Evidence of prehistoric human activity in Falkland Islands

 

IMAGE: KIT HAMLEY HOLDS A LARGE MALE SEA LION SKULL FROM A BONE PILE AT NEW ISLAND. DOZENS OF INDIVIDUAL SEA LIONS WERE PRESENT THROUGHOUT THE BONE PILE ASSEMBLAGES EXCAVATED AT NEW ISLAND. view more 

CREDIT: KIT HAMLEY

Since its first recorded sighting by European explorers in the 1600s, scientists and historians have believed that Europeans were the first people to ever set foot on the Falkland Islands. Findings from a new University of Maine-led study, however, suggests otherwise; that human activity on the islands predates European arrival by centuries. 

Kit Hamley, National Science Foundation graduate research fellow with the UMaine Climate Change Institute, spearheaded the first-ever scientific investigation into prehistoric human presence on the Southern Atlantic archipelago. She and her team collected animal bones, charcoal records and other evidence from across the islands over multiple expeditions and examined them for indications of human activity using radiocarbon dating and other laboratory techniques.

One notable sign of pre-European human activity derived from a 8,000-year-old charcoal record collected from a column of peat on New Island, located in the southwestern edge of the territory. According to researchers, the record showed signs of a marked increase in fire activity in 150 C.E., then abrupt and significant spikes in 1410 C.E., and 1770 C.E., the latter of which corresponds with initial European settlement. 

Researchers also gathered sea lion and penguin samples on New Island near the site where a landowner discovered a stone projectile point that is consistent with the technology Indigenous South Americans have used for the past 1,000 years. The bones were heaped in discrete piles at one site. Hamley says the location, volume and type of bones indicated that the mounds were likely assembled by humans. 

Most of the evidence Hamley and her colleagues collected indicated that Indigenous South Americans likely travelled to the Falkland Islands between 1275 C.E. and 1420 C.E. Arrival dates prior to 1275 C.E., however, cannot be ruled out because some evidence dates back even earlier, according to researchers. For example, the team found a tooth from an extinct Falkland Islands fox called the warrah with a radiocarbon date of 3450 B.C.E., the oldest for the species. Regardless, all of the team’s findings indicate that people landed in the archipelago before British navigator John Strong in 1690, the first European to set foot on the archipelago. 

Indigenous people likely visited the islands for multiple short-term stays, as opposed to long-term occupation, according to the UMaine researchers. As a result, they left few cultural materials there, but enough for Hamley and her colleagues to find a discernible anthropogenic and paleoecological footprint and conduct their study. 

“These findings broaden our understanding of Indigenous movement and activity in the remote and harsh South Atlantic Ocean,” says Hamley, a UMaine Ph.D. student of ecology and environmental sciences. “This is really exciting because it opens up new doors for collaborating with descendant Indigenous communities to increase our understanding of past ecological changes throughout the region. People have long speculated that it was likely that Indigenous South Americans had reached the Falkland Islands, so it is really rewarding to get to play a role in helping bring that part of the past to life of the islands."

UMaine researchers who participated in the study with Hamley include her adviser, Jacquelyn Gill, an associate professor of paleoecology and plant ecology; Daniel Sandweiss, a professor of anthropology; and Brenda Hall, a professor of glacial geology. 

Other investigators involved in the research include Dulcinea Groff, a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Wyoming and former UMaine Ph.D. student; Kathryn Krasinski, an assistant professor of anthropology at Adelphi University; John Southon; a researcher with the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California-Irvine; Paul Brickle, executive director of the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute; and Thomas Lowell, a geology professor with the University of Cincinnati. 

Science Advances, a journal from the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), published a report of their findings. 

Hamley’s most recent study builds on her research into the warrah (Dusicyon australis), an extinct species of fox. The warrah was the only native and terrestrial mammal to reside on the Falkland Islands at the time of European arrival. Subsequent hunting wiped the species out in 1856, making it the first extinct canid in the historic record, Hamley says. 

For years, various scholars, including Charles Darwin, have debated the warrah’s origins and how it came to the islands. Hamley hypothesizes that humans may have introduced the species to the archipelago prior to European settlement. Many previously rejected the theory based on a prior lack of scientific evidence, but the latest findings from Hamley’s team reopens that possibility, she says. Indigenous South Americans may have domesticated warrah as they have with other foxes and canids, and brought them to the islands during their voyages and short-term stays. 

During a 2018 expedition to the islands, Hamely and her colleagues found three warrah bone samples at Spring Point Farm in West Falkland. Carbon dating and isotopic analysis revealed the warrah whose bones were analyzed “had a marine-based diet consisting primarily of apex marine predators” like sea lions and fur seals, a similar diet to seafaring Indigenious South Americans in prehistoric times, according to researchers. While these findings could reflect coastal scavenging, it may exemplify the food their potential human counterparts were procuring and eating, researchers say. 

“This study has the potential to change the trajectory of future ecological research in The Falklands,” says Hamley. “The introduction of a top predator, like the warrah, could have had profound implications for the biodiversity of the islands, which are home to ground nesting seabirds such as penguins, albatross and cormorants. It also changes the ever-captivating story of past human-canine relationships. We know that Indigenous South Americans domesticated foxes, but this study helps show how potentially important these animals were to those communities extending back thousands of years." 

Hamley conducted her research during three expeditions to the Falkland Islands in 2014, 2016 and 2018. During the 2016 journey, she participated in UMaine’s Follow a Researcher program, through which scientists give K–12 students a glimpse of their work through live expedition updates, Twitter chats and videos. 

The study led by Hamley contributes to the growing body of scientific investigations into the ecological, anthropological and climate history of the Falklands Islands conducted by UMaine researchers. A 2020 UMaine-led study discovered that the establishment of seabird colonies on the islands in response to an abrupt regional cooling period 5,000 years ago changed its ecosystems. 

“As the world warms, we hope our growing understanding of the pre-colonial history of the Falklands will help decision-makers balance the needs of wildlife and people, who rely on ecotourism, fisheries and other industries,” says Gill, an NSF CAREER researcher who was named a 2020 Friend of the Planet by the National Center for Science Education. “We’re only just beginning to piece together the role people played in the Falklands before European settlement. Because of centuries of colonialism on the mainland, a lot of the oral knowledge about this period was lost. Western science needs updating, and we hope future work will be done in collaboration with the modern-day Indigenous people in the region; their ancestors were the first experts here.”

​​More than ceremonial, ancient Chaco Canyon was home

 

While some current scientific theories point to ancient Chaco Canyon, a distinctive archaeological site in the American southwest, as simply a prehistoric ceremonial site populated only during sacred rituals — University of Cincinnati researchers are turning that popular belief on its head.

“The ancestral puebloans interacted with the local ecosystem in ways that helped them adapt and thrive for over a millennium,” says David Lentz, UC professor of biology and co-author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE titled, “Ecosystem impacts by the ancestral Puebloans of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, USA.” 

“Many active researchers, however, align with the idea that Chaco Canyon was too arid to sustain day-to-day living, arguing that the land and architectural structures were not permanent dwellings. 

“Basically, they contend that the massive stone and timber infrastructure at Chaco Canyon, built over many centuries, was used only as a periodic ceremonial center and storage facility. But it was not that simple and our evidence contradicts many of the currently proposed theories about the occupation of Chaco Canyon in ancient times.”

Through on-site pollen and botanical analysis and lidar mapping technology during the last decade, Lentz and a team of interdisciplinary researchers from UC’s departments of anthropology, geology, geography and biology, including a select group of national collaborative scientists, reveal the economic and environmental impact of ancestral puebloans in Chaco Canyon during the culture’s great preeminence. 

“Our goals focused on providing fresh insight into the sustainability of land use practices in Chaco Canyon during the ancestral puebloan occupation,” adds Lentz. “Our findings add new data that reveal measurable changes in the juniper pinyon woodlands that occurred before 600 B.C. when the food procurement system transitioned from hunting and gathering to agricultural production.”

The shift in ancestral puebloan food resource management enhanced their ability to sustain larger populations in a harsh, barren landscape for several centuries during the pre-Columbian era. 

“But with their landscape modifications came serious environmental ramifications. At the cost of major reduction of tree density in the local woodlands, their activities ultimately contributed to a destabilizing environmental impact prior to their final exodus,” adds Lentz. 

This innovative interdisciplinary research is a stellar example of academic excellence, an ongoing tenet of UC’s strategic direction called Next Lives Here.

Early pueblo builders of the southwest

Chaco Canyon, a 34,000-acre center of social complexity located in the southwestern region of the U.S., flourished during the height of the Chaco culture between (800 to 1140 A.D.), a period Lentz refers to as the Bonito phase.

During the cultural flourishment, the hierarchical society was known for elaborate ceremonial activities, the maintenance of long-distance trade routes and impressive architectural complexes, including more than a dozen immense structures that Lentz and archaeologists refer to as “great houses.” One of the houses, known today as "Pueblo Bonito," may have had over 600 rooms, including crypts that housed more than 100 burials. 

Earlier research revealed a system of roads that connect many Chaco culture sites with evidence of astronomical alignments, indicating that some of the structures were oriented toward the solstice sun and lunar standstills.

Against this backdrop, archaeologists generally agree that Chaco Canyon functioned as a remote trade center and ceremonial site for the Chaco culture. Until now, however, Lentz says studies lacked evidence to support human management of the canyon’s precarious environment for daily living.

Hidden clues

Using lidar aerial mapping technology and the analysis of various ancient substances including carbon isotopes, pollen content, macrobotanical remains and chemical composition of soils, the research team evaluated alternative hypotheses relating to environmental impacts by the ancestral puebloans.

It became clear to the researchers that as ancient puebloans tussled with the unpredictable environment, they kept their society thriving for more than 1,000 years through agriculture by growing a variety of crops such as corn, beans and squash in the canyon while simultaneously harnessing local pinyon and juniper tree woodlands for architectural needs, food resources and firewood for cooking.

“This is a very arid area,” says Lentz. “In arid woodlands the trees are essential for holding the soil in place. When the puebloan inhabitants removed those woodlands, the result was eventually severe erosion and the deterioration of croplands.”

The researchers found a gradual degradation of the local woodlands beginning around 600 B.C., much earlier than previously thought, Lentz says. In spite of the woodland clearance, the people living in the canyon flourished for nearly a millennium through indigenous agricultural practices while using water irrigation methods from the nearby Chaco, Escavada and Fajada Wash tributaries. 

Research team director, Vernon Scarborough, UC professor of anthropology, emphasizes the highly interdisciplinary character of the project, noting that, “Although the focus of our work was on the identification of ancient ancestral puebloan water systems within this arid environment, past landscape alterations were more broadly brought to light.”

Critical evidence for utilizing the local juniper trees for firewood to cook locally cultivated corn, beans and squash was especially important, says Lentz. The pinyon pine nuts provided a valuable source of food, so the Chacoans protected the pinyon trees from over-harvesting for firewood. But the juniper trees, an excellent source of fuel, were not spared from this extensive harvesting.

“We found a reduction of the pinyon-juniper woodlands, with a loss of mostly juniper trees, happened at about the same time there was an introduction of agriculture into the canyon along with the technology for making pottery,” says Lentz. “Through radiocarbon dating from previous studies, we know that the woodlands were established and flourishing in that area as far back as 5,000 years ago, centuries before the puebloans began the use of agriculture.”

Early environmental impact

While the juxtaposition of utilizing agriculture and local wood for cooking had shifted the way the puebloans ate and prepared food, the ongoing clearing of the juniper trees placed an inexorable demand on the woodlands, say the researchers, eventually drastically reducing the number of trees.

“In this arid area, rain tends to come in buckets,” says Lentz. “After hundreds of years of thinning out the tree root systems that hold the soil in place, the rain began washing away much of the fertile topsoil, creating an environment that suffered continuous degradation.”

Prior to the emigration of many of Chaco’s residents from the canyon, these unsustainable land use practices resulted in bouts of erosion, which reduced the resilience of the landscape and likely exacerbated the ability of the ancestral puebloans to endure the period of extensive droughts and aridity that followed, says Lentz.

Present-day Chaco Canyon

With Chaco Canyon now declared a national park and UNESCO World Heritage site, visitors to Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico can marvel at the remains of 12 great houses and more than 4,000 areas of archaeological interest in the rocky landscape. The structures and ruins are protected from destruction and development and given national monument designation by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.

Because skywatching is deeply ingrained in the site’s past, Chaco Canyon’s 34,000-acre park was proclaimed a dark sky park in 2013, a designation intended to keep it free of light pollution, allowing visitors to see the stars. 

“This study markedly enhanced our revelation about the rate and process of early environmental change by ancient societal consumption practices and the climatic fluctuations,” says Scarborough. “This work, as well as that of others, ought to be yet another wake-up call for what is happening to our planet more generally today.”

 

Publication of 500-year-old manuscript exposes medieval beliefs and religious cults

 

IMAGE: THE BROMHOLM PRAYER ROLL, INK, SILVER AND GOLD ON PARCHMENT, 1370X130MMview more 

CREDIT: CREDIT GAIL TURNER / JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

A rare English illuminated medieval prayer roll, believed to be among only a few dozen still in existence worldwide, has been analysed in a new study to expose Catholic beliefs in England before the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

Now in private hands and previously unknown to experts, this metre-long roll provides fresh insights into Christian pilgrimage, and the cult of the Cross before Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

Examination of the ancient roll’s illustrations and text, including religious verse in Latin and English, are published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Archaeological Association.

“In particular,” art historian, and study author, Gail Turner states, “the study demonstrates Christian devotion in medieval England.

“It gives insight into the devotional rituals connected to a large crucifix (‘Rood’) at Bromholm Priory, in Norfolk, and uncovers a direct link between this 16th century artefact and a famous religious relic once associated among Christians with miracles.”

The first illumination of the roll (IMAGE)

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

 

The ‘Rood of Bromholm’, as it is known to historians, supposedly contained a fragment of the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. The relic transformed the Priory into a popular pilgrimage site mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer and in The Vision of Piers Plowman.

Images of the Rood in black, with gold outlines, feature several times in the Bromholm roll, and there is one direct reference to ‘the crosse of bromholme’.

The second illumination on the script (IMAGE)

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

 

Turner’s analysis suggests a prosperous pilgrim was possibly the owner of the Bromholm prayer roll – made from two pieces of vellum stitched together, and bought by a private collector in the 1970s.

“The roll reflects a time when the laity (non-clergy) had a real belief in both visible and invisible enemies,” says Turner, who has worked at Tate Britain, the Arts Council, and as a consultant for Christie’s and at the Courtauld.

“For their owners, prayer rolls…were prized as very personal inspirations to prayer, although during the Reformation and after they were commonly undervalued and dismissed.

“The survival of such a magnificent roll for over 500 years is therefore remarkable.”

Attaching animal skin pieces end to end in a continuous strip to make a ‘roll’ was once the standard method of presenting text. Few medieval prayer rolls survive today because they lacked covers yet were made to be handled. This one is 13cm wide, by a metre long.

Worshippers regularly touched or kissed images of Jesus on the cross in an attempt, says Turner, ”to experience Christ’s Passion more directly and powerfully”. Indeed, the historian reveals abrasion marks are visible on the Bromholm roll where the owner has engaged in such a ‘devotional act identified in other similar rolls’.

Turner has been able to estimate the document’s age through a reference in the roll to ‘John of Chalcedon’ or John Underwood, the penultimate prior of Bromholm. A passionate supporter of the Roman Catholic church, Underwood became auxiliary bishop of Norfolk in 1505 then lost his position in 1535 so it’s likely the roll was made between these dates.

Further connections between the roll, the Rood and Underwood can be made through the imagery of the five wounds Christ received during his crucifixion, according to the study.

Symbols representing the five wounds are depicted on Underwood’s tomb in Norwich, despite not being commonly found in Norfolk’s churches. In addition, the five wounds were focal to Bromholm Priory’s key devotional feasts – the Passion and the Exaltation of the Cross – when pilgrims came to venerate the Rood.

The original owner of the roll is likely to have been a ‘devout worshipper’ familiar with Bromholm’s feasts, says Turner. A patron of the priory, a member of the local Paston family, or a friend of John Underwood’s are among her suggestions.

Today, the priory stands in ruins in a field near the village of Bacton. As to the Rood of Bromholm’s fate, the study suggests it was taken to London. This is according to a letter written in 1537 to Thomas Cromwell by Sir Richard Southwell, a courtier from Norfolk.

After that, the trail appears to go cold, according to Turner, who adds it is ‘presumed to have been destroyed in London with many other relics, although its fate remains uncertain’.

Adoption of new military technologies in pre-industrial societies

 A new analysis spanning 10,000 years of history and ten major world regions has identified world population size, major technological advances, and geographical connectivity as key drivers of the evolution of military technology prior to the Industrial Revolution. Peter Turchin of Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, Austria, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 20, 2021.

Despite extensive speculation, the mechanisms that drove innovation, spread, and adoption of new military technologies in pre-industrial societies have been unclear. Prior research into this topic has often been criticized as being overly subjective, and many research efforts have been limited to narrow geographic regions or time periods.

To help clarify drivers of military technological evolution, Turchin and colleagues developed a new, systematic methodology that employs a resource known as Seshat: Global History Databank. This databank, originally developed by Turchin and others, serves as a growing collection of historical and archaeological data for numerous societies dating from the late Neolithic to the present.

For the new study, the researchers developed a quantitative approach for analyzing Seshat data that incorporates mathematical modeling and statistical analysis. They applied this methodology to empirically test prior hypotheses about military technological advancement in pre-industrial societies.

The researchers found support for several prior hypotheses; namely, that pre-industrial military technological evolution was indeed driven by world population size, connectivity between regions where technology is innovated and adopted, and key innovations, such as improvements in metallurgy. Meanwhile, they found, pre-industrial military technological evolution was not driven by smaller state-level factors, such as the population of a society, the size of its territory, or the sophistication of its government.

The authors view this study and their methodology as a significant first step towards better understanding of the drivers of both military technological advancement and technological advancements in general. They hope that future research will refine and extend this work; for example, by exploring the development of various technologies impacts equality and public well-being.

The authors add: "In this paper we set out to study the processes driving the evolution of military technology in the pre-industrial world. We were surprised to find that the size and internal complexity of states had very little impact. Instead, increased connectivity -- and growing conflict -- between societies across great distances, as well as the adoption of certain key innovations like cavalry and iron metallurgy, emerged as key drivers of military technological evolution."

500 ancient ceremonial sites in southern Mexico

The discovery shifts researchers' understanding of the relationship between the Olmec civilization and the subsequent Maya civilization.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

A team of international researchers led by the University of Arizona reported last year that they had uncovered the largest and oldest Maya monument – Aguada Fénix. That same team has now uncovered nearly 500 smaller ceremonial complexes that are similar in shape and features to Aguada Fénix. The find transforms previous understanding of Mesoamerican civilization origins and the relationship between the Olmec and the Maya people.

The team's findings are detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior. UArizona anthropology professor Takeshi Inomata is the paper's first author. His UArizona coauthors include anthropology professor Daniela Triadan and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Lab director Greg Hodgins.

Using data gathered through an airborne laser mapping technique called lidar, the researchers identified 478 complexes in the Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz. Lidar penetrates the tree canopy and reflects three-dimensional forms of archaeological features hidden under vegetation. The lidar data was collected by the Mexican governmental organization Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía and covered a 32,800-square-mile area, which is about the same size as the island of Ireland.

Publicly available lidar data allows researchers to study huge areas before they follow up with high-resolution lidar to study sites of interest in greater detail.

"It was unthinkable to study an area this large until a few years ago," Inomata said. "Publicly available lidar is transforming archaeology."

Missing Links?

There's a longstanding debate over whether the Olmec civilization led to the development of the Maya civilization or if the Maya developed independently.

The newly uncovered sites are located in a broad area encompassing the Olmec region and the western Maya lowlands. The complexes were likely constructed between 1100 B.C. and 400 B.C. and were built by diverse groups nearly a millennium before the heyday of the Maya civilization between A.D. 250 and 950.

The researchers found that the complexes share similar features with the earliest center in the Olmec area, San Lorenzo, which peaked between 1400 and 1100 BC. Aguada Fenix in the Maya area and other related sites began to adopt San Lorenzo's form and formalize it around 1100 BC.

At San Lorenzo, the team also found a previously unrecognized rectangular space.

"The sites are big horizontally but not vertically," Inomata said. "People will be walking on one and won't notice its rectangular space, but we can see it with lidar really nicely."

The researchers' work suggests that San Lorenzo served as a template for later constructions, including Aguada Fénix.

"People always thought San Lorenzo was very unique and different from what came later in terms of site arrangement," Inomata said. "But now we show that San Lorenzo is very similar to Aguada Fénix – it has a rectangular plaza flanked by edge platforms. Those features become very clear in lidar and are also found at Aguada Fénix, which was built a little bit later. This tells us that San Lorenzo is very important for the beginning of some of these ideas that were later used by the Maya."

Sites Were Likely Ritual Spaces

The sites uncovered by Inomata and his collaborators were likely used as ritual gathering sites, according to the paper. They include large central open spaces where lots of people could gather and participate in rituals.

The researchers also analyzed each site's orientation and found that the sites seem to be aligned to the sunrise of a certain date, when possible.

"There are lots of exceptions; for example, not every site has enough space to place the rectangular form in a desired direction, but when they can, they seem to have chosen certain dates," Inomata said.

While it's not clear why the specific dates were chosen, one possibility is that they may be tied to Zenith passage day, which is when the sun passes directly overhead. This occurs on May 10 in the region where the sites were found. This day marks the beginning of the rainy season and the planting of maize. Some groups chose to orient their sites to the directions of the sunrise on days 40, 60, 80 or 100 days before the zenith passage day. This is significant because the later Mesoamerican calendars are based on the number 20.

San Lorenzo, Aguada Fénix and some other sites have 20 edge platforms along the eastern and western sides of the rectangular plaza. Edge platforms are mounds placed along the edges of the large rectangular plazas. They define the shape of the plazas, and each are usually no taller than about 3 feet.

"This means that they were representing cosmological ideas through these ceremonial spaces," Inomata said. "In this space, people gathered according to this ceremonial calendar."

Inomata stressed that this is just the beginning of the team's work.

"There are still lots of unanswered questions," he said.

Researchers wonder what the social organization of the people who built the complexes looked like. San Lorenzo possibly had rulers, which is suggested by sculptures.

"But Aguada Fénix doesn't have those things," Inomata said. "We think that people were still somehow mobile, because they had just begun to use ceramics and lived in ephemeral structures on the ground level. People were in transition to more settled lifeways, and many of those areas probably didn't have much hierarchical organization. But still, they could make this kind of very well-organized center."

Inomata's team and others are still searching for more evidence to explain these differences in social organization.

"Continuing to excavate the sites to find these answers will take much longer," Inomata said, "and will involve many other scholars."

Traces of an ancient road in a lake

Anyone traveling from the German city of Brandenburg via Berlin to Frankfurt an der Oder at the Polish-German border does so along an ancient route that reaches far into Poland. German and Polish researchers have now documented the influence of this East-West connection on the history of the landscape by examining the sediments of Lake Czechowskie in the Bory Tucholskie and also evaluating historical sources. According to the results, three phases of landscape development can be distinguished in the last eight hundred years: from an almost untouched landscape through an intermediate phase lasting several centuries – characterized by alternations between strong settlement activity and the return of nature after wars – to today's cultural landscape.

One of the two main authors, Achim Brauer of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, says: "Wars had a clear influence, as the Via Marchionis was repeatedly used for troop transports that led to local destruction and devastation. In this study, for the first time, we have shown the impact on the landscape for every war in the region’s history. In general, wars have led to greater or lesser devastation ('renaturalization') of the landscape, which has also lasted for varying lengths of time."

At other times, it was political developments that left their mark on the landscape, such as an agrarian reform in 1343, which led, with a certain time lag, to an accelerated "anthropogenization" of the landscape, that is, to clearly visible human influence. In the sediments of Lake Czechowskie this is shown by a strong increase of rye pollen and the decrease of birch and pine pollen.

Because sediments in a lake exhibit annual stratification similar to tree rings, the German-Polish team was able to pinpoint the year from which pollen originated by counting the individual layers ("warves") down to a resolution of five years. According to this, the landscape remained largely untouched by humans until about 1350 AD. Extensive forests and natural grasses dominated. Then followed five turbulent centuries. The expansion of agriculture and the formation of larger towns were favored by a warm climate and politically calm times. However, between 1409 and 1435 there was war between the Teutonic Order and Poland – fields became fallow land, forests expanded again. After peace was concluded, five quiet decades followed again, during which an increase in handicrafts was also evident. Hardwood was cut to obtain building material and potash – thus, birch pollen disappeared from lake sediments, rye again increased massively.

Huge army campaigns with thousands of riders and foot soldiers, plague epidemics in several waves and some very cold years with crop failures are also documented. Then, from the middle of the 19th century, the influence of agriculture, settlements and economic activity took over to such an extent that one can speak of a predominantly human influence, which continues to this day.

First author Michał Słowiński sums up: "The most important result is that this development did not take place uniformly. Rather, we see an alternation of phases of rapid development and significant regressions. The reasons for this are complex interactions of socio-economic, political and climatic factors."

Original study: Michał Słowiński, Achim Brauer, Piotr Guzowski, Tomasz Związek, Milena Obremska, Martin Theuerkauf, Elizabeth Dietze, Markus Schwab, Rik Tjallingii, Roman Czaja, Florian Ott, Mirosław Błaszkiewicz: "The role of Medieval road operation on cultural landscape transformation" in: Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-00090-3

Europeans in the Americas 1000 years ago

 Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas. The Vikings got there centuries beforehand, although exactly when has remained unclear. Here, an international team of scientists show that Europeans were already active in the Americas in 1021 AD.

The Vikings sailed great distances in their iconic longships. To the west, they established settlements in Iceland, Greenland and eventually a base at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. However, it has remained unclear when this first transatlantic activity took place. Here, scientists show that Europeans were present in the Americas in 1021 AD - precisely 1000 years ago this year. This date also marks the earliest known point by which the Atlantic had been crossed, and migration by humankind had finally encircled the entire planet.

A Solar Storm Solution

In this study, the chopping of wood by Vikings at L'Anse aux Meadows was dated to exactly the year 1021 AD. The three pieces of wood studied, from three different trees, all came from contexts archaeologically attributable to the Vikings. Each one also displayed clear evidence of cutting and slicing by blades made of metal - a material not produced by the indigenous population. The exact year was determinable because a massive solar storm occurred in 992 AD that produced a distinct radiocarbon signal in tree rings from the following year.

"The distinct uplift in radiocarbon production that occurred between 992 and 993 AD has been detected in tree-ring archives from all over the world" says Associate Professor Michael Dee (University of Groningen), director of the research. Each of the three wooden objects exhibited this signal 29 growth rings (years) before the bark edge. "Finding the signal from the solar storm 29 growth rings in from the bark allowed us to conclude that the cutting activity took place in the year 1021 AD" says        Dr Margot Kuitems (University of Groningen), first author of the paper.

How Far, How Often?

The number of Viking expeditions to the Americas, and the duration of their stay over the Atlantic, remain unknown. All current data suggest that the whole endeavour was somewhat short lived, and the cultural and ecological legacy of this first European activity in the Americas is likely to have been small. Nonetheless, botanical evidence from L'Anse aux Meadows has confirmed that the Vikings did explore lands further south than Newfoundland.

The Sagas

1021 AD is the earliest year in which European presence in the Americas can be scientifically proven. Previous dates for the Viking presence in the Americas have relied heavily on the Icelandic Sagas. However, these began as oral histories and were only written down centuries after the events they describe. Whilst contradictory and at times fantastical, the Sagas also suggest encounters occurred, both violent and amiable, between the Europeans and the indigenous people of the region. However, little archaeological evidence has been uncovered to support such exchanges. Other medieval accounts also exist, which imply prominent figures on the European mainland were made aware the Vikings had made landfall across the Atlantic.