Roman emperors faced a high risk of violent death in their first
year of rule, but the risk slowly declined over the next seven years,
according to an article published in the open access journal Palgrave Communications.
When statistically modelled, the length of time from the beginning of
their reign until their death followed a set pattern, similar to that
seen in reliability engineering, interdisciplinary research by Dr Joseph
Saleh, an Aerospace Engineer from the Georgia Institute of Technology,
US suggests.
Historical records show that of 69 rulers of the unified Roman
Empire, 43 (62%) suffered violent deaths either by assassination,
suicide or during combat. Historical accounts typically examine each
death as a single, random event alongside individual contributing
factors such as allegiances and wealth. It is not known whether there
were any common, underlying patterns to how long each emperor's reign
lasted before they died.
By applying statistical methods frequently used to test the
reliability of components in engineering, Dr Joseph Saleh modelled the
typical length of time between the beginning of an emperor's reign and
their subsequent death. The author found parallels between the seemingly
random failures of components in engineering and the seemingly random
deaths of emperors.
Dr Saleh said: "In engineering, the reliability of a component or
process is defined as the probability that it is still operational at a
given time. The time it takes for a component or process to fail is
referred to as its time-to-failure and this shows similarities to the
time-to-violent-death of Roman emperors."
Dr Saleh found that Roman emperors faced a high risk of violent
death during their first year of reign, a pattern also seen when
engineering components fail early, often as a result of a failure to
function as intended or, in the case of an emperor, meet the demands of
their role. The risk of death stabilised by the eighth year but
increased again after 12 years of rule, a pattern similar to the failure
of components because of fatigue, corrosion or wear-out. When data
points were aligned on a graph, the failure rate of Roman emperors
displayed a bathtub-like curve, a model widely seen with mechanical and
electrical components.
Dr Saleh said: "It's interesting that a seemingly random process as
unconventional and perilous as the violent death of a Roman
emperor--over a four-century period and across a vastly changed
world--appears to have a systematic structure remarkably well captured
by a statistical model widely used in engineering. Although they may
appear as random events when taken singularly, these results indicate
that there may have been underlying processes governing the length of
each rule until death."
Data was obtained from the De Imperatoribus Romanis, a peer-reviewed
online encyclopedia of Roman emperors. The author cautions that the
limitations of the data should be acknowledged, as sources of ancient
history are often inconsistent and the exact causes of death may differ
between accounts. Further studies could explore why emperors repeatedly
met a violent end and whether other historical events may be analysed in
this way.
IMAGE: One of the analysed pig jaws for the study.
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Credit: Dr Richard Madgwick
People transported animals over huge distances for mass gatherings
at one of Ireland's most iconic archaeological sites, research
concludes.
Dr Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University led the study, which
analysed the bones of 35 animals excavated from Navan Fort, the
legendary capital of Ulster. Researchers from Queen's University
Belfast, Memorial University Newfoundland and the British Geological
Survey were also involved in the research.
The site had long been considered a centre for ritual gatherings, as
excavations found a huge 40m diameter building and a barbary ape
cranium, likely from at least as far as Iberia. Results suggest the
pigs, cattle and sheep were brought from across Ireland, perhaps being
reared as far afield as Galway, Donegal, Down, Tyrone and Antrim.
Evidence suggests some were brought over more than 100 miles.
Dr Madgwick, based in Cardiff University's School of History,
Archaeology and Religion, said: "Our results provide clear evidence that
communities in Iron Age Ireland were very mobile and that livestock
were also moved over greater distances than was previously thought.
"The high proportion of pig remains found there is very rare for
this period. This suggests that Navan Fort was a feasting centre, as
pigs are well-suited as feasting animals and in early Irish literature
pork is the preferred food of the feast.
"It is clear that Navan Fort had a vast catchment and that the influence of the site was far-reaching."
Researchers used multi-isotope analysis on samples of tooth enamel
to unlock the origins of each animal. Food and water have chemical
compositions linked to the geographical areas where they are sourced.
When animals eat and drink, these chemical signals are archived in their
teeth, allowing scientists to investigate the location where they were
raised.
Co-author of the research, Dr Finbar McCormick, of Queen's
University, Belfast, said: "In the absence of human remains,
multi-isotope analysis of animals found at Navan Fort provides us with
the best indication of human movement at that time.
"Feasting, almost invariably associated with sacrifice, was a social
necessity of early societies where the slaughter of a large domesticate
necessitated the consumption of a large amount of meat in a short
period of time."
Earlier this year, Dr Madgwick's research of 131 pigs found at sites
near Stonehenge revealed animals came from as far away as Scotland and
numerous other locations across the British Isles. Before this, the
origins of people who visited this area and the extent of the
population's movements at the time had been long-standing enigmas in
British prehistory.
Dr Madgwick added: "Transporting animals across the country would
have involved a great deal of time and effort so our findings
demonstrate the important role they played in society. Food was clearly a
central part of people's exchanges and traditions."
IMAGE: Skeleton from grave 293, Anglo-Saxon child burial.
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Credit: Oxford Archaeology East
Scientists from the University of Bristol and the British Museum, in
collaboration with Oxford Archaeology East and Canterbury Archaeological
Trust, have, for the first time, identified the use of birch bark tar
in medieval England - the use of which was previously thought to be
limited to prehistory.
Birch bark tar is a manufactured product with a history of
production and use that reaches back to the Palaeolithic. It is very
sticky, and is water resistant, and also has biocidal properties mean
that it has a wide range of applications, for example, as a multipurpose
adhesive, sealant and in medicine.
Archaeological evidence for birch bark tar covers a broad geographic
range from the UK to the Baltic and from the Mediterranean to
Scandinavia.
In the east and north of this range there is continuity of use to
modern times but in western Europe and the British Isles the use of
birch bark tar has generally been viewed as limited to prehistory, with
gradual displacement by pine tars during the Roman period.
The new identifications, reported today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, came from two early medieval sites in the east of England.
The first was a small lump of dark material found in a child grave
of the Anglo-Saxon period (440-530AD) in Cambridge (analysed by the
Organic Geochemistry Unit, University of Bristol, for Oxford Archaeology
East).
The other tar (analysed by scientists at the British Museum) was
discovered coating the interior of a ceramic container associated with a
5th-6th century cemetery site at Ringlemere in Kent.
The child in the Cambridge Anglo-Saxon period grave was likely a
girl, aged seven to nine years old, and she had a variety of grave
goods, including brooches and beads on her chest, and a variety of
artefacts, including an iron knife, a copper alloy girdle hanger and an
iron ring, together with the dark lump of material, all contained within
a bag hanging from a belt at her waist.
The different contexts of the finds point to diverse applications of the material.
From pathological indicators on the child skeleton, the team surmise
that the birch bark tar may have been used for medicinal purposes as
birch bark tar has a long history in medicine, having antiseptic
properties.
The tar in the ceramic vessel from Ringlemere might have been used for processing the tar or sealing the container.
Both of the tars were found to contain fatty material, possibly
added to soften the tar, or, in the case of the container could indicate
multiple uses.
Dr Rebecca Stacey from the British Museum's Department of Scientific
Research said: "The manufacturing and use of birch bark tar is well
known is well known from prehistoric times but these finds indicate
either a much longer continuity of use of this material than has been
recognised before or perhaps a reintroduction of the technology in
eastern regions at this time."
Dr Julie Dunne, from the University of Bristol's School of
Chemistry, added: "These results present the first identification of
birch bark tar from early medieval archaeological contexts in the UK.
"Interestingly, they are from two different contexts, one in a
ceramic pot, which suggests it may have been used to process birch bark
into tar and the other as an 'unknown' lump in a child grave of the
Anglo-Saxon period. The pathological indicators on the child skeleton
suggests the birch bark tar may have been used for medicinal purposes."
Dr Ian Bull, also from the University of Bristol's School of
Chemistry, said: "This is a great example of how state-of-the-art
chemical analyses have been able to re-characterise an otherwise mundane
object as something of extreme archaeological interest, providing
possible insights into medicinal practices in the Middle Ages."
IMAGE:
Photographs of finds from the Tel Hreiz settlement:
(a-b) exposure of stone-built features in shallow water.
(c) wooden posts dug into the seabed.
(d) bifacial flintadze.
(e) in situ stone bowl made...
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Credit: All photographs by E. Galili with the exception of Fig 3G by V. Eshed
Ancient Neolithic villagers on the Carmel Coast in Israel built a
seawall to protect their settlement against rising sea levels in the
Mediterranean, revealing humanity's struggle against rising oceans and
flooding stretches back thousands of years.
An international team of researchers from the University of Haifa,
Flinders University in Australia, the Israel Antiquities Authority and
The Hebrew University uncovered and analysed the oldest known coastal
defence system anywhere in the world, constructed by ancient settlers
from boulders sourced in riverbeds from 1-2km near their village.
In a study published today in PLOS ONE, Dr Ehud Galili from
the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, explains that
the over 100 metre long seawall proved to be a temporary reprieve and
the ancient village was eventually abandoned and inundated.
This discovery provides new insights into ancient human responses to current threats posed by sea level rise.
"During the Neolithic, Mediterranean populations would have
experienced a sea-level rise of 4 to 7 mm a year or approximately
12-21cm during a lifetime (up to 70 cm in a 100 years). This rate of
sea-level rise means the frequency of destructive storms damaging the
village would have risen significantly," says Dr Galili.
"The environmental changes would have been noticeable to people,
during the lifetime of a settlement across several centuries. Eventually
the accumulating yearly sea-level necessitated a human response
involving the construction of a coastal protection wall similar to what
we're seeing around the world now."
In a scenario comparable to the sinking capital of Jakarta today,
ancient Tel Hreiz was built at a safe elevation of up to 3 metres above
sea level but post glacial sea-level rises of up to 7mm a year posed a
threat to settlers and their homes.
Coauthor Dr Jonathan Benjamin from Flinders University in Australia
says the Tel Hreiz settlement was first recognised as a potential
archaeological site in the 1960's but the relevant areas that were
exposed by natural processes in 2012, revealed this previously unknown
archaeological material
"There are no known or similar built structures at any of the other
submerged villages in the region, making the Tel Hreiz site a unique
example of this visible evidence for human response to sea-level rise in
the Neolithic."
"Modern sea-level rise has already caused lowland coastal erosion
around the world. Given the size of coastal populations and settlements,
the magnitude of predicted future population displacement differs
considerably to the impacts on people during the Neolithic period."
Current estimates predict 21st century sea level rise to range from
1.7 to 3mm per year, representing a smaller change when compared to the
threat experienced by the Neolithic community that built the ancient sea
wall, however many of the same challenges will be posed according to
the authors.
"Many of the fundamental human questions and the decision-making
relating to human resilience, coastal defence, technological innovation
and decisions to ultimately abandon long-standing settlements remain
relevant." says Dr Galili.
Homo erectus, one of modern humans' direct ancestors, was a
wandering bunch. After the species dispersed from Africa about two
million years ago, it colonized the ancient world, which included Asia
and possibly Europe.
But about 400,000 years ago, Homo erectus essentially
vanished. The lone exception was a spot called Ngandong, on the
Indonesian island of Java. But scientists were unable to agree on a
precise time period for the site--until now.
In a new study published in the journal Nature, an
international team of researchers led by the University of Iowa;
Macquarie University; and the Institute of Technology Bandung,
Indonesia, dates the last existence of Homo erectus at Ngandong between 108,000 and 117,000 years ago.
The researchers time-stamped the site by dating animal fossils from the same bonebed where 12 Homo erectus
skull caps and two tibia had been found, and then dated the surrounding
land forms--mostly terraces below and above Ngandong--to establish an
accurate record for the primeval humans' possible last stand on Earth.
"This site is the last known appearance of Homo erectus
found anywhere in the world," says Russell Ciochon, professor in the
Department of Anthropology at Iowa and co-corresponding author on the
study. "We can't say we dated the extinction, but we dated the last
occurrence of it. We have no evidence Homo erectus lived later than that anywhere else."
The research team presents 52 new age estimates for the Ngandong
evidence. They include animal fossil fragments and sediment from the
rediscovered fossil bed where the original Homo erectus remains
were found by Dutch surveyors in the 1930s, and a sequence of dates for
the river terraces below and above the fossil site.
In addition, the researchers determined when mountains south of
Ngandong first rose by dating stalagmites from caves in the Southern
Mountains. This allowed them to determine when the Solo River began
coursing through the Ngandong site, and the river terrace sequence was
created.
"You have this incredible array of dates that are all consistent,"
Ciochon says. "This has to be the right range. That's why it's such a
nice, tight paper. The dating is very consistent."
"The issues with the dating of Ngandong could only ever be resolved
by an appreciation of the wider landscape," says Kira Westaway,
associate professor at Macquarie University and a joint-lead author on
the paper. "Fossils are the byproducts of complex landscape processes.
We were able to nail the age of the site because we constrained the
fossils within the river deposit, the river terrace, the sequence of
terraces, and the volcanically active landscape."
Previous research by Ciochon and others shows Homo erectus
hopscotched its way across the Indonesian archipelago, and arrived on
the island of Java about 1.6 million years ago. The timing was good: The
area around Ngandong was mostly grassland, the same environment that
cradled the species in Africa. Plants and animals were abundant. While
the species continued to venture to other islands, Java, it appears,
likely remained home--or least a way station--to some bands of the
species.
However, around 130,000 years ago, the environment at Ngandong changed, and so did Homo erectus's fortunes.
"There was a change in climate," Ciochon explains. "We know the
fauna changed from open country, grassland, to a tropical rainforest
(extending southward from today's Malaysia). Those were not the plants
and animals that Homo erectus was used to, and the species just could not adapt."
Ciochon co-led a 12-member, international team that dug at Ngandong
in 2008 and in 2010, accompanied by Yan Rizal and Yahdi Zaim, the lead
researchers from the Institute of Technology, Bandung, on the
excavation. Using notes from the Dutch surveyors' excavation in the
1930s, the team found the original Homo erectus bone bed at
Ngandong and re-exposed it, collecting and dating 867 animal fossil
fragments. Meanwhile, Westaway's team had been dating the surrounding
landscapes, such as the terraces, during that time.
"It was coincidental" the teams were working in the same place--one
group at the fossil bed, the other group dating the surrounding area,
Ciochon says.
"With the data we had, we couldn't really date the Ngandong
fossils," Ciochon continues. "We had dates on them, but they were
minimum ages. So, we couldn't really say how old, although we knew we
were in the ballpark. By working with Kira, who had vast amount of
dating data for the terraces, mountains, and other landscape features,
we were able to provide precise regional chronological and geomorphic
contexts for the Ngandong site."
Rigorous reexamination of radiocarbon
dating of sites on 55 islands shoots down the idea that colonization
moved step by step from south to north
University of Oregon
IMAGE: Students from the University of Oregon,
North Carolina State University and University College London work at a
Grand Bay cultural site on Carriacou Island, located in the Grenada
Grenadines in...
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Credit: Photo by Scott Fitzpatrick
EUGENE, Ore. - Dec. 18, 2019 - A fresh, comprehensive look at
archaeological data suggests that seafaring South Americans settled
first on the large northernmost islands of the Greater Antilles rather
than gradually moving northward from the much closer, smaller islands of
the Lesser Antilles.
That pattern of movement emerged as an eight-member University of
Oregon team reevaluated 2,500 radiocarbon results from cultural sites on
55 islands. Migrations occurred in two waves, the first beginning 5,800
years ago and the second 2,500 years ago, the team reported Dec. 18 in
the Science Advances.
Caribbean colonization has been little understood, said Matthew
Napolitano, the study's lead author and a doctoral student in the
Department of Anthropology.
"This scenario contradicts a competing stepping-stone model that
many archaeologists still subscribe to, which asserts a south-to-north
settlement beginning in the Lesser Antilles," he said.
Based on the team's examination, the first Caribbean islanders went
directly from South America to the northern Caribbean, initially
settling on the large islands that became Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto
Rico.
These islands likely offered productive lands and resources that
would have been attractive to early settlers. Early colonization
involved the movement across hundreds of miles of open seas, likely in
single-hulled canoes.
The new study, done over a four-year period, is the culmination of a
graduate student project supervised by Scott Fitzpatrick, associate
director of the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History and professor
in the Department of Anthropology. The work was designed to test the
stepping-stone model.
In their reexamination, the researchers assessed the reliability of
radiocarbon dating at each site, using strict criteria related to the
geologic and archaeological contexts of the dated material, the quality
of the samples and the lab conditions under which the materials were
analyzed. Slightly more than half of the dates passed muster, despite
more than 50 years of scholarship in the region.
The dates were then subjected to rigorous statistical analyses,
resulting in a new and exceptionally robust colonization model.
"By carefully applying these criteria, we were able to improve
confidence about the reported dates, as well as whether the dated
materials actually relate to human activity," said Fitzpatrick, an
expert in island and coastal archaeology whose research focuses on the
Caribbean and Pacific. "Our analysis of the resulting acceptable dates,
which represent human occupations on 26 islands, provides the first
reliable model for initial arrival in the region."
The study has also resulted in the largest publicly accessible database of radiocarbon dates for the region.
The family tombs are near the 2015 site of the 'Griffin Warrior,' a military leader buried with armor, weapons and jewelry.
University of Cincinnati
IMAGE: UC archaeologists found a sealstone made
from semiprecious carnelian in the family tombs at Pylos, Greece. The
sealstone was engraved with two lionlike mythological figures called
genii carrying serving vessels...
view more
Credit: UC Classics
Archaeologists with the University of Cincinnati have discovered two
Bronze Age tombs containing a trove of engraved jewelry and artifacts
that promise to unlock secrets about life in ancient Greece.
The UC archaeologists announced the discovery Tuesday in Greece.
Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, archaeologists in UC's classics
department, found the two beehive-shaped tombs in Pylos, Greece, last
year while investigating the area around the grave of an individual they
have called the "Griffin Warrior," a Greek man whose final resting
place they discovered nearby in 2015.
Like the Griffin Warrior's tomb, the princely tombs overlooking the
Mediterranean Sea also contained a wealth of cultural artifacts and
delicate jewelry that could help historians fill in gaps in our
knowledge of early Greek civilization.
UC's team spent more than 18 months excavating and documenting the
find. The tombs were littered with flakes of gold leaf that once papered
the walls.
"Like with the Griffin Warrior grave, by the end of the first week
we knew we had something that was really important," said Stocker, who
supervised the excavation.
"It soon became clear to us that lightning had struck again," said Davis, head of UC's classics department.
The Griffin Warrior is named for the mythological creature -- part
eagle, part lion -- engraved on an ivory plaque in his tomb, which also
contained armor, weaponry and gold jewelry. Among the priceless objects
of art was an agate sealstone depicting mortal combat with such fine
detail that Archaeology magazine hailed it as a "Bronze Age
masterpiece."
Artifacts found in the princely tombs tell similar stories about
life along the Mediterranean 3,500 years ago, Davis said. A gold ring
depicted two bulls flanked by sheaves of grain, identified as barley by a
paleobotanist who consulted on the project.
"It's an interesting scene of animal husbandry -- cattle mixed with
grain production. It's the foundation of agriculture," Davis said. "As
far as we know, it's the only representation of grain in the art of
Crete or Minoan civilization."
Like the grave of the Griffin Warrior, the two family tombs
contained artwork emblazoned with mythological creatures. An agate
sealstone featured two lion-like creatures called genii standing upright
on clawed feet. They carry a serving vase and an incense burner, a
tribute for the altar before them featuring a sprouting sapling between
horns of consecration, Stocker said.
Above the genii is a 16-pointed star. The same 16-pointed star also
appears on a bronze and gold artifact in the grave, she said.
"It's rare. There aren't many 16-pointed stars in Mycenaean
iconography. The fact that we have two objects with 16 points in two
different media (agate and gold) is noteworthy," Stocker said.
The genius motif appears elsewhere in the East during this period, she said.
"One problem is we don't have any writing from the Minoan or
Mycenaean time that talks of their religion or explains the importance
of their symbols," Stocker said.
UC's team also found a gold pendant featuring the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Hathor.
"Its discovery is particularly interesting in light of the role she played in Egypt as protectress of the dead," Davis said.
The identity of the Griffin Warrior is a matter for speculation.
Stocker said the combination of armor, weapons and jewelry found in his
tomb strongly indicate he had military and religious authority, likely
as the king known in later Mycenaean times as a wanax.
Likewise, the princely tombs paint a picture of accumulated wealth
and status, she said. They contained amber from the Baltic, amethyst
from Egypt, imported carnelian and lots of gold. The tombs sit on a
scenic vista overlooking the Mediterranean Sea on the spot where the
Palace of Nestor would later rise and fall to ruins.
"I think these are probably people who were very sophisticated for
their time," she said. "They have come out of a place in history where
there were few luxury items and imported goods. And all of a sudden at
the time of the first tholos tombs, luxury items appear in Greece.
"You have this explosion of wealth. People are vying for power," she
said. "It's the formative years that will give rise to the Classic Age
of Greece."
The antiquities provide evidence that coastal Pylos was once an important destination for commerce and trade.
"If you look at a map, Pylos is a remote area now. You have to cross
mountains to get here. Until recently, it hasn't even been on the
tourist path," Stocker said. "But if you're coming by sea, the location
makes more sense. It's on the way to Italy. What we're learning is that
it's a much more central and important place on the Bronze Age trade
route."
The princely tombs sit close to the palace of Nestor, a ruler
mentioned in Homer's famous works "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." The
palace was discovered in 1939 by the late UC Classics professor Carl
Blegen. Blegen had wanted to excavate in the 1950s in the field where
Davis and Stocker found the new tombs but could not get permission from
the property owner to expand his investigation. The tombs would have to
wait years for another UC team to make the startling discovery hidden
beneath its grape vines.
Excavating the site was particularly arduous. With the excavation
season looming, delays in procuring the site forced researchers to
postpone plans to study the site first with ground-penetrating radar.
Instead, Stocker and Davis relied on their experience and intuition to
focus on one disturbed area.
"There were noticeable concentrations of rocks on the surface once we got rid of the vegetation," she said.
Those turned out to be the exposed covers of deep tombs, one
plunging nearly 15 feet. The tombs were protected from the elements and
potential thieves by an estimated 40,000 stones the size of watermelons.
The boulders had sat undisturbed for millennia where they had fallen
when the domes of the tombs collapsed. And now 3,500 years later, UC's
team had to remove each stone individually.
"It was like going back to the Mycenaean Period. They had placed
them by hand in the walls of the tombs and we were taking them out by
hand," Stocker said. "It was a lot of work."
At every step of the excavation, the researchers used photogrammetry
and digital mapping to document the location and orientation of objects
in the tomb. This is especially valuable because of the great number of
artifacts that were recovered, Davis said.
"We can see all levels as we excavated them and relate them one to
the other in three dimensions," he said.
UC's team will continue working at Pylos for at least the next two years
while they and other researchers around the world unravel mysteries
contained in the artifacts.
"It has been 50 years since any substantial tombs of this sort have
been found at any Bronze Age palatial site. That makes this
extraordinary," Davis said.
University of Copenhagen The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
IMAGE: During excavations on Lolland, Denmark,
archaeologists have found a 5,700-year-old birch pitch. Researchers from
the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in extracting a complete
ancient human genome from the pitch...
view more
Credit: Photo: Theis Jensen.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in
extracting a complete human genome from a thousands-of-years old
"chewing gum". According to the researchers, it is a new untapped source
of ancient DNA.
During excavations on Lolland, archaeologists have found a
5,700-year-old type of "chewing gum" made from birch pitch. In a new
study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen succeeded in
extracting a complete ancient human genome from the pitch.
It is the first time that an entire ancient human genome has been
extracted from anything other than human bones. The new research results
have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
'It is amazing to have gotten a complete ancient human genome from
anything other than bone,'' says Associate Professor Hannes Schroeder
from the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, who led the
research.
'What is more, we also retrieved DNA from oral microbes and several
important human pathogens, which makes this a very valuable source of
ancient DNA, especially for time periods where we have no human
remains,' Hannes Schroeder adds.
Based on the ancient human genome, the researchers could tell that
the birch pitch was chewed by a female. She was genetically more closely
related to hunter-gatherers from the mainland Europe than to those who
lived in central Scandinavia at the time. They also found that she
probably had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes. Sealed in mud
The birch pitch was found during archaeological excavations at
Syltholm, east of Rødbyhavn in southern Denmark. The excavations are
being carried out by the Museum Lolland-Falster in connection with the
construction of the Fehmarn tunnel.
'Syltholm is completely unique. Almost everything is sealed in mud,
which means that the preservation of organic remains is absolutely
phenomenal,' says Theis Jensen, Postdoc at the Globe Institute, who
worked on the study for his PhD and also participated in the excavations
at Syltholm.
'It is the biggest Stone Age site in Denmark and the archaeological
finds suggest that the people who occupied the site were heavily
exploiting wild resources well into the Neolithic, which is the period
when farming and domesticated animals were first introduced into
southern Scandinavia,' Theis Jensen adds.
This is reflected in the DNA results, as the researchers also
identified traces of plant and animal DNA in the pitch - specifically
hazelnuts and duck - which may have been part of the individual's diet. Bacterial evolution
In addition, the researchers succeeded in extracting DNA from
several oral microbiota from the pitch, including many commensal species
and opportunistic pathogens.
'The preservation is incredibly good, and we managed to extract many
different bacterial species that are characteristic of an oral
microbiome. Our ancestors lived in a different environment and had a
different lifestyle and diet, and it is therefore interesting to find
out how this is reflected in their microbiome,' says Hannes Schroeder.
The researchers also found DNA that could be assigned to
Epstein-Barr Virus, which is known to cause infectious mononucleosis or
glandular fever. According to Hannes Schroeder, ancient "chewing gums"
bear great potential in researching the composition of our ancestral
microbiome and the evolution of important human pathogens.
'It can help us understand how pathogens have evolved and spread
over time, and what makes them particularly virulent in a given
environment. At the same time, it may help predict how a pathogen will
behave in the future, and how it might be contained or eradicated,' says
Hannes Schroeder.
Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) recently
discovered ancient vats for producing fish sauce about 2km south of
Ashkelon. Fish sauce (garum) was a popular condiment in the
Mediterranean diet during the Roman and Byzantine periods, but
archaeologists have rarely found the installations used to produce it.
These vats are among the few discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“ Long before pasta and pizza, the ancient Roman diet
was based largely on fish sauce. Historical sources refer to the
production of special fish sauce, that was used as a basic condiment for
food in the Roman and Byzantine eras throughout the Mediterranean
basin.
— Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini
One explanation for the seldom discovery of garum installations is the fact that producing fish sauce is a smelly business. According to Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini from the IAA, ancient sources describing garum production “report that the accompanying strong odors during its production required its being distanced from urban areas.” This is exactly what archaeologists found to be the case at Ashkelon, as the production site was about 2km away from the main city.
In addition to its uncommon nature, this discovery is significant because of what it tells us regarding the spread of Roman Culture. According to Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini, “The discovery of this kind of installation in Ashkelon evinces that the Roman tastes that spread throughout the empire were not confined to dress but also included dietary habits.”
The Roman site, together with its garum installations, was eventually abandoned. However, being a favorable area for cultivating vineyards, a Byzantine monastic community was established there in the 5th century CE. The community made a living from wine production, as evidenced by three winepresses built next to an elaborately decorated church. Little of the church survived to be uncovered, but architectural fragments found on site show that it was decorated with impressive mosaics and marble. Nearby, archaeologists unearthed a large kiln complex used to produce wine jars. Apparently, the jars were for exporting wine.
For decades, an ancient Egyptian
known as Merit Ptah has been celebrated as the first female physician
and a role model for women entering medicine. Yet a researcher from the
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus now says she never
existed and is an example of how misconceptions can spread.
"Almost like a detective, I had to trace back her story, following
every lead, to discover how it all began and who invented Merit Ptah,"
said Jakub Kwiecinski, PhD, an instructor in the Dept. of Immunology and
Microbiology at the CU School of Medicine and a medical historian.
His study was published last week in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
Kwiecinski's interest in Merit Ptah (`beloved of god Ptah') was sparked after seeing her name in so many places.
"Merit Ptah was everywhere. In online posts about women in STEM,
in computer games, in popular history books, there's even a crater on
Venus named after her," he said. "And yet, with all these mentions,
there was no proof that she really existed. It soon became clear that
there had been no ancient Egyptian woman physician called Merit Ptah."
Digging deep into the historical record, Kwiecinski discovered a
case of mistaken identity that took on a life of its own, fueled by
those eager for an inspirational story.
According to Kwiecinski, Merit Ptah the physician had her origins in
the 1930s when Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead, a medical historian, doctor and
activist, set out to write a complete history of medical women around
the world. Her book was published in 1938.
She talked about the excavation of a tomb in the Valley of Kings
where there was a "picture of a woman doctor named Merit Ptah, the
mother of a high priest, who is calling her `the Chief Physician.'"
Kwiecinski said there was no record of such a person being a physician.
"Merit Ptah as a name existed in the Old Kingdom, but does not
appear in any of the collated lists of ancient Egyptian healers - not
even as one of the `legendary'; or `controversial cases," he said. "She
is also absent from the list of Old Kingdom women administrators. No Old
Kingdom tombs are present in the Valley of the Kings, where the story
places Merit Ptah's son, and only a handful of such tombs exist in the
larger area, the Theban Necropolis."
The Old Kingdom of Egypt lasted from 2575 to 2150 BC.
But there was another woman who bears a striking resemblance to
Merit Ptah. In 1929-30, an excavation in Giza uncovered a tomb of
Akhethetep, an Old Kingdom courtier. Inside, a false door depicted a
woman called Peseshet, presumably the tomb owner's mother, described as
the `Overseer of Healer Women.' Peseshet and Merit Ptah came from the
same time periods and were both mentioned in the tombs of their sons who
were high priestly officials.
This discovery was described in several books and one of them found
its way into Hurd-Mead's private library. Kwiecinski believes Hurd-Mead
confused Merit Ptah with Peseseth.
"Unfortunately, Hurd-Mead in her own book accidentally mixed up the
name of the ancient healer, as well as the date when she lived, and the
location of the tomb," he said. "And so, from a misunderstood case of
an authentic Egyptian woman healer, Peseshet, a seemingly earlier Merit
Ptah, `the first woman physician' was born."
The Merit Ptah story spread far and wide, driven by a variety of
forces. Kwiecinski said one factor was the popular perception of ancient
Egypt as an almost fairytale land "outside time and space" perfectly
suited for the creation of legendary stories.
The story spread through amateur historian circles, creating a kind
of echo chamber not unlike how fake news stories circulate today.
"Finally, it was associated with an extremely emotional, partisan -
but also deeply personal - issue of equal rights," he said. "Altogether
this created a perfect storm that propelled the story of Merit Ptah into
being told over and over again."
Yet Kwiecinski said the most striking part of the story is not the
mistake but the determination of generations of women historians to
recover the forgotten history of female healers, proving that science
and medicine have never been exclusively male.
"So even though Merit Ptah is not an authentic ancient Egyptian
woman healer," he said. "She is a very real symbol of the 20th century
feministic struggle to write women back into the history books, and to
open medicine and STEM to women."
IMAGE: The two drilled 8,500-year-old human teeth found at Çatalhöyük in Turkey.
view more
Credit: University of Copenhagen
At a prehistoric archaeological site in Turkey, researchers have
discovered two 8,500-year-old human teeth, which had been used as
pendants in a necklace or bracelet. Researchers have never documented
this practice before in the prehistoric Near East, and the rarity of the
find suggests that the human teeth were imbued with profound symbolic
meaning for the people who wore them.
During excavations at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey
between 2013 and 2015, researchers found three 8,500-year-old-teeth that
appeared to have been intentionally drilled to be worn as beads in a
necklace or bracelet. Subsequent macroscopic, microscopic and
radiographic analyses confirmed that two of the teeth had indeed been
used as beads or pendants, researchers conclude in a newly published
article in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
"Not only had the two teeth been drilled with a conically shaped
microdrill similar to those used for creating the vast amounts of beads
from animal bone and stone that we have found at the site, but they also
showed signs of wear corresponding to extensive use as ornaments in a
necklace or bracelet," University of Copenhagen archaeologist and first
author of the article Scott Haddow said. He added:
"The evidence suggests that the two teeth pendants were probably
extracted from two mature individuals post-mortem. The wear on the
teeth's chewing surfaces indicates that the individuals would have been
between 30-50 years old. And since neither tooth seems to have been
diseased-which would likely have caused the tooth to fall out during
life, the most likely scenario is that both teeth were taken from skulls
at the site." Deep symbolic value
Researchers have previously found human teeth used for ornamental
purposes at European sites from the Upper Palaeolithic and the
Neolithic, but this practice has never been documented before in the
Near East during these or subsequent timeframes. This makes these finds
extremely rare and surprising.
"Given the amount of fragmentary skeletal material often circulating
within Neolithic sites, not least at Çatalhöyük where secondary burial
practices associated with the display of human skulls were frequent,
what is most interesting is the fact that human teeth and bone were not
selected and modified more often. Thus, because of the rarity of the
find, we find it very unlikely that these modified human teeth were used
solely for aesthetic purposes but rather carried profound symbolic
meaning for the people who wore them," Scott Haddow explained.
He concluded:
"The fact that the teeth were recovered from non-burial contexts is
also highly interesting in that burials at the site often contain beads
and pendants made from animal bone/teeth and other materials, indicating
that it seems to have been a deliberate choice not to include items
made from human bone and teeth with burials. So perhaps these human
teeth pendants were related to specific - and rare - ritual taboos? Or
perhaps we should look to the identity of the two individuals from whom
the teeth were extracted for an explanation? However, given the small
sample size, the ultimate meaning of the human teeth pendants will
remain elusive until new findings at Çatalhöyük or elsewhere in the Near
East can help us better contextualise the meaning these human teeth
artefacts."
Ancient
Egyptians wearing head cones of wax were excavated from graves at
Amarna, south of Cairo. A. Stevens et al., via The Amarna Project and
Antiquity Publications, 2019 via The New York Times.
Complete report Painted throughout ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics are scenes of people
at boisterous banquets. On top of the dark, braided heads of some
revelers sat peculiar white cones. Archaeologists have long puzzled over
the purpose of the mysterious headgear, and whether they were real
items worn by people, or just iconographic ornaments, like halos
crowning saints in Christian artwork. Now, a team of archaeologists has
uncovered — for the first time — two of the “head cones” in the ancient
Egyptian city of Amarna, nearly 200 miles south of Cairo. The cones were
made of wax and dated from 1347 to 1332 B.C. when Egypt was ruled by
the pharaoh Akhenaten, husband to Queen Nefertiti and the supposed
father of King Tutankhamen.
An Indonesian cave painting that depicts a prehistoric hunting scene
could be the world's oldest figurative artwork dating back nearly 44,000
years, a discovery that points to an advanced artistic culture,
according to new research.
Spotted two years ago on the island of Sulawesi, the 4.5 metre (13
foot) wide painting features wild animals being chased by half-human
hunters wielding what appear to be spears and ropes,
Using
dating technology, the team at Australia's Griffith University said it
had confirmed that the limestone cave painting dated back at least
43,900 years during the Upper Palaeolithic period.
The ancient Romans relied on long-distance
timber trading to construct their empire, according to a study published
December 4, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mauro Bernabei from the National Research Council, Italy, and colleagues.
The timber requirements of ancient Rome were immense and complex,
with different types of trees from various locations around the Roman
Empire and beyond used for many purposes, including construction,
shipbuilding and firewood. Unfortunately, the timber trade in ancient
Rome is poorly understood, as little wood has been found in a state
adequate for analysis. In this study, Bernabei et al successfully date
and determine the origin and chronology of unusually well-preserved
ancient Roman timber samples.
The twenty-four oak timber planks (Quercus species) analyzed
in this study were excavated during Metro construction in Rome during
2014-2016. They formed part of a Roman portico in the gardens of via
Sannio (belonging to what was once a lavishly decorated and rich
property). The authors measured the tree-ring widths for each plank and
ran statistical tests to determine average chronology, successfully
dating thirteen of the planks.
By comparing their dated planks to Mediterranean and central European
oak reference chronologies, the authors found that the oaks used for
the Roman portico planks were taken from the Jura mountains in eastern
France, over 1700km away. Based on the sapwood present in 8 of the
thirteen samples, the authors were able to narrow the date these oaks
were felled to between 40 and 60 CE and determined that the planks all
came from neighboring trees. Given the timber's dimensions and the vast
distance it travelled, the authors suggest that ancient Romans (or their
traders) likely floated the timber down the Saône and Rhône rivers in
present-day France before transporting it over the Mediterranean Sea and
then up the river Tiber to Rome, though this cannot be confirmed.
The authors note that the difficulty of obtaining these planks --
which were not specially sourced for an aesthetic function but used in
the portico's foundations -- suggests that the logistical organization
of ancient Rome was considerable, and that their trade network was
highly advanced.
Bernabei notes: "This study shows that in Roman times, wood from the
near-natural woodlands of north-eastern France was used for construction
purposes in the centre of Rome. Considering the distance, calculated to
be over 1700km, the timber sizes, [and] the means of transportation
with all the possible obstacles along the way, our research emphasises
the importance of wood for the Romans and the powerful logistic
organisation of the Roman society."
The Met Fifth Avenue, Floor 1, The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, Gallery 359
Deity Figure (zemÃ)
(detail), ca. A.D. 1000. Dominican Republic (?). TaÃno. Wood
(Guaiacum), shell, 27 x 8 5/8 x 9 1/8 in. (68.5 x 21.9 x 23.2 cm). The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Michael C. Rockefeller
Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979
A special exhibition
highlighting the artistic achievements of early Caribbean civilizations
will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning December 16,
2019. Showcasing more than 40 works drawn primarily from The Met
collection and augmented by select loans from public and private
collections in the United States, Arte del mar: Artistic Exchange in the Caribbean
will present a stunning narrative of creativity from the ancestral
cultures that encircled the Caribbean Sea in the millennia before
European colonization. The exhibition will be the first to focus on the
artistic exchange that took place among the TaÃno civilizations of the
Greater Antilles (present-day Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto
Rico) and the coastal societies in countries such as Colombia, Panama,
Costa Rica, and Honduras before the 16th century. Highlights will
include rarely seen sculptures created in ancient Puerto Rico. The exhibition is made possible by the Friends of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas: Art of Five Continents.
"Early
Caribbean civilizations developed a rich cultural legacy that was
fueled by the interplay of ideas and influences across the region," said
Max Hollein, the Director of The Met. "This exhibition celebrates the
artistic traditions of these ancestral communities while honoring the
enduring power of the objects."
Organized into three primary sections focused on ritual knowledge, ceremonial performance, and political power, Arte del mar (art of/from the sea) will highlight the sculptural achievements of the diverse island societies known today as the TaÃnos. Featured works on view include four rare wooden sculptures, such as the 10th- to 11th-century Deity Figure (ZemÃ)
from The Met collection, a masterpiece that intertwines spirituality,
ceremony, and politics. Another spectacular wooden figure from the 14th
century, on loan from the Saint Louis Art Museum, illustrates how
special trees inspired sculptors to reveal specific deity or ancestor
forms in collaboration with leaders and ritual specialists. An
exceptional group of three-pointed stones (trigonolitos), on
loan from the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural
History, highlights the extraordinary range of materials and imagery
used by Taino sculptors to create spiritually charged ritual objects.
Alongside works of art created by their better-known TaÃno peers,
the exhibition will present objects created by the artists of the
Tairona in northern Colombia, the diverse kingdoms in the Isthmus of
Panama and Costa Rica, and the networks of sculptor communities in the
Ulúa Valley, Honduras. Objects created from luxury materials including
greenstone, shell, gold, and marble will underscore the range of trade
connections between Caribbean peoples. In a fourth section, the
exhibition will explore the ancestral legacies into the 20th century and
today by incorporating Rumblings of the Earth (Rumor de la tierra), 1950, by painter Wifredo Lam (Cuban, 1902–1982), on loan from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum will offer a variety of educational programs in 2020, including an Artists on Artworks event, a lecture, Conversations With a Curator (bilingual in English and Spanish), Teen Career Lab, and a Family Afternoon (for families with children ages 3–11).
These programs are made possible by The Reed Foundation.
Arte del mar: Artistic Exchange in the Caribbean—part of a slate of special exhibitions on view for the Museum's 150th anniversary year—is accompanied by a Met Bulletin, which will present new archaeological and art historical research from international scholars of the region.
The Met's quarterly Bulletin
program is supported in part by the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, established by the cofounder of Reader's
Digest.
The
exhibition is organized by James Doyle, Assistant Curator for the Art
of the Ancient Americas in the Department of the Arts of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas.
This
exhibition will open just ahead of the renovation and re-imagination of
The Met's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 40,000 square feet of
galleries devoted to the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
The exhibition will be featured on The Met website as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hashtag #Artedelmar.
The exhibition labels will be available in Spanish online.
Ostrich eggshell beads are some of the
oldest ornaments made by humankind, and they can be found dating back at
least 50,000 years in Africa. Previous research in southern Africa has
shown that the beads increase in size about 2,000 years ago, when
herding populations first enter the region. In the current study,
researchers Jennifer Miller and Elizabeth Sawchuk investigate this idea
using increased data and evaluate the hypothesis in a new region where
it has never before been tested.
Review of old ideas, analysis of old collections
To conduct their study, the researchers recorded the diameters of
1,200 ostrich eggshell beads unearthed from 30 sites in Africa dating to
the last 10,000 years. Many of these bead measurements were taken from
decades-old unstudied collections, and so are being reported here for
the first time. This new data increases the published bead diameter
measurements from less than 100 to over 1,000, and reveals new trends
that oppose longstanding beliefs.
The ostrich eggshell beads reflect different responses to the
introduction of herding between eastern and southern Africa. In southern
Africa, new bead styles appear alongside signs of herding, but do not
replace the existing forager bead traditions. On the other hand, beads
from the eastern Africa sites showed no change in style with the
introduction of herding. Although eastern African bead sizes are
consistently larger than those from southern Africa, the larger southern
African herder beads fall within the eastern African forager size
range, hinting at contact between these regions as herding spread.
"These beads are symbols that were made by hunter-gatherers from both
regions for more than 40,000 years," says lead author Jennifer Miller,
"so changes -- or lack thereof -- in these symbols tells us how these
communities responded to cultural contact and economic change." Ostrich eggshell beads tell the story of ancient interaction
The story told by ostrich eggshell beads is more nuanced than
previously believed. Contact with outside groups of herders likely
introduced new bead styles along with domesticated animals, but the
archaeological record suggests the incoming influence did not overwhelm
existing local traditions. The existing customs were not replaced with
new ones; rather they continued and incorporated some of the new
elements.
In eastern Africa, studied here for the first time, there was no
apparent change in bead style with the arrival of herding groups from
the north. This may be because local foragers adopted herding while
retaining their bead-making traditions, because migrant herders
possessed similar traditions prior to contact, and/or because incoming
herders adopted local styles. "In the modern world, migration, cultural
contact, and economic change often create tension," says Sawchuk,
"ancient peoples experienced these situations too, and the patterns in
cultural objects like ostrich eggshell beads give us a chance to study
how they navigated these experiences."
The researchers hope that this work inspires a renewed interest into
ostrich eggshell beads, and recommend that future studies present
individual bead diameters rather than a single average of many. Future
research should also investigate questions related to manufacture,
chemical identification, and the effects of taphonomic processes and
wear on bead diameter. "This study shows that examining old collections
can generate important findings without new excavation," says Miller,
"and we hope that future studies will take advantage of the wealth of
artifacts that have been excavated but not yet studied."
Politecnico di milano [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Plan of the house of Orion, Showing the disposition of the newly discovered images (1,2) and of the mosaics (3) view more Credit: L. Ferro, G Magli, M. Osanna The technical skills of the Roman agrimensores - the technicians in charge of the centuriations (division of the lands) and of other surveys such as planning towns and aqueducts - are simply legendary. For instance, extremely accurate projects of centuriations are still visible today in Italy and in other Mediterranean countries. Their work had also religious and symbolic connectio... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *King Charles II of Spain was the last in the Habsburg line and one of the most afflicted with the facial deformity view more Credit: Don Juan Carreño de Miranda The "Habsburg jaw", a facial condition of the Habsburg dynasty of Spanish and Austrian kings and their wives, can be attributed to inbreeding, according to new results published in the *Annals of Human Biology*. The new study combined diagnosis of facial deformities using historical portraits with genetic analysis of the degree of relatedness to determine whether there was a direct link. The research... more »
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *A graphical abstract showing highlights of the research presented in the article: "The Justinanic Plague: An Inconsequential Pandemic? " view more Credit: Elizabeth Herzfeldt-Kamprath, SESYNC Researchers now have a clearer picture of the impact of the first plague pandemic, the Justinianic Plague, which lasted from about 541-750 CE. Led by researchers at the University of Maryland's National-Socio Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), the international team of scholars found that the plague's effects may have b... more »
University of Helsinki [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Charred remains of prehistoric gathered plants: a rose hip, a nutshell fragment, a raspberry seed, a yellow water lily seed and a bird cherry seed. The rose hip, dating back... view more Credit: Santeri Vanhanen In the study, the following questions were explored: Which plants did humans gather in prehistoric times? When did the first cultivated plants make their initial appearance, and where did they come from? How did farming develop after its adoption? To find answers to these questions, ancient plant remains, such as nutshells, seed... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Medieval burial site of Kalmistomäki in Kylälahti, Hiitola in Russia. view more Credit: Stanislav Belskiy A new genetic study carried out at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku demonstrates that, at the end of the Iron Age, Finland was inhabited by separate and differing populations, all of them influencing the gene pool of modern Finns. The study is so far the most extensive investigation of the ancient DNA of people inhabiting the region of Finland. In the study, genes were investigated from archaeological bone samples of more than one ... more »
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Alpine rock axehead found at Harras, Thuringia, from the Michelsberg Culture (c. 4300-2800 ANE). view more Credit: Juraj Lipták, State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. Axeheads made out of Alpine rocks had strong social and economic symbolic meaning in the Neolithic, given their production and use value. Their resistance to friction and breakage, which permitted intense polishing and a re-elaboration of the rocks, gave these artefacts an elevated exchange value, key to the formation of long-distan... more »
Birch bark tar, the oldest glue in the world, was in use for at least 50,000 years, from the Palaeolithic Period up until the time of the Gauls. Made by heating birch bark, it served as an adhesive for hafting tools and decorating objects. Scientists mistakenly thought it had been abandoned in western Europe at the end of the Iron Age (800-25 BC) and replaced by conifer resins, around which a full-fledged industry developed during the Roman period. But by studying artefacts that date back to the first six centuries AD through the lens of chemistry, archaeology, and textual analysis... more »
The Western Catholic Church's influence on marriage and family structures during the Middle Ages shaped the cultural evolution of the beliefs and behaviors now common among Western Europeans and their cultural descendants, researchers report. The greater individualism, lower conformity and increased stranger trust behaviors commonly observed among these populations, long exposed to the church, are at least in part due to the Medieval Western Church's policies, the authors say. Their study highlights how cultural changes more than 500 years ago can evolve and seed significant and lo... more »
All roads may lead to Rome, and in ancient times, a great many European genetic lineages did too, according to a new study. Its results, perhaps the most detailed analysis of changing genetic variation patterns in the region to date, reveal a dynamic population history from the Mesolithic (~10,000 BCE) into modern times, and spanning the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. At its height, the ancient Roman Empire sprawled across three continents, encompassing the entirety of the Mediterranean and the lives of tens of millions across Europe, the Near East and North Africa. The size of ... more »
UC Davis anthropologists and geneticists traced dog's DNA back 2,000 years University of California - Davis [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *A team of Greenland sled dogs are descendants of the Inuit of North American Arctic. view more Credit: Article author Tatiana Tatiana Feuerborn Inuit sled dogs have changed little since people migrated to the North American Arctic across the Bering Strait from Siberia with them, according to researchers who have examined DNA from the dogs from that time span. The legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in Arctic sled dogs, making them one of the last ... more »
Analysis of fossilized shells reveals cooking habits of Caribbean civilizations over 2500 years ago Cardiff University [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Photographs of all shells analyzed in this study. view more Credit: Cardiff University Scientists have reconstructed the cooking techniques of the early inhabitants of Puerto Rico by analysing the remains of clams. Led by Philip Staudigel, who conducted the analysis as a graduate student at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Cardiff University, the team has used new chemical analysis techniques ... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *The impressed odostome, Boonea impressa, is a tiny marine snail that parasitizes oysters by perching atop and piercing their shells and sucking their insides. Because the snails have a predictable... view more Credit: Kristen Grace/Florida Museum GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Foodie tradition dictates only eating wild oysters in months with the letter "r" - from September to April - to avoid watery shellfish, or worse, a nasty bout of food poisoning. Now, a new study suggests people have been following this practice for at least 4,000 years. An analysis of a large sh... more »
Ochre, one of Earth's oldest naturally occurring materials, was often seen as a vivid red paint University of Missouri-Columbia [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is one of the pieces of rock art found at Babine Lake. It is representative of the rock art that was analyzed in the study. view more Credit: University of Missouri Ochre, one of Earth's oldest naturally occurring materials, was often used as a vivid red paint in ancient rock art known as pictographs across the world. Despite its broad use throughout human history and a modern focus on how the artistic symbolism is interpreted,... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Scene from the Books of the Dead (The Egyptian museum) showing the ibis-headed God Thoth recording the result of the final judgement. view more Credit: Wasef et al, 2019 In ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study released November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal *PLOS ONE* by Sally Wasef of Griffith University, Australia and colleagues. Egyptian catacombs are famously filled with the mummified bodies of Sacred Ibises. Between around 664BC and 250AD, it was common practice for... more »
Climate change influenced rise and fall of Northern Iraq's Neo-Assyrian Empire Changes in climate may have contributed to both the rise and collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, which was considered the most powerful empire of its time, according to a new study. The results suggest that multi-decade megadroughts aligned with the timing of the empire's collapse in 609 BCE, triggering declines in the region's agricultural productivity that led to political and economic demise within 60 years. Previous explanations for the empire's collapse have focused on political i... more »
Stanford University -- School of Humanities and Sciences [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is an illustration of modern humans overcoming disease burden before Neanderthals. view more Credit: Vivian Chen Wong Growing up in Israel, Gili Greenbaum would give tours of local caves once inhabited by Neanderthals and wonder along with others why our distant cousins abruptly disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Now a scientist at Stanford, Greenbaum thinks he has an answer. In a new study published in the journal *Nature Communications*, Greenbaum and his colleagues propose that complex disease ... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is a falange of imperial eagle with marks of court from Cave Foradada view more Credit: Antonio RodrÃguez-Hidalgo Eagle talons are regarded as the first elements used to make jewellery by Neanderthals, a practice which spread around Southern Europe about 120,000 and 40,000 years ago. Now, for the first time, researchers found evidence of the ornamental uses of eagle talons in the Iberian Peninsula. An article published in the cover of the journal *Science Advances* talks about the findings, which took place in the site of the cave Foradada in Calafell. ... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *The origin and history of the population of North Africa are different from the rest of the continent and are more similar to the demographic history of regions outside Africa. view more Credit: Michael Gaida, Pixabay An international team of scientists has for the first time performed an analysis of the complete genome of the population of North Africa. They have identified a small genetic imprint of the inhabitants of the region in Palaeolithic times, thus ruling out the theory that recent migrations from other regions completely erased the genetic traces o... more »
A study has concluded that the earliest ancestors of anatomically modern humans (*Homo sapiens sapiens*) emerged in a southern African 'homeland' and thrived there for 70 thousand years. The breakthrough findings are published in the prestigious journal *Nature* today. The authors propose that changes in Africa's climate triggered the first human explorations, which initiated the development of humans' genetic, ethnic and cultural diversity. This study provides a window into the first 100 thousand years of modern humans' history. *DNA as a time capsule * "It has been clear for s... more »
Last year, scientists announced that a human jawbone and prehistoric tools found in 2002 in Misliya Cave, on the western edge of Israel, were between 177,000 and 194,000 years old. The finding suggested that modern humans, who originated in Africa, began migrating out of the continent at least 40,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought. But the story of how and when modern humans originated and spread throughout the world is still in draft form. That's because science hasn't settled how many times modern humans left Africa, or just how many routes they may have taken... more »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *A view of Manot cave and a close up of the area where some of the teeth were found. view more Credit: Prof. Israel Hershkovitz/American Friends of Tel Aviv University. Who exactly were the Aurignacians, who lived in the Levant 40,000 years ago? Researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Ben-Gurion University now report that these culturally sophisticated yet mysterious humans migrated from Europe to the Levant some 40,000 years ago, shedding light on a significant era in the region's history. The Aurignacian culture first appe... more »
This past Sukkot, about 8,500 people participated in archaeological excavations and activities hosted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). One family, from Tur’an in the Lower Galilee, made a rare and informative discovery while volunteering at the IAA’s excavation of ancient Usha. The family discovered an iron hammer-head and nails dating to the Byzantine period, about 1,400 years ago. According to *Yair Amitzur *and* Eyad Bisharat*, directors of the excavation on behalf of the IAA, “About 20 iron hammers are registered in the Israel Antiquities Authority records, only six o... more » »
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Regional map of Koh Ker showing the location of the chute and key archaeological features. The detailed map area (top right) is shown as a white dashed box on the... view more Credit: Dr Ian Moffat, Flinders University The largest water management feature in Khmer history was built in the 10th century as part of a short-lived ancient capital in northern Cambodia to store water but the system failed in its first year of operation, possibly leading to the return of the capital to Angkor. An international team of researchers led by Dr Ian Moffat from Flinders ... more »
