Archaeologists working in Israel's Negev desert have
discovered an ancient rural mosque, thought to be one of the earliest in
the world.
The mosque, which dates back to the 7th or 8th century,
was discovered by researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority as
they prepared to build a new neighborhood in the southern Israeli
Bedouin city of Rahat.
The archaeologists said in a statement that large
mosques from the period have been found in Mecca and Jerusalem but that
it was rare to find such a building in the area, which is north of the
city of Beer Sheva.
Researchers excavated the remains of a rectangular
open-air mosque with a prayer niche facing south toward Mecca The
mosque, they said, would be "a rare discovery anywhere in the world" and
was likely to have been used by local farmers.
"This is one of the earliest mosques known from the
beginning of the arrival of Islam in Israel, after the Arab conquest of
636 C.E.," said Gideon Avni, an archaeologist with the Israel
Antiquities Authority.
Other buildings were also found during the excavation,
including a Byzantine farm and a small settlement from the Islamic
period. The archaeologists said in a statement that no similar buildings
had been previously discovered in the area.
IMAGE: The La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neandertal
skull, with the external auditory exostoses ( "swimmer's ear " growths)
in the left canal indicated.
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Credit: Erik Trinkaus
Abnormal bony growths in the ear canal were surprisingly common in
Neanderthals, according to a study published August 14, 2019 in the
open-access journal PLOS ONE by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University and colleagues.
External auditory exostoses are dense bony growths that protrude
into the ear canal. In modern humans, this condition is commonly called
"swimmer's ear" and is known to be correlated with habitual exposure to
cold water or chilly air, though there is also a potential genetic
predisposition for the condition. Such exostoses have been noted in
ancient humans, but little research has examined how the condition might
inform our understanding of past human lifestyles.
In this study, Trinkaus and colleagues examined well-preserved ear
canals in the remains of 77 ancient humans, including Neanderthals and
early modern humans from the Middle to Late Pleistocene Epoch of western
Eurasia. While the early modern human samples exhibited similar
frequencies of exostoses to modern human samples, the condition was
exceptionally common in Neanderthals. Approximately half of the 23
Neanderthal remains examined exhibited mild to severe exostoses, at
least twice the frequency seen in almost any other population studied.
The authors suggest that the most likely explanation for this
pattern is that these Neanderthals spent a significant amount of time
collecting resources in aquatic settings. However, the geographic
distribution of exostoses seen in Neanderthals does not exhibit a
definitive correlation with proximity to ancient water sources nor to
cooler climates as would be expected. The authors propose that multiple
factors were probably involved in this high abundance of exostoses,
probably including environmental factors as well as genetic
predispositions.
Trinkaus adds: "An exceptionally high frequency of external auditory
exostoses (bony growths in the ear canal; "swimmer's ear") among the
Neandertals, and a more modest level among high latitude earlier Upper
Paleolithic modern humans, indicate a higher frequency of aquatic
resource exploitation among both groups of humans than is suggested by
the archeological record. In particular, it reinforces the foraging
abilities and resource diversity of the Neandertals."
On a Galilean mountaintop, in about 1150, King
Baldwin III stopped grousing at his mother, Queen Melisende of
Jerusalem, and built a castle in the village of Mi’ilya, from which he
sought to consolidate his shrunken share of the Frankish Crusader
kingdom in the Holy Land. Almost 900 years later, residents of this
village have come together in a unique venture spearheaded by a local
archaeologist, to fix and restore the dangerously crumbling castle. In
parallel, next door to the castle, a curious gas-station owner named
Salma Assaf privately funded an excavation beneath her house – leading
to the discovery of what may have been the biggest winery in the
Crusader world.
Unique in the annals of
medieval winemaking, this winery had not one treading floor where the
grapes were crushed, but two parallel ones, which apparently drain into a
huge pit carved out of bedrock back in the Roman period.
IMAGE: This is one of the Scythian type arrowheads found in the destruction layer from 587/586 BCE.
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Credit: Mt Zion Archaeological Expedition/Virginia Withers
Researchers digging at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte's ongoing archaeological excavation on Mount Zion in Jerusalem
have announced a second significant discovery from the 2019 season -
clear evidence of the Babylonian conquest of the city from 587/586 BCE.
The discovery is of a deposit including layers of ash, arrowheads
dating from the period, as well as Iron Age potsherds, lamps and a
significant piece of period jewelry - a gold and silver tassel or
earring. There are also signs of a significant Iron Age structure in the
associated area, but the building, beneath layers from later periods,
has yet to be excavated.
The Mount Zion Archaeological Project, co-directed by UNC
Charlotte professor of history Shimon Gibson, Rafi Lewis, a senior
lecturer at Ashkelon Academic College and a fellow of Haifa University,
and James Tabor, UNC Charlotte professor of religious studies, has been
in operation for over a decade and has made numerous significant finds
relating to the ancient city's many historical periods, including the
announcement made in July, 2019 on evidence concerning the sack of the
city during the First Crusade. The current find is one of the oldest
and perhaps the most prominent in its historical significance, as the
Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem is a major moment in Jewish history.
The team believes that the newly-found deposit can be dated to
the specific event of the conquest because of the unique mix of
artifacts and materials found -- pottery and lamps, side-by-side with
evidence of the Babylonian siege represented by burnt wood and ashes,
and a number of Scythian-type bronze and iron arrowheads which are
typical of that period.
Because of the site's location, various alternative explanations
for the artifacts can be eliminated, the researchers argue. "We know
where the ancient fortification line ran," noted Gibson, "so we know we
are within the city. We know that this is not some dumping area, but the
south-western neighborhood of the Iron Age city - during the 8th
century BCE the urban area extended from the "City of David" area to the
south-east and as far as the Western Hill where we are digging."
The ash deposits, similarly, are not conclusive evidence of the
Babylonian attack in themselves, but are much more so in the context of
other materials.
"For archaeologists, an ashen layer can mean a number of
different things," Gibson said. "It could be ashy deposits removed from
ovens; or it could be localized burning of garbage. However, in this
case, the combination of an ashy layer full of artifacts, mixed with
arrowheads, and a very special ornament indicates some kind of
devastation and destruction. Nobody abandons golden jewelry and nobody
has arrowheads in their domestic refuse."
"The arrowheads are known as 'Scythian arrowheads' and have been
found at other archaeological conflict sites from the 7th and 6th
centuries BCE. They are known at sites outside of Israel as well. They
were fairly commonplace in this period and are known to be used by the
Babylonian warriors. Together, this evidence points to the historical
conquest of the city by Babylon because the only major destruction we
have in Jerusalem for this period is the conquest of 587/586 BCE," he
said.
The clay artifacts also help date the discovery. The lamps,
Gibson notes, are the typical high-based pinched lamps of the period.
"It's the kind of jumble that you would expect to find in a
ruined household following a raid or battle," Gibson said. "Household
objects, lamps, broken bits from pottery which had been overturned and
shattered... and arrowheads and a piece of jewelry which might have been
lost and buried in the destruction."
"Frankly, jewelry is a rare find at conflict sites, because this
is exactly the sort of thing that attackers will loot and later melt
down."
"I like to think that we are excavating inside one of the 'Great
Man's houses' mentioned in the second book of Kings 25:9," Gibson
speculated. "This spot would have been at an ideal location, situated as
it is close to the western summit of the city with a good view
overlooking Solomon's Temple and Mount Moriah to the north-east. We have
high expectations of finding much more of the Iron Age city in future
seasons of work. "
The building that is apparently part of the layer remains
unexcavated. "One might ask why haven't we excavated the whole
building?" Gibson said. "The reason is that we are slowly taking the
site down, level by level, period by period, and at the end of this last
digging season two meters of domestic structures from later Byzantine
and Roman periods have still to be dug above the Iron Age level below.
We plan to get down to it in the 2020 season."
The unexpected and rare piece of jewelry found is apparently a
tassel or earring, with a bell-shaped gold upper part. Clasped beneath
is a silver part made in the shape of a cluster of grapes. Gibson noted
that this discovery of jewelry "is a unique find and it is a clear
indication of the wealth of the inhabitants of the city at the time of
the siege." The only other discovery of jewelry in Jerusalem from this
period was made many years ago in 1979 in an Iron Age tomb at Ketef
Hinnom outside the city.
The researchers say that finding evidence of a critical
historical event is what makes the discovery particularly exciting.
Lewis, another co-director of the project, explained that "It is very
exciting to be able to excavate the material signature of any given
historical event, and even more so regarding an important historical
event such as the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem."
By all accounts the Babylonian conquest of the city by the
Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was ferocious and resulted in a great
loss of life, with the razing of the city and the burning of houses,
and the plundering and dismantling of King Solomon's Temple to God. The
local ruler of the Kingdom of Judah, King Zedekiah, made an attempt to
flee the city with his retinue, but was eventually caught and taken
captive to Babylon.
The Hebrew Bible relates the famine and suffering that the
inhabitants of Jerusalem suffered during the lengthy Babylonian siege of
the city: "So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of King
Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the [fourth] month the famine was sore in
the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. Then a
breach was made in the city, and all the men of war [fled] by night by
the way of the gate between the two walls.... And he [Nebuzaradan, the
Babylonian captain of the guard] burnt the house of the Lord, and the
King's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man's
house, burnt he with fire." (2 Kings 25: 1-9).
The Babylonian siege of Jerusalem lasted for quite a while even
though many of the inhabitants wanted to give up. "King Zedekiah simply
was not willing to pay tribute to Nebuchadnezzar and the direct result
of this was the destruction of the city and the Temple", said Gibson.
Every year religious Jews in Jerusalem and across the world pray
and fast in remembrance of the destruction of the Jewish Temple to God
in Jerusalem, first by the Babylonians in 587/586 BCE, resulting in the
exile of the inhabitants of the city to Babylon, and yet again in 70 CE
at the hands of the Roman legions led by Titus. To remember the
devastating destruction of the Temple, Jews gather in synagogues around
the world and at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem, to pray and mourn
on Tisha B' Av (the ninth day in the Hebrew month of Av) according to
the Jewish calendar, which falls this year on August 11th.
The Mount Zion archaeological project is directed by Shimon
Gibson and James Tabor from the College of Liberal and Arts Studies at
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, in conjunction with Rafi
Lewis of Ashkelon Academic College and Haifa University, and with
sponsorship from Aron Levy, John Hoffmann, Cherylee and Ron Vanderham,
and Patty and David Tyler and others, and facilitated by Sheila Bishop
for The Foundation for Biblical Archaeology.
The dig is also staffed by a host of volunteers, including UNC
Charlotte students. The project has been a favorite summer activity of
for many of UNC Charlotte's Levine Scholars Program, the university's
highly selective national program for undergraduate scholars.
"Participating in the Mount Zion dig has been an amazing
opportunity for the Levine Scholars," said Diane Zablotsky, director of
UNC Charlotte's Levine Scholars Program. "Although they are from
different backgrounds and study in different majors, they shared a
unique experience that left them with a deep appreciation of
archaeology, the history of Jerusalem, and broadened worldview."
The site is within the "Sovev Homot" park administered by the Israel
Nature and Parks Authority. Other substantial remains of the
multi-period ancient city were uncovered during the 2019 season,
including vaulted basements from the time of Herod the Great, a
Byzantine street which was the south-westerly continuation of the main
city street known as the Cardo Maximus, and a sunken defense ditch that
ran in front of the fortifications which greeted the Crusader's when
they attacked Jerusalem in 1099 and hindered their assault on the city.
The complex architectural sequence of superimposed structures
dating back 3000 years or so is being carefully mapped by a team of
recorders and draftsmen headed by Steve Patterson. The University of
North Carolina at Charlotte has been conducting archaeological
excavations in Jerusalem since 2006 and much vital historical and
archaeological information has been steadily extracted from the digging
operations.
New research led by Oxford University and Queen Mary University of
London has resolved a pig paradox. Archaeological evidence has shown
that pigs were domesticated in the Near East and as such, modern pigs
should resemble Near Eastern wild boar. They do not. Instead, the
genetic signatures of modern European domestic pigs resemble European
wild boar.
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the study shows how this has happened. Working with more than 100
collaborators, researchers from Oxford's School of Archaeology sequenced
DNA signatures from more than 2,000 ancient pigs including genomes from
63 archaeological pigs collected across the Near East and Europe over
the last 10,000 years.
The findings revealed that the first pigs to arrive into Europe
alongside farmers 8,000 years ago had clear Near Eastern genetic
ancestry. Over the course of the next 3,000 years, however, ancient
domestic pigs hybridised with European wild boar to such an extent that
they lost almost all their Near Eastern ancestry. Some low level of Near
Eastern ancestry, however potentially remained in the genome of modern
European domestic pigs, and this likely explains their characteristic
black, and black and white spotted coat colours. Higher level of Near
Eastern ancestry were also maintained in pig populations on
Mediterranean islands maintained probably because these populations
experienced comparatively less gene flow with European wild boar
relative to pigs on the continent.
Professor Greger Larson, Director of the Palaeogenomics &
Bio-Archaeology Research Network (PalaeoBarn) at Oxford and senior
author of the study, said: "Having access to ancient genomes over such a
large space and time has allowed us to see the slow-motion replacement
of the entire genome of domestic pigs. This suggests that pig management
in Europe over millennia was extensive, and that though swineherders
maintained selection for some coat colours, domestic pigs interacted
with wild boar frequently enough that they lost the ancestral signature
of the wild boar from which they were derived."
Dr. Laurent Frantz, lead author of the study at Queen Mary
University of London, said: "We are all taught that the big change was
the initial process of domestication, but our data suggests that almost
none of the human-selection over the first 2,500 years of pig
domestication has been important in the development of modern European
commercial pigs."
Now that the team have pieced together a timeline of the genomic
history of pigs in western Eurasia, the next steps in the research will
be to precisely identify, in the genome of modern European domestic
pigs, the few genes that retained their original Near Eastern ancestry.
This will allow us to assess whether the artificial selection applied by
early farmers in the Fertile Crescent, over 10,000 years ago, left any
further legacy in modern pigs beyond coat colour.
The first Americans - humans who crossed onto the North American
continent and then dispersed throughout Central and South America - all
share common ancestry. But as they settled different areas, the
populations diverged and became distinct. A new study from North
Carolina State University shows that facial differences resulting from
this divergence were due to the complex interaction of environment and
evolution on these populations and sheds light on how human
diversification occurred after settlement of the New World.
"If we want to understand variation in modern populations in Central
and South America specifically, then we need to examine variation in
prehistoric American populations during the formative period after they
settled the continent but prior to European contact," says Ann Ross,
professor of biological sciences at NC State and lead author of a paper
describing the work.
In the first craniofacial variation study to look at the continent
as a whole - a study 20 years in the making - Ross and co-author Douglas
Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution examined skulls from across
Mesoamerica and Central and South America. The skulls dated from 730 -
1630 A.D., and came from environments ranging from arid to alpine to
coastal. Using a 3D digitizer, the researchers recorded standard
anatomical landmarks on the skulls in order to get a consensus
configuration for each population group. They compared the group
configurations to determine the types of variation associated with each
group.
"There's a lot of debate as to what models modern cranial
variation," Ross says. "Mutations would insert the most variation, but
they're very rare. Adaptation to environment is another possibility, but
many researchers believe variation is largely due to a neutral process
such as genetic drift, which occurs when populations separate and stop
exchanging genes."
Ross and Ubelaker found that highland populations from across the
region were similar to each other, as were lowland populations. But
comparing highland with lowland populations showed higher variation
between the two groups.
"That makes sense," Ross says. "You probably wouldn't travel from
the mountains to the beach in order to find a mate. And we know that
these groups were exchanging more than just pots."
While those results could be attributed in part to genetic drift,
the researchers also found that other factors - such as adaptations to
climate and altitude - also played a role in craniofacial
differentiation between populations. Ross hopes that the work can serve
as a baseline for future studies.
"Population divergence is a multifactorial process, a complex
interplay of factors," Ross says. "If you want to find out why these
populations diverge you have to look at multiple factors, not just
genetics or DNA."
IMAGE: The Fincha Habera rock shelter in the Ethiopian Bale Mountains served as a residence for prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
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Credit: Götz Ossendorf
People in Ethiopia did not live in low valleys during the last ice
age. Instead they lived high up in the inhospitable Bale Mountains.
There they had enough water, built tools out of obsidian and relied
mainly on giant rodents for nourishment. This discovery was made by an
international team of researchers led by Martin Luther University
Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) in cooperation with the Universities of Cologne,
Bern, Marburg, Addis Ababa and Rostock. In the current issue of "Science",
the researchers provide the first evidence that our African ancestors
had already settled in the mountains during the Palaeolithic period,
about 45,000 years ago.
At around 4,000 metres above sea level, the Bale Mountains in
southern Ethiopia are a rather inhospitable region. There is a low level
of oxygen in the air, temperatures fluctuate sharply, and it rains a
lot. "Because of these adverse living conditions, it was previously
assumed that humans settled in the Afro-Alpine region only very lately
and for short periods of time," says Professor Bruno Glaser, an expert
in soil biogeochemistry at MLU. Together with an international team of
archaeologists, soil scientists, palaeoecologists, and biologists, he
has been able to show that this assumption is incorrect. People had
already begun living for long periods of time on the ice-free plateaus
of the Bale Mountains about 45,000 years ago during the Middle
Pleistocene Epoch. By then the lower valleys were already too dry for
survival.
For several years, the research team investigated a rocky outcrop
near the settlement of Fincha Habera in the Bale Mountains in southern
Ethiopia. During their field campaigns, the scientists found a number of
stone artefacts, clay fragments and a glass bead. "We also extracted
information from the soil as part of our subproject," says Glaser. Based
on the sediment deposits in the soil, the researchers from Halle were
able to carry out extensive biomarker and nutrient analyses as well as
radiocarbon dating and thus draw conclusions as to how many people lived
in the region and when they lived there. For this work, the scientists
also developed a new type of palaeothermometer which could be used to
roughly track the weather in the region - including temperature,
humidity and precipitation. Such analyses can only be done in natural
areas with little contamination, otherwise the soil profile will have
changed too much by more recent influences. The inhospitable conditions
of the Bale Mountains present ideal conditions for such research since
the soil has only changed on the surface during the last millennia.
Using this data, the researchers were not only able to show that
people have been there for a longer period of time. The analyses may
also have uncovered the reasons for this: during the last ice age the
settlement of Fincha Habera was located beyond the edge of the glaciers.
According to Glaser, there was a sufficient amount of water available
since the glaciers melted in phases. The researchers are even able to
say what people ate: giant mole rats, endemic rodents in the region the
researchers investigated. These were easy to hunt and provided enough
meat, thereby providing the energy required to survive in the rough
terrain. Humans probably also settled in the area because there was
deposit of volcanic obsidian rock nearby from which they could mine
obsidian and make tools out of it. "The settlement was therefore not
only comparatively habitable, but also practical," concludes Glaser.
The soil samples also reveal a further detail about the history of
the settlement. Starting around 10,000 years before the Common Era, the
location was populated by humans for a second time. At this time, the
site was increasingly used as a hearth. And: "For the first time, the
soil layer dating from this period also contains the excrement of
grazing animals," says Glaser.
According to the research team, the new study in "Science"
not only provides new insights into the history of human settlement in
Africa, it also imparts important information about the human potential
to adapt physically, genetically and culturally to changing
environmental conditions. For example, some groups of people living in
the Ethiopian mountains today can easily contend with low levels of
oxygen in the air.
