Decorating the living space, objects, body and clothes with colour is a widespread human practice. While the habitual use of red mineral pigments (such as iron-oxide, e.g., ochre) by anatomically modern humans started in Africa about 140,000 years ago, the earliest documentation of the use of organic plant or animal-based red pigments is known from only 6,000 years ago. Here is reported the oldest reliable evidence of organic red pigment use 15,000 years ago by the first sedentary hunter-gatherers in the Levant. SEM-EDS and Raman Spectroscopy analyses of 10 red-stained shell beads enabled us to detect and describe the use of a colourant made of Rubiaceae plants roots (Rubia spp., Asperula spp., Gallium spp.) to colour personal adornments from the Early Natufian of Kebara cave, Mount Carmel, Israel. This adds a previously unknown behavioural aspect of Natufian societies, namely a well-established tradition of non-dietary plant processing at the beginning of the sedentary lifestyle. Through a combined multidisciplinary approach, this study broadens the perspectives on the ornamental practices and the chaînes opératoires of pigmenting materials during a crucial period in human history.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
In Prehispanic Cancun, immigrants were treated just like Maya locals
Families moved residence across Mesoamerica and integrated into new societies
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EL REY ARCHAEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE TYPE PALACE WITH COLUMNS. THIS KIND OF STRUCTURE WAS COMMON IN THE EAST COAST OF THE PENINSULA OF YUCATAN DURING AD 1200-1520.
view moreCREDIT: ALLAN ORTEGA-MUÑOZ, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)
Ancient people immigrated to Cancun Island and were treated just like locals, according to a study published October 25, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrea Cucina of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, Mexico and colleagues.
The Late Postclassic (AD 1200-1500) in the northern Maya lowlands was a period of major changes, including the development of many settlements along the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, influenced in part by expanded trade routes. Previous research has found that these settlements were home to many non-local individuals, but it remains unclear whether these people were treated as “foreigners” or if they were integrated into local society.
In this study, Cucina and colleagues analyzed the remains of 50 individuals from two archaeological sites on Cancun Island dating to the Late Postclassic. Investigating strontium isotope signatures in teeth, the team determined that seven of these individuals appear to have been born elsewhere in the Maya lowlands, not local to these sites. However, examination of carbon isotopes (as a proxy for diet) and the construction of the graves of these individuals found no significant difference between locals and non-locals, suggesting that they were all treated similarly in terms of the food they ate and how they were buried.
These results suggest that these non-local individuals had integrated into local culture despite being from other regions. The fact that the non-local people included adults and children suggests that whole families, not just individuals, were in the habit of moving residence. One notable limitation of this study is that these techniques cannot detect “second generation immigrants”, a potentially valuable source of information that will have to be investigated using different methods. Analyzing patterns of mobility in Prehispanic Mesoamerica is essential for a thorough understanding of cultural networks of the time.
The authors add: “In the Postclassic period (AD 1200-1520) the east coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula saw the arrival of foreign people, who were assumed, based on archaeological and architectural records, to come from several locations in central Mexico. However, the current research shows migration from within the Maya cultural region (from what is now Belize, Peten, Guatemala and other parts of the Yucatan Peninsula). Migration for economic, environmental, political or kinship considerations is a familiar part of the human experience, and the current study documents the past movement and integration of individuals, and possibly entire families, into new communities. People may have relocated for similar reasons as they do today—for economic, environmental, political or kinship considerations.”
The freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292022
Climate change likely impacted human populations in the Neolithic and Bronze Age
Harsher European climates were associated with decreased populations and increased social inequality
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THE SCHNEIDERBERG NEAR BAALBERGE (SAXONY-ANHALT, GERMANY) IS A BURIAL MOUND BUILT IN THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD WHICH WAS ENLARGED SEVERAL TIMES. ONE EXTENSION TOOK PLACE AROUND 2000 BCE AND CONTAINED A STRIKINGLY RICHLY FURNISHED BURIAL. IT IS ONE OF A WHOLE SERIES OF BURIALS OF THIS KIND IN THE REGION AROUND THE HARZ MOUNTAINS, DATING FROM A PERIOD OF UNFAVORABLE CLIMATIC CONDITIONS. THE LINKING OF DATA ON DEMOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT WITH REGIONAL CLIMATE DATA AND ACTUAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS IN THE STUDY PROVIDES NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF CLIMATE FLUCTUATIONS AND SOCIAL CHANGES IN CENTRAL EUROPE BETWEEN 5500 AND 3500 YEARS AGO.
view moreCREDIT: JOHANNES MÜLLER, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
Human populations in Neolithic Europe fluctuated with changing climates, according to a study published October 25, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ralph Großmann of Kiel University, Germany and colleagues.
The archaeological record is a valuable resource for exploring the relationship between humans and the environment, particularly how each is affected by the other. In this study, researchers examined Central European regions rich in archaeological remains and geologic sources of climate data, using these resources to identify correlations between human population trends and climate change.
The three regions examined are the Circumharz region of central Germany, the Czech Republic/Lower Austria region, and the Northern Alpine Foreland of southern Germany. Researchers compiled over 3400 published radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites in these regions to serve as indicators of ancient populations, following the logic that more dates are available from larger populations leaving behind more materials. Climate data came from cave formations in these regions which provide datable information about ancient climate conditions. These data span 3550-1550 BC, from the Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age.
The study found a notable correlation between climate and human populations. During warm and wet times, populations tended to increase, likely bolstered by improved crops and economies. During cold and dry times, populations often decreased, sometimes experiencing major cultural shifts with potential evidence of increasing social inequality, such as the emergence of high status “princely burials” of some individuals in the Circumharz region.
These results suggest that at least some of the trends in human populations over time can be attributed to the effects of changing climates. The authors acknowledge that these data are susceptible to skewing by limitations of the archaeological record in these regions, and that more data will be important to support these results. This type of study is crucial for understanding human connectivity to the environment and the impacts of changing climates on human cultures.
The authors add: “Between 5500 and 3500 years ago, climate was a major factor in population development in the regions around the Harz Mountains, in the northern Alpine foreland and in the region of what is now the Czech Republic and Austria. However, not only the population size, but also the social structures changed with climate fluctuations.”
The freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0291956
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Who were the first modern humans to settle in Europe?
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SKULL FRAGMENT FOUND AT BURAN KAYA III IN CRIMEA, BELONGING TO AN INDIVIDUAL DATING BACK TO APPROXIMATELY 37,000 YEARS AGO.
view moreCREDIT: © EVA-MARIA GEIGL/IJM/CNRS
Before modern humans settled definitively in Europe, other human populations left Africa for Europe beginning approximately 60,000 years ago, albeit without settling for the long term. This was due to a major climatic crisis 40,000 years ago, combined with a super-eruption originating from the Phlegraean Fields volcanic area near current-day Naples, subsequently precipitating a decline in ancient European populations. To determine who the first modern humans to settle definitively in Europe were, a team led by CNRS scientists1 analysed the genome of two skull fragments from the Buran Kaya III site in Crimea dating to 36,000 and 37,000 years ago. By comparing them to DNA sequences from human genome databases, they revealed the genetic proximity between these individuals and both current and ancient Europeans, especially those associated with the Gravettian culture, known for producing female figurines referred to as “Venuses”, whose apogee in Europe came between 31,000 and 23,000 years ago. The stone tools found at Buran Kaya III also resemble some Gravettian assemblages. The individuals studied here therefore contributed both genetically and technologically to the population that gave rise to this civilisation around 5,000 years later. This research, which was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on 23 October, documents the first arrival of the ancestors of Europeans.
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Women were hunters, too
It’s a familiar story to many of us: In prehistoric times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Women were not physically capable of hunting because their anatomy was different from men. And because men were hunters, they drove human evolution.
But that story’s not true, according to research by University of Delaware anthropology professor Sarah Lacy, which was recently published in Scientific American and in two papers in the journal American Anthropologist.
Lacy and her colleague Cara Ocobock from the University of Notre Dame examined the division of labor according to sex during the Paleolithic era, approximately 2.5 million to 12,000 years ago. Through a review of current archaeological evidence and literature, they found little evidence to support the idea that roles were assigned specifically to each sex. The team also looked at female physiology and found that women were not only physically capable of being hunters, but that there is little evidence to support that they were not hunting.
Lacy is a biological anthropologist who studies the health of early humans, and Ocobock is a physiologist who makes analogies between modern day and the fossil record. Friends in graduate school, they collaborated after “complaining about a number of papers that had come out that used this default null hypothesis that cavemen had strong gendered division of labor, the males hunt, females gather things. We were like, ‘Why is that the default? We have so much evidence that that's not the case,’” Lacy said.
The researchers found examples of equality for both sexes in ancient tools, diet, art, burials and anatomy.
“People found things in the past and they just automatically gendered them male and didn't acknowledge the fact that everyone we found in the past has these markers, whether in their bones or in stone tools that are being placed in their burials. We can't really tell who made what, right? We can't say, ‘Oh, only males flintknap,’ because there's no signature left on the stone tool that tells us who made it,” Lacy said, referring to the method by which stone tools were made. “But from what evidence we do have, there appears to be almost no sex differences in roles.”
The team also examined the question of whether anatomical and physiological differences between men and women prevented women from hunting. They found that men have an advantage over women in activities requiring speed and power, such as sprinting and throwing, but that women have an advantage over men in activities requiring endurance, such as running. Both sets of activities were essential to hunting in ancient times.
The team highlighted the role of the hormone estrogen, which is more prominent in women than men, as a key component in conferring that advantage. Estrogen can increase fat metabolism, which gives muscles a longer-lasting energy source and can regulate muscle breakdown, preventing muscles from wearing down. Scientists have traced estrogen receptors, proteins that direct the hormone to the right place in the body, back to 600 million years ago.
“When we take a deeper look at the anatomy and the modern physiology and then actually look at the skeletal remains of ancient people, there's no difference in trauma patterns between males and females, because they're doing the same activities,” Lacy said.
During the Paleolithic era, most people lived in small groups. To Lacy, the idea that only part of the group would hunt didn’t make sense.
“You live in such a small society. You have to be really, really flexible,” she said. “Everyone has to be able to pick up any role at any time. It just seems like the obvious thing, but people weren't taking it that way.”
Man the Hunter
The theory of men as hunters and women as gatherers first gained notoriety in 1968, when anthropologists Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore published Man the Hunter, a collection of scholarly papers presented at a symposium in 1966. The authors made the case that hunting advanced human evolution by adding meat to prehistoric diets, contributing to the growth of bigger brains, compared to our primate cousins. The authors assumed all hunters were male.
Lacy points to that gender bias by previous scholars as a reason why the concept became widely accepted in academia, eventually spreading to popular culture. Television cartoons, feature films, museum exhibits and textbooks reinforced the idea. When female scholars published research to the contrary, their work was largely ignored or devalued.
“There were women who were publishing about this in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, but their work kept getting relegated to, ‘Oh, that's a feminist critique or a feminist approach,’” Lacy said. “This was before any of the work on genetics and a lot of the work on physiology and the role of estrogen had come out. We wanted to both lift back up the arguments that they had already made and add to it all the new stuff.”
Lacy said the “man the hunter” theory continues to influence the discipline. While she acknowledges that much more research needs to be done about the lives of prehistoric people — especially women — she hopes her view that labor was divided among both sexes will become the default approach for research in the future.
For 3 million years, males and females both participated in subsistence gathering for their communities, and dependence on meat and hunting was driven by both sexes, Lacy said.
“It's not something that only men did and that therefore male behavior drove evolution,” she said. “What we take as de facto gender roles today are not inherent, do not characterize our ancestors. We were a very egalitarian species for millions of years in many ways.”
JOURNAL
American Anthropologist
Dingoes given ‘almost-human’ status in pre-colonial Australia
It's said that a dog is a man’s best friend, but the wild dingo is much maligned in Australia. This may not always have been the case though, with new research led by experts at The Australian National University and The University of Western Australia suggesting that dingoes were buried – and even domesticated – by First Nations people prior to European colonisation.
The researchers examined remains at the Curracurrang archaeological site, south of Sydney, where radiocarbon dating of dingo bones revealed the animals were buried alongside humans as far back as 2,000 years ago.
The care taken to bury the animals suggests a closer relationship between humans and dingoes than many previously realised, according to lead researcher Dr Loukas Koungoulos.
“Not all camp dingoes were given burial rites, but in all areas in which the burials are recorded, the process and methods of disposal are identical or almost identical to those associated with human rites in the same area,” Dr Koungoulos said.
“This reflects the close bond between people and dingoes and their almost-human status.”
The burials weren’t the only sign that Australia’s First Peoples domesticated wild dingoes, however, with severely worn teeth found at the site suggesting a diet heavy in large bones, likely from scraps from human meals.
The researchers also identified remains of dingoes of varying ages at the site – from pups to animals aged six to eight years. This shows that First Nations people didn’t just care for young dingoes before they returned to the wild, but that they built much more substantial relationships, the researchers argued.
“These findings mark an important development in our understanding of the relationship between Australia’s First Peoples and dingoes,” co-author Professor Susan O’Connor said.
“By the time Europeans settled in Australia, the bond between dingoes and Indigenous people was entrenched. This is well known by Indigenous people and has been documented by observers.
“Our work shows that they had long-lasting relationships prior to European colonisation, not just the transient, temporary associations recorded during the colonial era.”
The research is published in PLOS One.
Thursday, October 19, 2023
The encounter between Neanderthals and Sapiens as told by their genomes
About 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals, who had lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the western part of the Eurasian continent, gave way to Homo sapiens, who had arrived from Africa. This replacement was not sudden, and the two species coexisted for a few millennia, resulting in the integration of Neanderthal DNA into the genome of Sapiens. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have analyzed the distribution of the portion of DNA inherited from Neanderthals in the genomes of humans (Homo sapiens) over the last 40,000 years. These statistical analyses revealed subtle variations in time and geographical space. This work, published in the journal Science Advances, helps us to understand the common history of these two species.
Thanks to genome sequencing and comparative analysis, it is established that Neanderthals and Sapiens interbred and that these encounters were sometimes fruitful, leading to the presence of about 2% of DNA of Neanderthal origin in present-day Eurasians. However, this percentage varies slightly between regions of Eurasia, since DNA from Neanderthals is somewhat more abundant in the genomes of Asian populations than in those of European populations.
One hypothesis to explain this difference is that natural selection would not have had the same effect on genes of Neanderthal origin in Asian and European populations. Mathias Currat’s team, senior lecturer in the Department of Genetics and Evolution at the UNIGE Faculty of Science, is working on another hypothesis. His previous work, based on computer simulations, suggests that such differences could be explained by migratory flows: when a migrant population hybridizes with a local population, in their area of cohabitation, the proportion of DNA of the local population tends to increase with distance from the point of departure of the migrant population.
Europe: a territory shared by both species
In the case of Sapiens and Neanderthals, the hypothesis is that the further one moves away from Africa, Homo sapiens’ point of origin, the greater the proportion of DNA from Neanderthal, a population mainly located in Europe. To test this hypothesis, the authors used a database made available by Harvard Medical School that includes more than 4,000 genomes from individuals who have lived in Eurasia over the past 40 millennia.
‘‘Our study is mainly focused on European populations since we are obviously dependent on the discovery of bones and the state of conservation of DNA. It turns out that archaeological excavations have been much more numerous in Europe, which greatly facilitates the study of the genomes of European populations,’’ explains Claudio Quilodrán, senior research and teaching assistant in the Department of Genetics and Evolution at the UNIGE Faculty of Science, and co-first author of the study.
Statistical analyses revealed that, in the period following the dispersal of Homo sapiensfrom Africa, the genomes of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who lived in Europe contained a slightly higher proportion of DNA of Neanderthal origin than the genomes of those who lived in Asia. This result is contrary to the current situation but in agreement with paleontological data, since the presence of Neanderthals was mainly reported in western Eurasia (no Neanderthal bones have been discovered further east than the Altai region of Siberia).
The arrival of Anatolian farmers modifies genomes
Subsequently, during the transition to the Neolithic, i.e. the transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the farmer lifestyle, 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, the study shows a decline in the proportion of DNA of Neanderthal origin in the genomes of European populations, resulting in a slightly lower percentage than that of Asian populations (as currently observed). This decrease coincided with the arrival in Europe of the first farmers from Anatolia (Turkey’s western peninsula) and the Aegean area, who themselves carried a lower proportion of DNA of Neanderthal origin than the inhabitants of Europe at the same time. By mixing with the populations of Europe, the genomes of farmers from Anatolia ‘‘diluted’’ Neanderthal DNA a little more.
This study shows that the analysis of ancient genomes, coupled with archaeological data, makes it possible to trace different stages in the history of hybridized species. ‘‘In addition, we are beginning to have enough data to describe more and more precisely the percentage of DNA of Neanderthal origin in the genome of Sapiens at certain periods of prehistory. Our work can therefore serve as a reference for future studies to more easily detect genetic profiles that deviate from the average and might therefore disclose an advantageous or disadvantageous effect,’’ concludes Mathias Currat, last author of the study.
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
New dating of cave art reveals history of Puerto Rican people
In the karstic caves of Puerto Rico, cave art paints the rock walls. Previous research has assigned ages to this art based on the ages of nearby archaeological artifacts within the caves, but these ages are relative and may not reflect the true timing of the art creation.
Now, a new study to be presented Wednesday at the Geological Society of America’s GSA Connects 2023 meeting shows that researchers have refined the age of this rupestrian art by dating the pigment in the drawings. Angel Acosta-Colon, a geophysicist at University of Puerto Rico (UPR) at Arecibo, will present the findings.
In Puerto Rican caves, there are three types of art: petroglyphs (carved into the rock), pyroglyphs (drawn from the burnt remnants of objects), and pictographs, or cave drawings. Acosta-Colon says these pictograph drawings are in organic black material, perfect for radiocarbon dating.
Acosta-Colon and his colleague Reniel Rodríguez, an archaeologist at UPR Utuado, visited 11 different caves on La Isla Grande, the big island of the Puerto Rican archipelago. From these caves, they sampled 61 pigments in pictographic art.
The researchers were thoughtful about which art to sample, sampling art that is commonly seen and not unique. “[The pictographs] are not an infinite resource—they are limited,” explains Acosta-Colon. “So if we touch one, we touch it forever and for the future generations, we are not allowing the pleasure of seeing what we see.”
They were also conservative about how much of the material they collected, as sampling destroys a small area of the art. Acosta-Colon says that they take 1 to 2 mg samples from the black markings on cave walls for their analyses.
They ran the microsamples through the Center for Applied Isotope Studies (AIS) at the University of Georgia to get carbon-14 ages for the artwork. The earliest pictographs of abstract, geometrical shapes were dated to ca. 700–400 BCE, coinciding with the Archaic Age.
“That is very important to us because when the European Invasion came to Puerto Rico, they put in a document that our precolonial population was only there for 400 to 500 years,” says Acosta-Colon. “So this proves that we were here [thousands] of years before the European Invasion, and that is documented in science, not context archeology.”
They found that more anthropological-type drawings—with simple shapes of human bodies—were drawn between 200 and 400 CE. “We have gaps of time and that's interesting because we don't know what happened,” says Acosta-Colon, adding that they could fill those gaps with more sampling around the island.
The research team also found more detailed human and animal drawings that were created between 700 and 800 CE. These types of drawings continued throughout the next century, extending through European colonization (around 1500 CE), and include images of horses, ships, and other animals.
Within the array of animals, they discovered a particularly unusual find. “We have an image that looks like a lion—but in Puerto Rico, we don’t have lions,” says Acosta-Colon. When he and Rodriguez considered who could have seen a lion, they thought about the slaves that were brought to the island by the Spanish.
The idea, he notes, is controversial. “But the age of the art is around 1500,” he says. “We have data to corroborate what, I think, is one of the first slave art in caves in Puerto Rico.”
Understanding when these pictographs were created helps explain the history of the Puerto Rican people, says Acosta-Colon. “Normally we get the European history version of Puerto Rico, but this is direct evidence that the story in Puerto Rico didn’t start with the European Invasion, it started much, much earlier in history,” he notes.
He believes that studying more cave art sites may push back the human history record to 5000 BCE. This art, along with archeological finds, can reconstruct the “history of our people, from Archaic people, to the Taino people to the pre-Columbian time.
European ancestors ate seaweed and freshwater plants
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THE STONE BUILDING IS ISBISTER IN ORKNEY, ALSO KNOWN AS TOMB OF THE EAGLES WHERE SOME OF THE SEAWEED SAMPLES ANALYSED IN THE STUDY CAME FROM.
view moreCREDIT: PROFESSOR KAREN HARDY
For many people seaweed holds a reputation as a superfood, heralded for its health benefits and sustainability, but it appears our European ancestors were ahead of the game and were consuming the nutrient-rich plant for thousands of years.
Researchers say they have found “definitive” archaeological evidence that seaweeds and other local freshwater plants were eaten in the mesolithic, through the Neolithic transition to farming and into the Early Middle Ages, suggesting that these resources, now rarely eaten in Europe, only became marginal much more recently.
The study, published in Nature Communications, reveals that while aquatic resources were exploited, the archaeological evidence for seaweed is only rarely recorded and is almost always considered in terms of non-edible uses like fuel, food wrappings or fertilisers.
Historical accounts report laws related to collection of seaweed in Iceland, Brittany and Ireland dating to the 10th Century, while sea kale is mentioned by Pliny as a sailor’s anti-scurvy remedy.
By the 18th Century seaweed was considered as famine food, and although seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants continue to be economically important in parts of Asia, both nutritionally and medicinally, there is little consumption in Europe.
The team, led by archaeologists from the universities of Glasgow and York, examined biomarkers extracted from dental calculus from 74 individuals from 28 archaeological sites across Europe, from north Scotland to southern Spain, which revealed “direct evidence for widespread consumption of seaweed and submerged aquatic and freshwater plants.”
Samples where biomolecular evidence survived revealed consumption of red, green or brown seaweeds, or freshwater aquatic plants, with one sample from Orkney also containing evidence for a Brassica, most likely sea kale.
There are approximately 10,000 different species of seaweeds in the world, however only 145 species are eaten today, principally in Asia.
The researchers hope that their study will highlight the potential for including more seaweeds and other local freshwater plants in our diets today - helping Europeans to become healthier and more sustainable.
Karen Hardy, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Glasgow and Principal Investigator of the Powerful Plants project, said: “Today, seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants are virtually absent from traditional, western diets and their marginalisation as they gradually changed from food to famine resources and animal fodder, probably occurred over a long period of time, as has also been detected elsewhere with some plants.
“Our study also highlights the potential for rediscovery of alternative, local, sustainable food resources that may contribute to addressing the negative health and environmental effects of over-dependence on a small number of mass-produced agricultural products that is a dominant feature of much of today’s western diet, and indeed the global long-distance food supply more generally.”
“It is very exciting to be able to show definitively that seaweeds and other local freshwater plants were eaten across a long period in our European past.”
Co author on the paper, Dr Stephen Buckley, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said “The biomolecular evidence in this study is over three thousand years earlier than historical evidence in the Far East.
“Not only does this new evidence show that seaweed was being consumed in Europe during the Mesolithic Period around 8,000 years ago when marine resources were known to have been exploited, but that it continued into the Neolithic when it is usually assumed that the introduction of farming led to the abandonment of marine dietary resources.
“This strongly suggests that the nutritional benefits of seaweed were sufficiently well understood by these ancient populations that they maintained their dietary link with the sea.”
JOURNAL
Nature Communications
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
A non-exploitative economy favored the splendor of the Iberian Peninsula's Copper Age communities
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GRINDING TOOL FROM THE CHALCOLITHIC SETTLEMENT OF CASTELO DE CORTE JOÃO MARQUES, ALGARVE (PHOTO JOSÉ PAULO RUAS, MUSEU NACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGIA, PORTUGAL).
view moreCREDIT: JOSÉ PAULO RUAS, MUSEU NACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGIA, PORTUGAL
- A study by UAB researchers describes the productive forces of these communities as being very diverse, both in the type of tasks performed and in intensity, with a high degree of cooperation and no apparent signs of dependence between the different types of settlements or of political centralization.
- The work, based on the analysis of macrolithic tool data and the additional support of bioarchaeological information, allows to confirm the large ditched enclosure of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville) as a macro-populated area, inhabited by thousands of people, and not only as a place of worship.
The richness and productive diversity of the Chalcolithic communities of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula, dating back 5,100 to 4,200 years ago, were produced without signs of economic exploitation or marked social hierarchies and with a high degree of cooperation. This economic organization, based on a great variety of resources and tasks, was present in almost all settlements, independently of their type or dimensions, and would have been crucial for the great social, architectural and demographic dynamics and development reached by the societies of the peninsular Copper Age.
This is the conclusion of researchers from the Department of Prehistory of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) Marina Eguíluz, Selina Delgado-Raack and Roberto Risch in a study published in the Journal of World Prehistory, in which they analysed data on large stone tools (macrolithic artifacts) from the Copper Age to learn about the economic pattern of the different types of settlements that existed.
"Determining whether these settlements were distinguished by specific modes of production, with a characteristic economy between monumental ditched or fortified enclosures versus those located on hills and more open spaces, is fundamental to the ongoing debate on whether or not it is relevant to talk about social complexity when we refer to the Chalcolithic societies of the Iberian Peninsula and their political organization," explains Marina Eguíluz.
The Copper Age communities of the Iberian Peninsula produced one of the most important archaeological records of late prehistory, but at the same time also one of the most puzzling for specialists. How and why they achieved this great economic and social complexity, made evident by the number and size of the settlements, the creative capacity reflected in their objects, and the enormous circulation of goods that took place, is still a matter of debate.
Much variability and no signs of political centralization
The study describes the productive forces of these communities based, above all, on the macrolithic artifacts, essential tools for achieving a large part of the tasks undertaken in the Copper Age. The result is the finding of a great variability, both in the type of tasks performed and in their intensity, and without apparent signs of political dependence or centralization. This variability prevailed over specialization, particularly in cereal production, and is not explained by aspects such as geographical location, form of occupation or monumentality.
There is nothing to indicate that the fortified settlements stored large amounts of surplus and dominated the ditched settlements or vice versa, researchers point out. "What we observe is that productive diversity and, one would think, the exchange of products, knowledge and people between communities was fundamental in this period of exceptional economic, social and creative development," says Selina Delgado-Raak.
Each community would have organized its economy in the most productive way possible, taking into account its surroundings, population size and social conditions. The large ditched settlements had all the tools necessary to carry out the routine work of a community, without specific accumulations of certain materials, such as cereals or arrowheads.
This result is especially relevant in the case of the monumental site of Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), with an extension of more than 250 hectares and multiple ditches. "The study of more than 150 macrolithic artifacts from the northern part of the site has made it possible to correlate subsistence activities such as milling or stone and fiber-work with habitation structures, confirming that this was a macro settlement occupied by thousands of inhabitants and not a place of worship," said Marina Eguíluz.
Cooperative affluent societies
The strategy of productive diversity detected would be in line with what researchers have called 'cooperative affluent societies' of the late prehistory of Europe and the Middle East. "These societies were characterized by generating considerable material wealth and at the same time limiting the possibility of exploitation of the labor force and, consequently, the production of surplus value, contrary to what happened later with the Argar society," explains Roberto Risch. "Their organization challenges a unique thought of our times, according to which the production of wealth of any historical era requires the presence of a ruling class or group," adds the researcher.
The organization proposed by the researchers does not imply that violence was a foreign element to Chalcolithic Iberia. In fact, the findings at some sites suggest that there was, "but it was not an omnipresent aspect, a fact that is also confirmed by the anthropological record. Instead of a means to subjugate the population and demand obedience, violence could have been a strategy to achieve the opposite, i.e., to defend a rich society with a high degree of cooperation," says Roberto Risch.
In the study, the researchers analysed macrolithic artifacts that Copper Age groups from eighteen sites used for a multitude of tasks, such as grinding cereals, processing food, crushing minerals, cutting stones, waterproofing ceramics, dressing leather, forging and sharpening metal tools and weapons, felling trees and working wood, or butchering animals. "These are key tools for understanding the economy of a society and how tasks are distributed," explain the researchers. The results obtained are in line with other bioarchaeological data (botany, fauna, paleo-nutritional) available for sites of the same period.
JOURNAL
Journal of World Prehistory
Saturday, October 14, 2023
How an ancient society in the Sahara Desert rose and fell with groundwater
GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
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MAP LOCATION AND SATELLITE AERIAL IMAGERY SHOWING THE REGION AND LANDSCAPE WHERE ANCIENT SOCIETIES AND GARAMANTES LIVED. IMAGE FROM NASA/LUCA PIETRANERA.
view moreCREDIT: NASA/LUCA PIETRANERA: With its low quantities of rain and soaring high temperatures, the Sahara Desert is often regarded as one of the most extreme and least habitable environments on Earth. While the Sahara was periodically much greener in the distant past, an ancient society living in a climate very similar to today’s found a way to harvest water in the seemingly dry Sahara—thriving until the water ran out.
New research that will be presented Monday, 16 Oct., at the Geological Society of America’s GSA Connects 2023 meeting describes how a series of serendipitous environmental factors allowed an ancient Saharan civilization, the Garamantian Empire, to extract groundwater hidden in the subsurface, sustaining the society for nearly a millennia until the water was depleted.
“Societies rise and fall at the pleasure of the physical system, such that there are special features that let humanity grow up there,” says Frank Schwartz, professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University and lead author of the research study.
Monsoon rains had transformed the Sahara into a comparatively lush environment between 11,000 and 5,000 years ago, providing surface water resources and habitable environments for civilizations to thrive. When the monsoon rains stopped 5,000 years ago, the Sahara turned back into a desert, and civilizations retreated from the area—aside from an unusual outlier.
The Garamantes lived in the southwestern Libyan desert from 400 BCE to 400 CE under nearly the same hyper-arid conditions that exist there today and were the first urbanized society to become established in a desert that lacked a continuously flowing river. The surface water lakes and rivers of the “Green Sahara'' times were long gone by the time the Garamantes arrived, but there was luckily water stored underground in a large sandstone aquifer—potentially one of the largest aquifers in the world, according to Schwartz.
Camel trade routes from Persia through the Sahara brought the Garamantes technology on how to harvest groundwater using foggara or qanats. This method involved digging a slightly inclined tunnel into a hillside, to just below the water table. Groundwater would then flow down the tunnel and into irrigation systems. The Garamantes dug a total of 750 km of underground tunnels and vertical access shafts to harvest groundwater, with the greatest construction activity occurring between 100 BCE and 100 CE.
Schwartz integrates prior archaeological research with hydrologic analyses to understand how the local topography, geology, and unique runoff and recharge conditions produced the ideal hydrogeologic conditions for the Garamantes to be able to extract groundwater.
“Their qanats shouldn’t have actually worked, because the ones in Persia have annual water recharge from snowmelt, and there was zero recharge here,” says Schwartz.
The Garamantes had a significant streak of environmental luck, with the earlier wetter climate, appropriate topography, and unique groundwater settings, which made groundwater available with foggara technology. However, their luck ran out when groundwater levels fell below the foggara tunnels.
According to Schwartz, two trends are particularly concerning. First, extreme environments are becoming more prevalent around the world in countries like Iran. Second, it has become more common to use groundwater unsustainably.
“As you look at modern examples like the San Joaquin Valley, people are using the groundwater up at a faster rate than it’s being replenished,” says Schwartz. “California had a great wet winter this year, but that followed 20 years of drought. If the propensity for drier years continues, California will ultimately run into the same problem as the Garamantians. It can be expensive and ultimately impractical to replace depleted groundwater supplies.”
With no new water to replenish the aquifer and no surface water available, lack of water led to the downfall of the Garamantian Empire. The Garamantes serve as a cautionary tale for the power of groundwater as a resource, and the danger of its overuse.
Friday, October 13, 2023
About 2 million years ago, Homo Erectus lived at high altitudes and produced both Oldowan and Acheulean tools
Two million years ago, Homo erectus had expanded beyond the lowland savanna environments of East Africa and into the high-altitude regions of the Ethiopian highlands, where they produced both Oldowan and Acheulean tools, according to a new study. It presents a reanalysis of an early hominin fossil first discovered in 1981. The findings provide novel insights into the evolution, migration and adaptive capacities of early human ancestors. In Africa, the limited number of hominin fossils found in direct association with stone tools has hindered attempts to link Homo habilis and Homo erectus with particular stone tool industries, namely Oldowan or Acheulean.
One region critical to studying this question is a collection of sites known as the Melka Kunture complex – a cluster of prehistoric sites on the highlands of Ethiopia at an altitude of ~2000 meters above sea level. In 1981, a fossilized infant mandible was discovered at the Garba IV site and in direct association with Oldowan lithic tools. However, the hominin species the fossil represents has been the subject of debate.
In this study, Margherita Mussi and colleagues evaluate the geochronological context of the Garba IV site and re-assess the taxonomic affinity of the fossil mandible. Using synchrotron imaging to examine the internal morphology of the unerupted teeth in the Garba IV mandible, Mussi et al. confirm that it belonged to H. erectus. Moreover, combining preliminary argon-argon dates for the site’s stratigraphy with a more recently published magnetostratigraphic analysis, the authors argue that the fossil is around 2 million years old, making it one of the earliest H. erectus specimens yet discovered and the only one in clear association with an abundant Oldowan lithic industry. The overlying Acheulean tool-bearing strata, which date to ~1.95 million years ago, represent the earliest known evidence of Acheulean lithic technology. According to Mussi et al., the findings demonstrate that by 2 million years ago, H. erectus adapted early and quickly to a high-altitude mountain environment, first producing Oldowan technology and then Acheulean technology.
JOURNAL
Science
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Pre- Columbian cultures of the Caribbean consumed a diversity of plants, with peanuts, papaya, maize, and even cotton and tobacco
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COPROLITES AND ARTIFACTS RECOVERED FROM THE HUECOID AND SALADOID ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES.
view moreCREDIT: CHANLATTE AND NARGANES, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
DNA analysis of mummified poop reveals two pre-Columbian Caribbean cultures ate a wide variety of plants, like maize, sweet potato, and peanuts—and tobacco and cotton traces were detected too, according to a study published October 11, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jelissa Reynoso-García from the University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, and colleagues.
Mummified poop, or coprolites, can reveal clues to diet and lifestyle. In this study, Reynoso-García and colleagues analyzed plant DNA isolated from coprolites sampled from archeological sites of two pre-Columbian cultures (Huecoid and Saladoid) to see what these peoples ate and drank.
The authors carefully extracted and analyzed plant DNA from ten coprolite samples at the La Hueca archaeological site in Puerto Rico. They compared the extracted plant DNA against a database of diverse coprolite samples and contemporary plant DNA sequences.
The results suggest that Huecoid and Saladoid people enjoyed a diverse and sophisticated food system, with sweet potato, wild and domesticated peanut, chili peppers, a domesticated strain of tomatoes, papaya and maize all detected. The analysis also detected tobacco, possibly due to the use of chewing tobacco, pulverized tobacco inhalation, or tobacco as a food additive for medicinal and/or hallucinogenic purposes. Also surprisingly, cotton was detected—perhaps due to the use of ground cotton seeds for oil, or because women wet the cotton strands with their saliva leaving strands in the mouth while weaving. The authors did not find evidence of cassava/manioc/yucca (Manihot esculenta) consumption, though this plant was often reported as a staple food in the pre-Columbian Caribbean by chroniclers. The authors note that the elaborate grating and drying cassava preparation techniques reported in these accounts might have degraded the plant DNA, or that this might have been a seasonal staple food.
Due to food preparation techniques, the fact that each coprolite sample is only a snapshot of what one specific person had been recently eating, and the limitation that the authors were only able to identify plants also in current DNA sequence databases (not capturing any now-extinct, rare, or non-commercial crops) it’s likely that the Huecoid and Saladoid people ate other plants or fungi not noted here. Nevertheless, the authors hope this analysis gives further insight into the lives of pre-Columbian people of the Americas.
Dr. Toranzos adds: "Who would have thought that something that we avoid even looking at would contain so much information? It’s especially incredible that this is so even after thousands of years."
The freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292077