Remains of a 1,500-year-old Monastery and Church uncovered in Beit Shemesh

December 20, 2017

 

The spectacular remains of a 1,500-year-old (Byzantine Period) monastery and church decorated with mosaic floors and imported marble elements are currently being uncovered during large scale excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Beit Shemesh with the help of over 1,000 teenagers. The excavation is being conducted prior to the expansion of Ramat Beit Shemesh, funded by the Ministry of Construction and Housing, and implemented by the CPM Corporation managed by Anatoly Snider.



According to Benyamin Storchan, director of the excavations for the Israel Antiquities Authority, "We were surprised by the wonderful state of preservation of the ancient remains, and the richness of the finds being uncovered. The artifacts found in the large building, which seems to be a monastic compound, may indicate that the site was important and perhaps a center for ancient pilgrims in the Judean Shephelah region.



During the excavation, we uncovered before our eyes the remains of walls built of large worked stone masonry and a number of architectural elements including a marble pillar base decorated with crosses and marble window screens. The marble artifacts were brought from the region of Turkey and further inland by wagon. In one of the rooms we uncovered a beautiful mosaic floor decorated with birds, leafs, and pomegranates". "We already know of a number of ancient churches and monasteries in the Judean Shephelah" added Storchan, "but this one has outstanding preservation".



Until now, only a small percent of the monastery has been uncovered, which was abandoned in the 7^th century CE for unknown reasons.

  

Since the beginning of the excavation during the summer, over 1,000 teenagers from different groups and organization, mostly schools and pre-military organizations have participated in the excavation.



According to Hadas Keich, 16 years old and student of the Sde Boker Field School "We searched for a way to fundraise for our class trip to Poland, and we decided to take part in the archaeological excavations. Little by little we uncovered here exciting finds, which helped to connect us to our country and its history. Amazing what is hidden here beneath our feet."

Photos & Video Credits: Assaf Peretz, Yaniv Berman,

Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

An Idumean Palace or Temple in the Lachish Region?

An impressive 2200-year-old (Hellenistic period) structure, possibly an Idumean palace or temple, was uncovered during Sukkot in archaeological excavations at the site of Horvat 'Amuda, situated at the heart of a military training area in the Lachish region.

 

According to the excavation directors, Dr. Oren Gutfeld of the Hebrew University, and Pablo Betzer and Michal Haber of the Israel Antiquities Authority: "If this was indeed an Idumean palace or temple, it is a rare and exciting find - similar structures in this country can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It seems that the building was intentionally dismantled, possibly during the Hasmonean conquest of the region."

 

Two stone incense altars were discovered in one of the rooms. One of them, bearing the carved image of a bull, is depicted as standing in what is apparently the façade of a temple adorned with magnificent columns. According to the archaeologists, the altar is "a unique and rare find in terms of its decoration." The bull, they say, "may have symbolized a deity worshipped by the Idumeans." In addition to the incense altar, delicate pottery vessels were also uncovered, including painted bowls, juglets and oil lamps.



Also found at the site are numerous underground spaces, used as quarries or to house ritual baths (miqvaot), oil presses and dovecotes. Hiding tunnels from the time of the Jewish revolts against the Romans were also discovered; one of these contained an intact cooking pot from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-135 CE).



The new discovery came to light with the help of camera-equipped drones - technology that has become part of the archaeologists' tool box in recent years. As part of an extensive archaeological research project of the area between Bet Guvrin and Maresha in the north and Moshav Amatzia in the south, the drone cameras photographed the archaeological remains from high above, subsequently revealing hints of the structure now under excavation.

Calling the discovery a research breakthrough, the archaeologists say: "This technology helped us choose where to focus our excavation probes, and, indeed, it very quickly emerged that this was in fact a unique discovery. We hope that our continued excavation of the site in the spring will uncover more of the story told here."



The excavation at "Horvat Amuda", which was funded by the Beit Lehi Foundation and the Israel Antiquities Authority, was carried out with the participation of archaeology students from the Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University, as well as a group of volunteers from the United States.
During the Hellenistic period "Horvat Amuda" was apparently one of the agricultural satellite settlements of Maresha, which had by now become the Idumean district capital (today it is part of Bet Guvrin-Maresha National Park).

Prior to that, in the fifth century BCE (the Persian period), the Idumeans - a Semitic people originating in southern Jordan - settled in the Judean Shephelah (foothills). After the area was conquered by the Hasmoneans in 112 BCE, the Idumeans converted and subsequently blended into the Judean population.

Photos Credits: Michal Haber, Clara Amit, Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Dane Christensen

1,500-year-old Mosaic Floor with Inscription Uncovered in Ashdod

The mosaic, which was apparently the floor of a church or monastery, contains an inscription noting the year of the building's construction according to the Georgian calendar * This is the first Georgian church or monastery ever discovered on the Israeli coast.

An impressive 1,500-year-old church, with an inscription in Greek mentioning a date according to the Georgian calendar, was uncovered in archaeological excavations in Ashdod in August. According to the archaeologists, the floor was part of a Georgian church or monastery.

This is the third season of excavation at the ancient tell of Ashdod-Yam, under the direction of Dr. Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University's Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations Department, in cooperation with Prof. Angelika Berlejung of Leipzig University. The colored mosaic came to light during expansion of the excavation at the Ashdod-Yam antiquities site, in a cooperative project with the participation of Dr. Fantalkin, Dr. Balbina Bäbler of the University of Göttingen, and Sa'ar Ganor, Israel Antiquities Authority Ashkelon district archaeologist.
The ancient city of Ashdod-Yam, on the coast of what is now the southern part of the city of Ashdod, was one of the most important cities on the coast of the Land of Israel in the Byzantine period. The city, known in sources of the period as Azotus Paralios, covered a large area, and the renowned Madaba Map shows it with public buildings, including churches and a street flanked by colonnades. Beginning in the last excavation season, ancient Ashdod-Yam, hidden under the sand dunes, began to bring forth real surprises, which are shedding light on the city's long-ago inhabitants.

The dig uncovered a remarkable mosaic, with a four-line commemoration inscription in Greek dedicated to the structure's builders. The inscription mentions Bishop Procopius, in whose day the church was built, and the year of its construction, apparently according to the Georgian calendar:
"[By the grace of God (or Christ)], this work was done from the foundation under Procopius, our most saintly and most holy bishop, in the month Dios of the 3rdindiction, year 292".

According to Dr. Leah Di Segni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who deciphered the inscription, the date according to the Georgian calendar corresponds to the year 539 CE. "This is the earliest appearance of the use of the Georgian calendar in the Land of Israel, many years before it was used in Georgia itself," Dr. Di Segni said.
Dr. Fantalkin, Dr. Bäbler and Ganor said: "As far as we know, Ashdod is now home to the largest community of Jews of Georgian origin in the world. Testimony to the presence of the actual Georgians in the Land of Israel as far back as the Byzantine period has been found dozens of kilometers from Ashdod - in Jerusalem and its surroundings. But this is the first time that a Georgian church or monastery has been discovered on the Israeli coast."

The archaeologists said that according to historical sources, the famous Georgian prince and bishop Peter the Iberian lived in Ashdod-Yam before his death. "And now it seems that we have uncovered actual evidence of his influence on the Byzantine city of Ashdod-Yam," they added. "This public structure, which has only now begun to come to light, is part of an extensive archaeological complex in the southern part of modern Ashdod. We are now hard at work to raise additional funds to continue the archaeological excavation of Ashdod-Yam," the excavators said.

Photos Credit: Anat Rasiuk, Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

One-Thousand-Year-Old Eggplant Discovered in Israel

The earliest evidence of the arrival of eggplants in this Israel has come to light in the City of David, the archeological site of ancient Jerusalem: A 1,100-year-old refuse pit found in Israel Antiquities Authority excavations in the Jerusalem Walls National Park reveals dietary habits in the Early Islamic period


When did eggplants first arrive in Israel? A 1,100-year-old refuse pit, discovered in archaeological excavations at the stepped street in the City of David in the Jerusalem Walls National Park, may provide an answer. Eggplant seeds were identified in the pit, which dates from the Early Islamic period (also called the Abbasid period - 750-940 CE). These seeds, the earliest evidence of eggplants known in this country, were found alongside thousands of grape seeds, olive and Christ's thorn jujube pits, black mulberries, lentils, figs and more. The refuse pit was uncovered in an Israel Antiquities Authority excavation on the stepped street in the City of David, in collaboration with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and funded by the City of David Foundation.

According to Nahshon Szanton, excavation director for the Israel Antiquities Authority: "As a natural outcome of their activity, workshops and markets created a great deal of garbage that sometimes was buried in refuse pits and cesspits that were dug nearby. Archaeological findings from the refuse pits provide tangible evidence of what written historical sources of the period have to say, and provide valuable information about the diet, lifestyle and economic and trade connections of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and neighboring countries 1,000 years ago. The eggplant seeds, which originated in Persia, are just one example of the research potential of ancient refuse."

In the refuse pit that was discovered along the Second Temple Period Pilgrimage Road in the City of David, was discovered various vessels. Among them was an ancient lamp bearing the inscription "baracha" or blessing, in Arabic. Also found were bones from cattle, fish and birds, as well as many types of seeds. These represent a variety of foods and vegetable products - legumes, fruit and vegetables, as well as edible wild grasses that were also used as spices and for medicinal purposes. The contents of the pit are now being studied intensively by Oriya Amichay and Nahshon Szanton for the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with Bar-Ilan University's Archaeo-Botany Laboratory, headed by Prof. Ehud Weiss.

According to the scholarsAmichay andSzanton : "Finding thousands of grape seeds in refuse pit could attest to industrial activity involving grapes. Wine may have been produced here, or, more likely, grape honey (dibes). We know that with the Muslim conquest grape honey production became more prevalent in the area while wine production declined due to the Muslim religious ban on alcoholic beverages."

To the researchers' surprise, eggplant was also discovered among the many botanical species found in the pit. The discovery of the earliest eggplant seeds in this country and dating them to the Abbasid period provides important information about how eggplant first became part of local agriculture. According to the scholars: "The Arab conquest increased the extent of commerce in this country in general and in the Jerusalem area in particular. This gradual process led to changes in the diet of the local inhabitants due to the arrival of new species and tastes in our region, in addition to those already familiar in the local cuisine up to that time."

The scholars note that the botanical finds were uncovered due a rare mineral phenomenon: "In Israel, organic finds are usually preserved if they become carbonized as the result of a fire or when the site is in an area where weather conditions delay the breakdown of the material (for example in the Judean Desert). In contrast to these types of preservation, the botanical finds in the refuse pit on the stepped street in the City of David, like material found in refuse pits discovered in the past in excavations at the nearby Givati Parking Lot, were preserved in a unique way: The components of the seeds underwent a mineral process that rendered them inorganic - their outer form did not change and the seeds did not decompose, but rather were preserved in the pit until they were recovered during the excavation.

Photos and Clip Credits: 

Photos: Eliyahu Yannai, Clip: Michel Rozilio & Amit Ben Atar

Courtesy of the City of David

4,000-year-old military network in northern Syria

The discovery of more than a thousand sites in Syria has revised our understanding of the settlement of the steppes during all periods in the history of the Near East. Recently, analysis of aerial and satellite images has enabled the discovery of a vast structured surveillance and communication network dating from the Middle Bronze Age (2nd millennium BCE). This research, led by researchers from the Archéorient laboratory (Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient ancien - CNRS/Université Lumière Lyon 2) and the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums of Syria, is published in the journal Paléorient on December 19, 2017.

The region explored by the Franco-Syrian mission "Marges arides de Syrie du Nord" is located to the east of Hama and extends across approximately 7,000 km2. Positioned at the threshold of the densely populated sedentary regions of the Fertile Crescent to the west, and the arid, nomad-inhabited steppes to the east, it has not been continuously exploited by the region's inhabitants. Here, the multidisciplinary team from the geo-archaeological mission has discovered particularly well-preserved sites, including a fortified surveillance network over the territory dating from the second millennium (-2,000 to -1,550). It is the first time that such an extensive fortified system has been discovered in the territory.

This structure, exceptional in its extent and designed to protect urban areas and their hinterlands, is composed of a series of fortresses, small forts, towers, and enclosures that run along the mountainous ridge which dominates the steppes of central Syria. The researchers' work suggests that the fortresses were made from large blocks on unsculpted basalt and formed walls several meters wide and high. In addition, each fortified site was positioned in such a way to ensure that it could see and be seen by others. The spatial organization of this network thus depended on the ability to communicate through light (or smoke) signals in order to rapidly convey information to the major centers of power. The purpose of this regional network would have been to defend the territory, to surveil and protect transport corridors and, above all, to protect the most attractive lands.

These results consolidate field observations conducted prior to the exploration. These had already enabled the sites to be dated using ceramics collected on site. The access to aerial and satellite observations, from 1960 to the present day, made it possible to reconstruct the network beyond the limits of the zone under exploration. It has thus been identified across a north-south distance of around 150 km.

Unexpected agricultural production allowed pre-Hispanic society to flourish in arid Andes

Six hundred kilometers south of Lake Titicaca and more than 3700 m above sea level, the Intersalar region, between the two large salt lakes of Uyuni and Coipasa, is dotted with fields of quinoa and numerous communities. Today, this region is the main producer of this pseudo cereal that is exported throughout the world. Close to these villages, numerous archaeological settlement sites bear witness to an ancient human occupation, dating from between the 13th and 15th centuries. Within an area of 60 x 40 km, the researchers studied 48 sites, at which they identified more than 4500 archaeological granaries that were used for quinoa storage.

But, was the climate at that time similar to the current climate? All climate proxies agree and characterize the period from 1200-1450 CE as dry. Within this drier time interval, the rise of rainfed agriculture in the southern altiplano coincided with a catastrophic volcanic event, the eruption of the Samalas Volcano in Indonesia (1257 CE), that initiated climatic changes lasting several decades, with drops in temperature and precipitation on a global scale.

"The massive success of agricultural production in such an unfavorable environment is very surprising," says Richard Joffre ecologist at the CNRS. "It can only be explained by the development of very specific and detailed environmental knowledge that aimed to save water and avoid frost, and by the mastery of a set of agricultural practices by this pre-Hispanic society. Many micro-terraces are discernible. We mapped more than 1500 hectares of them. Moreover, very few traces of irrigation systems have been found. Production here was based on an unirrigated agricultural system, something remarkable in these arid conditions."

Moreover, according to Pablo Cruz, an anthropologist with CONICET, "the distribution of granaries at the sites and the management of agricultural land all indicate a non-centralized agrarian system. We found no material signs of the centralization of power or the presence of a governing elite."

Thierry Winkel, an ecologist with the IRD, points out "that similar production systems continue to be employed in the indigenous communities of Bolivia's southern altiplano today, providing quinoa producers social and productive resilience in the face of current climate and socio-economic changes..."

Did this particular social and productive organization make it easier for this society to adapt to the worsening climate recorded at that time? The authors of this study propose this stimulating hypothesis. The authors highlight that "these principles of decentralization and self-organization are proving to be an effective response in terms of adaptive strategies in the face of environmental adversity."

Discovery of ruins of ancient Turkic monument surrounded by 14 pillars with inscriptions

IMAGE: Drone aerial shot of the ancient Turkish ruins on Dongoin shiree. (North at the top.) Segments of the inscriptions and sarcophagus excavated from the hole at the center of the... view more 

Credit: Osaka University and Institute of History and Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Science

A joint excavation team from Osaka University and the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences discovered the ruins of a unique monument surrounded by 14 large stone pillars with Turkic Runic inscriptions arranged in a square on the steppe called Dongoin shiree in eastern Mongolia during their three-year (2015 ~ 2017) joint excavation. (Figure 1)

Before the investigation of the ruins began in May 2015, intellectuals involved had thought that inscriptions and ruins of Turkic royalties were only on the steppes in the western part of Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia (Figure 2). However, this excavation team led by Professor Takashi OSAWA at Osaka University discovered 12 new inscriptions at the site, obtaining clues for clarifying power relationships in eastern Mongolia in the Middle Ages from the contents of the inscriptions and the stone configuration at the monument.

The major feature of the monument is its structural configuration in which the stone sarcophagus at the center of the mound, where a deceased person might be placed, is surrounded by 14 stone pillars with inscriptions (Figure 3). On ever stone inscription, tamga (signs) of the ancient Turkic tribes are carved more than 100. These excavated inscriptions are some of the largest Turkic inscriptions discovered in Mongolia. Using radiocarbon dating of pieces of calcined coal, sheepskin, and horse bone excavated from the sarcophagus, it was estimated that this unique monument was built in the 8th century, during the late Second Ancient Turkic Qaghanate.

Professor Takashi OSAWA deciphered these inscriptions and found that the person who is buried and commemorated in the inscriptions assumed the position of Yabgu (viceroy), the highest ranking just behind Qaghan*, during the reign of Bilge Qaghan (716-734 AD) of the Second Turkic Qaghanate. It was also found that the Yabgu became a Tölis-Shad (Royalty of the East), a commander in chief and highest administrative officer, in eastern Mongolia during the reign of Tengri Qaghan (734-741 AD). * Qaghan (or Khagan) is a title of imperial rank in the Turkic and Mongolian languages equal to the status of emperor, and is someone who rules a Qaghanate or Khaganate (empire).

These findings show that the Dongoin shiree steppe, where the unique monument ruins remain, was the center of the eastern area of the ancient Turkic Qaghanate, whose location was not known from materials written in Chinese and Turkic texts.

This monument will reveal that power relationships of rulers in the east area of the Turkic Qaghanate and their territories as well as their political and military relationships with Mongolian tribes, such as the Khitan, Tatabi, and Tatar. In addition, the arrangement of these stone pillars on the plateau will also provide important information for discussing the religious ideas and world outlook of the ancient nomads.

Ancient feces reveal parasites described in earliest Greek medical texts

Ancient faeces from prehistoric burials on the Greek island of Kea have provided the first archaeological evidence for the parasitic worms described 2,500 years ago in the writings of Hippocrates - the most influential works of classical medicine.

University of Cambridge researchers Evilena Anastasiou and Piers Mitchell used microscopy to study soil formed from decomposed faeces recovered from the surface of pelvic bones of skeletons buried in the Neolithic (4th millennium BC), Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) and Roman periods (146 BC - 330 AD).

The Cambridge team worked on this project with Anastasia Papathanasiou and Lynne Schepartz, who are experts in the archaeology and anthropology of ancient Greece, and were based in Athens.

They found that eggs from two species of parasitic worm (helminths) were present: whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), and roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides). Whipworm was present from the Neolithic, and roundworm from the Bronze Age.

Hippocrates was a medical practitioner from the Greek island of Cos, who lived in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. He became famous for developing the concept of humoural theory to explain why people became ill.

This theory - in which a healthy body has a balance of four 'humours': black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm - remained the accepted explanation for disease followed by doctors in Europe until the 17th century, over 2,000 years later.

Hippocrates and his students described many diseases in their medical texts, and historians have been trying to work out which diseases they were. Until now, they had to rely on the original written descriptions of intestinal worms to estimate which parasites may have infected the ancient Greeks.

The Hippocratic texts called these intestinal worms Helmins strongyle, Ascaris, and Helmins plateia.

The researchers say that this new archaeological evidence identifies beyond doubt some of the species of parasites that infected people in the region. The findings are published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

"The Helmins strongyle worm in the ancient Greek texts is likely to have referred to roundworm, as found at Kea. The Ascaris worm described in the ancient medical texts may well have referred to two parasites, pinworm and whipworm, with the latter being found at Kea," said study leader Piers Mitchell, from Cambridge's Department of Archaeology.

"Until now we only had estimates from historians as to what kinds of parasites were described in the ancient Greek medical texts. Our research confirms some aspects of what the historians thought, but also adds new information that the historians did not expect, such as that whipworm was present".

The mention of infections by these parasites in the Hippocratic Corpus includes symptoms of vomiting up worms, diarrhoea, fevers and shivers, heartburn, weakness, and swelling of the abdomen.

Descriptions of treatment for intestinal worms in the Corpus were mainly through medicines, such as the crushed root of the wild herb seseli mixed with water and honey taken as a drink.

"Finding the eggs of intestinal parasites as early as the Neolithic period in Greece is a key advance in our field," said Evilena Anastasiou, one of the study's authors. "This provides the earliest evidence for parasitic worms in ancient Greece."

"This research shows how we can bring together archaeology and history to help us better understand the discoveries of key early medical practitioners and scientists," added Mitchell.

Genetics preserves traces of ancient resistance to Inca rule

IMAGE: The fortress of Kuelap, popularly known as 'the Machu Picchu of the north,' dominates the landscape at an elevation of 3,000 meters. view more 

Credit: Chiara Barbieri

The Chachapoyas region was conquered by the Inca Empire in the late 15th century. Knowledge of the fate of the local population has been based largely on Inca oral histories, written down only decades later after the Spanish conquest. The Inca accounts claim that the native population was forcibly resettled out of Chachapoyas and dispersed across the Inca Empire.

However, a new study in Scientific Reports, by an international team including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, uses genetic evidence to reveal that despite Inca conquest, the population of Chachapoyas has remained genetically distinct, and not assimilated with that of the Inca heartland.

Despite their spectacular achievements, from the first cities of the Americas to the Inca Empire, the indigenous peoples of the Andes left no written histories. One legacy that can now be read, however, is the genetic diversity of their descendants today, especially when taken together with the rich archaeology of the Andes and the prehistory of its native languages. This is the approach taken in a new study in Scientific Reports to test the demographic legacy of the Incas.

The study emerges out of a collaboration between research institutes in Peru and in Germany, including the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. The focus is on a key region in the cloud-forest transition between the Andes and Amazonia in northern Peru. Here the Incas encountered fierce resistance from the "Warriors of the Clouds," the Chachapoyas culture, noted particularly for its distinctive body-shaped sarcophagi and the monumental fortress of Kuelap, the "Machu Picchu of the north."

Particularly to punish and to secure control over such rebellious lands, the Incas are thought to have resettled millions of people across the "Four Quarters" of their empire, Tawantinsuyu.

Chachapoyas was reportedly singled out for such treatment, making it an ideal case for using genetics to test the accuracy of Inca oral histories, which were not written down until almost a century later, by the Spanish conquistadors.

"By targeting various linguistic indicators, we were able to pinpoint a genetic signal in Chachapoyas that turned out to be far more diverse than we expected, especially in the male line, from father to son," explains Chiara Barbieri, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and lead author of the study. "First of all, there's still a strong surviving Native American component, despite all the admixture with European genes ever since the Spanish conquest. What's more, here the native component is quite different from the main genetic network in the highlands of central and southern Peru. This is where the Inca Empire and its predecessors originated, and their conquests, road networks and empire-building ended up homogenizing the genetic make-up here."

The current study reveals how the people of Chachapoyas, by contrast, remained relatively isolated. "So it seems that some genetic legacy of the Chachapoyas did indeed resist Inca impacts, all the way through to today," explains Barbieri.

Two Peruvian geneticists, José Sandoval and Ricardo Fujita of the Universidad San Martin de Porres in Lima, Peru, also took part in the study. "These latest samples are part of a wider genetic coverage of Peru that we've been building up for years. It's these groups like the Chachapoya, culturally and linguistically highly distinctive, who have the most to tell us about our ancestors: where they came from, where they migrated to, what interactions they had with each other, and so on. Also, the Chachapoyas culture left such extensive archaeological remains that there are good prospects for recovering ancient DNA, to complement the modern picture."

Paul Heggarty, a linguist and senior author of the study, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, was first motivated to launch this project after unexpected results from a linguistic fieldwork trip to Chachapoyas. He was able to find a few remaining elderly speakers of an indigenous language that most assumed was already extinct in this region. "Quechua is one of our most direct living links to the people of the New World before Columbus. It still has millions of speakers, more than any other language family of the Americas - but not in Chachapoyas anymore. There are only a dozen or so fluent speakers now, in a few remote villages, so we need to act fast if we're to work out its real origins here."

The Chachapoyas form of Quechua has usually been classified as most closely related to the Quechua spoken in Ecuador, but the new DNA results show no close connections between the Quechua-speakers in these two areas. "Linguists need to rethink their traditional view of the family tree of Quechua languages, and the history of how they spread through the Andes," notes Heggarty. "It seems that Quechua reached Chachapoyas without any big movement of people. This also doesn't fit with the idea that the Incas forced out the Chachapoyas population wholesale."

Jairo Valqui, another linguist co-author from the National University of San Marcos in Lima, adds a further perspective on an even earlier language layer. "Once Quechua and Spanish arrived, the local Chachapoyas languages died out. Recovering anything from them is a real puzzle and a challenge for linguists. They left very few traces, but there are some characteristic combinations of sounds, for example, that still survive in people's surnames and in local placenames, like Kuelap itself."

Valqui, himself a Chachapoyano, also makes a point of taking these genetic results back to the local population. "For Peruvian society today, this matters. There's long been an appreciation of the Incas, but often at the cost of sidelining everything else in the archaeological record across Peru, and the diversity in our linguistic and genetic heritage too. As these latest findings remind us: Peru is not just Machu Picchu, and its indigenous people were not just the Incas."

Revising the story of the dispersal of modern humans across Eurasia

IMAGE: Map of sites and postulated migratory pathways associated with modern humans dispersing across Asia during the Late Pleistocene. view more 

Credit: Bae et al. 2017. On the origin of modern humans: Asian perspectives. Science. Image by: Katerina Douka and Michelle O'Reilly

Most people are now familiar with the traditional "Out of Africa" model: modern humans evolved in Africa and then dispersed across Asia and reached Australia in a single wave about 60,000 years ago. However, technological advances in DNA analysis and other fossil identification techniques, as well as an emphasis on multidisciplinary research, are revising this story. Recent discoveries show that humans left Africa multiple times prior to 60,000 years ago, and that they interbred with other hominins in many locations across Eurasia.

A review of recent research on dispersals by early modern humans from Africa to Asia by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa confirms that the traditional view of a single dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa around 60,000 years ago can no longer be seen as the full story. The analysis, published in the journal Science, reviews the plethora of new discoveries being reported from Asia over the past decade, which were made possible by technological advances and interdisciplinary collaborations, and shows that Homo sapiens reached distant parts of the Asian continent, as well as Near Oceania, much earlier than previously thought. Additionally, evidence that modern humans interbred with other hominins already present in Asia, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, complicates the evolutionary history of our species.

New model: Multiple dispersals of modern humans out of Africa, beginning as early as 120,000 years ago

The authors brought together findings from multiple recent studies to refine the picture of human dispersals out of Africa and into Asia. While scientists once thought that humans first left Africa in a single wave of migration about 60,000 years ago, recent studies have identified modern human fossils in far reaches of Asia that are potentially much older. For example, H. sapiens remains have been found at multiple sites in southern and central China that have been dated to between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago. Additional finds indicate that modern humans reached Southeast Asia and Australia prior to 60,000 years ago.

However, other recent studies do confirm that all present-day non-African populations branched off from a single ancestral population in Africa approximately 60,000 years ago. This could indicate that there were multiple, smaller dispersals of humans out of Africa beginning as early as 120,000 years ago, followed by a major dispersal 60,000 years ago. While the recent dispersal contributed the bulk of the genetic make-up of present-day non-Africans, the earlier dispersals are still evident.

"The initial dispersals out of Africa prior to 60,000 years ago were likely by small groups of foragers, and at least some of these early dispersals left low-level genetic traces in modern human populations. A later, major 'Out of Africa' event most likely occurred around 60,000 years ago or thereafter," explains Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Multiple interbreeding events

Recent genetic research has resolved the question of whether or not modern humans interbred with other ancient hominins - they definitely did. Modern humans interbred not only with Neanderthals, but also with our recently-discovered relatives the Denisovans, as well as a currently unidentified population of pre-modern hominins. One estimate is that all present-day non-Africans have 1-4% Neanderthal heritage, while another group has estimated that modern Melanesians have an average of 5% Denisovan heritage. In all, it is now clear that modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and perhaps other hominin groups likely overlapped in time and space in Asia, and they certainly had many instances of interaction.

The increasing evidence of interactions suggests that the spread of material culture is also more complicated than previously thought. "Indeed, what we are seeing in the behavioral record is that the spread of so-called modern human behaviors did not occur in a simple time-transgressive process from west to east. Rather, ecological variation needs to be considered in concert with behavioral variation between the different hominin populations present in Asia during the Late Pleistocene," explains Christopher Bae of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

In light of these new discoveries, our understanding of human movements across the Old World has become much more complex, and there are still many questions left open. The authors argue for the development of more complicated models of human dispersals and for conducting new research in the many areas of Asia where none has been done to date. Additionally, it will be important to review materials collected prior to the development of modern analytic methods, to see what more can now be learned from them. "Fortunately," states Katerina Douka, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, "there have been an increasing number of multidisciplinary research programs launched in Asia over the past few decades. The information that is being reported is helping to fill in the gaps in the evolutionary records."

"It is an exciting time to be involved with interdisciplinary research projects across Asia," adds Bae.

Storytellers promoted cooperation among hunter-gatherers before advent of religion

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Storytelling promoted co-operation in hunter-gatherers prior to the advent of organised religion, a new UCL study reveals.

The research shows that hunter-gatherer storytellers were essential in promoting co-operative and egalitarian values before comparable mechanisms evolved in larger agricultural societies, such as moralising high-gods.

Storytellers were also more popular than even the best foragers, had greater reproductive success, and were more likely to be co-operated with by other members of the camp, according to the research published today in Nature Communications.

The researchers, led by Daniel Smith, Andrea Migliano and Lucio Vinicius from UCL's Department of Anthropology and funded by the Leverhulme Trust, based their findings on their study of the Agta, an extant hunter-gatherer group descended from the first colonisers of the Philippines more than 35,000 years ago.

They asked three elders to tell them stories they normally told their children and each other, resulting in four stories narrated over three nights. They found the stories about humanised natural entities such as animals or celestial bodies promoted social and co-operative norms to co-ordinate group behaviour.

One, about the male sun falling out with the female moon before settling their differences over who should illuminate the sky by agreeing to share the duty, one during the day and the other during the night. The story promotes sex equality and co-operation between the sexes, which is common among forager societies.

The UCL study showed that 70% of a sample of 89 stories from seven different hunter-gatherer societies concerned reinforcing and regulating social behaviour.

"These stories appear to co-ordinate group behaviour and facilitate co-operation by providing individuals with social information about the norms, rules and expectations in a given society", according to Daniel Smith.

Consistent with this interpretation, Agta camps with a greater proportion of skilled story-tellers possessed increased levels of co-operation.

Almost 300 members from 18 Agta camps were also asked to choose who they would most like to live with, with skilled storytellers nearly twice as likely to be nominated as less skilled individuals.
Potentially because they receive increased social support in return for telling stories, the study found that skilled storytellers had on average 0.53 more children than those who were not skilled, demonstrating the reproductive benefits of being a good storyteller.

The authors state that storytelling may have been pivotal in organising human social behaviour by promoting co-operation, spreading co-operative norms and representing punishment of norm-breakers.

"Hunter-gatherer religions do not have moralising gods and yet they are highly cooperative towards the whole community. Thus, storytelling in hunter-gatherers was a precursor to more elaborate forms of narrative fiction such as moralising high-gods, common in post-agricultural populations", said Andrea Migliano, the last author of the paper.

Archaeologists revise chronology of the last hunter-gatherers in the Near East

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New research by a team of scientists and archaeologists based at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of Copenhagen suggests that the 15,000-year-old 'Natufian Culture' could live comfortably in the steppe zone of present-day eastern Jordan - this was previously thought to be either uninhabitable or only sparsely populated.

The hunter-gatherers of the Natufian Culture, which existed in modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria between c. 14,500 - 11,500 years ago, were some of the first people to build permanent houses and tend to edible plants. These innovations were probably crucial for the subsequent emergence of agriculture during the Neolithic era.

Previous research had suggested that the centre of this culture was the Mount Carmel and Galilee region, and that it spread from here to other parts of the region. The new study by the Copenhagen-Weizmann team, published in Scientific Reports, challenges this 'core region' theory.

The new paper is based on evidence from a Natufian site located in Jordan, c. 150 km northeast of Amman. The site, called Shubayqa 1, was excavated by a University of Copenhagen team led by Dr. Tobias Richter from 2012-2015.

The excavations uncovered a well-preserved Natufian site, which produced a large assemblage of charred plant remains. These kinds of botanical remains are rare at many other Natufian sites in the region, and enabled the Weizmann-Copenhagen team to obtain the largest number of dates for any Natufian site yet in Israel or Jordan.

"We dated more than twenty samples from different layers of the site, making it one of the best and most accurately dated Natufian sites anywhere. The dates show, among other things, that the site was first settled not long after the earliest dates obtained for northern Israel, ca. 14,600 years ago. This suggests that the Natufian either expanded very rapidly, which we think is unlikely, or that it emerged more or less simultaneously in different parts of the region," Dr. Richter reports, adding:

"The early date of Shubayqa 1 also shows that Natufian hunter-gatherers were more versatile than previously thought. Past research had linked the emergence of the Natufian to the rich habitat of the Mediterranean woodland zone. But the early dates from Shubayqa show that these late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers were also able to live quite comfortably in more open parkland steppe zones further east. Some of their subsistence appears to have relied heavily on the exploitation of club rush tubers, as well as other wild plants. They also hunted birds, gazelle and other animals," says Tobias Richter.

Precise dating methodology
The dating was undertaken by Professor Elisabetta Boaretto at the Weizmann Institute of Science using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, or AMS, dating. Boaretto is head of the D-REAMS lab in the Weizmann Institute - one of the few labs in the world that works with the technology and methods to analyze even the smallest organic remains from a site and precisely date them.

Using a specially designed mass spectrometer, Boaretto is able to reveal the amount of carbon-14 in a sample down to the single atom. Based on the half-life of the radioactive carbon-14 atoms, the dating done in her lab is accurate to around 50 years, plus or minus. For the analysis of the specimen from Shubayqa, the team was able to select only short-lived plant species or short-lived plant parts, such as seeds or twigs, to obtain the dates. This ensured the highest possible accuracy for the dates.

Boaretto says that the "core area" theory may have come about, in part, because the Mt. Carmel sites have been the best preserved and studied, until now. In addition to calling into question the idea of the Natufian beginning in one settlement and spreading outwards, the study suggests that the hunter-gatherers who lived 12,000 to 15,000 years ago were ingenious and resourceful. They learned to make use of numerous plants and animals where ever they were, and to tend them in a way that led to early settlement.

The authors say that this supports a view in which there were many pathways to agriculture and "the 'Neolithic way of life' was a highly variable and complex process that cannot be explained on the basis of single-cause models."

Bronze Age artifacts used meteoric iron

You may already be surprised to hear there are iron objects dating back to the Bronze Age, but their meteorite origin is even more astonishing. Though meteorites had already been recognized as one source of this metal, the scientific community couldn't determine whether they accounted for most or simply a few Bronze Age iron artifacts. Albert Jambon, as part of his work at the Institut de minéralogie, de physique des matériaux et de cosmochimie (CNRS / UPMC / IRD / Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle),[1] has demonstrated that iron used during the Bronze Age is always meteoric and he explained how this practice was abandoned during the Iron Age. His work is published in the December 2017 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The Iron Age began in Anatolia and the Caucasus around 1200 BCE. But nearly 2,000 years earlier, various cultures were already fashioning objects out of iron. These items were extremely rare and always greatly treasured. Iron ore abounds on the Earth's surface. So what made these artifacts so valuable? Initial research had shown that some were made with iron from meteorites, which led scientists to wonder how many others were. Albert Jambon gathered the available data and conducted his own nondestructive chemical analyses of samples using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer.

His collection of iron artifacts includes beads from Gerzeh (Egypt, ?3200 BCE); a dagger from Alaca Höyük (Turkey, ?2500 BCE); a pendant from Umm el-Marra (Syria, ?2300 BCE); an axe from Ugarit (Syria, ?1400 BCE) and several others from the Shang dynasty civilization (China, ?1400 BCE); and the dagger, bracelet, and headrest of Tutankhamen (Egypt, ?1350 BCE).

His analyses revealed that each of these Bronze Age artifacts was made with meteoric iron. When large celestial bodies like our planet are forming, nearly all nickel drifts towards the molten iron core. Thus, it is extremely rare to find nickel on the surface. However, some meteorites are created when celestial bodies are shattered. If these meteorites are composed of core material, they mostly contain iron with high levels of nickel and cobalt. This characteristic makes it possible to identify the source of iron.

Meteoric iron is also already in a metal state, ready for use, which explains why it went into all Bronze Age iron artifacts. In contrast, the iron compounds in terrestrial ores must first undergo the process of reduction, which removes bound oxygen to yield the desired metal. This is the basis of smelting in furnaces, a breakthrough that marked the beginning of the Iron Age. With smelting, Iron Age cultures could forget rare extraterrestrial metal and tap into terrestrial iron ores, which were far more abundant and easier to procure. Albert Jambon's findings refute certain theories proposing that nickel-laden iron alloys were obtained from terrestrial ores.