Thursday, August 29, 2019

Cooper's Ferry archaeological finds reveal humans arrived more than 16,000 years ago


American Association for the Advancement of Science

Archaeological discoveries from the Cooper's Ferry site in western Idaho indicate that humans migrated to and occupied the region by nearly 16,500 years ago. The findings expand the timing of human settlement in the Americas to a period predating the appearance of an ice-free corridor linking Beringia and the rest of North America and support the growing notion that the very first Americans likely landed upon the shores of the Pacific coast.

How and when human populations first arrived and settled in the Americas remains debated. A longstanding and influential hypothesis proposes that travelers initially entered North America and parts beyond from eastern Beringia, by way of a deglaciated ice-free corridor that separated the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets approximately 14,800 years ago. However, a small but growing body of research has shown that human populations were present and likely well-established south of the Late Pleistocene ice sheets long before such a passage; its proponents hypothesize a Pacific coastal migration route.

Loren Davis and colleagues present new findings from Cooper's Ferry that provide evidence of repeated occupation beginning between 16,560 to 15,280 years ago. Artifacts recovered from the site's earliest contexts indicate the use of unfluted and stemmed stone projectile point technologies before the use of fluted, broad-based points of the widespread Clovis Paleoindian Tradition.

According to Davis et al., the age, design and manufacture of Cooper's Ferry's distinctive stemmed points closely resemble features of artifacts found in Late Pleistocene archeological sites in northeastern Asia. The results suggest an initial migration along the Pacific Coast more than 16,000 years ago.

First human ancestors breastfed for longer than contemporary relatives


By analysing the fossilised teeth of some of our most ancient ancestors, a team of scientists led by the universities of Bristol (UK) and Lyon (France) have discovered that the first humans significantly breastfed their infants for longer periods than their contemporary relatives.
The results, published in the journal Science Advances, provide a first insight into the practice of weaning that remain otherwise unseen in the fossil record.
The team sampled minute amounts from nearly 40 fossilised teeth of our South African fossil relatives, early Homo, Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus.
They measured the proportions of their stable calcium isotopes in the tooth enamel, which are a function of the mother milk intake by infants.
By reconstructing the age at tooth enamel development, they show that early Homo offspring was breastfed in significant proportions until the age of around three to four years, which likely played a role in the apparition of traits that are specific to human lineage, such as the brain development.
In contrast, infants of Paranthropus robustus, that became extinct around one million years ago and were a more robust species in terms of dental anatomy, as well as infants of Australopithecus africanus, stopped drinking sizeable proportions of mother milk in the course of the first months of life.
These differences in nursing behaviours likely come with major changes in the social structures of groups as well as the time between the birth of one child and the birth of the next.
One of the study's lead authors, Dr Theo Tacail from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "The practice of weaning - the duration of breastfeeding, age at non-milk food introduction and the age at cessation of suckling - differs among the modern members of the hominid family which includes humans and modern great apes: orangutan, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.
"The development of such behavioural differences likely played major roles in the evolution of the members of human lineage, being associated for instance with size and structure of social groups, brain development or demography.
"However, getting insights into these behavioural changes from fossils that are millions of years old is a challenge and, so far, little evidence allow discussing nursing practices in these fossil species.
"The findings stress the need for further exploration of calcium stables isotopes compositions in the fossil record in order to understand the co-evolution of weaning practices with other traits such as brain size or social behaviours."

People transformed the world through land use by 3,000 years ago


 Humans started making an impact on the global ecosystem through intensive farming much earlier than previously estimated, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

Humans caused significant environmental change around the globe by about 3,000-4,000 years ago, much earlier than prior estimates, as revealed by a new international study
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Land use by early farmers, pastoralists and even hunter-gatherer societies was extensive enough to have created significant global landcover change by 3,000-4,000 years ago. This is much earlier than has been recognised, and challenges prevailing opinions concerning a mid-20th century start date for the Anthropocene. These are the findings of a new study published this week in Science, by a large international team of archaeologists and environmental scientists.
This study brought together several hundred archaeologists from around the world, who pooled extensive datasets summarising decades of archaeological research. Nicole Boivin, Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and a lead author on the study, notes that "archaeologists possess critical datasets for assessing long-term human impacts to the natural world, but these remain largely untapped in terms of global-scale assessments". She observes that "this novel crowd-sourcing approach to pooling archaeological data is extremely innovative, and has provided researchers with a unique perspective".
Unique collaboration allows for creation of large database of archaeological data to study past environmental change The ArchaeoGLOBE project was coordinated by an international team of researchers who developed an online survey to gather past land-use estimates from archaeologists with regional expertise. The current study offers a novel way to assess archaeological knowledge on human land use across the globe over the past 10,000 years. By incorporating online archaeological crowdsourcing, the study was able to incorporate the local expertise of 255 archaeologists to reach an unprecedented level of global coverage. This global archaeological assessment, and the collaborative approach it represents, will help stimulate and support future efforts towards the common goal of understanding early land use as a driver of long-term global environmental changes across the Earth system, including changes in climate.
"This type of work causes us to rethink the role of humans in environmental systems, particularly in the way we understand 'natural' environments," said Lucas Stephens of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Pennsylvania and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, who led the global collaboration of archaeologists that produced the study. "It also allows us to identify patterns in the distribution of our data and prioritize future collection areas to improve the reliability of global datasets."
Study of archaeological data reveals huge impact of humans over thousands of years "While modern rates and scales of anthropogenic global change are far greater than those of the deep past, the long-term cumulative changes wrought by early food producers are greater than many realize," said Andrea Kay of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and The University of Queensland, a lead author on the study. "Even small-scale or shifting agriculture can cause global change when considered at large scales and over long time-periods," she adds.
By acknowledging the deep time impact of humans on this planet and better understanding human-environment interactions over the long term, the researchers believe we can better plan for future climate scenarios and possibly find ways of mitigating negative impacts on soils, vegetation, and climate. "It's time to get beyond the mostly recent paradigm of the Anthropocene and recognize that the long-term changes of the deep past have transformed the ecology of this planet, and produced the social-ecological infrastructures - agricultural and urban - that made the contemporary global changes possible," said Erle Ellis of University of Maryland Baltimore County, a senior author who initially proposed and helped design the study. "These past changes produced the social-ecological infrastructures - agricultural and urban - that made the contemporary global changes possible."
Led by archeologist Lucas Stephens, a researcher affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, ArchaeoGLOBE used a crowdsourcing approach, inviting experts in ancient land use to contribute to a questionnaire on 146 regions (covering all continents except Antarctica) at ten historical time intervals to assess and integrate archaeological knowledge at a global scale. The result was a complete, though uneven, meta-analysis of global land use over time.
Significantly, the study also reveals that hunting and gathering was more varied and complex than originally thought, helping archeologists to recognize that foragers "may have initiated dramatic and sometimes irreversible environmental change." Intensive forms of agriculture reported around the world included activities like clearing land, creating fields that were fixed on the landscape, raising large herds of animals, and putting increasing amounts of effort into growing food.
SMU anthropologist and ArchaeoGLOBE team member K. Ann Horsburgh notes the rise in agriculture and livestock is primarily due to growing populations needing to be fed.
"Food production such as agriculture and pastoralism, when compared with foraging in the same environment, is linked to a faster population growth and can sustain higher population densities," said Horsburgh.
Horsburgh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and McCoy, Associate Professor of Anthropology, provided information on land use in Africa and the remote islands of the Pacific, respectively. McCoy also brought his expertise in geospatial technology to study how people in the past inhabited and shaped the world around them, while Horsburgh brought her knowledge of ancient DNA to retrace the spread of domesticated animals.
The map could provide new light on how the spread of farming and herding were linked to major migrations in human prehistory.
"This is first time that regional expertise on ancient land use has been synthesized on this scale," Horsburgh said. "That matters because we know that although the shift from foraging to farming tends to be a 'one-way' transition, it did not progress the same way around the world. The details of how it did progress has shaped everything from our diets to the languages we speak today."
Horsburgh went on to say, "What remains the topic of intense study is how much of the transition is food producers spreading and displacing foragers, and how much is it foragers adopting or marrying into food producing groups, or some other scenario. Most of this was done in the absence of written records, so it is up to anthropology to sort things out.
"The natural next step for this revised model of the spread of different types, and intensities, of land use is to compare them with human genetics and linguistics and integrate these findings into the big story of humanity," said Horsburgh.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Clues to early social structures may be found in ancient extraordinary graves




IMAGE
IMAGE: Reconstructed virtual E-W-cut through the burial Loc. C10:408, facing south. view more 
Credit: Benz et al., 2018
Elaborate burial sites can provide insight to the development of socio-political hierarchies in early human communities, according to a study released August 28, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by an international team of archaeologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists of the Ba'ja Neolithic Project hosted at the Free University of Berlin in cooperation with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. The interdisciplinary investigations on the 9000-year-old extraordinary grave studied here gives new evidence on emerging leadership in the first farming villages of the Near East.
As early farming communities gave rise to larger, more complex sedentary societies, new social hierarchies arose, presenting opportunities for individual people to achieve positions of importance. The authors cite two archetypal "pathways to power" such individuals might follow: one self-aggrandizing and often autocratic, and the other more group-oriented and egalitarian. But how these "pathways" were expressed in early cultures remains unclear.
This study focused on a single burial in the Ba'ja settlement of southern Jordan, dating between 7,500-6,900 BC, during the Late Pre-Pottery B Period. The elaborate construction of this grave and sophistication of associated symbolic objects suggest the deceased was a person of importance in the ancient society. The authors suggest that the presence of exotic items in the grave indicate a person who achieved individual prestige by access to trade networks, while the proximity of the grave to other less elaborate graves indicates that they were nonetheless considered close in status to the broader community, not neatly fitting either archetype of a powerful individual.
The authors propose that this sort of data can provide insights into cultural views toward leadership and social hierarchy in early cultures. They also suggest that further investigations of this body and others in Ba'ja, including ancient DNA analysis to illuminate familial relationships, may combine with grave information to create a more refined picture of early community social structures.
The authors add: "We suggest that leadership can be understood only by studying the social contexts and the pathways to power (not only the burials of extraordinary individuals). In fact, studying rich tombs to interpret social structures has been done before, but our new approach emphasizes the social environments of leadership. The key study of the elaborate burial of the late PPNB site of Ba'ja lets us surmise that access to leadership was possible through corporate leadership-type of primus inter pares than by autocratic coercive power."

A 3.8-million-year-old fossil from Ethiopia reveals the face of Lucy's ancestor



Cleveland Museum of Natural History Curator and Case Western Reserve University Adjunct Professor Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team of researchers have discovered a "remarkably complete" cranium of a 3.8-million-year-old early human ancestor from the Woranso-Mille paleontological site, located in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Working for the past 15 years at the site, the team discovered the cranium (MRD-VP-1/1), here referred to as "MRD," in February 2016. In the years following their discovery, paleoanthropologists of the project conducted extensive analyses of MRD, while project geologists worked on determining the age and context of the specimen. The results of the team's findings are published online in two papers in the international scientific journal Nature.
The 3.8-million-year-old fossil cranium (MRD) represents a time interval between 4.1 and 3.6 million years ago when early human ancestor fossils are extremely rare, especially outside the Woranso-Mille area. MRD generates new information on the overall craniofacial morphology of Australopithecus anamensis, a species that is widely accepted to have been the ancestor of Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis. MRD also shows that Lucy's species and its hypothesized ancestor, A. anamensis, coexisted for approximately 100,000 years, challenging previous assumptions of a linear transition between these two early human ancestors. Haile-Selassie said, "This is a game changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene."
Discovery of MRD-VP-1/1 ("MRD"): The Woranso-Mille project has been conducting field research in the central Afar region of Ethiopia since 2004. The project has collected more than 12,600 fossil specimens representing about 85 mammalian species. The fossil collection includes about 230 fossil hominin specimens dating to between >3.8 and ~3.0 million years ago.
The first piece of MRD, the upper jaw, was found by Ali Bereino (a local Afar worker) on February 10, 2016, at a locality known as Miro Dora, Mille District of the Afar Regional State. The specimen was exposed on the surface, and further investigation of the area resulted in the recovery of the rest of the cranium. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted the rest of the cranium. It was a eureka moment and a dream come true," said Haile-Selassie.
Location of the Discovery
MRD was found in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Project study area located in Zone 1, Mille District of the Afar Regional State of Ethiopia. Miro Dora is the local name of the area where MRD was found. It is about 550 km northeast of the capital, Addis Ababa, and 55 km north of Hadar ("Lucy's" site).
Geology and Age Determination
In a companion paper published in the same issue of Nature, Beverly Saylor of Case Western Reserve University and her colleagues determined the age of the fossil as 3.8 million years by dating minerals in layers of volcanic rocks nearby. They mapped the dated levels to the fossil site using field observations and the chemistry and magnetic properties of rock layers. Saylor and her colleagues combined the field observations with analysis of microscopic biological remains to reconstruct the landscape, vegetation and hydrology where MRD died.
MRD was found in the sandy deposits of a delta where a river entered a lake. The river likely originated in the highlands of the Ethiopian plateau while the lake developed at lower elevations, where rift activity caused the Earth surface to stretch and thin, creating the lowlands of the Afar region. Debris flows and volcanic ejecta occasionally descended into the otherwise quiet lake, which was ultimately buried by basalt lava flows. This kind of volcanic activity and dramatic landscape change is common in rift settings. "Incredible exposures and the volcanic layers that episodically blanketed the land surface and lake floor allowed us to map out this varied landscape and how it changed over time," said Saylor.
Fossil pollen grains and chemical remains of fossil plant and algae that are preserved in the lake and delta sediments provide clues about the ancient environmental conditions. Specifically, they indicate that the lake near where MRD finally rested was likely salty at times and that the watershed of the lake was mostly dry, but that there were also forested areas on the shores of the delta or alongside the river that fed the delta and lake system. "MRD lived near a large lake in a region that was dry. We're eager to conduct more work in these deposits to understand the environment of the MRD specimen, the relationship to climate change and how it affected human evolution, if at all," said Naomi Levin, a co-author on the study from University of Michigan.
Significance of the Discovery
1. Among the most important findings was the team's conclusion that Australopithecus anamensis and its descendant species, the well-known Australopithecus afarensis, coexisted for a period of at least 100,000 years. This finding contradicts the long-held notion of an anagenetic relationship between these two taxa, whereby one species disappears only by giving rise to a new species in a linear fashion.
2. Australopithecus anamensis is the oldest known member of the genus Australopithecus. The species was previously only known through teeth and jaw fragments, all dated to between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago. The similarities between the preserved dentition of the 3.8-million-year-old MRD and the previously known teeth and jaw fragments of A. anamensis led to a positive identification of MRD as a member of A. anamensis. Additionally, due to the cranium's rare near-complete state, the researchers identified never-before-seen facial features in the species. "MRD has a mix of primitive and derived facial and cranial features that I didn't expect to see on a single individual," Haile-Selassie said. Dr. Stephanie Melillo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, co-author of the papers, further said, "A. anamensis was already a species that we knew quite a bit about, but this is the first cranium of the species ever discovered. It is good to finally be able to put a face to the name."
Some characteristics were shared with its descendant species, Australopithecus afarensis, while others differed significantly and had more in common with those of even older and more primitive early human ancestor groups, such as Ardipithecus and Sahelanthropus.
3. The distinct differences between the 3.8-million-year-old MRD specimen and a previously unassigned 3.9-million-year-old hominin cranium fragment--commonly known as the Belohdelie frontal and discovered in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia by a team of paleontologists in 1981--also proved significant. The preserved features of the Belohdelie frontal differed from those of MRD but were significantly similar to those of the known cranial specimens of Lucy's species. As a result, the new study confirms that the Belohdelie frontal belonged to an individual of Lucy's species. This identification extends the earliest record of Australopithecus afarensis back to 3.9 million years ago, indicating a period of at least 100,000 years' overlap with its ancestor, Australopithecus anamensis.
4. The 3.8-million-year-old MRD specimen was buried in a river delta on the margin of a lake that formed in an actively rifted landscape with steep hillsides and volcanic eruptions that blanketed the land surface with ash and lava. There were forested areas on the shores of the delta or along the edges of the river that flowed into the delta and lake system, but the watershed that fed the river, delta and lake system was mostly dry with few trees.

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Not just genes: Environment also shaped population variation in first Americans

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
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... more »

Maya more warlike than previously thought

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 weeks ago
Evidence of extreme warfare from Classic period disputes role of violence in civilization's decline University of California - Berkeley [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *UC Berkeley's David Wahl and Lysanna Anderson of USGS with a local assistant taking a sediment sample from the center of Lake Ek'Naab from an inflatable platform. All the equipment... view more Credit: Francisco Estrada-Belli, Tulane The Maya of Central America are thought to have been a kinder, gentler civilization, especially compared to the Aztecs of Mexico. At the peak of Mayan culture some 1,500 years ago, warfare seemed... more »
 
Neandertals

Neanderthals commonly suffered from 'swimmer's ear'

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *The La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neandertal skull, with the external auditory exostoses ( "swimmer's ear " growths) in the left canal indicated. view more 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 ... more »
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Monday, August 26, 2019

The beginnings of trade in northwestern Europe during the Bronze Age



People in England were using balance weights and scales to measure the value of materials as early as the late second and early first millennia BC. This is what Professor Lorenz Rahmstorf, scientist at the University of Göttingen and project manager of the ERC "Weight and Value" project, has discovered. He compared Middle and Late Bronze Age gold objects from the British Isles and Northern France and found that they were based on the same unit of weight. This confirmed the hypothesis of the research team of the project that there was already expertise in using standard weights and measures in many regions of Europe at that time. The results were published in the journal Antiquity.
Until now, it had often been assumed that trade during the Bronze Age in northwestern Europe was primarily socially embedded - for example as in the exchange of gifts. The existence of precise units of measurement, however, enabled people even at that time to compare exact ratios of material values of different goods such as metals, possibly also wool and grain. They were also able to calculate profits, to create currencies and to save up measurable quantities of metal. "Obviously, the exchange was already based on the economic interests of trading partners," explains Rahmstorf, director of the Institute for Prehistory and Early History at the University of Göttingen. "So it is clear we are talking about real trade."
What is surprising about the statistical analysis of the unit of weight that has been identified, is that it is very nicely compatible and possibly even identical with the dominant East Mediterranean weight of that time. This would be an indication that knowledge about standard weights and measures has been widely disseminated and possibly passed on through travelling traders. It was already known that people in the technologically advanced, literate cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia - for example Greece, Egypt or Mesopotamia - used such weights and scales as an aid. However, these findings now indicate that such value measurement systems already existed in many if not all parts of prehistoric Bronze Age Europe. "The results of our research show that we have so far underestimated the complexity of the early commercial transactions during the Bronze Age in Europe," said Rahmstorf. Further information on the "Weight and Value" project can be found at http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/572018.html.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

New light on contested identity of medieval skeleton found at Prague Castle


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IMAGE: Photograph of grave IIIN199, shortly after excavation in 1928. view more 
Credit: Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague Castle Excavations
Used as a propaganda tool by the Nazis and Soviets during the Second World War and Cold War, the remains of a 10th century male, unearthed beneath Prague Castle in 1928, have been the subject of continued debate and archaeological manipulation.
The mysterious skeleton and associated grave goods, including a sword and two knives, were identified as Viking by the Nazis, as a Slavonic warrior by the Soviets and became part of the Czech independence movement in more recent years.
Writing in the journal Antiquity, a team of archaeologists, including two emeritus professors from the University of Bristol, unravel the complex story of the discovery of the remains, which were kept out of public view until 2004, and attempt to answer the decades-long question of who this man actually was.
The remains were discovered under the courtyard of Prague Castle in July 1928 as part of an excavation project by the National Museum of the newly established Czechoslovakia to discover the earliest phases of the castle.
The body was located on the edge of an old burial ground from when a hill fort was built on the site, likely dating to AD 800-950/1000.
It was discovered by Ivan Borkovský, a Ukrainian who fought for both the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians in the early 20th century, before escaping to Czechoslovakia in 1920 but he did not immediately publicise or publish anything about the remains or the artefacts.
In 1939, the German army invaded Czechoslovakia and immediately accused Borkovský of not publishing because he was part of a Czech conspiracy to hide the truth¬--that the remains were German, rather than Slavic (or maybe Viking).
As a German ancestor, the remains supported the German propagandist efforts to argue for a German heritage that 'extended over national borders and reached deep into the past'.
Under the Nazi regime, the remains became 'proof' for the Germanic, rather than Slavic, origin of Prague Castle.
When Borkovský published a book identifying the oldest Slavic pottery in central Europe, the Nazi's condemned the text and he was forced to withdraw it under threat of imprisonment in a concentration camp. When he published the Prague Castle remains a year later, it was overt in its 'Nazi-influenced Nordic interpretation'.
After the war, Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Soviets and in 1945, Borkovský narrowly escaped being sent to a Siberian Gulag because of former anti-Communist activities.
He explained that he had been forced into the pro-Nazi interpretation of the remains and published a second article in 1946 which interpreted the burial 'as that of an important person who was related to the early Western Slav Przemyslid dynasty'.
Lead author Professor Nicholas Saunders, from Bristol's Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, said: "A number of studies have recently begun to re-interpret the remains and ours provides a new analysis.
"The goods found with the remains are a mix of foreign (non-Czech) items, such as the sword, axe and fire striker (a common piece of Viking equipment), and domestic objects, such as the bucket and the knives.
"The sword is especially unique as it is the only one discovered in 1,500 early medieval graves so far found in Prague Castle.
"Perhaps he was a Slav from a neighbouring region, who had mastered Old Norse as well as Slavonic, or perhaps he regarded himself as a genuine Viking.
"Identities were complex in the medieval period, and the story of Borkovský and the Prague Castle warrior grave reminds us that the identities of such past people frequently fuel modern political conflicts."

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Earliest evidence of artificial cranial deformation in Croatia during 5th-6th century


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IMAGE: CT scans of the so called circular-erect type cranial deformation. view more 
Credit: M Kavka
People in Croatia during the 5th to 6th centuries may have used cranial modifications to indicate their cultural affiliations, according to a study published August 21, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE led by Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna and Mario Novak of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia.
The Hermanov vinograd archaeological site in Osijek Croatia has been known since the 1800s. A new pit excavated in 2013 contained three human skeletons dating to 415-560 CE, during the Great Migration Period, a time of significant movement and interaction of various European cultures. Two of the skeletons showed dramatically modified head shapes, one whose skull had been lengthened obliquely and another whose skull had been compressed and heightened. This is the oldest known incidence of Artificial Cranial Deformation (ACD) in Croatia.
ACD is the practice of modifying the skull from infancy to create a permanently altered shape, often to signify social status. In this study, genetic, isotopic and skeletal analysis of the bodies revealed that all were males between 12 and 16 years of age at death and that they all suffered from malnutrition. They are not obviously of different social status, but genetic analysis found that the two with cranial modifications exhibited very distinct ancestries, one from the Near East and the other from East Asia. The latter is the first individual from the Migration Period with a majority East Asian ancestry to be found in Europe.
The authors suggest the ACD observed here may have functioned to distinguish members of different cultural groups as these groups interacted closely during the Migration Period. From the evidence at hand, it is unclear if these individuals were associated with Huns, Ostrogoths, or another population. It is also unclear whether the use of ACD to signify cultural identity was a widespread practice or something peculiar to these individuals.
Dr Novak adds: "The most striking observation, based on nuclear ancient DNA, is that these individuals vary greatly in their genetic ancestries: the individual without artificial cranial deformation shows broadly West Eurasian associated-ancestry, the individual with the so-called circular-erect type cranial deformation has Near Eastern associated-ancestry, while the individual with the elongated skull has East Asian ancestry."

Nordic Bronze Age attracted wide variety of migrants to Denmark


Migration patterns in present-day Denmark shifted at the beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age, according to a study published August 21, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Karin Frei of the National Museum of Denmark and colleagues. Migrants appear to have come from varied and potentially distant locations during a period of unprecedented economic growth in southern Scandinavia in the 2nd millennium BC.
The 2nd and 3rd millennia BC are known to have been a period of significant migrations in western Europe, including the movement of steppe populations into more temperate regions. Starting around 1600 BC, southern Scandinavia became closely linked to long-distance metal trade elsewhere in Europe, which gave rise to a Nordic Bronze Age and a period of significant wealth in the region of present-day Denmark.
In this study, Frei and colleagues investigated whether patterns of migration changed during this Nordic Bronze Age. They examined skeletal remains of 88 individuals from 37 localities across present-day Denmark. Since strontium isotopes in tooth enamel can record geographic signatures from an early age, analysis of such isotopes was used to determine individuals' regions of provenance. Radiocarbon dating was used to determine the age of each skeleton and physical anthropological analyses were also conducted to add information on sex, age and potential injuries or illness.
From c. 1600 BC onwards, around the beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age, the geographic signal of migrants became more varied, an indication that this period of economic growth attracted migrants from a wide variety of foreign locales, possibly including more distant regions. The authors suggest this might reflect the establishment of new cultural alliances as southern Scandinavia flourished economically. They propose that further study using ancient DNA may further elucidate such social dynamics at large scales.
Co-author Kristian Kristiansen notes: "Around 1600 BC, the amount of metal coming into southern Scandinavia increased dramatically, arriving mostly from the Italian Alps, whereas tin came from Cornwall in south England. Our results support the development of highly international trade, a forerunner for the Viking Age period."
Karin Frei adds: "Our data indicates a clear shift in human mobility at the breakthrough point of the Nordic Bronze Age, when an unprecedented rich period in southern Scandinavia emerged. This suggests to us that these aspects might have been closely related."

Tiny ear bones help archaeologists piece together the past


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IMAGE: Scan of ossicle bone view more 
Credit: Kevin Mackenzie at the University of Aberdeen
Archaeologists from the University of Bradford have examined ear ossicles taken from the skeletons of 20 juveniles, excavated from an 18th and 19th century burial ground in Blackburn. They were chosen to represent those with and without dietary disease such as rickets and scurvy.
These children, who were excavated by Headland Archaeology, were examined at the University by Masters student Tamara Leskovar, under the supervision of Dr Julia Beaumont.
The new method has provided a link between the maternal pre-pregnancy diet and the late pregnancy diet found in the earliest tooth tissue. In particular it provides information on the health of the mother and baby in the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
Building on Dr Beaumont's previous research using teeth, the team identified that a person's ossicles can provide a correlation between diet and physiology, with the potential to identify children at risk of disease in later life and to study maternal and infant health in ancient populations.
Dr Beaumont said: "Our previous research has shown that teeth can tell us a lot more than people think. What we didn't realise is just how much one of the smallest bones in the body, our ear ossicle, can also tell us.
"It is formed early on, when the child is in the womb and finishes developing in the first two years. Unlike other bones, it then doesn't remodel, therefore providing a unique snapshot of the health of the mother during the early stages of pregnancy."
"This is the first time human ear bones have been used to investigate diet in the womb. This will allow us, in combination with the dentine, to work out the health of childbearing women who because of the slow rate of bone turnover have been invisible to us."

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Analyses of Roopkund skeletons show Mediterranean migrants in Indian Himalaya


A large-scale study conducted by an international team of scientists has revealed that the mysterious skeletons of Roopkund Lake - once thought to have died during a single catastrophic event - belong to genetically highly distinct groups that died in multiple periods in at least two episodes separated by one thousand years. The study, published this week in Nature Communications, involved an international team of 28 researchers from institutions in India, the United States and Europe.
Situated at over 5000 meters above sea-level in the Himalayan Mountains of India, Roopkund Lake has long puzzled researchers due to the presence of skeletal remains from several hundred ancient humans, scattered in and around the lake's shores, earning it the nickname Skeleton Lake or Mystery Lake. "Roopkund Lake has long been subject to speculation about who these individuals were, what brought them to Roopkund Lake, and how they died," says senior author Niraj Rai, of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, India, who began working on the Roopkund skeletons when he was a post-doctoral scientist at the CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, India.
The current publication, the final product of a more than decade-long study that presents the first whole genome ancient DNA data from India, reveals that the site has an even more complex history than imagined.
First ancient DNA data from India shows diverse groups at Roopkund Lake Ancient DNA obtained from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake - representing the first ancient DNA ever reported from India - reveals that they derive from at least three distinct genetic groups. "We first became aware of the presence of multiple distinct groups at Roopkund after sequencing the mitochondrial DNA of 72 skeletons. While many of the individuals possessed mitochondrial haplogroups typical of present-day Indian populations, we also identified a large number of individuals with haplogroups that would be more typical of populations from West Eurasia," says co-senior author Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CCMB, who started the project more than a decade ago, in an ancient DNA clean lab that he and then-director of CCMB Lalji Singh (deceased) built to study Roopkund.
Whole genome sequencing of 38 individuals revealed that there were at least three distinct groups among the Roopkund skeletons. The first group is composed of 23 individuals with ancestries that are related to people from present-day India, who do not appear to belong to a single population, but instead derived from many different groups. Surprisingly, the second largest group is made up of 14 individuals with ancestry that is most closely related to people who live in the eastern Mediterranean, especially present-day Crete and Greece. A third individual has ancestry that is more typical of that found in Southeast Asia. "We were extremely surprised by the genetics of the Roopkund skeletons. The presence of individuals with ancestries typically associated with the eastern Mediterranean suggests that Roopkund Lake was not just a site of local interest, but instead drew visitors from across the globe," says first-author Éadaoin Harney of Harvard University.
Dietary analysis of the Roopkund individuals confirms diverse origins Stable isotope dietary reconstruction of the skeletons also supports the presence of multiple distinct groups. "Individuals belonging to the Indian-related group had highly variable diets, showing reliance on C¬3 and C4 derived food sources. These findings are consistent with the genetic evidence that they belonged to a variety of socioeconomic groups in South Asia," says co-senior author Ayushi Nayak of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. "In contrast, the individuals with eastern Mediterranean-related ancestry appear to have consumed a diet with very little millet."
Two major groups at Roopkund Lake date to 1000 years apart, with the more recent around 1800 AD The findings also revealed a second surprise about the skeletons of Roopkund Lake. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the skeletons were not deposited at the same time, as previously assumed. Instead, the study finds that the two major genetic groups were actually deposited approximately 1000 years apart. First, during the 7th-10th centuries CE, individuals with Indian-related ancestry died at Roopkund, possibly during several distinct events. It was not until sometime during the 17th-20th centuries that the other two groups, likely composed of travelers from the eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia arrived at Roopkund Lake. "This finding shows the power of radiocarbon dating, as it had previously been assumed that the skeletons of Roopkund Lake were the result of a single catastrophic event," says co-senior author Douglas J. Kennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"It is still not clear what brought these individuals to Roopkund Lake or how they died," says Rai. "We hope that this study represents the first of many analyses of this mysterious site."
"Through the use of biomolecular analyses, such as ancient DNA, stable isotope dietary reconstruction, and radiocarbon dating, we discovered that the history of Roopkund Lake is more complex than we ever anticipated, and raises the striking question of how migrants from the eastern Mediterranean, who have an ancestry profile that is extremely atypical of the region today, died in this place only a few hundred years ago," concludes co-senior author David Reich of Harvard Medical School. "This study highlights the power of biomolecular tools to provide unexpected insights into our past."

A Stone Age boat building site has been discovered underwater


National Oceanography Centre, UK
IMAGE
IMAGE: This is historian Dan Snow inspecting the site. view more 
Credit: Maritime Archaeological Trust
The Maritime Archaeological Trust has discovered a new 8,000 year old structure next to what is believed to be the oldest boat building site in the world on the Isle of Wight.
Director of the Maritime Archaeological Trust, Garry Momber, said "This new discovery is particularly important as the wooden platform is part of a site that doubles the amount of worked wood found in the UK from a period that lasted 5,500 years."
The site lies east of Yarmouth, and the new platform is the most intact, wooden Middle Stone Age structure ever found in the UK. The site is now 11 meters below sea level and during the period there was human activity on the site, it was dry land with lush vegetation. Importantly, it was at a time before the North Sea was fully formed and the Isle of Wight was still connected to mainland Europe.
The site was first discovered in 2005 and contains an arrangement of trimmed timbers that could be platforms, walkways or collapsed structures. However, these were difficult to interpret until the Maritime Archaeological Trust used state of the art photogrammetry techniques to record the remains. During the late spring the new structure was spotted eroding from within the drowned forest. The first task was to create a 3D digital model of the landscape so it could be experienced by non-divers. It was then excavated by the Maritime Archaeological Trust during the summer and has revealed a cohesive platform consisting of split timbers, several layers thick, resting on horizontally laid round-wood foundations.
Garry continued "The site contains a wealth of evidence for technological skills that were not thought to have been developed for a further couple of thousand years, such as advanced wood working. This site shows the value of marine archaeology for understanding the development of civilisation.
Yet, being underwater, there are no regulations that can protect it. Therefore, it is down to our charity, with the help of our donors, to save it before it is lost forever."
The Maritime Archaeological Trust is working with the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) to record and study, reconstruct and display the collection of timbers. Many of the wooden artefacts are being stored in the British Ocean Sediment Core Research facility (BOSCORF), operated by the National Oceanography Centre.
As with sediment cores, ancient wood will degrade more quickly if it is not kept in a dark, wet and cold setting. While being kept cold, dark and wet, the aim is to remove salt from within wood cells of the timber, allowing it to be analysed and recorded. This is important because archaeological information, such as cut marks or engravings, are most often found on the surface of the wood and are lost quickly when timber degrades. Once the timbers have been recorded and have desalinated, the wood can be conserved for display.
Dr Suzanne Maclachlan, the curator at BOSCORF, said "It has been really exciting for us to assist the Trust's work with such unique and historically important artefacts. This is a great example of how the BOSCORF repository is able to support the delivery of a wide range of marine science."
When diving on the submerged landscape Dan Snow, the history broadcaster and host of History Hit, one of the world's biggest history podcasts, commented that he was both awestruck by the incredible remains and shocked by the rate of erosion.
This material, coupled with advanced wood working skills and finely crafted tools suggests a European, Neolithic (New Stone Age) influence. The problem is that it is all being lost. As the Solent evolves, sections of the ancient land surface are being eroded by up to half a metre per year and the archaeological evidence is disappearing.
Research in 2019 was funded by the Scorpion Trust, the Butley Research Group, the Edward Fort Foundation and the Maritime Archaeology Trust. Work was conducted with the help of volunteers and many individuals who gave their time and often money, to ensure the material was recovered successfully.

Monday, August 19, 2019

Shrine to Apostle Peter unearthed: Israeli archaeologist


Excavations in Israel's Galilee have uncovered remains of an ancient church said to mark the home of the apostles Peter and Andrew, the dig's archaeological director said Friday.

Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret Academic College, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, said this season's dig at nearby El-Araj confirmed it as the site of Bethsaida, a fishing village where Peter and his brother Andrew were born according to the Gospel of John.

The Byzantine church was found near remnants of a Roman-era settlement, matching the location of Bethsaida as described by the first century AD Roman historian Flavius Josephus, Aviam said.

The newly-discovered church, he added, fitted the account of Willibald, the Bavarian bishop of Eichstaett who visited the area around 725 AD and reported that a church at Bethsaida had been built on the site of Peter and Andrew's home.

According to Willibald, Aviam says, Bethsaida lay between the biblical sites of Capernaum and Kursi.

"We excavated only one third of the church, a bit less, but we have a church and that's for sure," Aviam told AFP.

"The plan is of a church, the dates are Byzantine, the mosaic floors are typical... chancel screens, everything that is typical of a church."


"Between Capernaum and Kursi there is only one place where a church is described by the visitor in the eighth century and we discovered it, so this is the one," he said.