Our human ancestors walked on two feet but their children still had a backup plan

IMAGE: Left block of images: The 3.32-million-year-old foot from an Australopithecus afarensis toddler shown in different angles. Right block of images: The child's foot (bottom) compared with the fossil remains of... view more 

Credit: Jeremy DeSilva & Cody Prang

More than 3 million years ago, our ancient human ancestors, including their toddler-aged children, were standing on two feet and walking upright, according to a new study published in Science Advances.
"For the first time, we have an amazing window into what walking was like for a 2½-year-old, more than 3 million years ago," says lead author, Jeremy DeSilva, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College, who is one of the world's foremost authorities on the feet of our earliest ancestors. "This is the most complete foot of an ancient juvenile ever discovered."
The tiny foot, about the size of a human thumb, is part of a nearly complete 3.32-million-year-old skeleton of a young female Australopithecus afarensis discovered in 2002 in the Dikika region of Ethiopia by Zeresenay (Zeray) Alemseged, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study. Alemseged is internationally known as a leading paleontologist on the study of human origins and human evolution.
"Placed at a critical time and the cusp of being human, Australopithecus afarensis was more derived than Ardipithecus (a facultative biped) but not yet an obligate strider like Homo erectus. The Dikika foot adds to the wealth of knowledge on the mosaic nature of hominin skeletal evolution" explained Alemseged.
Given that the fossil of the tiny foot is the same species as the famous Lucy fossil and was found in the same vicinity, it is not surprising that the Dikika child was erroneously labeled "Lucy's baby" by the popular press, though this youngster lived more than 200,000 years before Lucy.
In studying the fossil foot's remarkably preserved anatomy, the research team strived to reconstruct what life would have been like years ago for this toddler and how our ancestors survived. They examined what the foot would have been used for, how it developed and what it tells us about human evolution. The fossil record indicates that these ancient ancestors were quite good at walking on two legs. "Walking on two legs is a hallmark of being human. But, walking poorly in a landscape full of predators is a recipe for extinction," explained DeSilva.
At 2½ years old, the Dikika child was already walking on two legs, but there are hints in the fossil foot that she was still spending time in the trees, hanging on to her mother as she foraged for food. Based on the skeletal structure of the child's foot, specifically, the base of the big toe, the kids probably spent more time in the trees than adults. "If you were living in Africa 3 million years ago without fire, without structures, and without any means of defense, you'd better be able get up in a tree when the sun goes down," added DeSilva. "These findings are critical for understanding the dietary and ecological adaptation of these species and are consistent with our previous research on other parts of the skeleton especially, the shoulder blade," Alemseged noted.

Ancient genome analyses reveal mosaic pattern of goat domestication thousands of years ago

Goat domestication was a mosaic -- not a singular -- process, with capture from the wild impacting genetic diversity in different regions of the Fertile Crescent

An international team of scientists, led by geneticists from Trinity College Dublin, have sequenced the genomes from ancient goat bones from areas in the Fertile Crescent where goats were first domesticated around 8,500 BC. They reveal a 10,000-year history of local farmer practices featuring genetic exchange both with the wild and among domesticated herds, and selection by early farmers.
This genetic data - including 83 mitochondrial sequences and whole genome data from 51 goats - is published today by PhD Researcher in Genetics, Kevin Daly, and colleagues, in leading international journal Science.
One of our first domesticates and a source of meat, milk and hides, goats now number almost a billion animals. They have been a partner animal since c. 8,500 BC. The earliest evidence for domestic goats occurs in the Fertile Crescent region of Southwest Asia, where crop farming and animal herding began. Before herding, local hunters targeted wild goats - also known as bezoar - and this local practice eventually became the basis of goat management and livestock keeping.
However, reading the past from examining modern genetics is difficult due to thousands of years of migration and mixture.
"Just like humans, modern goat ancestry is a tangled web of different ancestral strands. The only way to unravel these and reach reliably into the past is to sequence genomes from actual ancient animals; a kind of molecular time travel," said Professor of Population Genetics and ERC Advanced Investigator at Trinity College Dublin, Dan Bradley, who led the project.
Using genetic data from over 80 ancient wild and domestic goats, the group has charted the initial patterns of domestication, demonstrating a surprising degree of genetic differentiation between goats across the Fertile Crescent and the surrounding regions.
Research Fellow at Trinity, and joint first author of the paper, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, said: "Goat domestication was a mosaic rather than a singular process with continuous recruitment from local wild populations. This process generated a distinctive genetic pool which evolved across time and still characterises the different goat populations of Asia, Europe and Africa today."
Using ancient samples, the group was able to analyse the genetic diversity of different goat populations back in time and reconstruct the history of early domesticates.
Domestic animals have changed human society and humans have also moulded livestock into hundreds of different types and breeds - this study has the earliest genetic discovery yet of this process. It seems that, like modern breeders, ancient farmers were interested in animal appearance.
PhD Researcher at Trinity, and first author of the paper, Kevin Daly, said: "Whole genome sequences from the past allowed us directly analyse some of the earliest goat herds. We found evidence that at least as far back as 8,000 years ago herders were interested in or valued the coat colour of their animals, based on selection signals at pigmentation genes." Furthermore, distinct but parallel patterns of this selection were observed in different early herds, suggesting this was a repeated phenomenon.
There are also indications that these early animals had been selected for liver enzymes that gave better tolerance to new toxins, possibly from fungus growing on fodder, and also production traits such as fertility and size.

First dogs in the Americas arrived from Siberia, disappeared after European contact

IMAGE: A ritual burial of two dogs at a site in Illinois near St. Louis suggests a special relationship between humans and dogs at this location and time (660 to 1,350... view more 

Credit: Photo courtesy Illinois State Archaeological Survey.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A study reported in the journal Science offers an enhanced view of the origins and ultimate fate of the first dogs in the Americas. The dogs were not domesticated North American wolves, as some have speculated, but likely followed their human counterparts over a land bridge that once connected North Asia and the Americas, the study found.
This is the first comprehensive genomic study of ancient dogs in the Americas to analyze nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents, along with mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only from mothers to their offspring. By comparing genomic signatures from 71 mitochondrial and seven nuclear genomes of ancient North American and Siberian dogs spanning a period of 9,000 years, the research team was able to gain a clearer picture of the history of the first canine inhabitants of the Americas.
The oldest dog remains in the Americas date to about 9,000 years ago, many thousands of years after people began migrating over a land bridge connecting present-day Siberia and Alaska. The ancient dogs analyzed in the new study likely originated in Siberia, the researchers found. The dogs dispersed to every part of the Americas, migrating with their human counterparts.
These dogs persisted for thousands of years in the Americas, but almost completely vanished after European contact, the researchers found.
"This suggests something catastrophic must have happened, and it's likely associated with European colonization," said senior lead author Laurent Frantz, a lecturer at Queen Mary University and co-investigator at the University of Oxford. "But we just do not have the evidence to explain this sudden disappearance yet."
"By looking at genomic data along with mitochondrial data, we were able to confirm that dogs came to the Americas with humans, and that nearly all of that diversity was lost - most likely as a result of European colonization," said Kelsey Witt, who led the mitochondrial DNA genome work as a graduate student in the laboratory of University of Illinois anthropology professor Ripan Malhi, who also is an author of the study.
"Few modern dogs have any trace of these ancient lineages," said Witt, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Merced.
The team also discovered that the genomic signature of a transmissible cancer that afflicts dogs appears to be one of the last "living" remnants of the genetic heritage of dogs that populated the Americas prior to European contact.
"This suggests that this tumor originated in or near the Americas," Witt said.
The new findings reinforce the idea that early human and dog inhabitants of the Americas faced many of the same challenges after European contact, Malhi said.
"It is known how Indigenous peoples of the Americas suffered from the genocidal practices of European colonists after contact," he said. "What we found is that the dogs of Indigenous peoples experienced an even more devastating history and a near-total loss, possibly as a result of forced cultural changes and disease."

Crucial new data on the origin of the Dolmens of Antequera, a World Heritage Site

The ATLAS research group from the University of Seville has just published a study of a high resolution analysis of one of the most important sections of the Peña de los Enamorados, a natural formation included in the Antequera Dolmens Site, declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Specifically, the researchers have studied the site known as the "Abrigo de Matacabras", which contains cave paintings in the schematic style. This small cave has a first-class visual and symbolic relationship with the Menga dolmen, establishing landscape relationships that are possibly unique in European prehistory.
The Abrigo de Matacabras is set deep in the northern sector of the Peña de los Enamorados, which, due to its shape, is reminiscent of a sleeping woman.
For this investigation, a latest-generation multidisciplinary archaeological method was used, which included a photogrammetric reconstruction of the entire cave, analysis of its graphic motifs by means of digital image processing and colorimetry, uranium-thorium dating of the rock layers that carried the motifs, archaeometric analysis of the ceramics associated with the cave and the neighbouring site of Piedras Blancas I. situated at the foot of the Peña, by means of neutron activation analysis and X-ray diffraction, as well as a complete stylistic analysis of the motifs.
The results obtained indicate the Neolithic chronology of the cave (probably, at least, at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC) and its importance as a place of reference for the Neolithic (and possibly even older) population of the region, which would explain the anomalous orientation of the Menga dolmen. "In addition, the data obtained allows us, for the first time, to consider the Abrigo de Matacabras from the point of view of its future conservation, and diagnosis anything that might threaten or damage the motifs", says Leonardo García Sanjuán, Professor of Prehistory at the University of Seville.

Oldest evidence of horse veterinary care discovered in Mongolia

A team of scholars, led by William Taylor of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, analyzed horse remains from an ancient Mongolian pastoral culture known as the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Culture (ca. 1300-700 BC). Deer stones, with their beautiful deer carvings, and their accompanying stone mounds (khirigsuurs) are famous for the impressive horse burials that are found alongside them in the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands. Through careful study of skeletal remains from these burials, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society, Taylor and colleagues found that Deer Stone-Khirigsuur people began using veterinary dental procedures to remove baby teeth that would have caused young horses pain or difficulty with feeding - the world's oldest known evidence for veterinary dental care.

Previous research has shown that these early herders were the first in eastern Eurasia to rely heavily on horses as livestock for food products, and may have been among the first to use horses for mounted riding. Drawing on insights from his Mongolian colleagues, Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan and Tumurbaatar Tuvshinjargal of the National Museum of Mongolia, Taylor argues that the development of horseback riding and a horse-based pastoral economy was a key driver for the invention of equine veterinary care. "We may think of veterinary care as kind of a Western science," he says, "but herders in Mongolia today practice relatively sophisticated procedures using very simple equipment. This results of our study show that a careful understanding of horse anatomy and a tradition of care was first developed, not in the sedentary civilizations of China or the Mediterranean, but centuries earlier, among the nomadic people whose livelihood depended on the well-being of their horses."

Additionally, Taylor and his team discovered that changes in horse dentistry accompanied major developments in horse control technology, including the incorporation of bronze and metal mouthpieces into bridles used for riding. This equipment, which spread into eastern Eurasia during the early first millennium BC, gave riders more nuanced control over horses, and allowed them to be used for new purposes - especially warfare. However, using metal to control horses also introduced new oral problems, including painful interactions with a vestigial tooth that develops in some animals, known as a "wolf tooth." Taylor and his team discovered that, as herders began to use metal bits, they also developed a method for extracting this problematic tooth - similar to the way most veterinary dentists would remove it today.
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In doing so, these early riders could control their horses in high-stress situations using a metal bit, without accompanying behavioral or health complications, which may have had major implications for the ancient world. Nicole Boivin, Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, explains, "In many ways, the movements of horses and horse-mounted peoples during the first millennium BCE reshaped the cultural and biological landscapes of Eurasia. Dr. Taylor's study shows that veterinary dentistry - developed by Inner Asian herders - may have been a key factor that helped to stimulate the spread of people, ideas, and organisms between East and West."

Neandertals practiced close-range hunting 120,000 years ago

Caption

Front and back view of a hunting lesion in the pelvis of an extinct fallow deer killed by Neandertals 120,000 years ago on a lakeshore close to current-day Halle in Germany.

Credit

© Eduard Pop, MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Leibniz Research Institute for Archaeology (RGZM)

An international team of scientists reports the oldest unambiguous hunting lesions documented in the history of humankind. The lesions were found on skeletons of two large-sized extinct fallow deer killed by Neandertals about 120,000 years ago around the shores of a small lake (Neumark-Nord 1) near present-day Halle in the eastern part of Germany. The study was led by Professor Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of the Department of Ancient Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and was now published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The study constitutes a significant step forward in our knowledge of the Neandertal niche. It demonstrates how Neandertals obtained their prey, first and foremost in terms of their much debated hunting equipment while also shedding light on their hunting skills.

With an innovative experimental ballistic setup including state-of-the-art motion-sensor technology, the researchers were able to reproduce the specific form of one of the lesions. The results prove the use of a wooden thrusting spear that was impacted with low velocity. This suggests that Neandertals approached animals very closely and thrusted rather than threw their spears at the animals, most likely from an underhand thrusting angle. Such a confrontational way of hunting required careful planning and concealment as well as close cooperation between individual hunters.

The lake where the hunts took place was surrounded by a close canopy forest, a type of environment deemed particularly challenging for hunter-gatherers, even modern human ones. Interestingly, the excavations in the Neumark-Nord area have yielded tens of thousands of bones of large mammals, including red and fallow deer, horses, and bovids, as well as thousands of lithic artefacts from this uniquely rich Last Interglacial lake landscape, attesting to the success of Neandertal survival in forested environments.

"Although hominins most likely started hunting with weapons more than 500,000 years ago, actual evidence on how wooden spear-like objects like those found at Clacton-on-Sea in England as well as in Schöningen and Lehringen in German were used was absent prior to the identification of the Neumark-Nord hunting lesions," stated Gaudzinski-Windheuser. "As far as spear use is concerned, we now finally have the crime scene fitting to the proverbial smoking gun."

Major Exhibition at The Met to Focus on Medieval Armenia

Exhibition Dates: September 22, 2018–January 13, 2019 Exhibition Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, First Floor, Gallery 199 Press Preview: Thursday, September 20, 10 am–noon

Opening September 22 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Armenia! explores the arts and culture of the Armenians from their conversion to Christianity in the early fourth century through their leading role on international trade routes in the 17th century. The exhibition emphasizes how Armenians developed a distinctive national identity in their homeland at the base of Mt. Ararat (widely accepted as the resting place of Noah's Ark) and how they maintained and transformed their traditions as their communities expanded across the globe.

More than 140 opulent gilded reliquaries, richly illuminated manuscripts, rare textiles, liturgical furnishings made of precious materials, khachkars (cross stones), church models, and printed books demonstrate Armenia's distinctive imagery in their homeland and other major Armenian sites, from the Kingdom of Cilicia on the Mediterranean to New Julfa, in Safavid Persia. Select comparative works display Armenian interaction with other cultures.

 

Major Armenian repositories of their culture provide almost all the works in the exhibition. Most are on view in the United States for the first time; many have not traveled for centuries.

 

The exhibition is made possible by The Hagop Kevorkian Fund. 

 

Additional support is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Giorgi Family Foundation, the Karagheusian Foundation, The Nazar and Artemis Nazarian Family, the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts, The Strauch Kulhanjian Family and The Paros Foundation, Aso O. Tavitian, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

 

Armenia! focuses on major Armenian centers of production from their homeland west and east, with emphasis on images of Armenians, from self-portraits to depictions of male and female rulers, donors, theologians, and historians. Special attention is given to works by major artists such as T'oros Roslin, Sargis Pidzak, Toros Taronatsi, and Hakob of Julfa working in the Armenian homeland, the Kingdom of Cilicia, and New Julfa.

 

More than half of the works on display are on loan from The Republic of Armenia with the support of The Ministry of Culture. Imposing liturgical works are coming from the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the primary site of the Armenian Church. In Yerevan, the "Matenadaran" Mesrop Masthots` Institute - Museum of Ancient Manuscripts is lending exceptional manuscripts, and the History Museum of Armenia is lending monumental church sculptures. The Holy See of Cilicia in Lebanon, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Mekhitarist Congregation in Venice are the other major Armenian religious communities lending exceptional works. Armenian collections lending select works are the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Portugal and in America, the Diocese of the Armenian Church (Eastern) (New York); the Armenian Museum of America (Boston); and the Alex and Marie Manoogian Museum (Southfield, Michigan). Additional works are coming from The Met and other American and European institutions.

 

Photographs of Armenian architecture and landscapes by noted Armenian-Canadian photographer Hrair Hawk Khatcherian and his assistant Lilit Khachatryan will provide context for the works in the exhibition, in the catalogue, and on the exhibition page of the website.

 

Credits

 

The exhibition was organized by Helen C. Evans, the Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art, with the support of C. Griffith Mann, the Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, assisted by Constance Alchermes, Research Assistant.

 

Exhibition design is by Michael Langley, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are by Chelsea Amato and Morton Lebigre, Graphic Designers; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers.

 

Programs and Catalogue

 

Education programs will include an international symposium, lectures, concerts, a website, a blog and group tours of the exhibition.

 

The symposium is made possible by The Armenian Center at Columbia University.

 

Armenia! is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue suitable for the general public and specialists alike. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, the book will be available in The Met Store ($65, hardcover). 

 

The catalogue is made possible by the Michel David-Weill Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund, the Ruben Vardanyan and Veronika Zonabend Family Foundation, Joanne A. Peterson, The Tianaderrah Foundation, The Armenian Center at Columbia University, Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard, and Souran G. and Carol R.K. Ouzounian.

 

The exhibition will be featured on The Met website as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter via the hashtag #Armenia.