Mediterranean hunter-gatherers relied on marine resources more than previously thought

 

New research has revealed humans living on the Mediterranean coast 9,500 years ago may have relied more heavily on a fish diet than previously thought. 

Led by the University of York’s BioArCh Centre, the study analysed the bones of 11 human individuals from one of the oldest Mesolithic cemeteries in the Mediterranean, at El Collado, Valencia, Spain. 

The research revealed that the individuals, who lived around 9,500 and 8,500 years ago, had a strong coastal economy which included a considerable amount of marine life in their diet, including brackish fish and shellfish.

The study, led by Dr Maria Fontanals-Coll, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, looked at the origin of fishing in Mediterranean prehistory. Previously, it has been assumed that the Mediterranean Sea, due to its lower biological productivity, was incapable of supporting fishing economies during the Mesolithic period, similar to those in other parts of Europe, such as the Atlantic and Baltic.

Dr Fontanals-Coll, said: “Our findings challenge the traditional view of Mediterranean prehistoric hunter-gatherers consuming fewer fish than their Atlantic counterparts.

“The evidence presented shows that the lower productivity in the Mediterranean basin didn’t have a major impact on the harvestable resources that constituted the diet of El Collado individuals.

“The extent to which humans relied on coastal resources in the past, is key to understanding not only long-term social and economic development, but also to assessing human health and the impact that humans had on the environment. 

“These findings have implications for understanding how farming, which swept through the Mediterranean in the following Neolithic period, took hold.”

Professor Oliver Craig, Director of BioArCh at the University of York, said: “This study is part of a new wave of isotopic analyses conducted on single compounds that are challenging and changing our understanding of ancient human diet, allowing us to compare with modern populations, where the nutritional and health implications are already well explored.”

The study was funded by the European project Marie Skłodowska-Curie NEOMEDIS, in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Sapienza University of Rome. 

André Colonese, researcher from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, said: “This study adds to the growing consensus that coastal areas were crucial to human societies since prehistoric times. The foundations of coastal fisheries in the Mediterranean can be traced back to these early fishers, and the results of this paper strongly support such an argument”.

The new research uses high-resolution biomolecular techniques, like compound-specific isotope analysis of individual collagen amino acids (CSIA-AA), which allows greater accuracy in discriminating between land animals and marine life, crucial when assessing the degree of dietary change associated with the introduction of domesticated plants and animals in farming.

The journal ‘Stable isotope analyses of amino acids reveal the importance of aquatic resources to Mediterranean coastal hunter–gatherers’ can be accessed in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 

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How scientists hauling logs on their heads may have solved a Chaco Canyon mystery

Peer-Reviewed Publication

 

IMAGE: JAMES WILSON, LEFT, AND RODGER KRAM, RIGHT, CARRY A PONDEROSA PINE LOG WEIGHING MORE THAN 130 POUNDS IN CHAUTAUQUA PARK IN BOULDER, COLORADO. view more 

CREDIT: PATRICK CAMPBELL/CU BOULDER

In a new study, several researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder reenacted a small part of a trek that people in the Southwest United States may have made more than 1,000 years ago.

Rodger Kram, associate professor emeritus of integrative physiology, and James Wilson, then an undergraduate studying biochemistry, spent the summer of 2020 training for an impressive test of endurance: Together, they carried a ponderosa pine log weighing more than 130 pounds for 15 miles up and down a forest road in Boulder County, Colorado—and they did it using only their heads in a technique inspired, in part, by sherpas in Nepal.

“Some people baked sourdough bread during COVID, Instead, we carried sand and heavy logs around using our heads,” said Kram, who is a passionate runner in his free time. 

He and Wilson weren’t trying to start a new exercise fad. Instead, they were hoping to solve an archaeological mystery that has perplexed researchers for decades: How did ancient peoples transport more than 200,000 heavy construction timbers over 60 miles to a famous site in the Southwest called Chaco Canyon?

The duo and their colleagues described their experiment Feb. 22 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The team’s findings show that the key to this testament to human labor may have been simple devices called tumplines. These straps, which sherpas, or native mountain peoples of Nepal, still widely use today, loop over the top of the head. They help porters to support weight using the bones of their neck and spine rather than their muscles. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient peoples in the Southwest employed tumplines woven from yucca plants to transport everyday items like food and water.

“Tumplines allow one to carry heavier weights over larger distances without getting fatigued,” said Wilson, now a medical student at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

Chaco Canyon sits near the border between New Mexico and Colorado. Thousands of people, the ancestors of today’s Diné, or Navajo, and Pueblo peoples, may have lived there from around A.D. 850 to 1200. They built “Great Houses,” which were as much as four stories tall and contained hundreds of rooms. 

But how this society got its construction supplies has been a long-standing mystery. Human porters would have needed to carry 16-foot-long wooden beams to Chaco Canyon by foot—following a network of ancient roads to sites like the Chuska Mountains to the west.

The team’s findings open up a new understanding of the day-to-day lives of the people who shaped the Southwest more than a thousand years ago, said study co-author Robert Weiner.

“The mountains are the most sacred places for the descendant Diné and Pueblo peoples. I've heard people say: ‘That's our church. That's where we go to heal, to pray,’” said Weiner, who will receive his doctorate in anthropology from CU Boulder later this spring. “These timbers brought pieces of the sacred mountains to Chaco Canyon.”

A new measurement

Kram got interested in Chaco Canyon several years ago. 

He read a statistic suggesting that the mass of a typical roof beam, or “viga,” in a Chacoan Great House likely averaged around 275 kilograms (more than 600 pounds). The number, Kram discovered, could be traced back to a study published in the 1980s. It seemed unrealistically high to him.

“I cut a 1-foot-long section of pine and weighed it on my bathroom scale,” said Kram, who lives on a wooded property in the hills west of Boulder. “I multiplied by 16 feet and realized, ‘That can’t add up to 275 kilograms.’”

He and Wilson decided to read everything they could about the properties of dried wood. In a 2022 study, they and their colleagues estimated that a pine log measuring about 16 feet long probably weighed closer to 85 kilograms (a little over 185 pounds).

“Once we corrected the mass of the timbers,” Wilson said, “that changed almost everything about how many people were required to carry those timbers, how much time it would take to cover 60 miles.”

Put the weight on me

The duo wanted to find out if such a journey would be possible. They first tried carrying a log on their shoulders.

“It was just debilitating,” Kram said. “It’s just a dumb way to carry a heavy object.”

Then the researchers hit on the idea of tumplines, which are depicted in ceramic effigies recovered from close to Chaco Canyon.

To make sure they were being safe, Kram and Wilson started with light loads and worked their way up, said Joseph Carzoli, a study co-author and certified strength and conditioning coach. 

“I had Dr. Kram and James initially focus on walking greater and greater distances with what felt like light tumpline training loads,” said Carzoli, who earned his doctorate in integrative physiology from CU Boulder in 2022. “As they became more comfortable with their training, we began alternating training days between carrying light loads for greater distances and heavier loads for shorter distances.”

After three months of training with tumplines for six or seven days a week, Kram and Wilson were ready to try a real log. They attempted their final test on a forest road leading to Gross Reservoir southwest of Boulder, carrying the timber using tumplines on either end. They hit a hiking pace with the log of just under 3 mph—not much slower than their normal walking speed. They used sticks called “tokmas,” which Nepalese sherpas also employ, to take breaks, resting the log without lowering it all the way to the ground.

The most uncomfortable part, Wilson noted, was the strap of the tumpline rubbing into his head. 

The irritation paid off. Weiner said the team’s results show that supplying Chaco Canyon with goods may not have been as back-breaking an undertaking as archaeologists once assumed. 

“As these guys showed, you don’t have to be super trained to carry a log,” he said.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Archaeological Science Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103876 

Archaeologists uncover early evidence of brain surgery in Ancient Near East

 

Archaeologists know that people have practiced cranial trephination, a medical procedure that involves cutting a hole in the skull, for thousands of years. They’ve turned up evidence that ancient civilizations across the globe, from South America to Africa and beyond, performed the surgery.

Now, thanks to a recent excavation at the ancient city of Megiddo, Israel, there’s new evidence that one particular type of trephination dates back to at least the late Bronze Age.

Rachel Kalisher, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, led an analysis of the excavated remains of two upper-class brothers who lived in Megiddo around the 15th century B.C. She found that not long before one of the brothers died, he had undergone a specific type of cranial surgery called angular notched trephination. The procedure involves cutting the scalp, using an instrument with a sharp beveled edge to carve four intersecting lines in the skull, and using leverage to make a square-shaped hole.

Kalisher said the trephination is the earliest example of its kind found in the Ancient Near East.

“We have evidence that trephination has been this universal, widespread type of surgery for thousands of years,” Kalisher said. “But in the Near East, we don’t see it so often — there are only about a dozen examples of trephination in this entire region. My hope is that adding more examples to the scholarly record will deepen our field’s understanding of medical care and cultural dynamics in ancient cities in this area.”

Kalisher’s analysis, written in collaboration with scholars in New York, Austria and Israel, was published on Wednesday, Feb. 22, in PLOS ONE. 

Two brothers, up close

Israel Finkelstein, who co-authored the study and serves as director of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa, said that 4,000 years ago, Megiddo stood at and controlled part of the Via Maris, an important land route that connected Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. As a result, the city had become one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the region by about the 19th century B.C., with an impressive skyline of palaces, temples, fortifications and gates. 

“It’s hard to overstate Megiddo’s cultural and economic importance in the late Bronze Age,” Finkelstein said.

According to Kalisher, the two brothers whose bones she analyzed came from a domestic area directly adjacent to Megiddo’s late Bronze Age palace, suggesting that the pair were elite members of society and possibly even royals themselves. Many other facts bear that out: The brothers were buried with fine Cypriot pottery and other valuable possessions, and as the trephination demonstrates, they received treatment that likely wouldn’t have been accessible to most citizens of Megiddo.

“These brothers were obviously living with some pretty intense pathological circumstances that, in this time, would have been tough to endure without wealth and status,” Kalisher said. “If you’re elite, maybe you don’t have to work as much. If you’re elite, maybe you can eat a special diet. If you’re elite, maybe you’re able to survive a severe illness longer because you have access to care.”

In her analysis, Kalisher spotted several skeletal abnormalities in both brothers. The older brother had an additional cranial suture and an extra molar in one corner of his mouth, suggesting he may have had a congenital syndrome such as Cleidocranial dysplasia. Both of the brothers’ bones show minor evidence of sustained iron deficiency anemia in childhood, which could have impacted their development. 

Those developmental irregularities could explain why the brothers died young, one in his teens or early 20s and the other sometime between his 20s and 40s. But Kalisher said it’s more likely that the two ultimately succumbed to an infectious disease. A third of one brother’s skeleton, and half of the other brother’s, shows porosity, legions and signs of previous inflammation in the membrane covering the bones — which together suggest they had systemic, sustained cases of an infectious disease like tuberculosis or leprosy. 

Kalisher said that while some skeletal evidence points to leprosy, it’s tough to deduce cases of leprosy using bones alone. She’s currently working with researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to conduct DNA analyses of specific lesions in the bones. If they find bacterial DNA consistent with leprosy, these brothers will be among the earliest documented examples of leprosy in the world.

“Leprosy can spread within family units, not just because of the close proximity but also because your susceptibility to the disease is influenced by your genetic landscape,” Kalisher said. “At the same time, leprosy is hard to identify because it affects the bones in stages, which might not happen in the same order or with the same severity for everyone. It’s hard for us to say for sure whether these brothers had leprosy or some other infectious disease.”

It’s also difficult to know, Kalisher said, whether it was the disease, the congenital conditions or something else that prompted one brother to undergo cranial surgery. But there’s one thing she does know: If the angular notched trephination was meant to keep him alive, it didn’t succeed. He died shortly after the surgery — within days, hours or perhaps even minutes.

Digging into medical history

Despite all the evidence of trephination uncovered over the last 200 years, Kalisher said, there’s still much archaeologists don’t know. It’s not clear, for example, why some trephinations are round — suggesting the use of some sort of analog drill — and some are square or triangular. Nor is it clear how common the procedure was in each region, or what ancient peoples were even trying to treat. (Doctors today perform a similar procedure, called a craniotomy, to relieve pressure in the brain.) Kalisher is pursuing a follow-up research project that will investigate trephination across multiple regions and time periods, which she hopes will shed more light on ancient medical practices.

“You have to be in a pretty dire place to have a hole cut in your head,” Kalisher said. “I’m interested in what we can learn from looking across the scientific literature at every example of trephination in antiquity, comparing and contrasting the circumstances of each person who had the surgery done.”

Aside from enriching colleagues’ understanding of early trephinations, Kalisher said she hopes her analysis also shows the general public that ancient societies didn’t necessarily live by “survival of the fittest” principles, as many might imagine. 

“In antiquity, there was a lot more tolerance and a lot more care than people might think,” Kalisher said. “We have evidence literally from the time of Neanderthals that people have provided care for one another, even in challenging circumstances. I’m not trying to say it was all kumbaya — there were sex- and class-based divisions. But in the past, people were still people.”

In addition to Kalisher and Finkelstein, other authors of the analysis included Melissa Cradic from the University at Albany; Matthew Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem; and Mario Martin from the University of Haifa and University of Innsbruck. The study’s associated excavation was funded by the Shmunis Family Foundation. 

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0281020 

Bow-and-arrow, technology of the first modern humans in Europe 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France

If the emergence of mechanically propelled weapons in prehistory is commonly perceived as one of the hallmarks of the advance of modern human populations into the European continent, the existence of archery has always been more difficult to trace. The recognition of these technologies in the European Upper Paleolithic has been hampered by ballistic overlaps between weapons projected with a thruster or a bow. Archery technologies are essentially based on the use of perishable materials; wood, fibers, leather, resins, and sinew, which are rarely preserved in European Paleolithic sites and make archaeological recognition of these technologies difficult. It is the flint armatures that constitute the main evidence of these weapon technologies. Based on the analysis of these stone armatures, the recognition of archery is now well documented in Africa dating back some 70,000 years. Some flint or deer antler armatures suggest the existence of archery from the early phases of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe more than 35,000 years ago, but the morphology and the hafting modes of these ancient armatures do not allow them to be linked to a distinct mode of propulsion, making the possible existence of archery during the European Paleolithic nearly invisible. The demonstration of Paleolithic archery has been established only on the basis of the discovery of the oldest bows and arrows found in peat bogs of Northern Europe (at the Stellmoor site in Germany, for example) and dated from the 10 to 12 millennium.

The data from Mandrin cave in Mediterranean France, presented in an article published Wednesday, February 22, 2023 in the journal Science Advances, profoundly enriches our knowledge of these technologies in Europe and now allows us to push back the age of archery in Europe by more than... 40 millennia! The study is based on the functional analysis of thousands of flint artifacts from the same archaeological level that revealed in February 2022 the oldest occupation of modern humans on the European continent. This very rich level, attributed to the Neronian culture, testifies to Homo sapiens occupations dating back to the 54th millennium and is interposed between numerous Neanderthal occupations occupying the cave before and after the modern human installations. The excavation of the Neronian settlement phases has revealed no less than 1500 flint points. Their analysis shows that a significant number of them were used as armatures for arrows propelled with a bow. It is the very small size and more precisely the small width of these armatures, of which some 30% weigh hardly more than a few grams, which allows us to exclude any other mode of ballistic propulsion for these very small weapons. If thanks to this study, archery in Europe, and more broadly throughout Eurasia, makes a remarkable leap back in time, it also sheds light on the weaponry of Neanderthal populations. The study shows that Neanderthals, contemporaries of Neronian modern humans, did not develop mechanically propelled weapons (like technologies using bows or thrusters) and continued to use their traditional weapons based on the use of massive spear-shaped points that were thrusted or thrown by hand, and thus requiring close contact with their game. The traditions and technologies mastered by these two populations were thus profoundly distinct, illustrating a remarkable objective technological advantage to modern populations during their expansion into the European continent. However, in their article, the authors place this debate in a much broader context in which technical choices cannot be limited solely to the cognitive capacities of differing human populations, referring us to the weight of traditions within these Neanderthal and modern human populations as well as to ethologies that may have been profoundly divergent between them.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add4675 

Genetic study of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans points to the importance of ‘balancing selection’ in evolution

 Like a merchant of old, balancing the weights of two different commodities on a scale, nature can keep different genetic traits in balance as a species evolves over millions of years.

These traits can be beneficial (for example, fending off disease) or harmful (making humans more susceptible to illness), depending on the environment.

The theory behind these evolutionary trade-offs is called balancing selection. A University at Buffalo-led study accepted on Jan. 10 and published on Feb. 21 in eLife explores this phenomenon by analyzing thousands of modern human genomes alongside ancient hominin groups, such as Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes.

The research has “implications for understanding human diversity, the origin of diseases, and biological trade-offs that may have shaped our evolution,” says evolutionary biologist Omer Gokcumen, the study’s corresponding author.

Gokcumen, PhD, associate professor of biological sciences in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, adds that the study shows that many biologically relevant variants “have been segregating among our ancestors for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years. These ancient variations are our shared legacy as a species.”

Ties with Neanderthals stronger than previously thought

The work builds upon genetic discoveries in the past decade, including when scientists uncovered that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred as early humans moved out of Africa.

It also coincides with the growth of personalized genetic testing, with many people now claiming that a small percentage of their genome comes from Neanderthals. But, as the eLife study show, humans share much more in common with Neanderthals than those small percentages indicate.

This additional sharing can be traced back to a common ancestor of  Neanderthals and humans that lived about 700,000 years ago. This common ancestor bequeathed to the Neanderthals and modern humans a shared legacy in the form of genetic variation.

The research team explored this ancient genetic legacy, focusing on a particular type of genetic variation: deletions.

Gokcumen says that the “deletions are strange because they affect large segments. Some of us are missing large chunks of our genome. These deletions should have negative effects and, as a result, be eliminated from the population by natural selection. However, we observed that some deletions are older than modern humans, dating back millions of years ago.”

Gene variations passed down over millions of years

The researchers used computational models to show an excess of these ancient deletions, some of which have persisted since our ancestors first learned to make tools, some 2.6 million years ago. Furthermore, the models found that balancing selection can explain this surplus of ancient deletions.

“Our study contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting that balancing selection may be an important force in the evolution of genomic variation among humans,” says first author Alber Aqil, a PhD candidate in biological sciences in Gokcumen’s lab.

The investigators found that deletions dating back millions of years are more likely to play an outsized role in metabolic and autoimmune conditions.

Indeed, the persistence of versions of genes that cause severe disease in human populations has long baffled scientists since they expect natural selection to get rid of these versions of genes. It is, after all, very unusual for potentially disease-causing variation to persist for such long periods. The authors argue that balancing selection can solve this riddle.

Aqil says that these variations may “protect against infectious diseases, outbreaks, and starvation, which have occurred periodically throughout human history. Thus, the findings represent a considerable leap in our understanding of how genetic variations evolve in humans. A variant may be protective against a pathogen or starvation while also underlying certain metabolic or autoimmune disorders, like Crohn’s disease.”

Hidden from the Romans: 200 tons of silver on the shores of the river Lah

 

 

IMAGE: "TRACTOR TRACKS". THE EXCAVATIONS IN BAD EMS WERE INITIATED BY J. EIGENBROD, WHO SPOTTED SUSPICIOUS TRACES IN THE FIELD FROM HIS HIGH SEAT. THE TRACES CONSTITUTE CHANGES IN THE VEGETATION, INDICATING GROUND INTERVENTIONS, IN THIS CASE THE DITCHES OF THE ROMAN CAMP ON THE "EHRLICH" view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO: H.-J. DU ROI)

When Prof. Markus Scholz, who teaches archaeology and the history of Roman provinces at Goethe University, returned to Bad Ems toward the end of the excavation work, he was astonished: After all, all the photos sent by his colleague Frederic Auth showed but a few pieces of wood. Not surprisingly, Scholz was ill-prepared for what he saw next: a wooden defense construction consisting of sharpened wooden stakes, designed to prevent the enemy’s approach. The martial-looking structure was intended to deter enemies from attacking the camp. Such installations – comparable, if you will, to modern barbed wire – are referenced to in literature from the time. Caesar, for instance, mentioned them. But to date, none had been found. The damp soil of the Blöskopf area obviously provided the ideal conditions: The wooden spikes, which probably extended throughout the entire downward tapering ditch around the camp, were found to be well preserved.

Two previously undiscovered Roman military camps

The work of the Frankfurt archaeologists and Dr. Peter Henrich of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, uncovered two previously unknown military camps in the vicinity of Bad Ems, situated on both sides of the Emsbach valley. The excavations were triggered by observations made by a hunter in 2016, who, from his raised hide, spotted color differences in the grain field, indicating the existence of sub-surface structures. A drone photo of the elevation, which bears the beautiful name "Ehrlich" (the German word for “honest”), confirmed the thesis: the field was crisscrossed by a track that could have originated from a huge tractor. In reality, however, it was a double ditch that framed a Roman camp. Geomagnetic prospecting later revealed an eight-hectare military camp with about 40 wooden towers. The archaeological excavations, carried out in two campaigns under the local direction of Dr. Daniel Burger-Völlmecke, revealed further details: the camp, apparently once intended as a solid build, was never completed. Only one permanent building, consisting of a warehouse and storeroom, was located there. The 3,000 soldiers estimated to have been stationed here probably had to sleep in tents. Burn marks show that the camp was burned down after a few years. But why?

It was the student team, led by Frederic Auth, that identified the second, much smaller camp, located some two kilometers away as the crow flies, on the other side of the Emsbach valley. The "Blöskopf" is no blank slate when it comes to archaeology: Exploratory excavations carried out in 1897 uncovered processed silver ore, raising the assumption that a Roman smelting works was once located there. The thesis was further supported by the discovery of wall foundations, fire remains and metal slag. For a long time it was assumed that the smelting works were connected to the Limes, built some 800 meters to the east at around 110 AD. These assumptions, considered valid for decades, have now been disproved: The supposed furnace in fact turned out to be a watchtower of a small military camp holding about 40 men. It was probably deliberately set on fire before the garrison left the camp. The spectacular wooden defense structure was discovered on literally the penultimate day of the excavations – along with a coin minted in 43 AD, proof that the structure could not have been built in connection with the Limes.

Roman tunnels located above the silver deposit

But why did the Romans fail to complete the large camp, instead choosing to abandon both areas after a few years? What were the facilities used for? Archaeologists have found a possible clue in the writings of historian Tacitus: He describes how, under Roman governor Curtius Rufus, attempts to mine silver ore in the area failed in 47 AD. The yield had simply been too low. In fact, the team of Frankfurt archaeologists was able to identify a shaft-tunnel system suggesting Roman origins. The tunnel is located a few meters above the Bad Ems passageway, which would have enabled the Romans to mine silver for up to 200 years – that is, if only they had known about it. In the end, the silver was mined in later centuries only. The Romans' hope for a lucrative precious metal mining operation also explains the military camp’s presence: They wanted to be able to defend themselves against sudden raids – not an unlikely scenario given the value of the raw material. "To verify this assumption, however, further research is necessary," says Prof. Scholz. It would be interesting to know, for example, whether the large camp was also surrounded by obstacles meant to hinder an enemy approach. So far, no wooden spikes have been found there, but traces could perhaps end up being discovered in the much drier soil.

Silver mining reserved for later centuries

The fact that the Romans abruptly abandoned an extensive undertaking is not without precedent. Had they known that centuries later, in modern times, 200 tons of silver would be extracted from the ground near Bad Ems, they might not have given up so quickly. The soldiers who were ordered to dig the tunnels obviously had not been too enthusiastic about the hard work: Tacitus reports that they wrote to Emperor Claudius in Rome, asking him to award the triumphal insignia to the commanders in advance so they would not have to make their soldiers slave away unnecessarily.

All considered, an exciting research story, which Frederic Auth, who has led the excavations in Bad Ems since 2019, also knows how to recount in an exciting way. His account won first prize in an interdisciplinary field of applicants at the 21st Wiesbaden Science Slam in early February. The young archaeologist is already booked for further appearances: Auth will perform in Heidelberg on March 2, in Bonn on March 7, and in Mannheim on March 19. More information about the events can be found at: https://www.science-slam.com/ (in German).

The research in Bad Ems was carried out jointly with the Directorate of State Archaeology in the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of Rhineland-Palatinate, the Institute of Prehistory and Early History at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences. Also involved were the hunter and honorary monument conservator Jürgen Eigenbrod and his colleague Hans-Joachim du Roi, as well as several metal detectorists with the necessary permits from the historical monument authorities. The project was financed with support from the Gerhard Jacobi Stiftung, the Society for Archaeology on the Middle Rhine and Moselle, and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). The wooden spikes have meanwhile been preserved at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz.

 

Publication: A monograph on the archaeological excavations in Bad Ems is currently being prepared.

 

Images for download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/132551146

 

Captions:

Image 1: "Tractor Tracks". The excavations in Bad Ems were initiated by J. Eigenbrod, who spotted suspicious traces in the field from his high seat. The traces constitute changes in the vegetation, indicating ground interventions, in this case the ditches of the Roman camp on the "Ehrlich" (Photo: H.-J. du Roi)

Figure 2: The geomagnetic prospection confirms the assumption that traces of the former usage of the “Ehrlich” hill would be found under the fields in the soil.  (Photo: C. Mischka, FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg).

Picture 3: The big surprise for the archaeologists unfolded during the last days of the excavation campaign: A construction of wooden spikes had been preserved in the damp soil of the "Blöskopf" hill, meant to deter potential attackers. (Photo: Auth)

Figure 4: Although Caesar had told of comparable obstacles meant to deter the enemy’s approach, so far no physical evidence of their existence had been found. For the most part, the wooden defensive constructions did not survive the test of the centuries. (Photo: Auth) 

Figure 5: Winner among the interdisciplinary field of applicants at the 21st Wiesbaden Science Slam: Goethe University’s archaeologist Frederic Auth (3rd from left) with moderator Rainer Holl (from left) and science slammers Maria Bruhnke, Christopher Synatschke, Nina Lanzer and Uwe Gaitzsch. (Photo: science-slam.com)

2.9-million-year-old butchery site reopens case of who made first stone tools

Discovery of stone tools and cut-marked animal bones in Kenya offers window into the dawn of stone technology

 

IMAGE: ALONG THE SHORES OF AFRICA’S LAKE VICTORIA IN KENYA ROUGHLY 2.9 MILLION YEARS AGO, EARLY HUMAN ANCESTORS USED SOME OF THE OLDEST STONE TOOLS EVER FOUND TO BUTCHER HIPPOS AND POUND PLANT MATERIAL, ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH LED BY AN INTERNATIONAL TEAM OF SCIENTISTS. THE STUDY PRESENTS WHAT ARE LIKELY TO BE THE OLDEST EXAMPLES OF A HUGELY IMPORTANT STONE-AGE INNOVATION KNOWN TO SCIENTISTS AS THE OLDOWAN TOOLKIT, AS WELL AS THE OLDEST EVIDENCE OF HOMININS CONSUMING VERY LARGE ANIMALS. EXCAVATIONS AT THE SITE, NAMED NYAYANGA AND LOCATED ON THE HOMA PENINSULA IN WESTERN KENYA, ALSO PRODUCED A PAIR OF MASSIVE MOLARS BELONGING TO THE HUMAN SPECIES’ CLOSE EVOLUTIONARY RELATIVE PARANTHROPUS. THE TEETH ARE THE OLDEST FOSSILIZED PARANTHROPUS REMAINS YET FOUND, AND THEIR PRESENCE AT A SITE LOADED WITH STONE TOOLS RAISES INTRIGUING QUESTIONS ABOUT WHICH HUMAN ANCESTOR MADE THOSE TOOLS. view more 

CREDIT: J.S. OLIVER, HOMA PENINSULA PALEOANTHROPOLOGY PROJECT

Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens College, CUNY, as well as the National Museums of Kenya,  Liverpool John Moores University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

The study, published today, Feb. 9, in the journal Science, presents what are likely to be the oldest examples of a hugely important stone-age innovation known to scientists as the Oldowan toolkit, as well as the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals. Though multiple lines of evidence suggest the artifacts are likely to be about 2.9 million years old, the artifacts can be more conservatively dated to between 2.6 and 3 million years old, said lead study author Thomas Plummer of Queens College, research associate in the scientific team of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program. 

Excavations at the site, named Nyayanga and located on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya, also produced a pair of massive molars belonging to the human species’ close evolutionary relative Paranthropus. The teeth are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains yet found, and their presence at a site loaded with stone tools raises intriguing questions about which human ancestor made those tools, said Rick Potts, senior author of the study and the National Museum of Natural History’s Peter Buck Chair of Human Origins.

“The assumption among researchers has long been that only the genus Homo, to which humans belong, was capable of making stone tools,” Potts said. “But finding Paranthropus alongside these stone tools opens up a fascinating whodunnit.”

Whichever hominin lineage was responsible for the tools, they were found more than 800 miles from the previously known oldest examples of Oldowan stone tools—2.6-million-year-old tools unearthed in Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia. This greatly expands the area associated with Oldowan technology’s earliest origins. Further, the stone tools from the site in Ethiopia could not be tied to any particular function or use, leading to speculation about what the Oldowan toolkit’s earliest uses might have been.

Through analysis of the wear patterns on the stone tools and animal bones discovered at Nyayanga, Kenya, the team behind this latest discovery shows that these stone tools were used by early human ancestors to process a wide range of materials and foods, including plants, meat and even bone marrow.

The Oldowan toolkit includes three types of stone tools: hammerstones, cores and flakes. Hammerstones can be used for hitting other rocks to create tools or for pounding other materials. Cores typically have an angular or oval shape, and when struck at an angle with a hammerstone, the core splits off a piece, or flake, that can be used as a cutting or scraping edge or further refined using a hammerstone.

“With these tools you can crush better than an elephant’s molar can and cut better than a lion’s canine can,” Potts said. “Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand-new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.”

Potts and Plummer were first drawn to the Homa Peninsula in Kenya by reports of large numbers of fossilized baboon-like monkeys named Theropithecus oswaldi, which are often found alongside evidence of human ancestors. After many visits to the peninsula, a local man named Peter Onyango working with the team suggested they check out fossils and stone tools eroding from a nearby site that was ultimately named Nyayanga after an adjacent beach.

Beginning in 2015, a series of excavations at Nyayanga returned a trove of 330 artifacts, 1,776 animal bones and the two hominin molars identified as belonging to Paranthropus. The artifacts, Plummer said, were clearly part of the stone-age technological breakthrough that was the Oldowan toolkit.

Compared to the only other stone tools known to have preceded them—a set of 3.3-million-year-old artifacts unearthed at a site called Lomekwi 3, just west of Lake Turkana in Kenya—Oldowan tools were a significant upgrade in sophistication. Oldowan tools were systematically produced and often fashioned using what is known as “freehand percussion,” meaning the core was held in one hand and then struck with a hammerstone being wielded by the opposing hand at just the right angle to produce a flake—a technique that requires significant dexterity and skill.

By contrast, most of the artifacts from Lomekwi 3 were created by using large stationary rocks as anvils, with the toolmaker either banging a core against the flat anvil stone to create flakes or by setting the core down on the anvil and striking it with a hammerstone. These more rudimentary modes of fabrication resulted in larger, cruder and more haphazard-looking tools.

Over time, the Oldowan toolkit spread all the way across Africa and even as far as modern-day Georgia and China, and it was not meaningfully replaced or amended until some 1.7 million years ago when the hand-axes of the Acheulean first appeared.

As part of their study, the researchers conducted microscopic analysis of wear patterns on the stone tools to determine how they were used, and they examined any bones seen to exhibit potential cut marks or other kinds of damage that might have come from stone tools.

The site featured at least three individual hippos. Two of these incomplete skeletons included bones that showed signs of butchery. The team found a deep cut mark on one hippo’s rib fragment and a series of four short, parallel cuts on the shin bone of another. Plummer said they also found antelope bones that showed evidence of hominins slicing away flesh with stone flakes or of having been crushed by hammerstones to extract marrow.

The analysis of wear patterns on 30 of the stone tools found at the site showed that they had been used to cut, scrape and pound both animals and plants. Because fire would not be harnessed by hominins for another 2 million years or so, these stone toolmakers would have eaten everything raw, perhaps pounding the meat into something like a hippo tartare to make it easier to chew.

Using a combination of dating techniques, including the rate of decay of radioactive elements, reversals of Earth’s magnetic field and the presence of certain fossil animals whose timing in the fossil record is well established, the research team was able to date the items recovered from Nyayanga to between 2.58 and 3 million years old.

“This is one of the oldest if not the oldest example of Oldowan technology,” Plummer said. “This shows the toolkit was more widely distributed at an earlier date than people realized, and that it was used to process a wide variety of plant and animal tissues. We don’t know for sure what the adaptive significance was but the variety of uses suggests it was important to these hominins.”

The discovery of teeth from the muscular-jawed Paranthropus alongside these stone tools begs the question of whether it might have been that lineage rather than the Homo genus that was the architect of the earliest Oldowan stone tools, or perhaps even that multiple lineages were making these tools at roughly the same time.

The excavations behind this study offer a snapshot of the world humans’ ancestors inhabited and help illustrate the ways that stone technology allowed these early hominins to adapt to different environments and, ultimately, give rise to the human species.

“East Africa wasn’t a stable cradle for our species’ ancestors,” Potts said. “It was more of a boiling cauldron of environmental change, with downpours and droughts and a diverse, ever-changing menu of foods. Oldowan stone tools could have cut and pounded through it all and helped early toolmakers adapt to new places and new opportunities, whether it’s a dead hippo or a starchy root.”

Earliest Oldowan tool use and first Paranthropus discovered in southwestern Kenya

New archaeological findings from Nyayanga, Kenya suggest that Oldowan technology – the earliest known stone tool industry in prehistory – was more ancient and widespread than previously believed, researchers report. They say the Oldowan tools they found were used to process a variety of foods, including ancient hippopotamuses, at least 600,000 years earlier than evidence at other Oldowan sites has suggested. And although it remains unknown which genera of hominin were using the Nyayanga Oldowan tools, the authors note the discovery of contemporaneous Paranthropus fossils at the site, which are also the first yet identified in southwestern Kenya. Previously, the oldest Oldowan tool sites, from around 2.6 million years ago (mya), were confined to Ethiopia’s Afar Triangle. Their appearance represented a technological milestone in early hominin development. Despite their rudimentary nature, these intentionally crafted, sharp-edged stone tools were the first geographically widespread and long-lasting technology. 

Although Oldowan is often attributed to the genus Homo, it’s thought that multiple other overlapping hominins may have made and/or used the early tools. However, due to a lack of early Oldowan sites, scientists still don’t understand the technology’s emergence, use and distribution. Thomas Plummer and colleagues report the discovery of Oldowan sites dated to 3-2.6 mya at Nyayanga, Kenya. Not only were Oldowan tools present, but fossilized bones from the sites with associated stone-tool damage demonstrate the tools were used to butcher large animals, namely hippopotamids and bovids. Furthermore, use-wear patterns on the tools themselves suggest the processing of plant materials. 

While no Homo remains were identified at Nyayanga, Plummer et al. did identify Paranthropus fossils at the site – 2 molars – one of which was in clear association with Oldowan artifacts, raising the possibility that these hominins made or were at least using the stone tools. “The late Pliocene expanded geography of the earliest Oldowan, and new evidence of its use in diverse tasks amplifies our understanding of the adaptive advantage of early stone technology in hominin diet and foraging technology,” write Plummer et al.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abo7452

Codebreakers crack secrets of Mary Queen of Scots’ lost letters

Launched on the anniversary of Mary’s execution, study reveals 50 new letters in cipher – with some still believed missing – shedding new light on her captivity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Secret, coded letters penned by Mary Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned in England by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I have been uncovered by a multidisciplinary team of international codebreakers.

The contents of the letters were believed for centuries to have been lost.
That was until George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer, Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music professor, and Satoshi Tomokiyo who is a physicist and patents expert, stumbled upon them while searching the national library of France’s – Bibliothèque nationale de France’s (BnF) – online archives for enciphered documents.

The trio only discovered Mary was the author after solving her sophisticated cipher system. Their decipherment work of 57 letters, which is presented in the peer-reviewed journal Cryptologia, reveals approximately 50 new scripts previously unknown to historians.

These date from 1578 to 1584, a few years before her beheading on this very day 436 years ago – 8th February, 1587.

Mary’s correspondences expose fascinating insights into her captivity. Most are addressed to Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissière, the French ambassador to England. He was a supporter of Catholic Mary who was under the Earl of Shrewsbury’s custody when she wrote them.  

“Upon deciphering the letters, I was very, very puzzled and it kind of felt surreal,” says lead author Lasry, who is also part of the multi-disciplinary DECRYPT Project – involving several universities in Europe, with the goal of mapping, digitizing, transcribing, and deciphering historical ciphers.

“We have broken secret codes from kings and queens previously, and they’re very interesting but with Mary Queen of Scots it was remarkable as we had so many unpublished letters deciphered and because she is so famous.

“This is a truly exciting discovery.”

He added: “Together, the letters constitute a voluminous body of new primary material on Mary Stuart – about 50,000 words in total, shedding new light on some of her years of captivity in England.

“Mary, Queen of Scots, has left an extensive corpus of letters held in various archives. There was prior evidence, however, that other letters from Mary Stuart were missing from those collections, such as those referenced in other sources but not found elsewhere.

“The letters we have deciphered … are most likely part of this lost secret correspondence.”

One of the 16th century’s most famous historical figures, Mary was first in line of succession to the English throne after her cousin Elizabeth.

Catholics considered Mary to be the legitimate sovereign and Elizabeth had her imprisoned for 19 years because she was seen as a threat. Mary was eventually executed aged 44 for her alleged part in a plot to kill Elizabeth.

During her time in captivity, Mary communicated with her associates and allies through extensive efforts to recruit messengers and to maintain secrecy.

The existence of a confidential communication channel between Mary and Castelnau is well-known to historians, and even to the English government at the time.

But Lasry and his fellow codebreakers provide new evidence that this exchange was already in place as early as May 1578 and active until at least mid-1584.

Using computerized and manual techniques, the study authors decoded the letters which show the challenges Mary faced maintaining links with the outside world, how the letters were carried and by whom.

Key themes referred to in Mary’s correspondence include complaints about her poor health and captivity conditions, and her negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I for her release, which she believes are not conducted in good faith.

Her mistrust of Elizabeth’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham is also apparent, as well as her animosity for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and a favourite of Elizabeth. She also expresses her distress when her son James (future King James I of England) is abducted in August 1582, and her feeling they have been abandoned by France.

Writing in this Special Issue version of Cryptologia, Lasry and his co-authors describe how they first came across the letters. Some were in a large set of unmarked documents in cipher and using the same set of graphical symbols.

The BnF catalogue listed them as from the first half of the 16th century, and related to Italian matters. However, the study authors say they ‘quickly realised’ – after starting to crack the code – they were written in French and ‘had nothing to do with Italy’.

Their detective work revealed verbs and adverbs often in the feminine form, several mentions of captivity, and the name ‘Walsingham’ which arose the suspicion that they might be from Mary, Queen of Scots.

This fact was confirmed by comparing them with the plaintext of letters in Walsingham’s papers in the British Library and through other methods. A search for similar letters in BnF collections uncovered 57 letters with the same cipher.

Commenting on the new paper, Mary Queen of Scots expert, John Guy, who wrote the 2004 biography of Mary Queen of Scots which led to a major Hollywood film, says this is the most significant find about Mary for a century.

“This discovery is a literary and historical sensation. Fabulous! This is the most important new find on Mary Queen of Scots for 100 years. I’d always wondered if de Castelnau’s originals could turn up one day, buried in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France or perhaps somewhere else, unidentified because of the ciphering.

“And now they have.”

Lasry and his co-authors suggest, too, that other enciphered letters from Mary which are known to have existed may still be missing. A physical inspection of documents, as well as online searches, are needed to uncover these, they add.

It is hoped, now too, that the study will lead to future research.

“In our paper, we only provide an initial interpretation and summaries of the letters. A deeper analysis by historians could result in a better understanding of Mary’s years in captivity,” adds Lasry. “It would also be great, potentially, to work with historians to produce an edited book of her letters deciphered, annotated, and translated.”

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JOURNAL

Cryptologia

DOI

10.1080/01611194.2022.2160677 

Drought accelerated Hittite empire collapse

 

 The collapse of the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age has been blamed on various factors, from war with other territories to internal strife. Now, a Cornell University team has used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a more likely culprit: three straight years of severe drought.

The group’s paper, “Severe Multi-Year Drought Coincident with Hittite Collapse ~1198-1196 BC,” published in Nature.

The Hittite Empire emerged around 1650 BC in semi-arid central Anatolia, a region that includes much of modern Turkey. For the next five centuries, the Hittites were one of the major powers of the ancient world, but around 1200 BC, the capital at Hattusa was abandoned and the empire was no more.

To find an explanation for the empire’s much-debated collapse, Sturt Manning, professor of arts and sciences in classical archaeology teamed up with Jed Sparks, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Manning and Sparks combined their labs to scrutinize samples from the Midas Mound Tumulus at Gordion, a human-made 53-meter-tall structure located west of Ankara, Turkey. The mound contains a wooden structure believed to be a burial chamber for a relative of King Midas, possibly his father. But equally important are the juniper trees – which grow slowly and live for centuries, even a millennium – that were used to build the structure and contain a hidden paleoclimatic record of the region.

The researchers looked at the patterns of tree-ring growth, with unusually narrow rings likely indicating dry conditions, in conjunction with changes in the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 recorded in the rings, which indicate the tree’s response to the availability of moisture.

Their analysis finds a general shift to drier conditions from the later 13th into the 12th century BC, and they peg a dramatic continuous period of severe dryness to approximately 1198–96 BC, plus or minus three years, which matches the timeline of the Hittite’s disappearance.

“We have two complementary sets of evidence,” Manning said. “The tree-ring widths indicate something really unusual is going on, and because it’s very narrow rings, that means the tree is struggling to stay alive. In a semi-arid environment, the only plausible reason that’s happening is because there’s little water, therefore it’s a drought, and this one is particularly serious for three consecutive years. Critically, the stable isotope evidence extracted from the tree-rings confirms this hypothesis, and we can establish a consistent pattern despite this all being over 3,150 years ago.”

At three consecutive years of drought, hundreds of thousands of people, including the enormous Hittite army, would face famine, even starvation. The tax base would crumble, as would the government. Survivors would be forced to migrate, an early example of the inequality of climate change.

Severe climate events may not have been the sole reason for the Hittite Empire’s collapse, the researchers noted, and not all of the ancient Near East suffered crises at the time. But this particular stretch of drought may have been a tipping point, at least for the Hittites.

“Situations where you get prolonged, really extreme events like this for two or three years are the ones that can undo even well-organized, resilient societies,” Manning said. 

That finding has particular relevance today, when global populations are reckoning with catastrophic climate change and a warming planet.

“We may be approaching our own breaking point,” Manning said. “We have a range of things we can cope with, but as we are stretched too far beyond that, we’ll hit a point where our adaptative capacities are no longer matched against what we’re facing.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-05693-y