The first successfully sequenced human genome from an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE is presented this week in a study published in Scientific Reports.
Prior to this, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from Pompeiian human and animal remains had been sequenced.
Gabriele Scorrano and colleagues examined the remains of two individuals who were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii and extracted their DNA. The shape, structure, and length of the skeletons indicated that one set of remains belonged to a male who was aged between 35 and 40 years at the time of his death, while the other set of remains belonged to a female aged over 50 years old. Although the authors were able to extract and sequence ancient DNA from both individuals, they were only able to sequence the entire genome from the male’s remains due to gaps in the sequences obtained from the female’s remains.
Comparisons of the male individual’s DNA with DNA obtained from 1,030 other ancient and 471 modern western Eurasian individuals suggested that his DNA shared the most similarities with modern central Italians and other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. However, analyses of the male individual’s mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA also identified groups of genes that are commonly found in those from the island of Sardinia, but not among other individuals who lived in Italy during the Roman Imperial age. This suggests that there may have been high levels of genetic diversity across the Italian Peninsula during this time.
Additional analyses of the male individual’s skeleton and DNA identified lesions in one of the vertebrae and DNA sequences that are commonly found in Mycobacterium, the group of bacteria that the tuberculosis-causing bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis belongs to. This suggests that the individual may have been affected by tuberculosis prior to his death.
The authors speculate that it may have been possible to successfully recover ancient DNA from the male individual’s remains as pyroclastic materials released during the eruption may have provided protection from DNA-degrading environmental factors, such as atmospheric oxygen. The findings demonstrate the possibility to retrieve ancient DNA from Pompeiian human remains and provide further insight into the genetic history and lives of this population, they add.
IMAGE: VIEW OF THE RICHARD III STATUE IMMEDIATELY OUTSIDE LEICESTER CATHEDRAL, CLOSE TO BOTH THESE LATEST ULAS WORKS AND THE GREYFRIARS SITE WHERE THE KING'S REMAINS WERE FOUND IN 2012.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
The team behind the discovery of Richard III have resumed major archaeological excavations at Leicester Cathedral, close to where the King was found.
Archaeologists and other experts from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) are leading excavations on the site of the Old Song School, at the eastern end of Leicester Cathedral, which could reveal aspects of Leicester life from the past 1,000 years.
The area within the Cathedral Gardens, previously part of St Martins’ churchyard, is being transformed into a new heritage and learning space as part of the Leicester Cathedral Revealed project, enabled by a £4.5 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
In advance of the regeneration, ULAS experts and colleagues from the University’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History hope to examine a cross section of the City’s history and learn more about the early foundation of the Cathedral – formerly a Parish Church – on the site.
These archaeological excavations, up to two metres below ground level, will allow experts to track the history of this part of Leicester from the Victorian period through Medieval, Saxon, Roman and perhaps even to early Iron Age settlement.
Mathew Morris is a Project Officer at ULAS and leads the excavations. He was also part of the team which unearthed the remains of Richard III in 2012, a stone’s throw from the Cathedral site. He said:
“This is in an area of Leicester which we rarely get to excavate, and it’s going to be the first time which we have excavated a continuous cemetery sequence dating from the late Saxon period to the relatively recent past, giving us a fantastic opportunity to investigate the story of Leicester through the lives of the people who lived and were buried here.
“The excavation is also going to give us the chance to explore the origins of the Cathedral site, including the foundation of the original church and aspects of the Roman town which predated it.”
Preliminary investigations took place in late 2021, with the ULAS team carefully uncovering more than 120 burials in the top-most layers on the site. The area was once used as the churchyard for burials of people from all walks of life living in the surrounding parish.
It is believed that there could be hundreds more burials on the site, which experts will need to painstakingly excavate by hand. Samples will then be tested by University of Leicester experts, which will reveal insights into the life of those who lived, worked and died in the City.
Dr Sarah Inskip is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Leicester and will lead this work to study these remains, as part of a wider project to study the history of tobacco use from the 15th to 18th Centuries. She said:
“The individuals offer an unpresented glimpse into life in Leicester through the Medieval and Post-Medieval periods. The ability to assess individuals from one location over such a long time period will allow us to see how the lives of Leicester people changed with major social upheaval and transitions, such as epidemic disease, the arrival of new global commodities such as tobacco, and industrialisation.”
Earlier burials will also be studied by experts from York Osteoarchaeology.
Dean of Leicester, the Very Revd David Monteith, added:
“Leicester Cathedral is pleased to be working with ULAS once again on the archaeological excavation work for our Leicester Cathedral Revealed project that will renew the Cathedral so that it can be its very best as a place of worship, heritage, pilgrimage, hospitality, learning, sanctuary and celebration.
“The archaeological excavations are a key element of the repair and restoration works to the existing Cathedral building and the construction of a new visitor and learning centre, The Chapter House - a striking extension to the Cathedral on the footprint of the Old Song School. The Chapter House will provide an exhibition gallery with immersive interpretation, a flexible learning space for school children and community groups, facilities for volunteers and WCs.”
Building work on the Leicester Cathedral Revealed project is led by main contractor Messenger Construction Ltd. ULAS excavations are expected to last for several months, with post-excavation work taking place into 2023.
Once the project is completed, the studied individuals will be reinterred by Leicester Cathedral.
John Thomas, Deputy Director of ULAS, added:
“The opportunity to examine a cross section of past Leicester residents is tremendously exciting and the timing of this excavation with the 10-year anniversary of the discovery of Richard couldn’t be more fitting.
“Collaborative work at the University and beyond revealed much about the life of Richard III and we hope to use comparable techniques to gain similar insights into those less historically visible.”
Later in 2022, the University of Leicester will mark the 10 years since the discovery of the remains of Richard III in a Leicester car park.
Working with the Richard III Society and other partners, ULAS archaeologists unearthed the King’s mortal remains in a trench in 2012. Further study, including genetic testing of the skeleton’s DNA against a known modern-day relative, revealed the remains belonged to the last Plantagenet King.
Richard’s remains were later reinterred in a specially-created tomb at Leicester Cathedral in 2015, in the presence of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and members of the Royal Family.
Proteins extracted from fragments of prehistoric eggshell found in the Australian sands confirm that the continent’s earliest humans consumed the eggs of a two-metre tall bird that disappeared into extinction over 47,000 years ago.
Burn marks discovered on scraps of ancient shell several years ago suggested the first Australians cooked and ate large eggs from a long-extinct bird – leading to fierce debate over the species that laid them.
Now, an international team led by scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Turin have placed the animal on the evolutionary tree by comparing the protein sequences from powdered egg fossils to those encoded in the genomes of living avian species.
“Time, temperature and the chemistry of a fossil all dictate how much information we can glean,” said senior co-author Prof Matthew Collins from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.
“Eggshells are made of mineral crystals that can tightly trap some proteins, preserving this biological data in the harshest of environments – potentially for millions of years.”
According to findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the ancient eggs came from Genyornis: a huge flightless “mihirung” – or ‘Thunder Bird’ – with tiny wings and massive legs that roamed prehistoric Australia, possibly in flocks.
Fossil records show that Genyornis stood over two metres tall, weighed between 220-240 kilograms, and laid melon-sized eggs of around 1.5 kg. It was among the Australian “mega-fauna” to vanish a few thousand years after humans arrived, suggesting people played a role in its extinction.
The earliest “robust” date for the arrival of humans to Australia is some 65,000 years ago. Burnt eggshells from the previously unconfirmed species all date to around 50 to 55 thousand years ago – not long before Genyornis is thought to have gone extinct – by which time humans had spread across most of the continent.
“There is no evidence of Genyornis butchery in the archaeological record. However, eggshell fragments with unique burn patterns consistent with human activity have been found at different places across the continent,” said senior co-author Prof Gifford Miller from the University of Colorado.
“This implies that the first humans did not necessarily hunt these enormous birds, but did routinely raid nests and steal their giant eggs for food,” he said. “Overexploitation of the eggs by humans may well have contributed to Genyornis extinction.”
While Genyornis was always a contender for the mystery egg-layer, some scientists argued that – due to shell shape and thickness – a more likely candidate was the Progura or ‘giant malleefowl’: another extinct bird, much smaller, weighing around 5-7 kg and akin to a large turkey.
The initial ambition was to put the debate to bed by pulling ancient DNA from pieces of shell, but genetic material had not sufficiently survived the hot Australian climate.
Miller turned to researchers at Cambridge and Turin to explore a relatively new technique for extracting a different type of “biomolecule”: protein.
While not as rich in hereditary data, the scientists were able to compare the sequences in ancient proteins to those of living species using a vast new database of biological material: the Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) project.
“The Progura was related to today’s megapodes, a group of birds in the galliform lineage, which also contains ground-feeders such as chickens and turkeys,” said study first author Prof Beatrice Demarchi from the University of Turin.
“We found that the bird responsible for the mystery eggs emerged prior to the galliform lineage, enabling us to rule out the Progura hypothesis. This supports the implication that the eggs eaten by early Australians were laid by Genyornis.”
The 50,000-year-old eggshell tested for the study came from the archaeological site of Wood Point in South Australia, but Prof Miller has previously shown that similar burnt shells can be found at hundreds of sites on the far western Ningaloo coast.
The researchers point out that the Genyornis egg exploitation behaviour of the first Australians likely mirrors that of early humans with ostrich eggs, the shells of which have been unearthed at archaeological sites across Africa dating back at least 100,000 years.
Prof Collins added: “While ostriches and humans have co-existed throughout prehistory, the levels of exploitation of Genyornis eggs by early Australians may have ultimately proved more than the reproductive strategies of these extraordinary birds could bear.”
More than 20 years ago, Dr. Heiko Prümers from the German Archaeological Institute and Prof. Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the University of Bonn, at that time a student in La Paz, began archaeological excavations on two "mounds" near the village of Casarabe in Bolivia. The Mojos Plains is a southwestern fringe of the Amazon region. Even though the savannah plain, which flooded several months a year during rainy season, does not encourage permanent settlement, there are still many visible traces of the time before Spanish colonization at the beginning of the 16th century. Next to the "mounds," these traces include mainly causeways and canals that often lead for kilometers in a dead straight line across the savannahs.
"This indicated a relatively dense settlement in pre-Hispanic times. Our goal was to conduct basic research and trace the settlements and life there," says Heiko Prümers. In earlier studies, the researchers already found that the Casarabe culture -- named after the nearby village -- dates to the period between 500 and 1400 AD and, according to current knowledge, extended over a region of around 16,000 square kilometers. The "mounds" turned out to be eroded pyramid stumps and platform buildings.
Initial conventional surveys revealed a terraced core area, a ditch-wall enclosing the site, and canals. In addition, it became apparent that some of these pre-Hispanic settlements were enormous in size. "However, the dense vegetation under which these settlements were located prevented us from seeing the structural details of the monumental mounds and their surroundings," says Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn.
LIDAR technology used in the Amazon for the first time
To find out more, the researchers used the airborne laser technology LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) for the first time in the Amazon region. This involves surveying the terrain with a laser scanner attached to a helicopter, small aircraft or drone that transmits around 1.5 million laser pulses per second. In a subsequent evaluation step, the vegetation is digitally removed creating a digital model of the earth's surface, which can also be displayed as a 3D image. "The first results were excellent and showed how effective the technology was even in dense rainforest. From that moment on, the desire arose to map the large settlements of the Casarabe culture using LIDAR technology," says study leader Dr. Heiko Prümers.
For the current study, in 2019 the team together with Prof. Dr. José Iriarte and Mark Robinson from the University of Exeter, mapped a total of 200 square kilometers of the Casarabe cultural area. The evaluation done by the company ArcTron3 held a surprise. What came to light were two remarkably large sites of 147 hectares and 315 hectares in a dense four-tiered settlement system. "With a north-south extension of 1.5 kilometers and an east-west extension of about one kilometer, the largest site found so far is as large as Bonn was in the 17th century," says co-author Prof. Dr. Carla Jaimes Betancourt.
It is not yet possible to estimate how many people lived there. "However, the layout of the settlement itself tells us that planners and many active hands were at work here," says Heiko Prümers. Modifications made to the settlement, for example the expansion of the rampart-ditch system, also speak to a reasonable increase in population. "For the first time, we can refer to pre-Hispanic urbanism in the Amazon and show the map of the Cotoca site, the largest settlement of the Casarabe culture known to us so far," Prümers emphasizes. In other parts of the world similar agrarian cities with low population densities had already been found.
LIDAR shows anthropogenically altered landscape
LIDAR mapping reveals the architecture of the settlement's large squares. Stepped platforms topped by U-shaped structures, rectangular platform mounds, and conical pyramids (up to 22 meters high). Causeway-like paths and canals connect the individual settlements and indicate a tight social fabric. At least one other settlement can be found within five kilometers of each of the settlements known today. "So the entire region was densely settled, a pattern that overturns all previous ideas," says Carla James Betancourt, who is a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Area "Present Pasts" at the University of Bonn.
The researchers emphasize that for all the euphoria about the site mappings and the possibilities they offer for reinterpreting the settlements in their geographic setting, the real archaeological work is just beginning. The goal for the future, they say, is to understand how these large regional centers functioned.
"Time is running out because the spread of mechanical agriculture is destroying a pre-Columbian structure every month in the Llanos de Mojos region, including mounds, canals, and causeways," says Betancourt. With this in mind, Betancourt says, Lidar is not only a tool for documenting archaeological sites, but also for planning and preserving the impressive cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.
IMAGE: MICROSCOPIC EGG OF CAPILLARIID WORM FROM DURRINGTON WALLS. BLACK SCALE BAR REPRESENTS 20 MICROMETRES.view more
CREDIT: EVILENA ANASTASIOU/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
A new analysis of ancient faeces found at the site of a prehistoric village near Stonehenge has uncovered evidence of the eggs of parasitic worms, suggesting the inhabitants feasted on the internal organs of cattle and fed leftovers to their dogs.
Durrington Walls was a Neolithic settlement situated just 2.8km from Stonehenge, and dating from around 2500 BC, when much of the famous stone monument was constructed. It is believed that the site housed the people who built Stonehenge.
A team of archaeologists led by the University of Cambridge investigated nineteen pieces of ancient faeces, or ‘coprolite’, found at Durrington Walls and preserved for over 4,500 years. Five of the coprolites (26%) – one human and four dog – were found to contain the eggs of parasitic worms.
Researchers say it is the earliest evidence for intestinal parasites in the UK where the host species that produced the faeces has also been identified. The findings are published today in the journal Parasitology.
“This is the first time intestinal parasites have been recovered from Neolithic Britain, and to find them in the environment of Stonehenge is really something,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.
“The type of parasites we find are compatible with previous evidence for winter feasting on animals during the building of Stonehenge,” he said.
Four of the coprolites, including the human one, contained the eggs of capillariid worms, identified in part by their lemon shape.
While the many types of capillariid around the world infect a wide range of animals, on the rare occasion that a European species infects humans the eggs get lodged in the liver and don’t appear in stool.
The evidence of capillariid eggs in human faeces indicates that the person had eaten the raw or undercooked lungs or liver from an already infected animal, resulting in the parasite’s eggs passing straight through the body.
During excavations of the main ‘midden’ – or dung and refuse heap – at Durrington Walls, archaeologists uncovered pottery and stone tools along with over 38,000 animal bones. Some 90% of the bones were from pigs, with less than 10% from cows. This is also where the partially mineralised faeces used in the study were found.
“As capillariid worms can infect cattle and other ruminants, it seems that cows may have been the most likely source of the parasite eggs,” said Mitchell.
Previous isotopic analyses of cow teeth from Durrington Walls suggest that some cattle were herded almost 100km from Devon or Wales to the site for large-scale feasting. Patterns of butchery previously identified on cattle bones from the site suggest beef was primarily chopped for stewing, and bone marrow was extracted.
“Finding the eggs of capillariid worms in both human and dog coprolites indicates that the people had been eating the internal organs of infected animals, and also fed the leftovers to their dogs,” said co-author Evilena Anastasiou, who assisted with the research while at Cambridge.
To determine whether the coprolites excavated from the midden were from human or animal faeces, they were analysed for sterols and bile acids at the National Environment Isotope Facility at the University of Bristol.
One of the coprolites belonging to a dog contained the eggs of fish tapeworm, indicating it had previously eaten raw freshwater fish to become infected. However, no other evidence of fish consumption, such as bones, has been found at the site.
“Durrington Walls was occupied on a largely seasonal basis, mainly in winter periods. The dog probably arrived already infected with the parasite,” said Dr Piers Mitchell.
“Isotopic studies of cow bones at the site suggests they came from regions across southern Britain, which was likely also true of the people who lived and worked there.”
The dates for Durrington Walls match those for stage two of the construction of Stonehenge, when the world-famous ‘trilithons’ – two massive vertical stones supporting a third horizontal stone – were erected, most likely by the seasonal residents of this nearby settlement.
While Durrington Walls was a place of feasting and habitation, as evidenced by the pottery and vast number of animal bones, Stonehenge itself was not, with little found to suggest people lived or ate there en masse.
Prof Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, who excavated Durrington Walls between 2005 and 2007, added: “This new evidence tells us something new about the people who came here for winter feasts during the construction of Stonehenge.”
“Pork and beef were spit-roasted or boiled in clay pots but it looks as if the offal wasn’t always so well cooked. The population weren’t eating freshwater fish at Durrington Walls, so they must have picked up the tapeworms at their home settlements.”
Archaeological excavations led by Wyoming’s state archaeologist and involving University of Wyoming researchers have confirmed that an ancient mine in eastern Wyoming was used by humans to produce red ocher starting nearly 13,000 years ago.
That makes the Powars II site at Sunrise in Platte County the oldest documented red ocher mine -- and likely the oldest known mine of any sort -- in all of North and South America. The excavations, completed shortly before the 2020 death of famed UW archaeologist George Frison, confirmed theories he advanced stemming from research he began at the site in 1986.
The paper’s lead author is Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton, who became involved in the Powars II project in 2016 when he was a UW doctoral student.
“We have unequivocal evidence for use of this site by early Paleoindians as long as 12,840 years ago and continuing by early Americans for about 1,000 years,” Pelton says. “It’s gratifying that we were finally able to confirm the significance of the Powars II site after decades of work by so many, including Dr. Frison, who learned of the site in the early 1980s and was involved in the research until his death.”
In fact, Frison -- who died in September 2020 as the only UW faculty member ever elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences -- is listed as a co-author of the new paper. Other contributors were George Zeimens, executive director of the Sunrise Historic and Prehistoric Preservation Society; Erin Kelley, a UW graduate and Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist staff member; and UW Ph.D. students Sarah Allaun, Alexander Craib, Chase Mahan and Charles Koenig.
Red ocher, also known as hematite, fulfilled a wide range of functions in Paleoindian societies, including as a pigment in rituals. It has been found at ancient graves, caches, campsites and kill sites in the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and beyond. The Powars II site is the only red ocher quarry identified in the North American archaeological record north of southern Mexico -- and one of only five such quarries identified in all of the Americas.
Among the artifacts previously discovered at the Powars II site are Clovis points -- believed to be from the first inhabitants of North America -- along with other projectile points, tools and shell beads.
The 2017-2020 excavation led by Pelton -- a 6- by 1-meter trench bisecting a previously undocumented quarry feature -- yielded several thousand more Paleoindian artifacts, along with many well-preserved animal bones and antlers. The animal bones and antlers were used to extract the red ocher in the quarry.
The projectile points come from numerous locations in the region, including from as far away as the Edwards Plateau in Texas, according to the paper. That makes it likely that red ocher found at archaeological sites throughout the American midcontinent came from the Powars II quarry.
“Beyond its status as a quarry, the Powars II artifact assemblage is itself one of the densest and most diverse of any thus far discovered in the early Paleoindian record of the Americas,” Pelton says. “The site contains over 30 chipped stone tools per square meter, some of the oldest canid remains from an American archaeological site and rare or unique artifacts, among other distinctions.”
The researchers say the evidence discovered so far indicates the quarry was used in two primary periods. During the first, dating to as long as 12,840 years ago and lasting several hundred years, people not only quarried red ocher -- using bones and antlers as tools -- but also produced and repaired weapons, along with other activities. After a hiatus of a century or more, the site was occupied by humans who mined red ocher and deposited artifacts in piles in a quarry pit.
“Further excavation of the estimated 800-square-meter remainder of the site will certainly reveal complexity not captured by our sample,” the researchers wrote.
Pelton nominated the Powars II site to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
IMAGE: THROUGH THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING USING THE AGISOFT PHOTOSCAN SOFTWARE, THE DIRECTIONS OF WATER FLOWS WITHIN AND AROUND THESE FEATURES WERE SIMULATED. GRAPHICS BY ZHENWEI QIU.view more
This study is led by Dr. Zhenwei Qiu (National Museum of China) and Dr. Yijie Zhuang (Institute of Archaeology, University College London). The Hanjing site is situated on the flood plains of the Mid-lower Huai River. Three seasons of field surveys and excavations were carried out by the joint archaeological team of the National Museum of China, Nanjing Museum and Sihong County Museum from 2014 to 2016, with Professor Lina Zhuang as the director. The rice-field-like archaeological features suggest some initial forms of management of local hydrology at Hanjing (see image below). “These features would have facilitated irrigation and drainage in the field, which were crucial for rice cultivation” Zhenwei says.
Microscopic analyses of macro- and micro-plant remains from the Hanjing site were conducted by Zhenwei Qiu at the Institute of Archaeology, National Museum of China. Charred rice grains and spikelet bases recovered by floatation confirmed that domesticated rice and wild rice co-existed at the Hanjing site. The direct radiocarbon dates of charred rice grains fall between 8400-8000 cal. BP. The morphological features of rice phytoliths (Oryza-type bulliform cells and double-peaked Oryza-type glume cells) from rice leaf and husk point to discrepancy of prediction on rice domestication at the Hanjing site.
The team also examined microstructure of some potsherds. Charred remains of rice plants or impressions can be found on the inner and/or outer surfaces as well as in the cross-section of the potsherds. Some translucent residues were identified to be phytolith from rice husk (see image below).
The researchers also carried out lipid analysis of both the food crusts and ceramic matrices. “The pottery vessels were mainly used to process C3-based plants (possibly rice), aquatic foods and terrestrial non-ruminant animals” Dr. Huiyun Rao (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) says.
Combined zooarchaeological evidence with the archaeobotanical data, it is clear that hunting, fishing, rice cultivation and wild plant food collection were all important parts of the subsistence economy at Hanjing. “This subsistence economy points to a shared characteristic of the subsistence strategies amongst the Early to Mid-Neolithic sites in the Huai valley, in which hunting and gathering still played a very important role in food production” Qiu says.
The team believes that the Hanjing site presents one of the earliest evidence of rice cultivation and domestication in the Huai River valley, supporting this region as another important center for early development of rice economies that was less well understood, and that might have experienced a different pathway to the beginning and development of rice farming compared to the Middle and Lower Yangtze River regions.
Measurements of Oryza-type bulliform cells and double-peaked Oryza-type glume cells show that these two types of phytoliths hold different significance to predict rice domestication at Hanjing. “This discrepancy of phytolith identification and prediction of rice domestication might be attributed to several analytical and methodological factors, including analytical approaches and sampling issues, statistical methods applied during measurement and data analysis” Qiu says. Future effort is required to further investigate whether such a discrepancy is related to the nature of rice plant physiology in initial rice cultivation or to some other factors.
See the article:
Qiu Z, Zhuang L, Rao H, Lin L, Zhuang Y. 2022. Excavation at Hanjing site yields evidence of early rice cultivation in the Huai River more than 8000 years ago. Science China Earth Sciences, 65(5): 910–920, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-021-9885-x
The archaeological site of Salorno—Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest and most significant documentations of cremated human remains preserved from an ancient cremation platform (ustrinum). The pyre area, located along the upper Adige valley, is dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1150–950 BCE) and has yielded an unprecedented quantity of cremated human remains (about 63.5 kg), along with burnt animal bone fragments, shards of pottery, and other grave goods made in bronze and animal bone/antler. This study focuses on the bioanthropological analysis of the human remains and discusses the formation of the unusual burnt deposits at Salorno through comparisons with modern practices and protohistoric and contemporaneous archaeological deposits. The patterning of bone fragmentation and commingling was investigated using spatial data recorded during excavation which, along with the bioanthropological and archaeological data, are used to model and test two hypotheses: Salorno—Dos de la Forca would be the result of A) repeated primary cremations leftin situ; or B) of residual material remaining after select elements were removed for internment in urns or burials to unknown depositional sites. By modelling bone weight and demographic data borrowed from regional affine contexts, the authors suggest that this cremation site may have been used over several generations by a small community–perhaps a local elite. With a quantity of human remains that exceeds that of any other coeval contexts interpreted asustrina, Salorno may be the product of a complex series of rituals in which the human cremains did not receive individual burial, but were leftin situ, in a collective/communal place of primary combustion, defining an area of repeated funeral ceremonies involving offerings and libations across a few generations. This would represent a new typological and functional category that adds to the variability of mortuary customs at the end of the Bronze Age in the Alpine are, at a time in which “globalising” social trends may have stimulated the definition of more private identities.
Recent research from an Israeli archaeological dig has proven that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together in the Negev desert some 50,000 years ago. Not only that, but the site they excavated, Boker Tachtit, has now been established as the earliest known migration point from Africa for early Homo sapiens from the Levant.
In the Middle Palaeolithic era, 250,000 to 50,000 years ago, two humanoid species lived in the Old World at the same time: Neanderthal man and modern man (Homo sapiens).
The Neanderthals lived in Europe and Central Asia whereas modern man lived in Africa at that time.
As the Israel Antiquities Authority states regarding the ground-breaking findings, “the Middle East, and the region of Israel in particular, were at the limits of the distribution of these two species and they therefore also contain remnants of the two populations at different times.”
The research undertaken at the Boker Tachtit site in Ein Avdat National Park in Israel’s Negev desert has now provided the first proof of the two cultures’ coexistence there and pinpoints—for the first time ever—the exact time when modern humans left Africa.
A recent reexamination of artifacts from the Boker Tachtit site was the subject of a study published on Monday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The dig was led by researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Max Planck Society, Prof. Elisabetta Boaretto together with Dr. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
“Boker Tachtit is the first site outside of Africa, which modern man penetrated on his way to the rest of the world, hence the importance of the site, as well as the importance of dating it accurately,” said Dr. Barzilai, the director of excavation at the Boker Tachtit site in the statement.
“The age of the site as dated in the study—50,000 years—indicates that modern man existed in the area of the Negev at the same time as the Neanderthal man, who is known to have lived in it during this period,” he explained.
“There is no doubt that the two species who lived and roamed the Negev were aware of each other’s existence,” Barzilai declared, adding “Our research Boker Tachtit site places an important and unequivocal point of reference on the timeline of human evolution.”
The “recent African origin” theory of human development stipulates that Homo sapiens originated in Africa as early as 270,000 years ago; at different times, humans took either the northern route to Eurasia, passing through the Levant, or several possible southern routes to all the corners of Asia.
Many believe that Homo sapiens even reached Oceania—getting as far as Australia by land at that time.
Scientist believe that DNA research shows the migration of modern humans began from Africa to Asia and Europe and proceeded onward to the rest of the world approximately 60,000 years ago.
From the Middle Bronze Age, Egypt played a crucial role in the appearance of calcite-alabaster artifacts in Israel, and the development of the local gypsum-alabaster industry. The absence of ancient calcite-alabaster quarries in the Southern Levant (modern day Israel and Palestine) led to the assumption that all calcite-alabaster vessels found in the Levant originated from Egypt, while poorer quality vessels made of gypsum were local products.
Until now this long-held assumption was never scientifically tested. But the recent identification of a calcite-alabaster quarry in the Te’omim cave, located on the western slopes of the Jerusalem hills (near modern-day Beit Shemesh, Israel), calls this hypothesis into question. A new study, recently published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, scientifically refutes the hypothesis and, for the first time, allows the distinction between calcite-alabaster originating in Israel from that originating in Egypt. Furthermore, it confirms that calcite-alabaster objects, such as Herod the Great's alabaster bathtubs, were quarried in Israel rather than Egypt.
The research was conducted as part of Ayala Amir’s MA thesis at the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, supervised by Prof. Boaz Zissu and Prof. Aren M. Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Amos Frumkin, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Analytical data were first collected from samples of two well-defined sources, from Egypt and modern-day Israel. The Egyptian sources included both ancient and modern calcite-alabaster samples. The ancient samples were obtained courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. These ancient vessel remains were collected by the Austrian archaeological expedition to Giza in the nineteenth century CE. The modern Egyptian artifact, made of geological-sourced calcite-alabaster, was bought in a market in Cairo, Egypt in 2013. The calcite-alabaster from Israel included raw material from the Te’omim cave quarry, chips (mining debitage) found in the cave near the quarry, and chips and a stone block (raw material carved to a cube, but not yet used to make a vessel) from Umm el-‘Umdan -- an archaeological site near the Te’omim cave. Additional samples were collected from a speleothem in Natuf cave located in Wadi en-Natuf in western Samaria.
Next, through a multidisciplinary approach, the calcite-alabaster samples from Israel and Egypt were analyzed with the assistance of Prof. Gil Goobes and Prof. Amnon Albeck, of the Department of Chemistry at Bar-Ilan University using four analytic methods, most of which have not been previously used, to determine their origin: inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analysis, routine infra-red (IR) spectroscopy, 1H- and 31P- solid state NMR (ssNMR) experiments and C and O stable isotope ratio analysis to determine their composition and their crystalline structure.
"All four analytical methods applied in the study provided consistent results, clearly distinguishing the Israeli from the Egyptian calcite-alabaster for the first time," said Prof. Albeck of the findings.
The same methods were then applied to two of Herod the Great’s royal bathtubs, which were made of finely worked calcite-alabaster and found in the Kypros fortress and the palace of Herodium, located just south of Jerusalem. The results unequivocally indicated that the bathtubs were quarried in Israel and not in Egypt, the main source of calcite-alabaster in ancient periods.
"The fact that both bathtubs were unequivocally quarried in Israel and not in Egypt, as we would have expected due to the high quality of the stone, was a particular surprise because that means that Herod the Great used local produce, and that the calcite-alabaster industry in Judea in the second half of the first century BC was sufficiently developed and of high enough quality to serve the luxurious standards of Herod, one of the finest builders among the kings of that period," said Prof. Aren Maeir.
The source of calcite-alabaster artifacts cannot be determined by traditional archaeological methods. Furthermore, petrographic analysis, the main method used to determine the source of Israeli calcite-alabaster, shows wide variability in texture, depending on its depositional environment. Consequently, this method could not be used to identify the source of the bathtubs.
"The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this study provides information concerning both the composition and crystalline structure of calcite-alabaster and is significant for understanding and interpreting archaeological findings," said researcher Ayala Amir. "Combining analytic methods with archaeological studies may provide new and fascinating information that could not be obtained by traditional archaeological techniques and enable us to determine the origin of other calcite-alabaster artifacts with much greater confidence," she added.
This study was supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation and the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology. It is an outgrowth of the research project “Ancient Quarry of Calcite Cave Deposit ('Bahat') in the Jerusalem Hills: Archaeological and Environmental Significances” funded by the Israel Science Foundation and directed by Prof. Boaz Zissu, of Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Amos Frumkin, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The first whole genome sequences of the ancient people of Uruguay provide a genetic snapshot of Indigenous populations of the region before they were decimated by a series of European military campaigns.PNAS Nexuspublished the research, led by anthropologists at Emory University and the University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay.
"Our work shows that the Indigenous people of ancient Uruguay exhibit an ancestry that has not been previously detected in South America," says John Lindo, co-corresponding author and an Emory assistant professor of anthropology specializing in ancient DNA. "This contributes to the idea of South America being a place where multi-regional diversity existed, instead of the monolithic idea of a single Native American race across North and South America."
The analyses drew from a DNA sample of a man that dated back 800 years and another from a woman that went back 1,500 years, both well before the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. The samples were collected from an archeological site in eastern Uruguay by co-corresponding author Gonzalo Figueiro, a biological anthropologist at the University of the Republic.
The results of the analyses showed a surprising connection to ancient individuals from Panama -- the land bridge that connects North and South America -- and to eastern Brazil, but not to modern Amazonians. These findings support the theory proposed by some archeologists of separate migrations into South America, including one that led to the Amazonian populations and another that led to the populations along the East coast.
"We've now provided genetic evidence that this theory may be correct," Lindo says. "It runs counter to the theory of a single migration that split at the foot of the Andes."
The archeological evidence for human settlement of the area now known as Uruguay, located on the Atlantic coast south of Brazil, goes back more than 10,000 years. European colonizers made initial contact with the Indigenous people of the region in the early 1500s.
During the 1800s, the colonizers launched a series of military campaigns to exterminate the native peoples, culminating in what is known as the massacre at Salsipuedes Creek, in 1831, which targeted an ethnic group called the Charrúa. At that time, the authors write, the term Charrúa was being applied broadly to the remnants of various hunter-gatherer groups in the territory of Uruguay.
"Through these first whole genome sequences of the Indigenous people of the region before the arrival of Europeans, we were able to reconstruct at least a small part of their genetic prehistory," Lindo says.
The work opens the door to modern-day Uruguayans seeking to potentially link themselves genetically to populations that existed in the region before European colonizers arrived. "We would like to gather more DNA samples from ancient archeological sites from all over Uruguay, which would allow people living in the country today to explore a possible genetic connection," Lindo says.
The Lindo ancient DNA lab specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas. Most ancient DNA labs are located in Europe, where the cooler climate has better preserved specimens.
Less focus has been put on sequencing ancient DNA from South America. One reason is that warmer, more humid climates throughout much of the continent have made it more challenging to collect usable ancient DNA specimens, although advances in sequencing technology are helping to remove some of these limitations.
"If you're of European descent, you can have your DNA sequenced and use that information to pinpoint where your ancestors are from down to specific villages," Lindo says. "If you are descended from people Indigenous to the Americas you may be able to learn that some chunk of your genome is Native American, but it's unlikely that you can trace a direct lineage because there are not enough ancient DNA references available."
Further complicating the picture, he adds, is the massive disruption caused by the arrival of Europeans given that many civilizations were destroyed and whole populations were killed.
By collaborating closely with Indigenous communities and local archeologists, Lindo hopes to use advanced DNA sequencing techniques to build a free, online portal with increasing numbers of ancient DNA references from the Americas, to help people better explore and understand their ancestry.
Co-authors of the current paper include Emory senior Rosseirys De La Rosa, Andrew Luize Campelo dos Santos (the Federal University of Penambuco, Recife, Brazil), Monica Sans (University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay), and Michael De Giorgio (Florida Atlantic University).
The work was funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Emory University. Original written by Carol Clark. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
John Lindo, Rosseirys De La Rosa, Andre Luiz Campelo dos Santos, Mónica Sans, Michael DeGiorgio, Gonzalo Figueiro. The genomic prehistory of the indigenous peoples of Uruguay. PNAS Nexus, 2022; DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac047
