre-dates the arrival of Europeans. You probably replied
with the Aztecs, the Inca or perhaps the Maya. A new paper, published in
De Gruyter's open access journal Open Archeology, by Michael
E. Smith of Arizona State University shows how this view of American
civilizations is narrow. It is entitled "The Teotihuacan Anomaly: The
Historical Trajectory of Urban Design in Ancient Central Mexico."
Smith, using a map produced by the Teotihuacan mapping project,
conducted a comparative analysis of the city with earlier and later
Mesoamerican urban centers and has proved, for the first time, the
uniqueness of the city. The paper outlines how the urban design of the
city of Teotihuacan differed from past and subsequent cities, only to be
rediscovered and partially modelled on many centuries later by the
Aztecs.
Teotihuacan was in touch with other Mesoamerican civilizations and at
the height of its influence between 100 -- 650 AD, it was the largest
city in the Americas, and one of the largest in the world. It is unclear
who the builders of the city were, and what relation they had to the
peoples which followed. It is possible they were related to the Nahua or
Totonac peoples. It is also unclear why the city was abandoned. There
are several theories which include foreign invasion, a civil war, an
ecological catastrophe, or some combination of all three.
The Aztecs, who reached the height of their power about a thousand
years later, held Teotihuacan in reverence. The site of Teotihuacan is
located about forty kilometers from the site of the Aztec capital. They
claimed to be the descendants of the Teotihuacans. That may or may not
be true, but the Teotihuacans had a huge influence on the later Aztec
culture. The name Teotihuacan comes from the Aztec language, and means
'the birthplace of the gods' and they believed it was the location of
the creation of the universe. But the paper outlines how the influence
of this ancient culture on the Aztecs was not limited only to their
cultural beliefs, but also how it affected the urban design of their
capital city, and also how unparalleled that original design was.
Most ancient cities throughout Mesoamerica followed the same planning
principles, and they included the same kinds of buildings. Each city
usually had a well-planned central area which included temples, a royal
palace, a ballcourt, and a plaza that was surrounded by a much more
chaotic (in terms of planning) residential area. Teotihuacan most likely
had no royal palace, no ballcourt, and no central areas. It was much
larger than cities before it, and the residential areas were much better
planned than its predecessors, and it had an innovation unique in world
history -- the apartment compound. Buildings with one entrance that
contained many households had been rare before the industrial revolution
and those that did exist were for the poor. Teotihuacan's were spacious
and comfortable.
"Teotihuacan stood alone as the only city using a new and very
different set of planning principles, and its apartment compounds
represent a unique form of urban residence not just in Mesoamerica but
in world urban history," said Michael E. Smith.
All of these features were unique in Central America before and
after, until the Aztecs drew their inspiration for their capital
Tenochtitlan from Teotihuacan using many of the same features.
Scientists confirm that the age and content of an old sack is in accordance with a medieval myth about Saint Francis of Assisi.
For more than 700 years the Friary of Folloni near Montella in Italy has protected and guarded some small fragments of textile.
According to the legend the textile fragments originate from a sack
that appeared on the doorstep of the friary in the winter of 1224
containing bread sent from Saint Francis of Assisi, who at that time was
in France. The bread was allegedly brought to the friary by an angel.
Ever since that cold winter's night the sack has been guarded by the
friary, and today the last few remaining fragments are kept as a relic
in a well protected shrine.
In line with the legend
A Danish/Italian/Dutch team of reseachers led by Associate Professor
Kaare Lund Rasmussen from University of Southern Denmark has had the
opportunity to conduct scientific studies of the alleged bread sack
fragments. Their study is published in the journal Radiocarbon.
C-14 analysis revealed that the textile can be dated to 1220-1295.
The age is in line with the legend, says Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a chemist, and specialized in archaeo-chemical analyses.
There was probably bread in the sack
The researchers also looked for traces of bread in the textile. They
did this by looking for ergosterol, a sterol for the fungal kingdom and
encountered in several types of mould. Ergosterol can be a potential
biomarker for brewing, baking or agriculture.
The studies show that there was probably bread in the sack. We don't
know when, but it seems unlikely that it was after 1732, where the sack
fragments were inmured in order to protect them. It is more likely that
bread was in contact with the textile in the 300 years before 1732; a
period, where the textile was used as altar cloth -- or maybe it was
indeed on the cold winter's night in 1224 -- it is possible, says
Rasmussen.
The bread sack
According to legend the bread sack miraculously
appeared on the doorstep of the friary in 1224. For 300 years it was
used as an altar cloth. During this time pieces were cut off and given
to other religious institutions in Italy. After an earthquake in 1732 a
new friary was built and the remaining sack fragments were inmured. I
1807 the fragments were moved to the main church, Santa Maria del piano.
In 1817 half of the textile was returned to the friary. In 1999 the
remaining half returned. Today the fragments of the textile are kept in a
reliquary.
IMAGE: Twill example from Civita Castellana, Italy, seventh century BC.
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Credit: Margarita Gleba
Textiles represent one of the earliest human craft technologies and
applied arts, and their production would have been one of the most
important time, resource and labour consuming activities in the ancient
past.
In archaeological contexts, textiles are relatively rare finds,
especially in Mediterranean Europe where conditions are unfavourable for
organic material preservation. Many archaeological textile fragments
do, however, survive in mineralised form, which forms the basis of a new
study published today in Antiquity.
Detailed analysis of several hundred textile fragments has provided,
for the first time, a much more detailed definition of the textile
cultures in Italy and Greece during the first half of the first
millennium BC.
According to Dr Margarita Gleba, the study's author and researcher
at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of
Cambridge, "Luckily for us, during the Iron Age (c. 1000-400 BC) people
were buried with a lot of metal goods such as personal ornaments,
weapons and vessels. These metals are conducive to the preservation of
textiles as the metal effectively kills off the micro-organisms which
would otherwise consume the organic materials, while at the same time
metal salts create casts of textile fibres, thereby preserving the
textile microstructure."
"This is how we get such a large number of textiles, even though
they only exist now in tiny fragments. Through meticulous analysis using
digital and scanning electron microscopy, high performance liquid
chromatography and other advanced methods we are able to determine a lot
of information including the nature of the raw materials and structural
features such as thread diameter, twist direction, type of weaving or
binding, and thread count."
The technical differences suggest that during the Iron Age, textiles
in Italy more closely resembled those found in Central Europe
(associated with the Hallstatt culture that was prevalent in modern-day
Germany, Austria and Slovenia) while the textile culture of Greece was
largely connected with the Near East.
Dr Gleba added, "There is overwhelming evidence for frequent contact
between Italy and Greece during the first half of the first millennium
BC, but this evidence shows that their textile traditions were
technically, aesthetically and conceptually very different. This means
that the populations in these two regions are making an active decision
to clothe themselves in a certain way and it may have to do with
traditions set up already in the Bronze Age."
"Textiles have been and still are widely considered one of the most
valuable indicators of individual and group identity. Even in societies
today, we frequently form opinions of others based on the type of cloth
they are wearing: tweed is associated with Irish and British country
clothing, cashmere with Central Asia and silk with the Far East for
example."
"Curiously, by Roman times, the establishment of Greek colonies in
southern Italy and more general oriental influences observed in material
culture of Italic populations leads towards gradual disappearance of
the indigenous textile tradition. Our future research will attempt to
understand the cause behind this change in textile culture."
IMAGE: Mount Hora in Malawi, where the oldest DNA in the study, from a woman who lived more than 8,000 years ago, was obtained.
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Credit: Jessica C. Thompson/Emory University
The first large-scale study of ancient human DNA from sub-Saharan
Africa opens a long-awaited window into the identity of prehistoric
populations in the region and how they moved around and replaced one
another over the past 8,000 years.
The findings, published Sept. 21 in Cell by an
international research team led by Harvard Medical School, answer
several longstanding mysteries and uncover surprising details about
sub-Saharan African ancestry -- including genetic adaptations for a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the first glimpses of population
distribution before farmers and animal herders swept across the
continent about 3,000 years ago.
"The last few thousand years were an incredibly rich and formative
period that is key to understanding how populations in Africa got to
where they are today," said David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS
and a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
"Ancestry during this time period is such an unexplored landscape that
everything we learned was new."
"Ancient DNA is the only tool we have for characterizing past
genomic diversity. It teaches us things we don't know about history from
archaeology and linguistics and can help us better understand
present-day populations," said Pontus Skoglund, a postdoctoral
researcher in the Reich lab and the study's first author. "We need to
ensure we use it for the benefit of all populations around the world,
perhaps especially Africa, which contains the greatest human genetic
diversity in the world but has been underserved by the genomics
community."
Long time coming
Although ancient-DNA research has revealed insights into the
population histories of many areas of the world, delving into the deep
ancestry of African groups wasn't possible until recently because
genetic material degrades too rapidly in warm, humid climates.
Technological advances--including the discovery by Pinhasi and
colleagues that DNA persists longer in small, dense ear bones--are now
beginning to break the climate barrier. Last year, Reich and colleagues
used the new techniques to generate the first genome-wide data from the
earliest farmers in the Near East, who lived between 8,000 and 12,000
years ago.
In the new study, Skoglund and team, including colleagues from South
Africa, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, coaxed DNA from the remains of 15
ancient sub-Saharan Africans. The individuals came from a variety of
geographic regions and ranged in age from about 500 to 8,500 years old.
The researchers compared these ancient genomes--along with the only
other known ancient genome from the region, previously published in
2015--against those of nearly 600 present-day people from 59 African
populations and 300 people from 142 non-African groups.
With each analysis, revelations rolled in.
"We are peeling back the first layers of the agricultural transition
south of the Sahara," said Skoglund. "Already we can see that there was
a whole different landscape of populations just 2,000 or 3,000 years
ago."
Genomic time-lapse
Almost half of the team's samples came from Malawi, providing a
series of genomic snapshots from the same location across thousands of
years.
The time-series divulged the existence of an ancient hunter-gatherer population the researchers hadn't expected.
When agriculture spread in Europe and East Asia, farmers and animal
herders expanded into new areas and mixed with the hunter-gatherers who
lived there. Present-day populations thus inherited DNA from both
groups.
The new study found evidence for similar movement and mixing in
other parts of Africa, but after farmers reached Malawi,
hunter-gatherers seem to have disappeared without contributing any
detectable ancestry to the people who live there today.
"It looks like there was a complete population replacement," said
Reich. "We haven't seen clear evidence for an event like this anywhere
else."
The Malawi snapshots also helped identify a population that spanned
from the southern tip of Africa all the way to the equator about 1,400
years ago before fading away. That mysterious group shared ancestry with
today's Khoe-San people in southern Africa and left a few DNA traces in
people from a group of islands thousands of miles away, off the coast
of Tanzania.
"It's amazing to see these populations in the DNA that don't exist
anymore," said Reich. "It's clear that gathering additional DNA samples
will teach us much more."
"The Khoe-San are such a genetically distinctive people, it was a
surprise to find a closely related ancestor so far north just a couple
of thousand years ago," Reich added.
The new study also found that West Africans can trace their lineage
back to a human ancestor that may have split off from other African
populations even earlier than the Khoe-San.
Missing links
The research similarly shed light on the origins of another unique group, the Hadza people of East Africa.
"They have a distinct appearance, language and genetics, and some
people speculated that, like the Khoe-San, they might represent a very
early diverging group from other African populations," said Reich. "Our
study shows that instead, they're somehow in the middle of everything."
The Hadza, according to genomic comparisons, are today more closely
related to non-Africans than to other Africans. The researchers
hypothesize that the Hadza are direct descendants of the group that
migrated out of Africa, and possibly spread within Africa as well, after
about 50,000 years ago.
Another discovery lay in wait in East Africa.
Scientists had predicted the existence of an ancient population
based on the observation that present-day people in southern Africa
share ancestry with people in the Near East. The 3,000-year-old remains
of a young girl in Tanzania provided the missing evidence.
Reich and colleagues suspect that the girl belonged to a herding
population that contributed significant ancestry to present-day people
from Ethiopia and Somalia down to South Africa. The ancient population
was about one-third Eurasian, and the researchers were able to further
pinpoint that ancestry to the Levant region.
"With this sample in hand, we can now say more about who these people were," said Skoglund.
The finding put one mystery to rest while raising another:
Present-day people in the Horn of Africa have additional Near Eastern
ancestry that can't be explained by the group to which the young girl
belonged.
Natural selection
Finally, the study took a first step in using ancient DNA to understand genetic adaptation in African populations.
It required "squeezing water out of a stone" because the researchers
were working with so few ancient samples, said Reich, but Skoglund was
able to identify two regions of the genome that appear to have undergone
natural selection in southern Africans.
One adaptation increased protection from ultraviolet radiation,
which the researchers propose could be related to life in the Kalahari
Desert. The other variant was located on genes related to taste buds,
which the researchers point out can help people detect poisons in
plants.
The researchers hope that their study encourages more investigation
into the diverse genetic landscape of human populations in Africa, both
past and present. Reich also said he hopes the work reminds people that
African history didn't end 50,000 years ago when groups of humans began
migrating into the Near East and beyond.
IMAGE: Skeleton of the Neanderthal boy recovered from the El Sidrón cave (Asturias, Spain).
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Credit: Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC
How did Neanderthals grow? Does modern man develop in the same way as Homo neanderthalensis
did? How does the size of the brain affect the development of the body?
A study led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) researcher,
Antonio Rosas, has studied the fossil remains of a Neanderthal child's
skeleton in order to establish whether there are differences between the
growth of Neanderthals and that of sapiens.
According to the results of the article, which are published in Science, both species regulate their growth differently to adapt their energy consumption to their physical characteristics.
"Discerning the differences and similarities in growth patterns
between Neanderthals and modern humans helps us better define our own
history. Modern humans and Neanderthals emerged from a common recent
ancestor, and this is manifested in a similar overall growth rate",
explains CSIC researcher, Antonio Rosas, from Spain's National Natural
Science Museum (MNCN).
As fellow CSIC researcher Luis Ríos highlights,
"Applying paediatric growth assessment methods, this Neanderthal child
is no different to a modern-day child". The pattern of vertebral
maturation and brain growth, as well as energy constraints during
development, may have marked the anatomical shape of Neanderthals.
Neanderthals had a greater cranial capacity than today's humans.
Neanderthal adults had an intracranial volume of 1,520 cubic
centimetres, while that of modern adult man is 1,195 cubic centimetres.
That of the Neanderthal child in the study had reached 1,330 cubic
centimetres at the time of his death, in other words, 87.5% of the total
reached at eight years of age. At that age, the development of a
modern-day child's cranial capacity has already been fully completed.
"Developing a large brain involves significant energy expenditure
and, consequently, this hinders the growth of other parts of the body.
In sapiens, the development of the brain during childhood has a high
energetic cost and, as a result, the development of the rest of the body
slows down," Rosas explains.
Neanderthals and sapiens
The cost, in terms of energy, of anatomical growth of the modern
brain is unusually high, especially during breastfeeding and during
infancy, and this seems to require a slowing down of body growth.
The
growth and development of this juvenile Neanderthal matches the typical
characteristics of human ontogeny, where there is a slow anatomical
growth between weaning and puberty. This could compensate for the
immense energy cost of developing such a large brain.
In fact, the skeleton and dentition of this Neanderthal present a
physiology which is similar to that of a sapiens of the same age,
except for the thorax area, which corresponds to a child between five
and six years, in that it is less developed. "The growth of our
Neanderthal child was not complete, probably due to energy saving",
explains CSIC researcher Antonio Rosas.
The only divergent aspect in the growth of both species is the
moment of maturation of the vertebral column. In all hominids, the
cartilaginous joints of the middle thoracic vertebrae and the atlas are
the last to fuse, but in this Neanderthal, fusion occurred about two
years later than in modern humans.
"The delay of this fusion in the vertebral column may indicate
that Neanderthals had a decoupling of certain aspects in the transition
from infancy to the juvenile phase. Although the implications are
unknown, this feature could be related to the characteristic enlarged
shape of the Neanderthal torso, or slower brain growth", says Rosas.
The Neanderthal child
The protagonist of this study was 7.7 years old, weighed 26 kilos
and measured 111 centimetres at the time of death. Although the genetic
analyses failed to confirm the child's sex, the canine teeth and the
sturdiness of the bones showed that it to be a male. 138 pieces, 30 of
them teeth (including some milk teeth), and part of the skeleton-
including some fragments of the skull from the individual- identified as
El Sidrón J1, have recovered.
The researchers have been able to establish that our protagonist
was right-handed and was already performing adult tasks, such as using
his teeth as a third hand to handle skins and plant fibres. In addition,
they know who his mother was, and that the child protagonist of this
investigation had a younger brother in the group. Furthermore, this
child was found to have suffered from enamel hypoplasia when he was two
or three years old. Hypoplasia (white spots on the teeth, especially
visible in the upper incisors), occurs when the teeth have less enamel
than normal, the cause usually being malnutrition or disease.
Discovered in 1994, the El Sidrón cave, located in Piloña (in
Asturias, northern Spain) has provided the best collection of
Neanderthals that exists on the Iberian Peninsula. The team has
recovered the remains of 13 individuals from the cave. The group
consisted of seven adults (four women and three men), three teenagers
and three younger children.
A
replica of one of ancient Rome’s most iconic sculptures brings ancient
history and Jewish culture to life at Yeshiva University Museum
this fall.
Spoils from the Temple of Solomon. Relief in the passageway of the Arch of Titus.
Attic inscription, Arch of Titus
The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome, and Back
allows visitors to experience the richness and ongoing influence of one
of ancient Rome’s most significant monuments, as well as the ways its
meaning has dramatically transformed over 2,000 years. The
exhibition
will be on view in the Museum’s Popper Gallery, located at the Center
for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, through January 14, 2018.
The
exhibition explores the historical and cultural significance of the
Arch from its creation as a monument celebrating the Roman triumph over
the Jews
in 70 CE through the medieval papacy and early modern rabbis, the
Counter-Reformation, European Classicism and finally the Jewish and
Israeli national re-appropriation of the Arch.
“This
history, where a symbol of defeat transforms into a symbol of victory,
is especially relevant in light of the recent events in Charlottesville,
where symbols of a
dark history have galvanized people to assert the primacy of values that
are more inclusive and compassionate,” said Dr. Steven Fine, Churgin
Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University and director of the
Yeshiva
University Center for Israel Studies.
The Arch of Titus – from Jerusalem to Rome, and Backwas
conceived and is presented by Yeshiva University Museum in partnership
with the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies. The Museum and
the Center will also co-present a special
international conference on the Arch on October 29, 2017.
Built
by Emperor Domitian around 82 CE to commemorate the Roman defeat of
Judaea in the Jewish War of 66-74 CE, the Arch of Titus has today become an iconic representation
of antiquity. The Arch
preserves sculptural reliefs that depict the sacred vessels of the
Jerusalem Temple being carried into Rome by celebrating Roman soldiers,
including
a seven-branched Menorah, which, since 1949, has been the emblem of the
State of Israel.
The exhibition features a digitally carved life-size replica of the Spoils of Jerusalem
relief from the interior passageway of the Arch. The replica is
projected with images that reconstruct the missing sculptures and colors
of the original relief, based on the original polychromy discovered
in 2012 by YU’s Arch of Titus Project, working collaboratively with a team of historians, scientists, and archaeologists.
In
complement to the cutting-edge visual technologies, the exhibition also
features rare artifacts from collections in Italy, Israel and the
United States that illuminate
the monument’s vibrant history – including:
Rare prints, paintings, photographs and depictions of the Arch of Titus across the centuries;
17th- and 18th-century placards carried by the Jews of Rome at the Arch during papal processions;
A postcard written by Sigmund Freud from the Arch, in 1913, inscribed: “The Jew Survives it”;
A selection of original proposals for the Emblem of the State of Israel.
The
exhibition stretches from the Roman era to the present, exploring the
image and symbolism of the Arch from various vantage points as the
monument transformed and was re-interpreted
across history.
As a complement to the exhibition, Yeshiva University Museum is teaming with the Jewish Museum of Rome and Centro Primo
Levi on The Rome Lab, an ambitious multimedia program that explores Rome's Jewish community through the centuries and today.
Spearheaded by Alessandra Di Castro,
director of the Jewish Museum of Rome, and Natalia Indrimi, director of
Centro Primo Levi, The Rome Lab is a dreamlike space that collapses
spatial and temporal coordinates around three symbolic physical places:
the Jewish
quarter, the Jewish Museum and the Synagogue. This historic partnership
with the Jewish Museum of Rome is especially meaningful in that it comes
directly after the conclusion of the exhibition on the Menorah held
jointly at
the Jewish Museum of Rome and the Vatican Museum.
In 1908, The Metropolitan Museum of Art began
to excavate late-antique sites in the Kharga Oasis, located in Egypt's
Western Desert. The Museum's archaeologists uncovered two-story houses,
painted tombs, and a church and retrieved objects that reveal the
multiple cultural and religious identities of people who had lived in
the region between the third and seventh centuries A.D., a time of
transition between the Roman and early Byzantine periods. The finds
represent a society that integrated Egyptian, Greek, and Roman culture
and art. Opening October 11 at The Met, the exhibition Art and Peoples of Kharga Oasis will feature some 30 works from these excavations.
By grouping objects according to the
archaeological context in which they were discovered, the exhibition
will explore the interpretation of ancient identities and artifacts and
show how archaeological documentation can aid in understanding an
object's original function.
On view will be copies of frescoes with Early
Christian images, ceramics, ostraca (pottery shards that were used as
writing surfaces), jewelry from burials, glassware, and early
20th-century site photography. An excerpt from the 1989 documentary film
Merchants and Masterpieceswill feature footage ofthe landscape and monuments of Kharga Oasis.
Students and scholars wishing to do further
research may consult "Excavations of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine
Sites in the Kharga Oasis," an online resource available through the Digital Collection portal of the Museum's Thomas J. Watson Library.
The exhibition is organized by Helen Evans,
the Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art, Department of
Medieval Art and The Cloisters, and Andrea Myers Achi. Exhibition, graphic, and lighting design is by The Met Design Department.
The first large-scale genetic study of people in Papua New Guinea
has shown that different groups within the country are genetically
highly different from each other. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust
Sanger Institute and their colleagues at the University of Oxford and
the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research reveal that the
people there have remained genetically independent from Europe and Asia
for most of the last 50,000 years, and that people from the country's
isolated highlands region have been completely independent even until
the present day.
Reported today (15 September) in Science, the study also
gives insights into how the development of agriculture and cultural
events such as the Bronze or Iron Age could affect the genetic structure
of human societies.
Papua New Guinea is a country in the southwestern Pacific with some
of the earliest archaeological evidence of human existence outside
Africa. Largely free from Western influence and with fascinating
cultural diversity, it has been of enormous interest to anthropologists
and other scientists seeking to understand human cultures and evolution.
With approximately 850 domestic languages, which account for over 10
per cent of the world's total, Papua New Guinea is the most
linguistically diverse country in the world. To discover if the
linguistic and cultural diversity was echoed in the genetic structure of
the population, researchers studied the genomes of 381 Papuan New
Guinean people from 85 different language groups within the country.
The researchers looked at more than a million genetic positions in
the genome of each individual, and compared them to investigate genetic
similarities and differences. They found that groups of people speaking
different languages were surprisingly genetically distinct from each
other.
Human evolution in Europe and Asia has been greatly influenced by
the development of agriculture around 10,000 years ago. When small bands
of hunter-gatherers settled into villages and started farming, they
expanded and over time gave rise to more genetically homogenous
(similar) societies. However, despite the independent development of
agriculture in Papua New Guinea at about the same time, the same process
of homogenization did not occur here. This may indicate that other
historical processes in Europe and Asia, such as the later Bronze and
Iron Ages, were the key events that shaped the current genetic structure
of those populations.
War was not an activity exclusive to males in the Viking world. A
new study conducted by researchers at Stockholm and Uppsala Universities
shows that women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, who led the study, explains: "What we
have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military
leader, that happens to be a woman".
The study was conducted on one of the most iconic graves from the
Viking Age. It holds the remains of a warrior surrounded by weapons,
including a sword, armour-piercing arrows, and two horses.
There were
also a full set of gaming pieces and a gaming board. "The gaming set
indicates that she was an officer", says Charlotte, "someone who worked
with tactics and strategy and could lead troops in battle". The warrior
was buried in the Viking town of Birka during the mid-10th century.
Isotope analyses confirm an itinerant life style, well in tune with the
martial society that dominated 8th to 10th century northern Europe.
Anna Kjellström, who also participated in the study, has taken an
interest in the burial previously. "The morphology of some skeletal
traits strongly suggests that she was a woman, but this has been the
type specimen for a Viking warrior for over a century why we needed to
confirm the sex in any way we could."
And this is why the archaeologists turned to genetics, to
retrieve a molecular sex identification based on X and Y chromosomes.
Such analyses can be quite useful according to Maja Krezwinska: "Using
ancient DNA for sex identification is useful when working with children
for example, but can also help to resolve controversial cases such as
this one". Maja was thus able to confirm the morphological sex
identification with the presence of X chromosomes but the lack of a Y
chromosome.
Jan Storå, who holds the senior position on this study, reflects
over the history of the material: "This burial was excavated in the
1880ies and has served as a model of a professional Viking warrior ever
since. Especially, the grave-goods cemented an interpretation for over a
century". It was just assumed she was a man through all these years.
"The utilization of new techniques, methods, but also renewed critical
perspectives, again, shows the research potential and scientific value
of our museum collections".
IMAGE: 4,000 years ago, European women traveled
far from their home villages to start their families, bringing with them
new cultural objects and ideas.
view more
Credit: Stadtarchäologie Augsburg
At the end of the Stone Age and in the early Bronze Age, families
were established in a surprising manner in the Lechtal, south of
Augsburg, Germany. The majority of women came from outside the area,
probably from Bohemia or Central Germany, while men usually remained in
the region of their birth. This so-called patrilocal pattern combined
with individual female mobility was not a temporary phenomenon, but
persisted over a period of 800 years during the transition from the
Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age.
The findings, published today in PNAS, result from a research
collaboration headed by Philipp Stockhammer of the Institute of Pre-
and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces of
the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In addition to
archaeological examinations, the team conducted stable isotope and
ancient DNA analyses. Corina Knipper of the Curt-Engelhorn-Centre for
Archaeometry, as well as Alissa Mittnik and Johannes Krause of the Max
Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena and the
University of Tuebingen jointly directed these scientific
investigations.
"Individual mobility was a major feature characterizing
the lives of people in Central Europe even in the 3rd and early 2nd
millennium," states Philipp Stockhammer. The researchers suspect that it
played a significant role in the exchange of cultural objects and
ideas, which increased considerably in the Bronze Age, in turn promoting
the development of new technologies.
For this study, the researchers examined the remains of 84
individuals using genetic and isotope analyses in conjunction with
archeological evaluations. The individuals were buried between 2500 and
1650 BC in cemeteries that belonged to individual homesteads, and that
contained between one and several dozen burials made over a period of
several generations.
"The settlements were located along a fertile loess
ridge in the middle of the Lech valley. Larger villages did not exist
in the Lechtal at this time," states Stockhammer.
"We see a great diversity of different female lineages, which would
occur if over time many women relocated to the Lech Valley from
somewhere else," remarks Alissa Mittnik on the genetic analyses and
Corina Knipper explains, "Based on analysis of strontium isotope ratios
in molars, which allows us to draw conclusions about the origin of
people, we were able to ascertain that the majority of women did not
originate from the region." The burials of the women did not differ from
that of the native population, indicating that the formerly foreign
women were integrated into the local community.
From an archaeological point of view, the new insights prove the
importance of female mobility for cultural exchange in the Bronze Age.
They also allow us to view the immense extent of early human mobility in
a new light. "It appears that at least part of what was previously
believed to be migration by groups is based on an institutionalized form
of individual mobility," declares Stockhammer.
A Neanderthal spear is
predominantly made up of two parts, a piece of flint for the point, and a
stick for the shaft. But one aspect is often overlooked, and has
recently been puzzling archaeologists: the glue that fixes the point to
the shaft. For this, Neanderthals used tar from birch bark, a material
that researchers often assumed was complex and difficult to make.
Credit: Diederik Pomstra
The world's oldest known glue was made
by Neanderthals. But how did they make it 200,000 years ago? Leiden
archaeologists have discovered three possible ways. Publication in
Scientific Reports, 31 August.
A Neanderthal spear is predominantly made up of two parts, a piece of
flint for the point, and a stick for the shaft. But one aspect is often
overlooked, and has recently been puzzling archaeologists: the glue
that fixes the point to the shaft. For this, Neanderthals used tar from
birch bark, a material that researchers often assumed was complex and
difficult to make.
Three methods
Leiden archaeologists have now shown that this assumption was
unfounded. Led by Paul Kozowyk and Geeske Langejans, the researchers
discovered no fewer than three different ways to extract tar from birch
bark. For the simplest method, all that is needed is a roll of bark and
an open fire. This
enabled Neanderthals to produce the first glue as
early as 200,000 years ago.
Experimental archaeology
The researchers made this surprising discovery by setting to work
with only the tools and materials that Neanderthals possessed. They used
experimental archaeology because the preservation of ancient adhesives
is incredibly rare and there is no direct archaeological evidence about
how tar was made during the Palaeolithic. In situations like this,
experimental archaeology provides a window into the past that would not
otherwise exist.
Temperature control
'In earlier experimental attempts, researchers only managed to
extract small quantities of tar from birch bark, or they didn't get
anything at all,' says Kozowyk. 'It was beleived that this was because
the fire needed to be controlled to within a narrow temperature range.
However, we discovered that there are more ways to produce tar, and that
some work even with a significant temperature variation. So, precisely
controlling the temperature of the fire is not as important as was
initially thought.'
From simple to complex
Kozowyk and his colleagues show that Neanderthals discovered tar
production by combining existing knowledge and materials. Neandertals
may have started with a simple method that required only fire and birch
bark, and later adopted a more complex method to obtain higher yields of
tar.
The early settlement of the Americas is a subject of controversial
debate. A longstanding hypothesis claimed that the first migration took
place 12,600 years ago through an ice-free corridor between retreating
North American glaciers, via the ice-age Bering Land Bridge between
Siberia and Alaska. In recent years, however, this theory is being
increasingly called into question by new finds from North and South
America. They indicate that people arrived there earlier. However, these finds were mostly artifacts or open
hearths, their age being dated by using the sediment they contained. It
has been extremely rare so far to find human bones older than 10,000
anywhere in the Americas.
A prehistoric human skeleton found on the
Yucatán Peninsula is at least 13,000 years old and most likely dates
from a glacial period at the end of the most recent ice age, the late
Pleistocene. A German-Mexican team of researchers led by Prof. Dr
Wolfgang Stinnesbeck and Arturo González González has now dated the
fossil skeleton based on a stalagmite that grew on the hip bone.
"The bones from the Chan Hol Cave near the city of Tulúm discovered
five years ago represent one of the oldest finds of human bones on the
American continent and are evidence of an unexpectedly early settlement
in Southern Mexico," says Prof. Stinnesbeck, who is an earth scientist
at Heidelberg University. The research findings have now been published
in PLOS ONE.
The water-filled caves near Tulúm on Yucatán -- a peninsula
separating the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea -- offer a rich
area for finds. Seven prehistoric human skeletons have already been
documented in the intricate cave system near the coast in the eastern
part of the peninsula, some of them previously dated by other
researchers. The caves along Yucatán's Caribbean coast were not flooded
until the worldwide rise in sea level after the ice age. They contain
archaeological, palaeontological and climatic information hidden there
from the time before the flooding, which is extremely well preserved,
according to Wolfgang Stinnesbeck.
It was, however, difficult to exactly determine the age of the human
skeletal material using conventional radiocarbon dating, because the
collagen in the bones had been completely washed out due to the long
period spent in water. Prof. Stinnesbeck and his German-Mexican team of
earth scientists and archaeologists therefore chose another method. By
dating a stalagmite that had grown on the hip bone, they were able to
narrow down the age of the human bones from the Chan Hol Cave.
The analysis of the uranium-thorium isotopes gave the skeleton a
minimum age of 11,300 years. However, the climatic and precipitation
data stored in the stalagmite showed a clearly higher age. It is
measurable in terms of oxygen and carbon isotope ratios and was compared
to "environmental archive" data from other parts of the earth. Aged at
least 13,000, the Chan Hol Cave inhabitant presumably dates from the
Younger Dryas. "It represents one of the oldest human skeletons from
America. Our data underline the great importance of the Tulúm cave finds
for the debate about the settling of the continent," says Prof.
Stinnesbeck.
According to the Heidelberg earth scientist, the enormous
urbanisation and growth of tourism in this region threaten the
palaeontological and archaeological archives preserved in the caves.
Shortly after the discovery of the human skeleton in February 2012 the
site of the find was looted; unknown divers stole all the bones lying
around on the ground of the cave. Only a few photos and small fragments
of bones bear witness today to the original find situation. The hip bone
investigated by the German-Mexican researcher team only escaped being
stolen through the protection provided by the rock-hard lime-sinter of
the stalagmite.
