Jebel Sahaba: A succession of violence rather than a prehistoric war

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IMAGE: PROJECTILE IMPACT PUNCTURE WITH AN EMBEDDED LITHIC FRAGMENT IN THE POSTERIOR SURFACE OF THE LEFT HIP BONE OF INDIVIDUAL JS 21. view more 

CREDIT: © ISABELLE CREVECOEUR/MARIE-HÉLÈNE DIAS-MEIRINHO

Since its discovery in the 1960s, the Jebel Sahaba cemetery (Nile Valley, Sudan), 13 millennia old, was considered to be one of the oldest testimonies to prehistoric warfare. However, scientists from the CNRS and the University of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (1) have re-analysed the bones preserved in the British Museum (London) and re-evaluated their archaeological context. The results, published in Scientific Reports on May 27, 2021, show that it was not a single armed conflict but rather a succession of violent episodes, probably exacerbated by climate change.

Many individuals buried at Jebel Sahaba bear injuries, half ot them caused by projectiles, the points of which were found in the bones or the fill where the body was located. The interpretation as evidence of mass death due to a single armed conflict, however, remained debated until a team of anthropologists, prehistorians and geochemists undertook a new study of the thousands of bones, about a hundred associated lithic pieces and the entire burial complex (now submerged by Lake Aswan) from 2013 to 2019.

The bones of 61 individuals were re-examined, including microscopic analysis, in order to distinguish traces of injury from damage produced after burial. About a hundred new lesions, both healed and unhealed, were identified, some with previously unrecognised lithic flakes still embedded in the bones. In addition to the 20 individuals already identified, 21 other skeletons have lesions, almost all suggestive of interpersonal violence, such as traces of projectile impact or fractures. In addition, 16 individuals have both healed and unhealed injuries, suggesting repeated episodes of violence over the course of a person's life rather than a single conflict. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that some skeletons appear to have been disturbed by later burials. Surprisingly, men, women and children seem to have been treated indiscriminately in terms of the number and type of injuries or the projectiles direction (2).

These new data also reveal that the majority of lesions were produced by composite projectiles, throwing weapons (arrows or spears) composed of several sharp lithic pieces, some of which are laterally embedded. The presence of variously sharpened points, with variations in the orientation of the cutting edge, suggests that the intended purpose was to lacerate and bleed the victim.

These new results reject the hypothesis of a disaster cemetery linked to a single war. Instead, this site indicates a succession of limited raids or ambushes against these hunter-fisher-gatherers, at a time of major climatic variations (end of the last ice age and beginning of the African humid period). The concentration of archaeological sites of different cultures in such a limited area of the Nile Valley at this time suggests that this region must have been a refuge area for human populations subject to these climatic fluctuations. Competition for resources is therefore probably one of the causes of the conflicts witnessed in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery. This analysis, which changes the history of violence in prehistory, invites us to reconsider other sites from the same period.

Study sheds light on population history of northern east Asia

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

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IMAGE: GEOGRAPHIC AND TEMPORAL DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION STRUCTURE OF NEWLY SAMPLED AND PUBLISHED POPULATIONS IN NORTHERN EAST ASIA view more 

CREDIT: MAO ET AL., 2021

A study led by research groups of Prof. FU Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. ZHANG Hucai from Yunnan University covers the largest temporal transect of population dynamics in East Asia so far and offers a clearer picture of the deep population history of northern East Asia.

The study was published in Cell on May 27.

Northern East Asia falls within a similar latitude range as central and southern Europe, where human population movements and size were influenced by Ice Age climatic fluctuations. Did these climatic fluctuations have an impact on the population history of northern East Asia?

Stories uncovered by ancient DNA in East Asia remain relatively underexplored. The population dynamics between 40,000 years ago (40 ka) and 9.5 ka still remain mysterious.

To answer questions related to the deep population history of East Asia, the researchers obtained genome-wide genotype data from 25 ancient humans ranging from 33 to 3.4 ka from the Songnen Plain (Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China) in the Amur Region. This period covers the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which is crucial to understanding what happened to northern East Asians before, during and after the LGM.

They found that the oldest sample (AR33K, ~33 ka) shares the highest genetic affinity with the Tianyuan man (~40 ka near Beijing, which represents the earliest ancient genome found in East Asia so far), compared to all other published ancient and modern individuals. This probably indicates that Tianyuan/AR33K ancestry was widespread before the LGM in northern East Asia, both geographically and temporally (from 40 ka to 33 ka). In addition, both AR33K and Tianyuan are basal to all East Asians."

The second oldest sample (AR19K, ~19 ka), an individual who lived toward the end of the LGM, is revealed to be the earliest northern East Asian yet identified. This shows that North-South genetic separation in East Asia occurred as early as 19 ka, 10,000 years earlier than previously discovered. AR19K also possesses a genetic ancestry distinct from that of the modern humans who occupied this region before the LGM (e.g., Tianyuan and AR33K), indicating a potential population shift.

The analyses of younger samples after the LGM demonstrate that the genetic continuity reported between modern inhabitants of the Amur Region and the Devil's Cave population (about 8 ka) probably started as early as 14 ka, i.e., 6,000 years earlier than previously proposed.

"The Amur Region populations could have been at the forefront of interactions with ancient North Eurasian (ANE)-related populations that likely contributed to the Ancient Paleo-Siberians," said Prof. FU. The Ancient Paleo-Siberians are reported to be the closest relatives of Native American populations outside of the Americas.

Besides elucidating population dynamics, these analyses provide the first ancient DNA evidence to narrow the time of appearance of an Asian-specific variant (EDAR V370A), which is associated with anthropogenic traits like thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands, and shovel-shaped incisors.

"This genetic variant was likely to be elevated to high frequency after the LGM. Our direct observations using ancient DNA likely support the hypothesis that selection on EDAR V370Aincreased vitamin D in breast milk in a low UV environment," said Associate Professor MAO Xiaowei, the first author of the study.

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Ancient fish bones reveal non-kosher diet of ancient Judeans

 

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Ancient Judeans commonly ate non-kosher fish surrounding the time that such food was prohibited in the Bible, suggests a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Tel Aviv.

This finding sheds new light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws that are still observed by many Jews today. Among these rules is a ban on eating any species of fish which lacks scales or fins.

The study reports an analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date to the more than 2,000-year span from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BCE) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 CE).

The authors say the results call for a rethink of assumptions that long-held traditions were the basis for the food laws outlined in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

"The ban on finless and scaleless fish deviated from longstanding Judean dietary habits", says Yonatan Adler from Ariel University.

"The Biblical writers appear to have prohibited this food despite the fact that non-kosher fish were often found on the Judean menu. There is little reason to think that an old and widespread dietary taboo lay at the root of this ban".

The Old Testament was penned at different times, beginning in the centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and into Hellenistic times (332-63 BCE). A set of passages repeated twice forbids the eating of certain species of fish.

The Book of Leviticus states: "Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you", and Deuteronomy decrees that '...whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.'

In both, the references immediately follow a prohibition on 'unclean' pig which has received wide scholarly attention. However, the origins and early history of the seafood ban have not been explored in detail until now.

The authors in this study set out to discover when and how the fish prohibition first arose, and if it was predated by an earlier taboo practiced prior to the editing of the Old Testament passages. They also sought to establish the extent to which the rule was obeyed.

Adler's co-author Omri Lernau from Haifa University analysed thousands of fish remains from dozens of sites in the southern Levant. At many Judean sites dating to the Iron Age (1130-586 BCE), including at the Judean capital city of Jerusalem, bone assemblages included significant proportions of non-kosher fish remains. Another key discovery was evidence of non-kosher fish consumption in Jerusalem during the Persian era (539-332 BCE).

Non-kosher fish bones were mostly absent from Judean settlements dating to the Roman era and later. The authors note that sporadic non-kosher fish remains from this later time may indicate 'some degree of non-observance among Judeans'.

The authors now intend to analyse more fish from around this timeframe to establish when Judeans began to avoid eating scaleless fish and how strictly the prohibition was kept.

Secret of the famous Pazyryk carpet: Fermented wool is the answer

 Why are the red, yellow, and blue colours used in the world's oldest knotted-pile carpet still so vivid and bright, even after almost two and a half thousand years? Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg have now been able to uncover the secrets behind the so-called Pazyryk carpet using high-resolution x-ray fluorescence microscopy. Their findings have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The Pazyryk carpet is the world's oldest example of a knotted-pile carpet and is kept at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The carpet, which was made out of new wool at around 400 BC, is one of the most exciting examples of central Asian craftsmanship from the Iron Age. Ever since the carpet was discovered in 1947 by Russian archaeologists in a kurgan tomb in the Altai mountains, experts in traditional dyeing techniques have been puzzled by the vivid red, yellow and blue colours of the carpet, which lay buried in extreme conditions for almost two thousand five hundred years.

Red fibres under the microscope

Prof. Dr. Karl Meßlinger from the Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology at FAU, and x-ray microscopy experts Dr. Andreas Späth and Prof. Dr. Rainer Fink from the Chair of Physical Chemistry II at FAU have now shed some light on this secret. Together, they came up with the idea of imaging the distribution of pigments across the cross section of individual fibres of wool using high-resolution x-ray fluorescence microscopy (?-XRF). Dr. Späth and Prof. Fink conducted the experiments using the PHOENIX x-ray microscope at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland. With three to five micrometres, the microscope provides sufficient spatial resolution combined with high sensitivity for characteristic chemical elements.

Fermenting sheep's wool before it is dyed increases the brilliance and longevity of the colour. Fermented wool can be identified by the raised position of the layers of the cuticle along the fibres or by the characteristic distribution of pigments across the cross-section of the fibres. The latter is shown in the x-ray fluorescence images (left). The cuticle layer has fallen off the samples of fibre from the Pazyryk carpet (right). The influence of the fermentation process is still visible by comparing the fluorescence images (bottom) with those of recently dyed samples.

The study focused mainly on red wool fibres, as the pigment Turkey red has been in use almost exclusively for centuries in Central Asia and in the Far East to create a characteristic shade of red. Turkey red is a metal organic complex made of alizarin, which is derived from the roots of the rose madder, and aluminium. '?-XRF imaging shows the characteristic distribution of the aluminium along the cross section of fermented wool fibres,' explains Dr. Andreas Späth. 'We found the same pattern in fibres from the Pazyryk carpet.' This is by far the earliest example of the fermentation technique and provides an insight into the already highly-developed techniques used by textile craftsmen and women in the Iron Age. The results also show the high potential of x-ray microscopy for analysing samples of textiles from archaeological sites. Up to now, research in this field has used scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Fermented wool does not fade

Prof. Dr. Karl Meßlinger received a sample of some knots from the Pazyryk carpet 30 years ago in 1991 for analysis with a scanning electron microscope. Together with Dr. Manfred Bieber, an expert in oriental textile dyeing techniques, he previously discovered that SEM imaging can identify wool fibres that have been treated with a special dyeing technique based on previous fermentation of the wool. The fermentation process increases the diffusion of the pigments towards the centre of the wool fibres resulting in significantly more brilliant and permanent colours. Fermented wool can be identified by SEM imaging by means of the characteristic raised position of the outermost layers of the cuticle. 'Traditional Anatolian textile craftspeople are familiar with a less costly yet reliable technique,' says Meßlinger. 'They spread the dyed wool out on a field for several weeks in direct sunlight, then put it in a barn as bedding for their animals before rinsing it out in a stream or river. Only fermented wool retains its colour without any significant bleaching.'

Prof. Meßlinger and Dr. Bieber were able to trace the origins of this traditional dyeing technique back to the 17th century. However, the more the treated textile is used or the more it is exposed to the elements, the less remains of the cuticle layers. Most of the cuticle layers of the world-famous Pazyryk carpet were also missing. The researchers succeeded in proving the effect of fermentation by comparing the fluorescent images with those of samples of wool they fermented and dyed themselves.

Pre-Columbus climate change may have caused Amazon population decline

Indigenous Amazonia populations may have been in decline prior to 'Great Dying'

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Climate change impacts felt in the Amazon rainforest prior to the arrival of European settlers after 1492 may have meant populations of indigenous people were already in decline before the 'Great Dying', new research has suggested.

Scientists studying fossil pollen and charcoal data from across the Amazon say it appears to show that human management of the rainforest may have peaked around 1200 AD, before some sites were abandoned, allowing reforestation of these areas.

The new research, involving University of Reading scientists and published in the journal Science, challenges the prior assumption that the largest population decrease in the Americas - known as the Great Dying - did not start until after European settlers carried new diseases to the continent.

Professor Frank Mayle, a tropical palaeoecology researcher at the University of Reading, and co-author of the study, said: "Our analysis raises the possibility that climate change caused the decline of some Amazonian societies several centuries before the Europeans arrived, especially the more complex societies which may have been too rigid to adapt.

"Although the introduction of European diseases, such as small pox, is still likely to have been the reason for the major population decline subsequently seen in the Americas, the research is a warning of the threat climate change poses to society. Knowledge of how different types of ancient society responded to past climate change may provide valuable clues to understanding the fate of today's diverse societies under 21st century global warming."

The research was led by Professor Mark Bush at Florida Tech, and included a team of international collaborators who are investigating how pre- and post-European people modified and managed Amazonian forests.

Analysis of fossilised pollen and charcoal revealed that many previously deforested lands have been recovering for over 800 years, rather than the 400 years previously supposed, indicating a pre-European population decline. The research team is now looking to assess the drivers and mechanisms of this population drop-off.

Finding signatures of initial forest regrowth following ancient human disturbance is important to ongoing discussions about the impact of Pre-Columbian people on Amazon rainforests and the extent to which modern forests exhibit legacies of past human activity.

This research also has implications for atmospheric and biosphere science. It was previously believed that the indigenous population collapse in Amazonia following European Contact, and subsequent reforestation, led to the sequestration of so much carbon dioxide that global atmospheric CO2 levels decreased markedly, an event known as the 'Orbis Spike'. Yet the team found no evidence that the Orbis Spike was caused by Amazonian reforestation.

Forensic archaeologists begin to recover Spanish Civil War missing bodies

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IMAGE: THE MISSING FACES OF THOSE WHOSE BODIES THE TEAM ARE TRYING TO FIND. view more 

CREDIT: GEMA ORTIZ IGLESIAS

Forensic archaeologists and anthropologists from Cranfield University have started to recover the bodies of victims executed by the Franco regime at the end of the Spanish Civil War during an excavation in the Ciudad Real region of Spain.

The team from Cranfield is working with partners from the University Complutense of Madrid (UCM) and social anthropologists from Mapas de Memoria (Maps of Memory) to search for, exhume and identify those executed and buried in the civil cemetery at Almagro between 1939 and 1940.

Several bodies with gunshot wounds to the head, personal effects and parts of clothing have already been recovered and in total the team are searching for 26 people in this excavation which is focused on a separate area of the graveyard that has been closed for decades.

Families of victims have been found in the hope of identifying relatives through DNA analysis and returning the human remains for proper burial.

This exhumation is part of a number of recoveries from the Spanish Civil War which are currently being investigated in Spain. Since 2000, over 7,000 victims have been recovered.

Dr Nicholas Márquez-Grant, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Anthropology at Cranfield Forensic Institute (CFI), who is leading the excavation, said: "This excavation is particularly complex due to the number of victims and subsequent burials in the cemetery during the postwar period. Recovery of the bodies is carried out layer by layer and is only the start of the process to identify and bring dignity to the deceased and help to provide closure and peace to their families."

José Barrios, whose great uncle - also named José Barrios - was executed and buried at the site, said: "When the excavation started I did not feel much but when they found the first body, I saw the skull and the feet of an individual, I thought: we are here now, we are coming to find you."

The excavation period will last until the beginning of June and will be followed by a longer investigation involving anthropological analysis in the laboratory and DNA analysis until the end of 2021 to identify human remains recovered.

The first stage in the overall process was carried out by Maps of Memory to locate the graves through archival research and contact the families of victims through social networks and testimonies from neighbours.

Dr Jorge Moreno, director of Maps of Memory, a project of the National Distance Learning University (UNED), said: "Whilst archaeologists and forensic anthropologists work from the ground down, social anthropologists work from the ground up. Whilst scientists search for human remains, social anthropologists search for families, their histories and stories. Originally we had four families identified for this excavation and in ten days we now have 21 families and 21 stories. We find bodies on the one hand, and stories on the other that later connect."

A total of 11 pits have been identified for the excavation, and several pits have more than one individual in them. Cranfield team members also include graduates and alumni from CFI's Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology MSc.

Once remains are recovered, they are taken to the forensic anthropology laboratory at UCM to identify and determine the circumstances of the death of each of the individuals.

Dr Maria Benito Sanchez, director of the scientific team for the project from the School of Legal Medicine at UCM, said: "As forensic anthropology professionals we have the responsibility of putting our science to the service of the relatives who have been searching for their loved ones for a long time now. Since I started working on mass graves, there have been many rewards which I take with me, and all are for the relatives - they are the engine for this work."

Genetic analysis with samples from family members and bone samples recovered then follows and where checks are positive, family members are identified. Remains will then be passed to the families for burial or returned to the cemetery to be buried again if that isn't possible.

The wider Memory Maps project, which is funded by the Ciudad Real Provincial Council, has located 53 mass graves and named 3,457 people killed in the province of Ciudad Real by the Franco regime over the last ten years. So far the Almagro excavation is the largest mass grave opened in the province, although there are known to be others with hundreds of people buried in them.

Scientists discover a new feature that distinguishes modern humans from Neanderthals

IMAGE: SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A NEW FEATURE THAT DISTINGUISHES MODERN HUMANS FROM NEANDERTHALS view more 

CREDIT: PAVEL ODINEV / SKOLTECH

Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Germany and the United States have analyzed the metabolomes of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques in muscle, kidney, and three different brain regions. The team discovered that the modern human genome undergoes mutation which makes the adenylosuccinate lyase enzyme less stable, leading to a decrease in purine synthesis. This mutation did not occur in Neanderthals, so the scientists believe that it affected metabolism in brain tissues and thereby strongly contributed to modern humans evolving into a separate species. The research was published in the journal eLife.

The predecessors of modern humans split from their closest evolutionary relatives, Neanderthals and Denisovans, about 600,000 years ago, while the evolutionary divergence between our ancestors and those of modern chimpanzees dates as far back as 65 million years ago. Evolutionary biologists are after the particular genetic features that distinguish modern humans from their ancestors and may give a clue as to why humans are what they are.

Researchers from the Skoltech Center for Neurobiology and Brain Restoration (CNBR) led by Professor Philipp Khaitovich and their colleagues from the Max Planck Institutes in Leipzig, Dresden and Cologne and the University of Denver studied metabolic differences in the brain, kidney and muscle of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques.

The research supervisor was a renowned evolutionary biologist, Professor Svante Pääbo, who earlier on had discovered the Denisovan and led the Neanderthal Genome Project.

The team looked at an interesting human mutation that leads to amino acid substitution in adenylosuccinate lyase, an enzyme involved in the synthesis of purine inside DNA. This substitution reduces the enzyme's activity and stability, which results in a lower concentration of purines in the human brain. The team showed that the new mutation is typical for humans only and does not appear in other primates or Neanderthals. The researchers proved that this mutation is indeed the reason for the metabolic peculiarities in humans by introducing it into the mouse genome. The mice subjected to mutation produced fewer purines, whereas an ancestral gene, when introduced into human cells, led to apparent metabolic changes.

"Although a powerful tool for scientists, the decoded human genome, unfortunately, cannot account for all the phenotypic differences between humans. The study of the metabolic composition of tissues can give clues about why functional changes occur in humans. I am delighted that we have succeeded in predicting the metabolic characteristics of modern humans and validated our hypotheses on mouse and cell models, even though we did not have 'live Neanderthals' to work on," says lead author and Skoltech PhD student Vita Stepanova.

Bubonic plague had long-term effect on human immunity genes

Scientists examined DNA from mass grave of plague victims in Germany

 Scientists examining the remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany have found the first evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes, driven by the disease, may have conferred immunity on later generations of people from the region.

"We found that innate immune markers increased in frequency in modern people from the town compared to plague victims," said the study's joint-senior author Paul Norman, PhD, associate professor in the Division of Personalized Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "This suggests these markers might have evolved to resist the plague."

The study, done in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute in Germany, was published online Thursday in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

The researchers collected DNA samples from the inner ear bones of individuals in a mass grave in the southern German city of Ellwangen which experienced bubonic plague outbreaks in the 16th and 17th centuries. Then they took DNA samples from 50 current residents of the town.

They compared their frequency spectra - the distribution of gene variants in a given sample - for a large panel of immunity-related genes.

Among the current inhabitants, the team found evidence that a pathogen, likely Yersinia pestis which causes bubonic plague, prompted changes in the allele distribution for two innate pattern-recognition receptors and four Human Leukocyte Antigen molecules, which help initiate and direct immune response to infection. An allele is a variant form of a gene.

"We propose that these frequency changes could have resulted from Y.pestis plague exposure during the 16th century," Norman said.

The findings are the first evidence that evolutionary processes, prompted by Y. pestis, may have been shaping certain human immunity-relevant genes in Ellwangen and possibly throughout Europe for generations.

And since the plague tormented Europe for nearly 5,000 years, the study suggests that these immunity genes may have been pre-selected in the population long ago but recently became selected through epidemic events.

"Although the lethality of the plague is very high without treatment it remains likely that specific individuals are protected from, or more susceptible to, severe disease through polymorphism in the determinants of natural immunity," the study said. "In this case, any change in allele frequencies that occurred during a given epidemic crisis could be evident as genetic adaptation and detectable in modern day individuals."

Later simulations showed that natural selection likely drove these allele frequency changes.

"I think this study shows that we can focus on these same families of genes in looking at immunity in modern pandemics," Norman said. "We know these genes were heavily involved in driving resistance to infections."

The study also demonstrates that, so far, no matter how deadly the pandemic there are always survivors.

"It sheds light on our own evolution," Norman said. "There will always be people who have some resistance. They just don't get sick and die and the human population bounces back."

Still, he doesn't want people to get the wrong message, especially in the era of Covid-19.

"I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from taking a vaccine for the current pandemic," Norman said. "It's a much safer bet than counting on your genes to save you."