Scientists use modern technology to understand how ochre paint was created in pictographs

Ochre, one of Earth's oldest naturally occurring materials, was often seen as a vivid red paint

University of Missouri-Columbia

IMAGE: This is one of the pieces of rock art found at Babine Lake. It is representative of the rock art that was analyzed in the study. view more 

Credit: University of Missouri

Ochre, one of Earth's oldest naturally occurring materials, was often used as a vivid red paint in ancient rock art known as pictographs across the world. Despite its broad use throughout human history and a modern focus on how the artistic symbolism is interpreted, little research exists on the paint itself and how it was produced.
Now, scientists led by Brandi MacDonald at the University of Missouri are using archaeological science to understand how ochre paint was created by hunter-gatherers in North America to produce rock art located at Babine Lake in British Columbia. The study was published in Scientific Reports, a journal of Nature.
"Ochre is one of the only types of material that people have continually used for over 200,000 years, if not longer," said MacDonald, who specializes in ancient pigments. "Therefore, we have a deep history in the archeological record of humans selecting and engaging with this material, but few people study how it's actually made."
This is the first study of the rock art at Babine Lake. It shows that individuals who prepared the ochre paints harvested an aquatic, iron-rich bacteria out of the lake -- in the form of an orange-brown sediment.
In the study, the scientists used modern technology, including the ability to heat a single grain of ochre and watch the effects of temperature change under an electron microscope at MU's Electron Microscopy Core facility. They determined that individuals at Babine Lake deliberately heated this bacteria to a temperature range of approximately 750°C to 850°C to initiate the color transformation.
"It's common to think about the production of red paint as people collecting red rocks and crushing them up," MacDonald said. "Here, with the help of multiple scientific methods, we were able to reconstruct the approximate temperature at which the people at Babine Lake were deliberately heating this biogenic paint over open-hearth fires. So, this wasn't a transformation done by chance with nature. Today, engineers are spending a lot of money trying to determine how to produce highly thermo-stable paints for ceramic manufacturing or aerospace engineering without much known success, yet we've found that hunter-gatherers had already discovered a successful way to do this long ago."

Early DNA lineages from Finland shed light on the diverse origins of the contemporary population

IMAGE: Medieval burial site of Kalmistomäki in Kylälahti, Hiitola in Russia. view more 

Credit: Stanislav Belskiy

A new genetic study carried out at the University of Helsinki and the University of Turku demonstrates that, at the end of the Iron Age, Finland was inhabited by separate and differing populations, all of them influencing the gene pool of modern Finns. The study is so far the most extensive investigation of the ancient DNA of people inhabiting the region of Finland.
In the study, genes were investigated from archaeological bone samples of more than one hundred individuals who lived between the 4th and 19th centuries AD. Most of the samples originated in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed down by mothers to all of their offspring, was extracted from the individuals, thus uncovering the population history of women.
Based on the findings, the people who inhabited Finland in the Iron Age (approximately 300-1300 AD) and the Middle Ages (approximately 1200-1500 AD) shared mitochondrial lineages with today's Finns. However, significant differences were seen in the genome of individuals buried in different burial sites in the Iron Age in particular. mtDNA lineages typical of Stone Age hunter-gatherers were common among those buried in Luistari, Eura (southwest Finland), and Kirkkailanmaki, Hollola (southern Finland). In Kylalahti, Hiitola (Republic of Karelia, Russia) and Tuukkala, Mikkeli (eastern Finland), the most common findings were lineages characteristic of ancient European farmer populations. The fifth Iron Age burial site included in the study is located in Levanluhta, western Finland. Many of the individuals buried there represented mtDNA lineages associated with the modern Sami.
"All of the above originally independent lineages remain common in Finland to this day. This indicates that the studied Iron Age populations have had an impact on the gene pool of contemporary Finns," says doctoral student Sanni Oversti from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland.
The researchers posit that the differences found in the Iron Age populations of western and eastern Finland are opposite to those found in today's Finns: the lineages associated with ancient farmers were more common in the east, while the lineages inherited from hunter-gatherers were more prevalent in the west. Farmer populations arriving in Finland not only from the west and south but also from the east provides a potential explanation for this.

Alpine rock axeheads became social and economic exchange fetishes in the Neolithic

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

IMAGE: Alpine rock axehead found at Harras, Thuringia, from the Michelsberg Culture (c. 4300-2800 ANE). view more 

Credit: Juraj Lipták, State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt.

Axeheads made out of Alpine rocks had strong social and economic symbolic meaning in the Neolithic, given their production and use value. Their resistance to friction and breakage, which permitted intense polishing and a re-elaboration of the rocks, gave these artefacts an elevated exchange value, key to the formation of long-distance exchange networks among communities of Western Europe. Communities who had already begun to set the value of exchange of a product according to the time and effort invested in producing them.
This is what a study led by a research group at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) indicates in regards to the mechanical and physical parameters characterising the production, circulation and use of a series of rock types used in the manufacturing of sharp-edged polished artefacts in Europe during the Neolithic (5600-2200 BCE).
The objective of the study was to answer a long debated topic: the criteria by which Alpine rocks formed part of an unprecedented pan-European phenomenon made up of long-distance exchange networks, while others were only used locally. Was the choice based on economic, functional or perhaps subjective criteria? Stone axeheads were crucial to the survival and economic reproduction of societies in the Neolithic. Some of the rocks used travelled over 1000 kilometres from their Alpine regions to northern Europe, Andalusia in southern Spain and the Balkans.
This is the first time a study includes in the specialised bibliography comparative data obtained by testing the resistance to friction and breakage of the rocks. These mechanical parameters have led to the definition of production and use values, which were then correlated with the distances and volumes of the rocks exchanged in order to obtain their exchange value. The results help understand the basic principles underlying the supply and distribution system of stone materials during the Neolithic in Western Europe, as well as its related economic logic.
"The reasons favouring the integration of specific rock types into these long-distance networks depended on a complex pattern of technological and functional criteria. This pattern was not solely based on economic aspects, their use value, but rather on the mechanical capacity to resist successive transformation processes, i.e. their production value, and remain unaltered throughout time", explains Selina Delgado-Raack, researcher at the Department of Prehistory, UAB, and first author of the article.
Supply System and Economic Logic
The study points to the diverging economic conception between the manufacturing of tools using other rocks and Alpine rock axeheads. Neolithic communities selected the most suitable raw materials available from all the resources in their region and knew each of their mechanical and physical characteristics. These tools normally travelled in a radius of 200 kilometres from where they originated and rarely went farther than 400-500 kilometres. Only Alpine rocks travelled further than those regional and economic limits.
"The circulation of these rocks at larger distances did not respond to a functional and cost-efficient logic, in which each agent takes into account the costs of manufacturing and transport when selecting the different rock types, all of them viable in being converted into fully functioning tools", indicates Roberto Risch, also researcher at the Department of Prehistory, UAB, and coordinator of the research. "It rather obeys the emergence of a very different economic reasoning, based on the ability to transform one material through ever greater amounts of work, something which many centuries later Adam Smith used to define the British economy of the 18th century. In the case of Alpine axeheads, their exceptional exchange value was due to the increase in manufacturing costs, a result of the intense polishing of these stones as they passed from one community to another".
A Primitive Form of Currency?
For the research team, the fact that the Alpine axeheads are categorised as the most commonly crafted and modified artefact in different periods and regions during the Neolithic rules out their role as symbols of power or ceremonial elements. "The economic pattern points towards more of a fetish object used in social and economic interactions among European communities of highly different socio-political productions and orientations", Selina Delgado-Raack states.
The exceptional exchange value reached by some rock types, such as the omphacitites and jadeitites, leads the team to think that they may have been used as a primitive form of currency, although they admit that there is a need for more studies before this topic can be clarified.

Ancient Egyptians gathered birds from the wild for sacrifice and mummification

IMAGE: Scene from the Books of the Dead (The Egyptian museum) showing the ibis-headed God Thoth recording the result of the final judgement. view more 

Credit: Wasef et al, 2019

In ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study released November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Wasef of Griffith University, Australia and colleagues.
Egyptian catacombs are famously filled with the mummified bodies of Sacred Ibises. Between around 664BC and 250AD, it was common practice for the birds to be sacrificed, or much more rarely worshipped in ritual service to the god Thoth, and subsequently mummified. In ancient sites across Egypt, these mummified birds are stacked floor to ceiling along kilometers of catacombs, totaling many millions of birds. But how the Egyptians got access to so many birds has been a mystery; some ancient texts indicate that long-term farming and domestication may have been employed.
In this study, Wasef and colleagues collected DNA from 40 mummified Sacred Ibis specimens from six Egyptian catacombs dating to around 2500 years ago and 26 modern specimens from across Africa. 14 of the mummies and all of the modern specimens yielded complete mitochondrial genome sequences. These data allowed the researchers to compare genetic diversity between wild populations and the sacrificed collections.
If the birds were being domesticated and farmed, the expected result would be low genetic diversity due to interbreeding of restricted populations, but in contrast, this study found that the genetic diversity of mummified Ibises within and between catacombs was similar to that of modern wild populations. This suggests that the birds were not the result of centralized farming, but instead short-term taming. The authors suggest the birds were likely tended in their natural habitats or perhaps farmed only in the times of year they were needed for sacrifice.
The authors add: "We report the first complete ancient genomes of the Egyptian Sacred Ibis mummies, showing that priests sustained short-term taming of the wild Sacred Ibis in local lakes or wetlands contrary to centralised industrial scale farming of sacrificial birds."

World's oldest glue used from prehistoric times till the days of the Gauls

Birch bark tar, the oldest glue in the world, was in use for at least 50,000 years, from the Palaeolithic Period up until the time of the Gauls. Made by heating birch bark, it served as an adhesive for hafting tools and decorating objects. Scientists mistakenly thought it had been abandoned in western Europe at the end of the Iron Age (800-25 BC) and replaced by conifer resins, around which a full-fledged industry developed during the Roman period. But by studying artefacts that date back to the first six centuries AD through the lens of chemistry, archaeology, and textual analysis, researchers[1] from the CNRS, Université Nice Sophia Antipolis / Université Côte d'Azur, and Inrap have discovered birch tar was being used right up to late antiquity, if not longer. The artefacts in question--found in a region where birch is scarce, thus raising the question of how it was procured--are testimony to the strength of tradition among the Gauls. The scientists' findings are published in Antiquity (13 November 2019).

Megadrought likely triggered the fall of the Assyrian Empire

Climate change influenced rise and fall of Northern Iraq's Neo-Assyrian Empire

Changes in climate may have contributed to both the rise and collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, which was considered the most powerful empire of its time, according to a new study. The results suggest that multi-decade megadroughts aligned with the timing of the empire's collapse in 609 BCE, triggering declines in the region's agricultural productivity that led to political and economic demise within 60 years. Previous explanations for the empire's collapse have focused on political instability and wars; the role of climate change was largely "ignored," the authors say, in part because of a lack of high-resolution paleoclimate records from the region. Ashish Sinha et al. gathered oxygen and carbon isotopic data from two stalagmites found in Kuna Ba Cave in northern Iraq, which provide a precisely dated record of precipitation over the last 4,000 years. These records indicate that the interval between 850 and 740 BCE (when the empire was at its zenith) was one of the wettest periods in 4,000 years, with precipitation levels during the cool season 15 to 30% higher than during the modern 1980-2007 period. However, the record also suggests that cool season precipitation during a seventh century BCE megadrought may have fallen below the level required for productive farming. Since the empire was highly dependent on agriculture, Sinha and colleagues conclude the megadrought would have likely exacerbated political unrest and may have encouraged invading armies that ultimately led to Assyrian collapse. The authors also note that their data suggest that the recent multi-year droughts, if they were to continue over a century, would constitute the worst episodes of regional drought in the last four millennia.

New research suggests it was climate-related drought that built the foundation for the collapse of the Assyrian Empire (whose heartland was based in today's northern Iraq)--one of the most powerful civilizations in the ancient world. The Science Advances paper, led by Ashish Sinha at California State University, Dominguez Hills and coauthored by CIRES affiliate Adam Schneider, details how megadroughts in the 7th century BC triggered a decline in Assyria's way of life that contributed to its ultimate collapse.
Keep reading for a Q&A with Schneider, who was a CIRES researcher from 2015 to 2017:
Q: What role did the Assyrian Empire play in global history?
A: There are people in the archaeological community who say Neo-Assyria was the first super power in the history of the world. The Neo-Assyrian empire (912-609 BC) was the third and final phase of Assyrian civilization. It was by far the largest empire in the region up to that time, controlling much of the territory from the Persian Gulf to Cyprus. The Assyrians were basically like the Empire in Star Wars, they are the all-devouring machine.
They also had incredible skill as hydro-engineers. The Assyrians were largely responsible for the way that the Tigris River Basin drainage now works, they completely remade the natural water flows of that landscape using aqueducts and other hydraulic infrastructure. Amazingly, some of these features are still functioning today.
Q: How did a culture this powerful collapse?
A: In the final decades of the Neo-Assyrian empire, the civilization was littered with political instability, civil wars, and invasion by outside armies. Our study shows that climate-related factors were underlying all of this.
The Assyrian empire was built during a time of heavy precipitation and successful harvests. But now we can tell, from climate records, that the civilization experienced a series of megadroughts that likely triggered the collapse of the empire--weakening agriculture and amplifying conflict. The impact of drought in this region was dependent on where the Assyrians were located in northern Iraq. The Tigris River is so deeply cut into the surrounding soil that you can't do large scale-irrigation there. That's why rainfall was so crucial to their lives. The Assyrians were much more vulnerable to the impacts of prolonged and severe drought than people downriver.
Q: How are these findings different than previous research?
A: Our team analyzed drip water that got fossilized in two stalagmites in Kuna Ba Cave in northern Iraq. Because the oxygen and carbon isotope composition in different layers of the cave formations can be used to infer changes in precipitation at a high temporal resolution, we get a much better proxy than anything else we had previously. And because the isotope record went all the way up to 2007 CE, we were able to correlate the stable carbon and oxygen isotope ratios with modern instrumental climate information from the region. This has enabled us to compare the modern isotope data with ancient layers. We now know that the Assyrian droughts started decades earlier than we had previously thought, and also that the period prior to the onset of drought was one of the wettest in the entire roughly 3800-year sequence. It changes some of the hypotheses we have made.
For example: King Sennacherib, who ruled from 705 to 681 BC, was well-known for building massive canals and other structures. In our earlier work on the question of drought in ancient Assyria, I and my colleague Dr. Selim Adal? had initially viewed him as a short-sighted ruler who had pursued short-term political goals at the expense of long-term drought resilience, and set in motion a catastrophic chain of events as a result. But with this new data, we now think thatSennacherib probably was already experiencing drought when he was king, and in fact he may well have been trying to do something about the environmental calamity during that time. So my colleagues and I have joked about issuing an apology letter to Sennacherib for the misunderstanding!
Q: How did you find yourself in this area of research: the crossroads between climate and history?
A: Archeology has been my passion since I was a small child. The climate angle I wanted no part of it, because that was the family business--my father was a climatologist, and I didn't want to compete. But in the summer of 2010 he suddenly passed away. At that point I was without a clear dissertation project and started to rethink the idea of looking at climatic impacts on ancient people. So it started as a tribute to my father. I ended up going to a research center in Turkey and I got hooked. In fact, I very quickly earned the nickname "Climate Guy" as historians would come ask me if their research had any climatic basis.
Q: Have there been other times in history, in other places, where climate events impacted political structure like in Assyria?
A: The French Revolution is one example. In the two years prior to the French Revolution, poor weather led to a series of bad harvests, which alongside other factors helped to cause the price of bread to skyrocket, especially in Paris. Another example is the U.S. Dust Bowl in the 1930's. We saw a mass migration resulting from both climatic and economic factors during the Great Depression, causing huge changes. It drove the development and agriculture in southern California. The question is not, "Did climate have an impact?"--it's: "How, why, and how important was climate alongside the other factors?"
Q: What about modern day?
A: If you look at the record, the Assyrian Megadrought and what I have called the Late Assyrian Dry Phase is one of two of the most extreme periods of dry conditions in the entire 3800 year sequence for northern Iraq. The other one is the present day. Our working assumption here is that the latter is being driven at least in part by anthropogenic climate change.
Obviously, today Iraq is a very different place than it was in 700 B.C. But it's not hard to look at that country's problems with internal political stability and sectarian strife to think about the additional issue of drought leading to further trouble in that region.

The medieval Catholic church's influence on psychology of Western, industrialized societies

The Western Catholic Church's influence on marriage and family structures during the Middle Ages shaped the cultural evolution of the beliefs and behaviors now common among Western Europeans and their cultural descendants, researchers report. The greater individualism, lower conformity and increased stranger trust behaviors commonly observed among these populations, long exposed to the church, are at least in part due to the Medieval Western Church's policies, the authors say. Their study highlights how cultural changes more than 500 years ago can evolve and seed significant and long-lasting psychological variation, both within and across nations. "Illuminating the ways in which cultures vary - and why they have evolved in different ways given certain socioenvironmental forces - can help us to empathize with those who are different," writes Michele Gelfand in a related Perspective.

Substantial variation exists in the psychological beliefs and behaviors of populations across the globe. In particular, the proclivities of individuals in western, industrialized countries are unique. Previous research has shown that these societies, more recently characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic - or "WEIRD" - tend to be more individualistic, analytically oriented and trustful of others whilst demonstrating less conformity, obedience and solidarity.

Whether the driver of these traits is formal political institutions, for example, or something else, has been unclear. Jonathan Schultz and colleagues hypothesized that the Western Catholic Church's marriage and family program dissolved strong, cohesive kin networks, which then impacted psychology. To test this, they combined anthropological, historical and psychological data. For example, analyzing records kept by the Vatican, which informed the rate of cousin marriages, helped them to evaluate kinship intensity. To capture human psychology, they drew on a very broad set of data, including survey data, behavioral data, and ecologically relevant observational data such as voluntary blood donation.

Schulz et al.'s analysis points to the expanding Church's religious decrees on marriage systematically replacing extended kin-based family networks with smaller, more independent nuclear households with weak family ties. To rule out alternative hypotheses that could explain their results, they controlled for variables including geographic factors, income, wealth, and education.