Excavated dolmen in Sweden one of the oldest in Scandinavia

 

 

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THE CHAMBER UNDER EXCAVATION. EAST SIDE MOULD REMOVED. THE PLASTIC TUBES ARE SAMPLES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL DNA.

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CREDIT: PHOTO: KARL-GÖRAN SJÖGREN

The first analysis results now confirm that the grave in Tiarp is one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden. “It’s an early grave which dates to the Early Neolithic period, about 3500 BCE,” says archaeologist Karl-Göran Sjögren. The researchers also noted that some parts of the people buried in the grave are missing, such as skulls and thigh bones, posing intriguing questions for archaeologists.

Last summer, archaeologists from Gothenburg University and Kiel University excavated a dolmen, a stone burial chamber, in Tiarp near Falköping in Sweden. The archaeologists judge that the grave has remained untouched since the Stone Age. However, the odd thing is that parts of the skeletons of the people buried are missing.

Skulls and large bones are missing and may have been removed from the grave. We don’t know whether that has to do with burial rituals or what’s behind it,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

Now that the researchers have examined the material from the grave, they have found that it contains bones from hands and feet, fragments of rib bones and teeth. But skulls and larger bones such as thigh and arm bones are very few.

“This differs from what we usually see in megalith graves, i.e. stone burial chambers  from the Neolithic period,” Karl-Göran Sjögren explains. “Usually, the bones that are missing are smaller bones from feet and hands.”

Torbjörn Ahlström, Professor of Osteology at Lund University, studied the bone finds. His conclusion is that the bones come from at least twelve people, including infants and the elderly. But the archaeologists don’t yet know why they died.

“We haven’t seen any injuries on the people buried so we don’t think violence is involved. But we are continuing to study their DNA and that will show whether they had any diseases,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

Falköping has long been known for its many passage graves dating from a somewhat later period, approximately 3300 BCE. Agriculture reached Falbygden in about 4000 BCE, i.e. about 500 years before the grave in Tiarp was built. In all likelihood, the people buried in the dolmen were farmers.

“They lived by growing grain and keeping animals and they consumed dairy products,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

Are the people buried in the grave related?

A number of samples were taken at the excavation last summer, including DNA from the skeletal remains.

“The preliminary DNA results show that the DNA in the bones is well preserved. This means we will be able to reconstruct the family relationships between the people in the grave and we are working on that now,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

Falbygden is known for its many traces of people from the Stone Age. There are more than 250 passage graves here, large graves built of blocks of stone.

“But this dolmen is older. It’s about 200 to 150 years older than the passage graves, making it one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden and across the whole of Scandinavia,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

There is another thing that makes the grave unique.

“It’s the way it is constructed. There’s a little niche at each end. This is unique for graves in Falbygden,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

The study is freely available as open access in Journal of Neolithic Archaeology. Tiarp Backgården. An Early Neolithic Dolmen in Falbygden, Sweden and Early Megalithic Tombs in South Scandinavia and Northern Central Europe.

https://doi.org/10.12766/jna.2023.8

Facts

• The grave in Tiarp Backgården in Falköping, was first found in 1929. It was studied by archaeologists at the time, and then again in 2014, which was when it was discovered that the grave was more or less intact and had bodies buried inside it.

• The archaeological excavation in Tiarp in summer 2023 was carried out jointly by Gothenburg and Kiel Universities. 

How did humans learn to walk?

 

The inner ear of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape reveals clues about the evolution of human movement

 

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THREE DIFFERENT VIEWS OF THE RECONSTRUCTED INNER EAR OF LUFENGPITHECUS.

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CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF YINAN ZHANG, INSTITUTE OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND PALEOANTHROPOLOGY, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

Humans and our closest relatives, living apes, display a remarkable diversity of types of locomotion—from walking upright on two legs to climbing in trees and walking using all four limbs. 

While scientists have long been intrigued by the question of how humans’ bipedal stance and movement evolved from a quadrupedal ancestor, neither past studies nor fossil records have permitted the reconstruction of a clear and definitive history of the early evolutionary stages that led to human bipedalism.

However, a new study, which centers on recently discovered evidence from skulls of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape, Lufengpithecus, offers important clues about the origins of bipedal locomotion courtesy of a novel method: analyzing its bony inner ear region using three-dimensional CT-scanning.  

“The semicircular canals, located in the skull between our brains and the external ear, are critical to providing our sense of balance and position when we move, and they provide a fundamental component of our locomotion that most people are probably unaware of,” explains Yinan Zhang, a doctoral student at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP) and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal the Innovation. “The size and shape of the semicircular canals correlate with how mammals, including apes and humans, move around their environment. Using modern imaging technologies, we were able to visualize the internal structure of fossil skulls and study the anatomical details of the semicircular canals to reveal how extinct mammals moved.”

“Our study points to a three-step evolution of human bipedalism,” adds Terry Harrison, a New York University anthropologist and one of the paper’s co-authors. “First, the earliest apes moved in the trees in a style that was most similar to aspects of the way that gibbons in Asia do today. Second, the last common ancestor of apes and humans was similar in its locomotor repertoire to Lufengpithecus, using a combination of climbing and clambering, forelimb suspension, arboreal bipedalism, and terrestrial quadrupedalism. It is from this broad ancestral locomotor repertoire that human bipedalism evolved.”

Most studies of the evolution of ape locomotion had focused on comparisons of the bones of the limbs, shoulders, pelvis, and spine and the way they are associated with the different types of locomotor behaviors seen in living apes and humans. However, the diversity of locomotor behaviors in living apes and the incompleteness of the fossil record have hampered the development of a clear picture of human bipedalism’s origins.

The skulls of Lufengpithecus—originally discovered in China’s Yunnan Province in the early 1980s—have given scientists the opportunity to address, in new ways, unanswered questions about the evolution of locomotion. However, the heavy compression and distortion of the skulls obscured the bony ear region and led previous researchers to believe that the delicate semicircular canals were not preserved.

To better explore this region, Zhang, Ni and Harrison, along with other researchers at IVPP and the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (YICRA), used three dimensional scanning technologies to illuminate these portions of the skulls to create a virtual reconstruction of the inner ear’s bony canals. They then compared these scans to those collected from other living and fossil apes and humans from Asia, Europe, and Africa. 

“Our analyses show that early apes shared a locomotor repertoire that was ancestral to human bipedalism,” explains IVPP Professor Xijun Ni, who led the project. “It appears that the inner ear provides a unique record of the evolutionary history of ape locomotion that offers an invaluable alternative to the study of the postcranial skeleton.”

“Most fossil apes and their inferred ancestors are intermediate in locomotor mode between gibbons and African apes,” adds Ni. “Later, the human lineage diverged from the great apes with the acquisition of bipedalism, as seen in Australopithecus, an early human relative from Africa.”

By studying the rate of evolutionary change in the bony labyrinth, the international team proposed that climate change may have been an important environmental catalyst in promoting the locomotor diversification of apes and humans. 

“Cooler global temperatures, associated with the build up of glacial ice sheets in the northern hemisphere approximately 3.2 million years ago, correspond with an uptick in the rate of change of the bony labyrinth and this may signal a rapid increase in the pace of ape and human locomotor evolution,” explains Harrison.

New research challenges hunter-gatherer narrative in the ancient Andes

 

 

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THE WILAMAYA PATJXA ARCHEOLOGICAL SITE IN PERU PRODUCED HUMAN REMAINS SHOWING THAT THE DIETS OF EARLY PEOPLE OF THE ANDES WERE PRIMARILY COMPOSED OF PLANT MATERIALS.

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CREDIT: RANDY HAAS

The oft-used description of early humans as “hunter-gatherers” should be changed to “gatherer-hunters,” at least in the Andes of South America, according to groundbreaking research led by a University of Wyoming archaeologist.

Archaeologists long thought that early human diets were meat based. However, Assistant Professor Randy Haas’ analysis of the remains of 24 individuals from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik'aya Patjxa burial sites in Peru shows that early human diets in the Andes Mountains were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.

The study, titled "Stable isotope chemistry reveals plant-dominant diet among early foragers on the Andean Altiplano," has been published by the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE. It applies methods in isotope chemistry and statistical modeling to unveil a surprising twist in early Andean societies and traditional hunter-gatherer narratives.

“Conventional wisdom holds that early human economies focused on hunting -- an idea that has led to a number of high-protein dietary fads such as the Paleodiet,” Haas says. “Our analysis shows that the diets were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.”

For these early humans of the Andes, spanning from 9,000 to 6,500 years ago, there is indeed evidence that hunting of large mammals provided some of their diets. But the new analysis of the isotopic composition of the human bones shows that plant foods made up the majority of individual diets, with meat playing a secondary role.

Additionally, burnt plant remains from the sites and distinct dental-wear patterns on the individuals’ upper incisors indicate that tubers -- or plants that grow underground, such as potatoes -- likely were the most prominent subsistence resource.

“Our combination of isotope chemistry, paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological methods offers the clearest and most accurate picture of early Andean diets to date,” Haas says. “These findings update our understanding of earliest forager economies and the pathway to agricultural economies in the Andean highlands.”

Joining Haas in the study were researchers from Penn State University, the University of California-Merced, the University of California-Davis, Binghamton University, the University of Arizona and the National Register of Peruvian Archaeologists.

Undergraduate students also had the opportunity to conduct research during the initial 2018 excavations at the Wilamaya Patjxa burial site.

Currently a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Penn State University, Jennifer Chen, the journal article’s lead author and a former undergraduate student in Haas' research lab, performed the isotope lab work and much of the isotope analysis following the excavations.

“Food is incredibly important and crucial for survival, especially in high-altitude environments like the Andes,” Chen says. “A lot of archaeological frameworks on hunter-gatherers, or foragers, center on hunting and meat-heavy diets -- but we are finding that early hunter-gatherers in the Andes were mostly eating plant foods like wild tubers."

Haas notes that archaeologists now have the tools to understand early human diets, and their results are not what they anticipated. This case study demonstrates for the first time that early human economies, in at least one part of the world, were plant based.

“Given that archaeological biases have long misled archaeologists -- myself included -- in the Andes, it is likely that future isotopic research in other parts of the world will similarly show that archaeologists have also gotten it wrong elsewhere,” he says.

Haas investigates human behavior in forager societies of the past to better understand human behavior in the present. He leads archaeological excavations and survey projects in the Andes and mountain regions of western North America. To learn more about his research, email Haas at whaas@uwyo.edu.

DNA from preserved feces reveals ancient Japanese gut environment

 

 

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PHYLOGENETIC TREES OF DETECTED GUT BACTERIA. THE TREE INDICATES PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS OF 4,616 BACTERIAL SPECIES.

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CREDIT: NISHIMURA ET AL., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a study published January 24, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Luca Nishimura and Ituro Inoue from the National Institute of Genetics, Japan, Hiroki Oota from The University of Tokyo, Mayumi Ajimoto from Wakasa History Museum, and colleagues.

Fossilized feces, also known as coprolites, can preserve an array of genetic material from the digestive tracts of ancient people. This includes the DNA of the microbes and viruses that lived in their digestive system—all of which could help archaeologists understand more details about their culture and lifestyle. In this study, researchers analyzed the genetic traces left behind in four coprolites collected at Japan’s Torihama shell-mound archaeological site to assess what details of the ancient people’s lives could be ascertained from these samples.

The fecal samples were between 5,500 and 7,000 years old, dating back to the island chain’s Early Jomon period. The researchers collectively sampled all of the genetic material from the coprolites and compared the DNA they found with known genetic sequences. Within the fecal samples, they found DNA fragments of the viruses which are homology with human betaherpesvirus 5 and human adenovirus F.

DNA breaks down over time, so the genomes represented in the coprolites were often highly fragmented. But despite this degradation, the researchers were still able to assess what kinds of microbes and viruses may have been present in people’s digestive systems thousands of years ago. In addition, the authors suggest that the coprolites’ preservation of both viral and bacterial genetic material could help scientists explore how bacteria and the viruses that infect those bacteria have co-evolved over time.

The freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295924

China’s medieval Tang dynasty had a surprising level of social mobility

 

In studying social mobility in today’s industrialized nations, researchers typically rely on data from the World Economic Forum or, in the United States, the General Social Survey. But examining the same phenomena from past centuries is a more daunting task because relevant statistics are harder to come by. 

However, a social science research team has now discovered a way to examine professional advancement in medieval China (618-907 CE) by drawing from the tomb epitaphs during the Tang Dynasty. These epitaphs contain the ancestral lineages, names, and office titles (e.g., Minister of Personnel, Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, and Palace Deputy Imperial Censor) of the deceased’s father and grandfather as well as the deceased’s career history and educational credentials—ample data points for measuring social mobility across generations. 

Notably, their analysis shows that education during this period was a catalyst for social mobility.

“Epitaphs written in medieval China, including the Tang Dynasty, tend to be highly detailed descriptions of an individual’s life with stylized prose and poems, and they contain granular information about the ancestral origins, family background, and career history of each deceased individual,” says Fangqi Wen, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University. 

“This information, to some extent, mirrors what would have been included in a contemporary social mobility survey,” adds Erik H. Wang, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Politics.

Wang studies historical political economy while Wen examines social mobility in contemporary societies. After recognizing the high level of data quality embedded in these epitaphs, they realized that the artifacts were a vessel that merged their scholarly interests. Later they recruited the NYU professor of sociology Michael Hout, Wen’s dissertation advisor and a leading scholar on social stratification and mobility, to join the project.

Their findings, which appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the patterns of relationships of social origins, education, and adult achievement somewhat resemble the patterns in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. In drawing from 3,640 epitaphs of males as well as other data from reliable historical sources, such as dynastic records and third-party compiled genealogies, the researchers’ analysis revealed a decline of Chinese medieval aristocracy and the rise of meritocracy 1300 years ago.

The researchers discovered a specific reason for this development: whether or not the deceased passed the Keju, or the Imperial Exam, which was developed during this period for the purposes of selecting officials for civil service posts. They found that the Keju, which was administered until the early 20th century, served as a catalyst for social mobility—much as higher education has done in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.

“Our statistical analysis shows that coming from a prominent ancient great house or ‘branch’

mattered less for career success in the bureaucratic system after roughly 650 CE while passing the Keju came to matter more,” the authors write. “Furthermore, passing the competitive exam may have even equalized chances of subsequent success, as a father’s status was not a factor in the bureaucratic rank of men who passed the Keju.”

“Education is central to our understanding of intergenerational mobility,” observes Hout. “Many think it was a 20th-century development. But, as we can see from centuries-old data, there are phenomena linking origin, education, and careers very much like contemporary patterns.”

Poor Mesolithic oral health

Members of a hunter-gatherer group that lived in south-western Scandinavia during the Mesolithic era — approximately 10,000 years ago — may have been affected by tooth decay and gum disease, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Emrah Kırdök, Anders Götherström and colleagues sequenced the DNA found on three pieces of birch tar — a substance made from heated birch bark — that were excavated in the 1990s from Huseby Klev, Sweden and have been dated to between 9,890 and 9,540 years old. They created profiles of the microbial, plant, and animal species DNA found on each sample and compared these to those previously reported for modern human samples, ancient human dental plaque, and a 6,000 year old chewed birch tar sample

The authors found that the microbial profiles of the birch tar samples were most similar to microbes found in the modern human mouth, in ancient human dental plaque, and in a 6,000 year old chewed birch tar sample. This suggests that the samples from Huseby Klev were chewed by humans. They also found that they contained an increased abundance of several bacteria that are commonly associated with gum disease — such as Treponema denticola, Streptococcus anginosus, and Slackia exigua — and tooth decay — such as Streptococcus sobrinus and Parascardovia denticolens. Based on the relative abundance of microbial species in the birch tar samples and using machine learning models, the authors estimate that the probability that members of the hunter-gatherer group were affected by gum disease is between 70 and 80%. The authors suggest that the wider use of teeth to perform tasks involving gripping, cutting and tearing in ancient hunter-gatherer societies may have increased their risk of coming into contact with microbial species that cause gum disease.

In addition to microbial DNA, the authors identified DNA sequences consistent with those from a range of plant and animal species, including hazelnut, apple, mistletoe, red fox, grey wolf, mallard, limpet, and brown trout. These could reflect the materials that members of the hunter-gatherer group chewed prior to the birch tar samples. The authors speculate that these materials could have included food sources, furs, and bone tools.

The findings highlight the poor oral health of a group of Mesolithic Scandinavian hunter-gatherers and provide insight into their diet, material use, and local environment.

Ancient chewing gum reveals stone age diet

 

What did people eat on the west coast of Scandinavia 10 000 years ago? A new study of the DNA in a chewing gum shows that deer, trout and hazelnuts were on the diet. It also shows that one of the individuals had severe problems with her teeth.

Some 9 700 years ago, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia, north of what is today Göteborg. They had been fishing, hunting and collecting resources for food. And some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue, just after munching on trout and deer, as well as on hazelnuts. Due to a bad case of periodontitis (severe gum infection that can lead to tooth loss and bone loss), one of the teenagers had problems eating the chewy deer-meat, as well as preparing the resin by chewing it.

We know this because an international research team has been working with the chewed resin from Huseby Klev for some time. “There is a richness of DNA sequences in the chewed mastic from Huseby-Klev, and in it we find both the bacteria that we know are related to periodontitis, and DNA from plants and animals that they had chewed before”, says Dr. Emrah Kırdök, from Mersin University Department of Biotechnology, who coordinated the metagenomic work on the Mesolithic chewing gum. Emrah Kırdök started to analyse the material when he was a postdoc at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University, but the study has grown much since then.

The site Huseby Klev on the island Orust was excavated 30 years ago. Chewed resin was found together with remains of stone tools in a context dated to c. 9700 years ago. The stone material also indicated a Mesolithic chronology. The chewed material from Huseby Klev has already generated a study on the human genetic data from three individuals, and the DNA in the material that was not of human origin has also been analysed and published.

Identifying the different species present in the kind of mix of DNA that was present in the Mesolithic chewing gum was challenging. Dr Andrés Aravena, from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Istanbul University spent much time on the computer analysing the data together with Dr. Emrah Kırdök. “We had to apply several computational heavy analytical tools to single out the different species and organisms. All the tools we needed were not ready to be applied to ancient DNA; but much of our time was spent on adjusting them so that we could apply them”, concludes Andrés Aravena. Metagenomics on ancient DNA is an expanding area, but there have yet only been a few studies on this type of chewed material.

Professor Anders Götherström, at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a collaboration between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, is the head of the project where this study was conducted. “This provides a snapshot of the life of a small group of hunter-gatherers on the Scandinavian west coast. I think it is amazing, there are other well established methods to work out what nutrition and diet relates to the Stone Age, but here we know that these teenagers were eating deer, trout, and hazelnuts 9 700 years ago on the west coast of Scandinavia, while at least one of them had severe problems with his teeth.”

The study is published in Scientific Reports. Read article: Metagenomic analysis of Mesolithic chewed pitch reveals poor oral health among stone age individuals

Woolly mammoth movements tied to earliest Alaska hunting camps

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS

 

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ARTWORK SHOWS THREE MAMMOTHS BEING WATCHED BY A FAMILY OF ANCIENT ALASKANS FROM THE DUNES NEAR THE SWAN POINT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, A SEASONAL HUNTING CAMP OCCUPIED 14,000 YEARS AGO.

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CREDIT: IMAGE BY JULIUS CSOSTONYI

Researchers have linked the travels of a 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth with the oldest known human settlements in Alaska, providing clues about the relationship between the iconic species and some of the earliest people to travel across the Bering Land Bridge.

Scientists made those connections by using isotope analysis to study the life of a female mammoth, named Élmayųujey'eh, by the Healy Lake Village Council. A tusk from Elma was discovered at the Swan Point archaeological site in Interior Alaska. Samples from the tusk revealed details about Elma and the roughly 1,000-kilometer journey she took through Alaska and northwestern Canada during her lifetime.

Isotopic data, along with DNA from other mammoths at the site and archaeological evidence, indicates that early Alaskans likely structured their settlements to overlap with areas where mammoths congregated. Those findings, highlighted in the new issue of the journal Science Advances, provide evidence that mammoths and early hunter-gatherers shared habitat in the region. The long-term predictable presence of woolly mammoths would have attracted humans to the area.

“She wandered around the densest region of archaeological sites in Alaska,” said Audrey Rowe, a University of Alaska Fairbanks Ph.D. student and lead author of the paper. “It looks like these early people were establishing hunting camps in areas that were frequented by mammoths.”

The mammoth tusk was excavated and identified in 2009 by Charles Holmes, affiliate research professor of anthropology at UAF, and François Lanoë, research associate in archaeology at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. They found Elma’s tusk and the remains of two related juvenile mammoths, along with evidence of campfires, the use of stone tools, and butchered remains of other game. All of this “indicates a pattern consistent with human hunting of mammoths,” said Ben Potter, an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at UAF.

Researchers at UAF’s Alaska Stable Isotope Facility then analyzed thousands of samples from Elma’s tusk to recreate her life and travels. Isotopes provide chemical markers of an animal’s diet and location. The markers are then recorded in the bones and tissues of animals and remain even after they die. 

Mammoth tusks are well-suited to isotopic study because they grew throughout the ancient animals’ lives, with clearly visible layers appearing when split lengthwise. Those growth bands give researchers a way to collect a chronological record of a mammoth’s life by studying isotopes in samples along the tusk.

Much of Elma’s journey overlapped with that of a previously studied male mammoth who lived 3,000 years earlier, demonstrating long-term movement patterns by mammoths over several millennia. In Elma’s case, they also indicated she was a healthy 20-year-old female.

“She was a young adult in the prime of life. Her isotopes showed she was not malnourished and that she died in the same season as the seasonal hunting camp at Swan Point where her tusk was found,” said senior author Matthew Wooller, who is director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and a professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The era in which Elma lived may have compounded the challenges posed by the relatively recent appearance of humans. The grass- and shrub-dominated steppe landscape that had been common in Interior Alaska was beginning to shift toward more forested terrain.

“Climate change at the end of the ice age fragmented mammoths’ preferred open habitat, potentially decreasing movement and making them more vulnerable to human predation,” Potter said.

Ancient cities in the Anthropocene

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE OF GEOANTHROPOLOGY

 

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MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY PROVIDE A WEALTH OF INFORMATION ABOUT HOW CITIES SHAPE, AND ARE SHAPED BY, THEIR ENVIRONMENT.

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CREDIT: MICHELLE O'REILLY

Cities play a key role in climate change and biodiversity and are one of the most recognizable features of the Anthropocene. They also accelerate innovation and shape social networks, while perpetuating and intensifying inequalities. Today over half of all humanity lives in cities, a threshold which will rise to nearly 70% by the mid-21st century. Yet despite their importance for the Anthropocene, cities are not a recent phenomenon.

In a new study, an interdisciplinary team of authors from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology argue that the history of urbanism provides an important resource for understanding where our contemporary urban challenges come from, as well as how we might begin to address them. The paper highlights the ways in which new methodologies are changing our understanding of past cities and providing a reference for urban societies navigating the intensifying climatic extremes of the 21st century.

These methods range from remote sensing techniques like LiDAR, which are documenting cities in places where urban life was once considered impossible, to biomolecular approaches like isotope analysis, which can provide insights into how cities have shaped different organisms and influenced human mobility and connectivity through time. Meanwhile, the study of sediment cores and historical data can show how cities have placed adaptive pressures on different landscapes and human societies – as they still do today.

As understanding of humanity’s influence on the Earth system grows, urbanism is increasingly considered one of the most impactful forms of land use. In this new study, the authors also highlight how multidisciplinary approaches, including Earth system modelling, are revealing the impacts that ancient and historical forms of urbanism had on land use, and, critically, how they compare to the impacts of urban areas today.

Throughout, the authors emphasize that the past does not just provide anecdotal insights, but rather numerical datasets of things like road lengths, building types, population sizes, economic output, environmental impacts, and more. With advances in computational archaeology, this opens up the possibility of quantifying similarities and differences in urban pathways across space and time, directly linking the past to the present.

By reviewing diverse examples from around the world ranging from medieval Constantinople (now Istanbul) to 9th century Bagdad, from Great Zimbabwe to Greater Angkor in Cambodia, this new study highlights the potential of new methodological approaches to reveal historical legacies and predict trajectories of urbanism in the Anthropocene epoch.

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First prehistoric person with Turner syndrome identified from ancient DNA

     

• First prehistoric person with Turner syndrome identified from the Iron Age
• Earliest known person with Jacob’s syndrome identified from Early Medieval Period
• Individuals with Klinefelter syndrome identified across a range of time periods
• New technique developed to measure number of chromosomes in ancient genomes more precisely

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, working with University of Oxford, University of York and Oxford Archaeology, have developed a new technique to measure the number of chromosomes in ancient genomes more precisely, using it to identify the first prehistoric person with mosaic Turner syndrome (characterised by one X chromosome instead of two [XX]), who lived about 2500 years ago.

As part of their research published today in Communications Biology, they also identified the earliest known person with Jacob’s syndrome (characterised by an extra Y chromosome - XYY) in the Early Medieval Period, three people with Klinefelter syndrome (characterised by an extra X chromosome - XXY) across a range of time periods and an infant with Down Syndrome from the Iron Age.

Most cells in the human body have 23 pairs of DNA molecules called chromosomes, and the sex chromosomes are typically XX (female) or XY (male), although there are differences in sexual development. ‘Aneuploidy’ occurs when a person’s cells have an extra or missing chromosome. If this occurs in the sex chromosomes, a few differences like delayed development or changes in height can be seen around puberty.

Ancient DNA samples can erode over time and can be contaminated by DNA from other ancient samples or from people handling them. This makes it difficult to accurately capture differences in the number of sex chromosomes.

The team at the Crick developed a computational method which aims to pick up more variation in sex chromosomes. For the sex chromosomes, it involves counting the number of copies of X and Y chromosomes, and comparing the outcome to a predicted baseline (what you would expect to see).

The team used the new method to analyse ancient DNA from a large dataset of individuals collected as part of their Thousand Ancient British Genomes project across British history, identifying six individuals with aneuploidies across five sites in Somerset, Yorkshire, Oxford and Lincoln2. The individuals lived across a range of time periods, from the Iron Age (2500 years ago) up to the Post-Medieval Period (about 250 years ago).

They identified five people who had sex chromosomes which fell outside of the XX or XY categories. All were buried according to their society’s customs although no possessions were found with them to shed more light on their lives.

The three individuals with Klinefelter syndrome lived across very different time periods, but they shared some similarities - all were slightly taller than average and showed signs of delayed development in puberty.

By investigating details on the bones, the research team could see that it was unlikely that the individual with Turner syndrome had gone through puberty and started menstruation, despite their estimated age of 18-22. Their syndrome was shown to be mosaic -some cells had one copy of chromosome X and some had two.

Kakia Anastasiadou, PhD student in the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Crick, and first author of the study, said: “Through precisely measuring sex chromosomes, we were able to show the first prehistoric evidence of Turner syndrome 2500 years ago, and the earliest known incidence of Jacob’s syndrome around 1200 years ago. It’s hard to see a full picture of how these individuals lived and interacted with their society, as they weren’t found with possessions or in unusual graves, but it can allow some insight into how perceptions of gender identity have evolved over time.”

Pontus Skoglund, Group Leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Crick, said: “Our      method is also able to classify DNA contamination in many cases, and can help to analyse incomplete ancient DNA, so it could be applied to archaeological remains which have been difficult to analyse.

“Combining this data with burial context and possessions can allow for a historical perspective of how sex, gender and diversity were perceived in past societies. I hope this type of approach will be applied as the common resource of ancient DNA data continues to grow.”

The team worked with archaeologists from the University of Oxford, the Wells and Mendip Museum, University of York, University of Bradford, Oxford Archaeology, York Osteoarchaeology and Network Archaeology, acknowledging support from Lincolnshire County Council, Magdalen College and Balfour Beatty for National Highways.

Rick Schulting, Professor of Scientific and Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: “The results of this study open up exciting new possibilities for the study of sex in the past, moving beyond binary categories in a way that would be impossible without the advances being made in ancient DNA analysis.”

Discovered in the Upper Amazon: evidence for early urbanism in the region

A dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers, characterized by constructed platforms and plazas and connected by large, straight roads, has been discovered in the upper Amazon, according to a new study. The research, based on more than 20 years of interdisciplinary research, suggests that this original 2500-year-old society constitutes the earliest and largest low-density agrarian urbanism documented in the Amazon thus far. Such extensive early development in the Upper Amazon resembles similar Maya urban systems in Central America. 

Although a growing body of research has begun to highlight the scope and scale of pre-Hispanic occupation of the Amazon, evidence for large-scale urbanism has remained elusive. Stéphen Rostain and colleagues present evidence for an agrarian-based civilization that began more than 2500 years ago in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, a region in the eastern foothills of the Andes. 

Based on more than 20 years of interdisciplinary research that included fieldwork and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) mapping, Rostain et al. describe urbanism at a scale never before documented in Amazonia, consisting of more than 6000 anthropogenic rectangular earthen platforms and plaza structures connected by footpaths and roads and surrounded by expansive agricultural landscapes and river drainages within the 300 square kilometer survey area. 

The authors identified at least 15 distinct settlement sites of various sizes based on clusters of structures. However, according to Rostain et al., the most notable elements of this built environment are the extensive and complex regional-scale road network connecting urban centers and the surrounding hinterland. 

Archaeological excavations indicate that the construction and occupation of the platforms and roads occurred between ~500 BCE and 300 to 600 CE and was carried out by groups from the Kilamope and later Upano cultures. Rostain et al. note that the Upano sites are different from other monumental sites discovered in Amazonia, which are more recent and less extensive. 

“Such a discovery is another vivid example of the underestimation of Amazonia’s twofold heritage: environmental but also cultural, and therefore Indigenous,” write Rostain et al. “…we believe that it is crucial to thoroughly revise our preconceptions of the Amazonian world and, in doing so, to reinterpret contexts and concepts in the necessary light of an inclusive and participatory science.”

Discovery of immense fortifications dating back 4,000 years in north-western Arabia

 

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DIGITAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE RAMPART NETWORK FROM THE NORTHERN SECTION OF THE KHAYBAR WALLED OASIS 4,000 YEARS AGO.

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CREDIT: © KHAYBAR LONGUE DURÉE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT, M. BUSSY & G. CHARLOUX

The North Arabian Desert oases were inhabited by sedentary populations in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE. A fortification enclosing the Khaybar Oasis—one of the longest known going back to this period—was just revealed by a team of scientists from the CNRS1 and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU). This new walled oasis is, along with that of Tayma, one of the two largest in Saudi Arabia. While a number of walled oases dating back to the Bronze Age had already been documented, this major discovery sheds new light on human occupation in north-western Arabia, and provides a better grasp of local social complexity during the pre-Islamic period.

Cross-referencing field surveys and remote sensing data with architectural studies, the team estimated the original dimensions of the fortifications at 14.5 kilometres in length, between 1.70 and 2.40 metres in thickness, and approximately 5 metres in height. Preserved today over a little less than half of its original length (41%, 5.9 km and 74 bastions), this colossal edifice enclosed a rural and sedentary territory of nearly 1,100 hectares. The fortification’s date of construction is estimated between 2250 and 1950 BCE, on the basis of radiocarbon dating of samples collected during excavations.

While the study confirms that the Khaybar Oasis clearly belonged to a network of walled oases in north-western Arabia, the discovery of this rampart also raises questions regarding why it was built as well as the nature of the populations that built it, in particular their relations with populations outside the oasis.

This archaeological discovery, whose results will be published on 10 January in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (JASREP), paves the way for major advances in understanding the prehistoric, pre-Islamic, and Islamic past of the north-western Arabian Peninsula.

 

Notes

1 – From the Orient and Mediterranean Laboratory (CNRS/Collège de France/EPHE-PSL/Sorbonne Université/Université Panthéon-Sorbonne) and the Archéorient – Environments and Societies of the Ancient East Laboratory (CNRS/Université Lumière Lyon 2), in connection with the Khaybar Longue Durée Archaeological Project commissioned by the French Agency for AlUla Development (AFALULA) for the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU).

Ancient DNA reveals reason for high multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s rates in Europe

 

Researchers have created the world’s largest ancient human gene bank by analysing the bones and teeth of almost 5,000 humans who lived across western Europe and Asia up to 34,000 years ago.

By sequencing ancient human DNA and comparing it to modern-day samples, the international team of experts mapped the historical spread of genes – and diseases – over time as populations migrated. They found:

• The startling origins of neurodegenerative diseases including multiple sclerosis
• Why northern Europeans today are taller than people from southern Europe
• How major migration around 5,000 years ago introduced risk genes into the population in north-western Europe – leaving a legacy of higher rates of MS today
• Carrying the MS gene was an advantage at the time as it protected ancient farmers from catching infectious diseases from their sheep and cattle
• Genes known to increase the risk of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and type 2 diabetes were traced back to hunter gatherers
• Future analysis is hoped to reveal more about the genetic markers of autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression

New research identifies renowned rock art sites ‘chosen’ for vantage

 

 

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MAP OF THE STUDY AREA WITHIN THE LARGER REGION, SHOWING THE ALLIGATOR RIVERS, FLOODPLAINS, KAKADU NATIONAL PARK AND ARNHEM LAND ALONG WITH THE ARNHEM PLATEAU. 

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CREDIT: DR JARRAD KOWLESSAR, FLINDERS UNIVERSITY.

New research has uncovered internationally significant rock art sites in Arnhem Land were far from random and instead “chosen” for the critical vantage points they provided.

The Flinders University research team, working in collaboration with the Njanjma Rangers and Erre Traditional Owners, used aerial and drone surveys, subsurface imaging and elevation data to create the first high-resolution palaeolandscape modelling to help understand 103 separate rock art sites in the region’s rich Red Lily Lagoon area.

What this innovative research has done is statistically model what the environmental conditions were like 15,000-28,000 years ago – when even the floodplain floor was 7-15 metres lower than where it sits today.

Flinders Associate Professor Ian Moffat says the research findings better informs how the sites would have been used, their accessibility and visibility – what the Traditional Owner artists would have been looking at, watching out for and why.

“When archaeologists interpret rock art, they often assume the landscape hasn’t changed since the art was first inscribed which certainly isn’t the case at Red Lily Lagoon,” he explains.

“This landscape has changed dramatically from being on the coast, a swamp, woodlands and freshwater – and sometimes in just one lifetime.

“Our innovative research approach adds new information to understand the rock art in a fundamentally different way.

“Modelling the changes in environmental conditions over time sheds new light on the locations, where they were in in these landscapes, how they were selected and used, and the roles they held in community and clan life.”

This area of western Arnhem Land contains internationally renowned archaeological records, including Australia's oldest known archaeological site, and at the same time it has experienced colossal environmental landscape changes generated mostly by changing sea levels.

Associate Professor Moffat says the research identifies these changes include the coastline moving from 100s of kilometres away to coming right up against the cliffs in the Red Lily region, before retreating northwards, about 50kms to its current position.

He says the Flinders research traces the transformational impact rising sea levels had on the sandstone cliffs and flat floodplains terrain – changing its open savanna to mudflats, to mangrove swamp, before evolving into the seasonally inundated freshwater wetlands of today. These changes would have had profound implications for people, how they moved, interacted and what they recorded at these locations.

“Our research has enabled a clearer understanding of the placement of rock art sites that goes beyond relying on today’s landscape as a reference point which is significant.

Flinders College of Humanities Research Associate Dr Jarrad Kowlessar says this research identifies rock art production was most active, diverse in style, and covered most of the plateau area during a period when mangroves completely covered the floodplains – approximately 6,000 years ago.

“This may be because the mangroves provided abundant resources to sustain a large and stable human population at the time, or because the land had simply contracted so much due to the rising sea level that more people were in closer proximity,” says Dr Kowlessar.

“Interestingly most sites during this time were selected with views specifically overlooking mangrove areas.

“We also identify that during the period when the sea level was rising, rock art was preferentially made in areas with long distance views over areas that had open woodlands at the time. So we can suggest these views may helped facilitate hunting, or even to more closely watch areas at a time when many people were being displaced by the rising water.

“Without doubt the research demonstrates rock art site locations were intentionally selected, with nuanced relationships to the local landscape, and there is potential to use our modelling into the future to tell us much more about the rich and significant archaeology of Arnhem Land.”