New language tree model suggests hybrid origin for Indo-European languages

Paul Heggarty and colleagues present a new framework for the chronology and divergence of languages in the Indo-European family, which places the family’s origin at around 8300 BP – older than previous analyses. Their study also reconciles current linguistic and ancient DNA evidence to suggest that Indo-European languages first arose south of the Caucasus and subsequently branched northward to the Steppe regions before expanding throughout Eurasia. The origins and spread of Indo-European languages, which are spoken by nearly half of the world’s population, have long been debated. Much of the dispute centers on where the language group originated, with some scholars supporting an origin in the eastern Fertile Crescent that subsequently spread alongside agriculture and others supporting an origin in the Steppe region with spread facilitated by horse-based pastoralism. The new analysis by Heggarty et al. uses a dataset of 100 modern languages and 51 non-modern languages, examining shared word origin among the core vocabulary in these languages. The new dataset increases language sampling and does not necessarily assume that modern spoken languages derive directly from ancient written languages, which the authors say have hampered previous analyses. The resulting phylolinguistic family trees do not fully support either an agriculture or pastoralism-based origin for the language family, but instead support a “hybrid” hypothesis that contains elements of both scenarios in the spread of Indo-European languages, the authors write.

 

IMAGE: THE LANGUAGE FAMILY BEGAN TO DIVERGE FROM AROUND 8100 YEARS AGO, OUT OF A HOMELAND IMMEDIATELY SOUTH OF THE CAUCASUS. ONE MIGRATION REACHED THE PONTIC-CASPIAN AND FOREST STEPPE AROUND 7000 YEARS AGO, AND FROM THERE SUBSEQUENT MIGRATIONS SPREAD INTO PARTS OF EUROPE AROUND 5000 YEARS AGO. view more 

CREDIT: © P. HEGGARTY ET AL., SCIENCE (2023)

For over two hundred years, the origin of the Indo-European languages has been disputed. Two main theories have recently dominated this debate: the ‘Steppe’ hypothesis, which proposes an origin in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe around 6000 years ago, and the ‘Anatolian’ or ‘farming’ hypothesis, suggesting an older origin tied to early agriculture around 9000 years ago. Previous phylogenetic analyses of Indo-European languages have come to conflicting conclusions about the age of the family, due to the combined effects of inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the datasets they used and limitations in the way that phylogenetic methods analyzed ancient languages.

To solve these problems, researchers from the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology assembled an international team of over 80 language specialists to construct a new dataset of core vocabulary from 161 Indo-European languages, including 52 ancient or historical languages. This more comprehensive and balanced sampling, combined with rigorous protocols for coding lexical data, rectified the problems in the datasets used by previous studies.

Indo-European estimated to be around 8100 years old

The team used recently developed ancestry-enabled Bayesian phylogenetic analysis to test whether ancient written languages, such as Classical Latin and Vedic Sanskrit, were the direct ancestors of modern Romance and Indic languages, respectively. Russell Gray, Head of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution and senior author of the study, emphasized the care they had taken to ensure that their inferences were robust. “Our chronology is robust across a wide range of alternative phylogenetic models and sensitivity analyses”, he stated. These analyses estimate the Indo-European family to be approximately 8100 years old, with five main branches already split off by around 7000 years ago.

These results are not entirely consistent with either the Steppe or the farming hypotheses. The first author of the study, Paul Heggarty, observed that “Recent ancient DNA data suggest that the Anatolian branch of Indo-European did not emerge from the Steppe, but from further south, in or near the northern arc of the Fertile Crescent — as the earliest source of the Indo-European family. Our language family tree topology, and our lineage split dates, point to other early branches that may also have spread directly from there, not through the Steppe.”

New insights from genetics and linguistics

The authors of the study therefore proposed a new hybrid hypothesis for the origin of the Indo-European languages, with an ultimate homeland south of the Caucasus and a subsequent branch northwards onto the Steppe, as a secondary homeland for some branches of Indo-European entering Europe with the later Yamnaya and Corded Ware-associated expansions. “Ancient DNA and language phylogenetics thus combine to suggest that the resolution to the 200-year-old Indo-European enigma lies in a hybrid of the farming and Steppe hypotheses”, remarked Gray.

Wolfgang Haak, a Group Leader in the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, summarizes the implications of the new study by stating, “Aside from a refined time estimate for the overall language tree, the tree topology and branching order are most critical for the alignment with key archaeological events and shifting ancestry patterns seen in the ancient human genome data. This is a huge step forward from the mutually exclusive, previous scenarios, towards a more plausible model that integrates archaeological, anthropological and genetic findings.”

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abg0818 

Family trees from the European Neolithic

 

 

IMAGE: RECONSTRUCTED FAMILY TREE OF THE LARGEST GENETICALLY RELATED GROUP IN GURGY: THE PAINTED PORTRAITS ARE AN ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE INDIVIDUALS BASED ON PHYSICAL TRAITS ESTIMATED FROM DNA (WHERE AVAILABLE). THE DOTTED SQUARES (GENETICALLY MALE) AND CIRCLES (GENETICALLY FEMALE) REPRESENT INDIVIDUALS WHO WERE NOT FOUND AT THE SITE OR DID NOT PROVIDE SUFFICIENT DNA FOR ANALYSIS. view more 

CREDIT: DRAWING BY ELENA PLAIN; REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BORDEAUX / PACEA

The Neolithic lifestyle, based on farming instead of hunting and gathering, emerged in the Near East around 12,000 years ago and contributed profoundly to the modern way of life. The ability to produce and store extra food led Neolithic people to develop new social customs built on wealth, and therefore form social hierarchies. After an early phase of diffusion and having reached regions in western Europe, settled societies became more complex, which is sometimes reflected in the funerary world as well. The Paris Basin region in northern modern-day France is known for its monumental funerary sites, understood as being built for the society’s “elite”. In this context, the site of Gurgy ‘Les Noisats’, one of the biggest Neolithic funerary sites without monument in the region, begs the question who these people buried with different practices were.

Using new methods for obtaining and analysing ancient DNA data, and by sampling nearly every individual from the flat cemetery, researchers from the PACEA laboratory in Bordeaux, France, and from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reveal two massive family trees which open a window into the lives of the people of this prehistoric community.

Massive family trees

In their study, the scientists analysed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 94 individuals buried at Gurgy, combined with strontium isotope ratio values, mitochondrial DNA (maternal lineages) and Y-chromosome (paternal lineages) data, age-at-death, and genetic sex. Two family trees could be reconstructed, the first connecting 64 individuals over seven generations is the largest pedigree reconstructed from ancient DNA to date, while the second connects twelve individuals over five generations.

“Since the beginning of the excavation, we found evidence of a complete control of the funerary space and only very few overlapping burials, which felt like the site was managed by a group of closely related individuals, or at least by people who knew who was buried where”, says Stéphane Rottier from the University of Bordeaux, the archaeo-anthropologist who excavated the site between 2004 and 2007. Indeed, a positive correlation between spatial and genetic distances showed that the deceased were likely to be buried close to a relative.

Insights into the social structure of Gurgy

Exploring the pedigrees revealed a strong patrilineal pattern, where each generation is almost exclusively linked to the previous generation through the biological father, which connects the entire group of Gurgy through the paternal line. At the same time, combined evidence from mitochondrial lineages and strontium stable isotope revealing a non-local origin of most women suggested the practice of patrilocality, meaning that the sons stayed where they were born, and had children with females from outside of Gurgy. Settling in with the male partner’s home community is known as virilocality. By contrast, most of the lineage adult daughters are missing, in line with female exogamy, potentially indicating a reciprocal exchange system. Interestingly, these “new incoming” female individuals were only very distantly related to each other, meaning that they must have come from a network of nearby communities, instead of just one nearby group. This lends support to the existence of a relatively wide and potentially fluid exchange network comprising many (including smaller) groups.

Looking at the family trees, Maïté Rivollat, first author of the study, is amazed: “We observe a large number of full siblings who have reached reproductive age. Combined with the expected equal number of females and significant number of deceased infants, this indicates large family sizes, a high fertility rate and generally stable conditions of health and nutrition, which is quite striking for such ancient times.” Another notably unique feature at Gurgy is a lack of half-siblings, suggesting neither polygamous nor serial monogamous reproductive partnerships (or the exclusion of offspring from these unions from the main cemetery), when compared to the so far only other example of union practices from Neolithic megaliths.

A founding ancestor

In the frame of this patrilocal system, one male individual from which everyone in the largest family tree was descended could be identified as the “founding father” of the cemetery. His burial is unique at the site, as his skeletal remains were buried as a secondary deposit inside the grave pit of a woman, for whom, unfortunately, no genomic data could be obtained. Therefore, his bones must have been brought from wherever he had originally died to be reburied at Gurgy. “He must have represented a person of great significance for the founders of the Gurgy site to be brought there after a primary burial somewhere else,” explains Marie-France Deguilloux from the University of Bordeaux, co-senior author of the study.

Although the main pedigree spans seven generations, the demographic profile suggests that a large family group spanning several generations arrived at the site. With almost no subadults buried at the site during the first few generations, and by contrast no adult burials in the last generations, only a short use of the site is expected. The group must have left a previous site, leaving behind any previously deceased children but still brought the lineage father. Only a few generations later the same happened: the adult of the last generations left Gurgy for another place, leaving behind their own children. Hence, Gurgy was probably only used for three to four generations, or approximately one century.

These largest pedigrees reconstructed to date from ancient human DNA data, combined with multiple lines of evidence, represent an unprecedented step forward in our understanding of the social organization of past societies. “Only with the major advances in our field in very recent years and the full integration of context data it was possible to carry out such an extraordinary study. It is a dream come true for every anthropologist and archaeologist and opens up a new avenue for the study of the ancient human past,” concludes Wolfgang Haak of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, senior author of the study.å

DNA analysis offers new insights into diverse community at Machu Picchu

— A genetic analysis suggests that the servants and retainers who lived, worked, and died at Machu Picchu, the renowned 15th century Inca palace in southern Peru, were a diverse community representing many different ethnic groups from across the Inca empire.

The genomic data, described in a new study in Science Advances, is the first investigation of the genomic diversity of individuals buried at Machu Picchu and adjacent places around Cusco, the Inca capital. It builds upon previous archeological and bio-archaeological research, including a 2021 Yale-led study which found that Machu Picchu (AD 1420-1530) is older than was previously believed.

“The DNA analysis not only confirms the historical accounts that retainers were drawn from many different ethnic groups under Inca control, but it also demonstrates a much greater diversity of origins than had been suspected with individuals being brought from the entire empire,” said archaeologist Richard Burger, the Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and lead researcher for the Machu Picchu project.

“Our analyses show that the population at Machu Picchu was highly heterogenous, with individuals exhibiting genetic ancestries associated with groups from regions throughout the Inca empire including the coast, highlands, and Amazonia,” Burger said.

Researchers from Yale, Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC), the University of California-Santa Cruz (UCSC), Tulane University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and other institutions conducted the study, under an agreement to return artifacts and human remains from the Hiram Bingham collection back to Cusco for exhibition, conservation, and study.

Machu Picchu is perhaps the most famous archeological site in the Western Hemisphere. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than a million visitors toured the site. Yet until quite recently, little was known about its inhabitants.

Scholars now believe Machu Picchu was a royal estate connected to the lineage of Pachacuti, the emperor credited with establishing the Inca empire. Royals resided at these estates seasonally, but a retinue of servants and retainers, known as yanacona, was left behind to take care of the facilities. Yanacona, who were brought to the estate from conquered lands, were believed to be privileged compared to the general population.

For the new study, researchers generated DNA data for 34 individuals buried at Machu Picchu who were believed to be retainers or attendants assigned to serve the Inca royal family, as well as 34 individuals from Cusco for comparative purposes.

“An unexpected result was the finding that many of the retainers were of Amazonian origin and about a third of them have DNA reflecting significant amounts of Amazonian ancestry,” said lead author Lucy Salazar, a research associate in Yale’s Department of Anthropology. “At least two zones within the Amazonian region are represented.”

Another unexpected result, the researchers said, was that many of the individuals had mixed ancestries, often from regions distant from each other. The researchers said this suggests individuals at Machu Picchu were selecting mates from other genetic groups, producing a diverse population unlike those found in agricultural villages.

“This study does not focus on the life of ‘royals’ or political elites, but on the life of those that were brought to Machu Picchu to serve the nobility that lived there and operated the place,” said co-corresponding author Lars Fehren-Schmitz, a professor at UC-SC and a former Yale post-doctoral researcher. “Thus, it gives us a unique insight into the life of a highly diverse community of individuals and their families who were subject to Inca forced relocation and resettlement policies, a group usually referred to as retainers or yanacona.”

Co-corresponding author Jason Nesbitt, a former Yale Ph.D. student who is now an associate professor at Tulane, noted that few of the individuals buried at Machu Picchu were from the Inca heartland of the Cuzco Valley or the adjacent Lake Titicaca region. He also said the four cemetery areas at Machu Picchu were not organized by genomic origin. Even the individuals buried in a single burial cave represented diverse genomic backgrounds.

“These results suggest that Machu Picchu was a cosmopolitan community in which people of different backgrounds lived, mated, and were interred together,” Burger said.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

Earliest known composite-tiled roofs

 

Researchers from Peking University School of Archaeology and Museology collaborated with the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology to reconstruct the world’s earliest composite-tiled roofs. Their findings were consolidated in an article titled “Reconstructing the earliest known composite-tiled roofs from the Chinese Loess Plateau,” published in the international journal Scientific Reports on May 19, 2023.

With support from projects like “Archaeological China: Settlements and Society in the Hetao Region,” the researchers used 5,000 pieces of terracotta tiles dating back to the early Longshan culture, excavated from the Qiaocun Ruins in Lingtai County, Gansu Province. By means of morphological measurement, quantitative analysis, 3D modeling, and computer simulation, the researchers then reconstructed the earliest known splicing technology of composite-tiled roofs, achieving a major breakthrough in the research on the traceability of composite terracotta tiles.

Existing archaeological discoveries indicate that the earliest ceramic tiles in the world appeared in Greece circa late 3,000 BC, but only in simple forms. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating results show that the absolute age of tiles unearthed from the relic site of Qiaocun date back to 2400-2200 BC, proving these as the earliest composite tiles. 

In the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC), terracotta tile manufacturing was significantly developed in central Shaanxi Province, forming the Longshan Western Zhou culture, which further spread to the rest of Asia including South Korea, Japan, the Russian Far East and Southeast Asia.

To avoid the limitations of previous studies, the research team recruited experts in the fields of archaeology, architecture, relic protection and computer simulation to conduct cross-disciplinary research, overcoming difficulties such as the small sample size and the fragility of the samples.

The study of the Qiaocun Ruins is an important part of the “Archaeology China” project titled “Settlements and Society in the Hetao Region.” The recent findings suggest a strong relation between the roofed buildings in Qiaocun and increasing social interactions in public affairs management in the Loess Plateau, which promotes the social complexity and civilization process of this region.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35299-x

Mesoamerica : clues to urban resiliency lie within ancient cities

 These major cities and others around the globe have many similarities, but they share one particular commonality that is concerning for residents. They are among the global cities most affected by climate change.

While each of these cities has proven resilient for centuries, urban planners, community leaders and civil engineers continue to address their many environmental challenges. In preparing for these cities’ future, however, it might be more expedient to revisit the distant past for inspiration.

A recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) explores how ancient Mesoamerican civilizations fared against environmental threats and provides examples of how modern metropolises can learn from their successes.

“Mesoamerican Urbanism Revisited: Environmental Change, Adaptation, Resilience, Persistence, and Collapse” was published in the latest edition of PNAS and also is available to review on PubMed Central. Its authors include a who’s who of anthropological archaeology and urbanism scholars from across the globe.

“There are some lessons to be learned from many regions within Mesoamerica,” said its lead author Diane Z. Chase, University of Houston senior vice president for academic affairs and provost.

Both Diane Chase and her husband Arlen Chase (longtime archaeologists, research collaborators and spouses) are frequent visitors to the Maya archaeological site of Caracol in Belize. That region and others, she said, holds many clues to addressing some of the problems faced by today’s cities.

“When that city was at its height, the city planning in and of itself was exceedingly well done,” she said. “They were doing some things that we are still talking about … green cities, walkable cities.”

Prehispanic Mesoamerica included areas of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador. In addition to Caracol, Mesoamerican cities examined within the article include Chunchucmil, Monté Alban and Teotihuacan in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala. 

These and other Mesoamerican cities prospered despite a lack of modern technologies and without basic resources such as wheeled transport or domesticated animals such as oxen, mules or donkeys to carry loads. Chase and her fellow authors maintain that despite history often depicting the fall of Maya cities, their resiliency for centuries is often overlooked.

“While the causes of the Classic lowland Maya collapse remain a subject of coalescing debate, sizeable changes in the populations of many cities occurred,” Chase and co-authors stated in the article. “These changes in population have largely blinded scholars to the remarkable successes of lowland Maya cities that persisted, adapted, and flourished for many centuries and were then replaced by smaller cities that subsequently arose and flourished.”

Such resiliency can be attributed to enhanced infrastructure that included roads, access to markets and agricultural terracing (or sloped planes with sections landscaped into flattened platforms for farming). Likewise, these cities supported advanced socio-economic systems that included structured governance, institutions and social norms.

Ultimately, these cities withstood a number of environmental challenges such as drought, earthquakes, heavy rains, hurricanes and rising sea levels. Many of these meteorological conditions were detected by researchers who examined stalagmites, shells and other items found within these ancient sites.

Drought has long been considered to be a factor in the demise of Mesoamerican cities. According to Arlen Chase, professor in UH’s Comparative Cultural Studies Department, that is indeed a myth. He said that cities such as Teotihuacan experienced significant growth during a period of severe drought. In Caracol, the city was already largely abandoned when that area of Belize was affected by lack of rain.

“The correlation between the population sizes within these cities and the consistency of these sites doesn’t have anything to do with drought,” he said. “These cities actually were quite resilient.”

Another myth, he said, focused on the concept of compact and dense urbanism as constituting all cities, which is largely a western concept. A form of dispersed urbanism was prevalent within Mesoamerica (and in other parts of the world) that varied from city to city. One trend observed by the Chases and their collaborators was that collective societies (or those that were largely democratic) were the most successful.

“At their peaks, most Mesoamerican cities were prosperous and sustainable, often with a form of collective governance,” the authors stated within the article. “Governance, however, was fickle and was subject to shift between more collective and more autocratic systems over the course of history. Also particularly striking in terms of the abandonments of Mesoamerican cities―and opposed to earlier understandings―is that most of their collapses are associated with a rejection of these successful adaptations for strategies more focused on autocracy and inequality, in which there was only limited wealth sharing.”

In determining social structures and governance within these ancient sites, the Chases and fellow researchers analyzed the bones of residents within Caracol and other sites. Chemical elements within these human remains can offer clues to a person's diet (which provides insights on where people lived or their level or wealth). Additionally, artifacts and the size of living spaces can offer insight on wealth, power and social status.

Co-author Gary M. Feinman, MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian Anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, said there are many lessons to be learned from Mesoamerica. In facing the challenges of the future, it’s essential to look to the past, he said.

He added that the PNAS article is a first step in helping clear the air regarding any misconceptions regarding the perceived failures of Mesoamerican cities and truly spotlights the resiliency of their residents.

“Part of this article is trying to correct the misbelief that the Mesoamerican cities were riddled with collapse, that rulers were purely despotic and that there was no such thing as economic growth and prosperity,” Feinman said. “That’s why this era is not looked at as a source of information. By clearing up some of these misbeliefs that are broadly held, we can make this information more accessible to city planners and policy makers.”

Feinman believes that one of the biggest lessons to be learned from the success of Mesoamerican cities is from its residents. Those community members, who worked tirelessly to adapt to a changing environment and react to natural disasters without technology, are models for contemporary communities, he said.

“These cities speak to the great potential of human cooperation,” he said. “When people share a goal, they can do amazing things.”

Central-west Brazil was settled as early as 27,000 years ago,

This week a new academic study upended migration timelines by proposing that what is now central-west Brazil was settled as early as 27,000 years ago, a finding that bolsters the theory that our ancestors inhabited the continent during the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended around 11,700 years ago. (Pansani et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B via The New York Times)

Complete academic report

 The peopling of the Americas and human interaction with the Pleistocene megafauna in South America remain hotly debated. The Santa Elina rock shelter in Central Brazil shows evidence of successive human settlements from around the last glacial maximum (LGM) to the Early Holocene. Two Pleistocene archaeological layers include rich lithic industry associated with remains of the extinct giant ground sloth Glossotherium phoenesis. The remains include thousands of osteoderms (i.e. dermal bones), three of which were human-modified. In this study, we perform a traceological analysis of these artefacts by optical microscopy, non-destructive scanning electron microscopy, UV/visible photoluminescence and synchrotron-based microtomography. We also describe the spatial association between the giant sloth bone remains and stone tools and provide a Bayesian age model that confirms the timing of this association in two time horizons of the Pleistocene in Santa Elina. The conclusion from our traceological study is that the three giant sloth osteoderms were intentionally modified into artefacts before fossilization of the bones. This provides additional evidence for the contemporaneity of humans and megafauna, and for the human manufacturing of personal artefacts on bone remains of ground sloths, around the LGM in Central Brazil.

NY Times report

Early humans in the Hula Valley invested in systematic procurement of raw materials hundreds of thousands of years ago – much earlier than previously assumed

 

IMAGE: HANDAXES FROM GESHER BENOT YA'AQOV TESTED GEOCHEMICALLY. ARROWS INDICATE THE STRIKING OF FLAKES SAMPLED. view more 

CREDIT: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

A new study from Tel Aviv University and Tel-Hai College solves an old mystery: Where did early humans in the Hula Valley get flint to make the prehistoric tools known as handaxes? The researchers applied advanced methods of chemical analysis and AI to identify the geochemical fingerprints of handaxes from the Hula Valley's oldest prehistoric sites, Ma'ayan Barukh and Gesher Benot Ya'aqov. Their findings indicate that the raw material came from exposures of high-quality flint in the Dishon Plateau, about 20km to the west, and hundreds of meters above the Hula Valley. The researchers: "Our findings indicate that these early humans had high social and cognitive abilities: they were familiar with their surroundings, knew the available resources, and made great efforts to procure the high-quality raw materials they needed. For this purpose, they planned and carried out long journeys, and transferred this essential knowledge to subsequent generations."

 

The study was led by Dr. Meir Finkel of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East Cultures, Tel Aviv University and Prof. Gonen Sharon of the MA Program in Galilee Studies, Tel-Hai College, in collaboration with Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, Tel Aviv University, Dr. Oded Bar and Dr. Yoav Ben Dor, the Geological Survey of Israel, and Ofir Tirosh, the Hebrew University. The paper was published in Geoarchaeology.

 

Dr. Finkel: "The Hula Valley, located along the Dead Sea Transform Rift, is well known for its many prehistoric sites, the oldest of which date back to 750,000 years before present (YBP). The valley offered early humans rich sources of water, vegetation, and game, right on the northward migration route from Africa - the Great African Rift Valley. These early inhabitants left behind them many artifacts, including thousands of handaxes – flint stones chiseled to fit the human hand. One of the earliest and most universal tools produced by humans, the handaxe may have served as a multipurpose 'penknife' for many different tasks, from cutting game meat to digging for water and extracting roots. It was used in many different parts of the Old World, in Africa, Asia, and Europe, for about 1.5 million years."

 

In the present study the researchers looked for the source of the raw material used to produce thousands of handaxes found at two prehistoric sites in the Hula Valley: Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, dated to 750,000 YBP and Ma'ayan Barukh, dated to 500,000 YBP, both of the Acheulian culture.  Prof. Sharon: "Approximately 3,500 handaxes were found scattered on the ground at Ma'ayan Barukh, and several thousands more were discovered at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov. The average hand axe, a little over 10cm long and weighing about 200g, was produced by reducing stones that are five times larger – at least 1kg of raw material. In other words, to make the 3,500 handaxes found at Ma'ayan Barukh alone, early humans needed 3.5 tons of flint. But where did they obtain such a huge amount of flint? Many researchers have tried to answer this question, but our study was the first to use innovative 21st century technologies: advanced chemical analysis and an AI algorithm developed specifically for this purpose."

 

The researchers took samples from 20 handaxes – 10 from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov and 10 from Ma'ayan Barukh, ground them into powder and dissolved the powder in acid in a clean lab. For each sample they measured the concentration of approximately 40 chemical elements, using an ICP-MS (inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer), a state-of-the-art device that accurately measures the concentration of dozens of elements, down to a resolution of one particle per billion.

 

In addition, in order to locate possible flint sources available to the Hula Valley's prehistoric inhabitants, the researchers conducted a field survey covering flint exposures in the Safed Mountains, Ramim Ridge, Golan Heights, and Dishon Plateau, as well as cobbles from streams draining into the Hula Valley: the Jordan, Ayun, Dishon, Rosh Pina, and Mahanayeem. This methodical survey was combined with a comprehensive literature review led by Dr. Bar of the Geological Survey of Israel. Flint samples collected from all potential sources were then analyzed using ICP-MS technology to enable comparison with the handaxes. A novel computational approach specially adapted by Dr. Ben Dor of the Geological Survey of Israel was used for this comparison. 

 

Dr. Ben Dor: "The complex process, from collecting and preparing the samples to the chemical analysis, produced a very large amount of data for each sample. To enable optimal matching between data from the archaeological artifacts and data from the flint exposures, we developed a dedicated algorithm based on several computational steps, alongside machine learning models. Thus, we were able to classify the archaeological artifacts according to the database derived from the geological samples."

 

Dr. Finkel: "Through the computational process we discovered that all 20 archaeological artifacts were made of flint from a single source: the Dishon Plateau's flint exposures dating back to the Eocene geological epoch, about 20km west of the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov and Ma'ayan Barukh sites. At the Dishon Plateau we also found a prehistoric flint extraction and reduction complex, indicating that the place served as a flint source for hundreds of thousands of years. In addition, we demonstrated that cobbles from streams draining into the Hula Valley were too small to be used as raw material for handaxes, ruling out this possibility."

 

Prof. Ben-Yosef: "Our findings clearly indicate that humans living in the Hula Valley hundreds of thousands of years ago, probably hominids of the homo erectus species, possessed high cognitive and social capabilities. To procure suitable raw materials for producing their vital handaxes, they planned and carried out 20km hikes that included an ascent from 70 to 800 meters above sea level. Moreover, they passed on this important knowledge from one generation to the next, over many millennia. All these suggest a high level of sophistication and ability, which modern researchers do not usually attribute to prehistoric humans from such an early period."

Link to the article:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gea.21968

Early humans were weapon woodwork experts, study finds

 

IMAGE: ARTISTIC RECONSTRUCTION SHOWING THE STICK WOULD HAVE BEEN THROWN view more 

CREDIT: BENOIT CLARYS

A 300,000-year-old hunting weapon has shone a new light on early humans as woodworking masters, according to a new study.

State-of-the-art analysis of a double-pointed wooden throwing stick, found in Schöningen in Germany three decades ago, shows it was scraped, seasoned and sanded before being used to kill animals. The research indicates early humans’ woodworking techniques were more developed and sophisticated than previously understood.

The findings, published today (Wednesday, 19 July) in PLOS ONE, also suggest the creation of lightweight weapons may have enabled group hunts of medium and small animals. The use of throwing sticks as hunting aids could have involved the entire community, including children.

Dr Annemieke Milks, of the University of Reading’s Department of Archaeology, led the research. She said: “Discoveries of wooden tools have revolutionised our understanding of early human behaviours. Amazingly these early humans demonstrated an ability to plan well in advance, a strong knowledge of the properties of wood, and many sophisticated woodworking skills that we still use today.

“These lightweight throwing sticks may have been easier to launch than heavier spears, indicating the potential for the whole community to take part. Such tools could have been used by children while learning to throw and hunt.”

Co-author Dirk Leder said: “The Schöningen humans used a spruce branch to make this aerodynamic and ergonomic tool. The woodworking involved multiple steps including cutting and stripping off the bark, carving it into an aerodynamic shape, scraping away more of the surface, seasoning the wood to avoid cracking and warping, and sanding it for easier handling.”

High-impact weapon

Found in 1994, the 77cm-long stick is one of several different tools discovered in Schöningen, which includes throwing spears, thrusting spears and a second similarly sized throwing stick.

The double-pointed throwing stick – analysed to an exceptionally high level of detail for this new study - was most likely used by early humans to hunt medium-sized game like red and roe deer, and possibly fast-small prey including hare and birds that were otherwise difficult to catch. The throwing sticks would have been thrown rotationally – similar to a boomerang - rather than overhead like a modern-day javelin and may have enabled early humans to throw as far as 30 metres. Although lightweight, the high velocities at which such weapons can be launched could have resulted in deadly high-energy impacts.

The fine surface, carefully shaped points and polish from handling suggest this was a piece of personal kit with repeated use, rather than a quickly made tool that was carelessly discarded.

Principal investigator Thomas Terberger said: “The systematic analysis of the wooden finds of the Schöningen site financed by German Research Foundation provides valuable new insights and further exciting information on these early wooden weapons can be expected soon.”

The well-preserved stick is on display at the Forschungsmuseum in Schöningen.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0287719 

New findings suggest historical infanticide in Europe likely more widespread than estimated

New study examines selective infanticide within European communities as a means of controlling resources and social status in Italy, France and England

‘Routine’ infanticide of newborns by married parents in early modern Europe was a much more widespread practice than previously thought, a new book posits.

This fresh insight sits at the heart of a new book, Death Control in the West 1500–1800: Sex Ratios at Baptism in Italy, France and England, by Gregory Hanlon and contributors.

The French-trained behavioural historian explains: “In most cases, infanticide was a crime leaving no aggrieved party seeking revenge if it was committed right away. It could be overlooked and forgotten with the passage of time.”

Widespread infanticide

Hanlon, who is Distinguished Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Canada, calls attention to the limited scope of existing scholarship, which has never focused on sex ratios of infants brought for baptism within hours or days after their birth.

These records reveal startling spikes in the number of male baptisms in the aftermath of famines or diseases.

He notes: “Historians in the West have relied almost exclusively on records of criminal trials in which unwed mothers or married women carrying progeny not sired by their husbands hid their pregnancies and killed their newborns alone or with female accomplices. Married infanticidal mothers may have been a hundred times more numerous.”

Hanlon’s research suggests that in rural Tuscany at the height of infanticide the victims might have constituted up to a third of the total number of live births.

Beyond the lone woman perpetrator

Using baptismal registers and ecclesiastical censuses drawn from scores of parishes in Italy, France and England, Hanlon shows similar infanticide patterns across city and country, for Catholics, Calvinists and Anglicans alike.

In Italy’s rural 17th century Tuscany, Hanlon suggests that parents seemed willing to sacrifice a child if they were a twin, opting to keep just one of the newborns. In the north Italian city of Parma, Laura Hynes Jenkins found that working-class parents preferred girls over boys.

Contributor Dominic J. Rossi finds a clear pattern of a preference for girls in the French town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot after 1650.

Rossi – one of the five former students who contributes to the book – posits the idea that ‘the lower-status families would want to marry their daughters up at the same time as economic conditions allowed them to make long-term plans for social movement’.

Meanwhile Evan Johnson, another contributor, finds evidence to demonstrate that upper-class parents in rural Mézin showed a clear preference for keeping newborn males.

Infanticide within the contemporary

Death Control in the West 1500-1800 shines a light on the many infants whose existence went unrecorded and whose deaths remained unpunished.

Hanlon calls attention to lax punitive measures taken for crimes of infanticide, and notes: “Tribunals operated against single mothers almost exclusively, but only if they killed the newborn deliberately. Simple abandonment was not a comparable offense.”

The roles of the state and criminal justice system are rigorously examined in the study, alongside realities of poverty and social class structures. The book draws parallels between histories of infanticide and present discussions of reproductive rights.

“Infanticide is murder, of course, but people did not consider this murder to be a crime,” explains Hanlon, who says ‘most people could live with it as an unpleasant fact of life’.

Together, Hanlon and his contributors invite readers to reckon with infanticide beyond a moralistic approach, in order to understand the social practice’s ramifications for our present times.

Climate change fostered rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire during 600-800 AD

 

 

IMAGE: THE VARVES OF JIANGCO ARE ANNUAL VARVES, EACH LAYER DIVIDED INTO COARSE-GRAINED AND FINE-GRAINED SUB-LAYERS view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Dr. Juzhi Hou, Dr. Fahu Chen, and Dr. Kejia Ji (Group of Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences). The research team obtained a high-resolution climate record of the past 2000 years using the varved sediments of Lake JiangCo on the central Tibetan Plateau. The warm and humid climate during the 7th-9th centuries AD and the subsequent cold and aridification are consistent with the rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire. Climate change is one of the possible reasons for the rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire.

During the preliminary field investigation, the researchers found that the varved sediment in JiangCo, a lake on the central Tibetan Plateau, was well-preserved. Through earlier varve counting and other radiometric dating methods, the time range of a gravity core of up to 1 meter covering the past 2000 years was determined. Subsequently, high-resolution XRF elements scanning and carbonate carbon/oxygen isotope analysis were performed on the sediment, and the temperature and precipitation records for the past 2000 years were reconstructed using biomarkers such as alkenones. The results showed that the 7th-9th centuries AD was an unusually warm and humid period. The researchers compared this period with historical literatures and found that it coincided with the only unified local regime, the Tibetan Empire, which existed on the Tibetan Plateau at that time. The changes in warm and humid climate and cold and dry climate were highly correlated with the foreign policy changes of the Tibetan Empire. Combined with the ecological niche model, the researchers simulated the area of highland barley cultivation during the warm and humid period of the 7th-9th centuries AD and the subsequent cold and dry period, which differed by about 10.88 million hectares.

On the ecologically fragile environment of the Tibetan Plateau, climate change is one of the factors that constrains human activities. This latest research results show that warm and humid climates promote the development of agriculture and animal husbandry on the plateau, while cold and arid conditions have negative effects on agriculture and animal husbandry. Climate change played a important role in the rise and fall of the Tibetan Empire. Today, with the warming and humidification of the Tibetan Plateau, studying the human-environment interactions in the past has important implications for modern responses to climate change.

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JOURNAL

Science Bulletin

DOI

10.1016/j.scib.2023.04.040 

Research group deciphers enigmatic ancient script

 

IMAGE: WHERE THE BILINGUAL INSCRIPTION WAS DISCOVERED IN TAJIKISTAN. THE ARCHAEOLOGIST DR BOBOMULLO BOBOMULLOEV DOCUMENTED THE FINDING IN 2022 AND SENT PICTURES TO THE LINGUISTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE, LEADING TO THE DECISIVE BREAKTHROUGH IN THEIR DECIPHERMENT OF THE UNKNOWN KUSHAN SCRIPT. view more 

CREDIT: BOBOMULLO BOBOMULLOEV

A team of early-career researchers at the University of Cologne has succeeded in decoding a script that has been puzzling scholars for over seventy years: the so-called ‘unknown Kushan script’. Over a period of several years, Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann and Natalie Korobzow examined photographs of inscriptions found in caves as well as characters on bowls and clay pots from various Central Asian countries in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together. On 1 March 2023, they first announced their partial decipherment of the unknown Kushan script at an online conference of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan. Currently, about 60 percent of the characters can be read, and the group is working to decipher the remaining characters. A detailed description of the decipherment has now been published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society under the title ‘A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script’.

New discovery led to breakthrough

The ‘unknown Kushan script’ is a writing system that was in use in parts of Central Asia between about 200 BCE and 700 CE. It can be associated with both the early nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe, such as the Yuèzhī, and the ruling dynasty of the Kushans. The Kushans founded an empire which, among other things, was responsible for the spread of Buddhism to East Asia. They also created monumental architecture and artworks.

So far, several dozen mostly short inscriptions are known, most of them originating from the territory of the present-day states of Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. There is also a longer trilingual that was found by French archaeologists in the 1960s at Dašt-i Nāwur in Afghanistan: on a boulder at 4,320 m altitude on Mount Qarabayu, approximately 100 km southwest of Kabul.

The writing system was has been known since the 1950s, but had never been successfully deciphered. In 2022, a short bilingual was found carved into a rock face in the Almosi Gorge in northwestern Tajikistan, approximately 30 km from the capital Dushanbe. In addition to the unknown Kushan script, it also contains a section in the already known Bactrian language. This discovery led to renewed attempts by several researchers to decode the script – independently of one another. In the end, the linguists at the University of Cologne succeeded in partially deciphering the writing system in collaboration with the Tajik archaeologist Dr Bobomullo Bobomulloev, who was instrumental in the discovery and documentation of the bilingual.

Success 200 years after the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs

The team applied a methodology based on the way unknown scripts have been deciphered in the past, i.e. the Egyptian hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone, ancient Persian cuneiform script or Greek Linear B script: Thanks to the known content of the bilingual inscription found in Tajikistan (Bactrian and unknown Kushan script) and the trilingual inscription from Afghanistan (Gandhari or Middle Indo-Aryan, Bactrian and unknown Kushan script), Bonmann, Halfmann and Korobzow were able to gradually draw conclusions about the type of writing and language.

The breakthrough was finally made possible by the royal name Vema Takhtu, which appeared in both Bactrian parallel texts, and the title ‘King of Kings’, which could be identified in the corresponding sections in the unknown Kushan script. The title especially proved to be a good indicator of the underlying language. Step by step, using the Bactrian parallel text, the linguists were able to analyse further character sequences and determine the phonetic values of individual characters.

Key to a better understanding of Kushan culture

According to the research group, the Kushan script recorded a completely unknown Middle Iranian language, which is neither identical to Bactrian nor to the language known as Khotanese Saka, which was once spoken in western China. The language probably occupies a middle position in the development between these languages. It could be either the language of the settled population of northern Bactria (on a part of the territory of today’s Tajikistan) or the language of certain nomadic peoples of Inner Asia (the Yuèzhī), who originally lived in northwestern China. For a certain period of time, it apparently served as one of the official languages of the Kushan Empire alongside Bactrian, Gandhari/Middle Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit. As a preliminary name, the researchers propose the term ‘Eteo-Tocharian’ to describe the newly identified Iranian language.

The group is planning future research trips to Central Asia in close cooperation with Tajik archaeologists, as new finds of further inscriptions are to be expected and promising potential sites have already been located. First author Svenja Bonmann remarked, “Our decipherment of this script can help enhance our understanding of the language and cultural history of Central Asia and the Kushan Empire, similar to the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs or Mayan glyphs for our understanding of ancient Egypt or Mayan civilization.”