A tiny ivory carving of a busty woman may be not only the oldest known example of erotic art–it may be the oldest art depicting any human figure at all. Named the Venus of Hohle Fels after the cave in southwestern Germany where it was recently excavated, the object dates to at least 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, based on more than 30 radiocarbon measurements conducted at the site [Discovery News]. The statue is also “bordering on the pornographic” by our modern standards, one expert says, with its huge, bulbous breasts and oversized genitalia.
Germany’s southern caves were presumably inviting sanctuaries, scholars say, for populations of modern humans migrating then into central and western Europe. These were the people who eventually displaced the resident Neanderthals, around 30,000 years ago. Dr. Conard reported that the discovery was made beneath three feet of red-brown sediment in the floor of the Hohle Fels cave. Six fragments of the carved ivory, including all but the left arm and shoulder, were recovered. When he brushed dirt off the torso, he said, “the importance of the discovery became apparent” [The New York Times].
(more…)
A computer analysis of symbols inscribed on stone tablets and artifacts more than 4,000 years ago has prompted a new debate on a fiercely contested question: Did the people of the Indus Valley civilization have a written language? According to the researchers who conducted the latest analysis, the answer is yes, and the next step is to search for the grammatical rules governing the language. But other researchers have harsh words for the methods used in the study. “As they say: garbage in, garbage out,” [New Scientist], one critic says.
The Indus civilisation flourished in isolation 4,500 years ago along the border of what is now eastern Pakistan, but almost no historical information exists about the people and their long-lost community. Archaeologists working in the region have unearthed a rich hoard of artifacts, including amulets, seals and ceramic tablets, many of which are embellished with the unusual symbols [The Guardian]. But some researchers contend that the symbols are simply religious or political imagery, and that they don’t add up to a language. They note that most of the inscriptions are extremely short (averaging only four or five symbols), and that few symbols are used repeatedly.
(more…)
About 5,000 years ago the ancient Egyptians were already mixing herbs and tree resins into their wine to make natural medicines, according to a new analysis of the chemical traces left behind in wine jars. The early Egyptians “were living in a world without modern synthetic medicines, and they were very aware of the benefits that natural additives can have—especially if dissolved into an alcoholic medium, like wine or beer,” which breaks down plant alkaloids [National Geographic News], says lead researcher Patrick McGovern, an archaeochemist.
Literary evidence of such drinks had already been brought to light. Ancient Egyptian papyri dating from about 1850 B.C. contained recipes for concoctions to treat a variety of ailments, with many of the recipes involving wine mixed with herbs…. But scientists had not found remnants of any such health-preserving beverages until now [Science News]. The new findings also push back the date at which Egyptians were known to be dabbling in medicinal mixology by more than 1,000 years. The chemical compounds found in the ancient jars may have come from coriander, mint, sage, rosemary, and pine tree resin, researchers say.
(more…)
On the steppes of Central Asia, researchers have found evidence of the earliest “horse farm” dating from 5,500 years ago, pushing back the known domestication of horses by 1,000 years. Those first domesticated horses were probably kept primarily for meat and milk, researchers say, but soon enough new uses emerged, and horse riding revolutionized transport, communications, trade, and warfare. Says study coauthor Sandra Olsen: “To me, the domestication of the horse was a seminal event in human history…. All the major empire builders, like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, would have been nothing without horses” [Los Angeles Times].
The evidence of the early farm developed by the ancient Botai people of present-day Kazakhstan includes massive deposits of horse bones, grooved horse teeth that indicate the animals wore bridles, and even the chemical traces of horse milk fats in ceramic pots, says study coauthor Alan Outram. “This is, apart from being fascinating, something of a smoking gun for domestication — would you milk a wild horse?” said Outram [AP]. The people of Kazakhstan and Mongolia still milk mares today to make a fermented, slightly alcoholic drink called “koumiss.”
(more…)
The ancestors to modern humans really hit their stride 1.5 million years ago. Fossilized footprints found in Kenya were made by hominids that share a common foot anatomy and walking stride with modern humans, researchers say.
Scientists are almost certain that the 1.5-million-year-old prints belong to Homo erectus and that the individuals had heels, insteps and toes almost identical to those in humans, and they walked with a long stride similar to human locomotion…. The prints helped explain fossil and archaeological evidence that erectus had adapted the ability for long-distance walking and running [The New York Times]. There is evidence of a heavy landing on the heel with weight transferred along the outer edge of the foot, progressing to the ball of the foot and lifting off with the toes [BBC].
(more…)
The tools found in Colorado resident Patrick Mahaffy’s backyard weren’t the typical collection of weed whackers and shovels. Instead Mahaffy’s yard hosted a collection of chipped stone knives and axes that date from the time of the Clovis people, who are believed to have been among the first inhabitants of America around 13,000 years ago. “The idea that these Clovis-age tools essentially fell out of someone’s yard in Boulder is astonishing,” [anthropologist Douglas Bamforth] said. “But the evidence I’ve seen gives me no reason to believe the cache has been disturbed since the items were placed there for storage about 13,000 years ago” [LiveScience].
The prehistoric tool cache was turned up when landscapers were digging a hole for a fishpond in Mahaffy’s backyard, and struck stone. The collection contains 83 knives, axes, and smaller pieces of flint, and a chemical analysis of blood residue left on the blades revealed that the tools had been used to butcher extinct types of North American camels and horses, and well as bears and sheep.
(more…)
A man browsing through Google Ocean, the new program that allows for virtual exploration of the ocean’s depths, briefly claimed to have found Atlantis, leading some to joke that a Google search really can find anything–even fabled cities that may never have existed. The man believed he had spotted the street grid of the ancient city that the philosopher Plato said sunk beneath the waves in 9000 BC. The network of criss-cross lines is 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa near the Canary Islands on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean…. The underwater image can be found at the co-ordinates 31 15′15.53N 24 15′30.53W [Telegraph].
But the exciting idea that a 11,000-year-old city could be located from a desktop computer was short-lived. Google quickly issued a statement explaining that the grid pattern was an artifact of the process used to collect data about the sea floor. “Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor…. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data. The fact there are blank spots between each of these lines is a sign of how little we really know about the world’s oceans” [BBC News], the statement says.
(more…)
Excavators have unearthed the largest known cache of fossils from the last ice age. In it, a Colombian mammoth, which researchers have named Zed, has become the first nearly intact mammoth to be found near the La Brea tar pits, where an estimated 34 mammoths have been found previously, but only in bits and pieces.
Zed was found in good company: among other finds were the skeletons of a complete saber-toothed cat, a giant ground sloth, and a North American lion, as well as smaller fossils including pieces of tree trunks, turtles, snails, and gophers. Even these smaller findings are exciting for paleontologists, because the first excavators at La Brea in the 1900s discarded such items as they searched for larger ones; crucial information was lost in the process. The new discovery, which was found at a site beneath the demolished May department store in Los Angeles, “gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago” in the Los Angeles Basin, said John Harris, chief curator at the [nearby George C. Page Museum]. The find will make the museum “the major library of life in the Pleistocene ice age” [Los Angeles Times]. (more…)
The chemical signatures of chocolate have been found on pottery shards in New Mexico dating from 1000 A.D., indicating that the practice of drinking chocolate had reached North America 400 years earlier than expected–and that the imbibers went to great lengths to procure the delicacy. The nearest source for the cacao, which was made into a bitter beverage used in religious and other rituals, was more than 1,200 miles to the south in Mexico [Los Angeles Times].
Traces of the cacao seeds that are the source of chocolate were found in shards from cylinder jars found at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. The site was occupied by the Chaco culture for millenniums, but it grew rapidly beginning about AD 900. The multistory pueblo itself contains an estimated 800 rooms [Los Angeles Times]. One of those rooms housed a collection of 111 tall, cylindrical vessels, and anthropologist Patricia Crown had been puzzling over their use. Previously, researchers thought that Spanish conquistadors carried the first cacao seeds to North America centuries later.
(more…)
In a muddy pit near the town of York in northern England, archaeologists have found a skull holding what they believe is the preserved remains of an “Iron Age brain.” Here’s how the noggin was first noticed: York Archaeological Trust dig team member Rachel Cubitt reached in [to the ditch] and, while she cleaned the soil-covered skull’s outer surface, “she felt something move inside the cranium. Peering through the base of the skull, she spotted an unusual yellow substance” [LiveScience]. Scans later showed that the yellow mass was in the shape of a shrunken brain, according to a press release from the University of York.
The skull was discovered in an area of extensive prehistoric farming landscape of fields, trackways and buildings dating back to at least 300 BC. The archaeologists believe the skull, which was found on its own in a muddy pit, may have been a ritual offering [BBC News]. Researchers declared it the oldest brain ever found in Britain, although it can’t touch the record for the oldest brain ever discovered: That honor belongs to the roughly 8,000-year-old scraps of brain tissue that were found in skeletons buried in a Florida peat bog. In the Florida case, the absence of bacteria in the acidic peat bogs allowed the organic tissue to be preserved; researchers still aren’t sure how the York brain was preserved or whether the yellow substance has any organic matter in it.
(more…)
About 4,600 years ago in Germany’s fertile farm country a group of stone age people met a violent end, but the arrangement of their skeletons in four graves tells a story of love and family bonds. One particularly well-preserved grave holds what researchers say is the first known nuclear family, with an adult male and female cradling the bodies of their two sons. A DNA analysis of the skeletons’ bones and teeth confirmed their blood ties: “The two kids have her mitochondrial DNA, and his Y chromosome – that’s a nuclear family,” says molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp [New Scientist].
The group of 13 individuals includes adults aged 25 to 60 and children under the age of 9, and researchers believe that they were massacred. Says study coauthor Alistair Pike: “They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken.” At least five of the individuals show the effects of a violent attack, one even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra [BBC News].
(more…)
In a dusty cave in Israel, archaeologists have unearthed a 12,000-year-old grave that they say may be the resting spot of one of the earliest known shamans. The grave contains the artfully arranged bones of a roughly 45-year-old woman as well as a collection of animal and human body parts, including a complete human foot, 50 tortoise shells, and bones from a wild boar, an eagle, and a leopard.
“What was unusual here was there were so many different parts of different animals that were unusual, that were clearly put there on purpose,” said researcher Natalie Munro…. This care along with the animal parts point to the grave belonging to both an important member of the society and possibly a healer called a shaman…. Such healers mediate between the human and spirit worlds, often summoning the help of animal spirits along their quests, according to the researchers [LiveScience].
(more…)
Researchers have long debated whether human migration out of Africa was spurred by climate changes that forced the early humans to move along or by technological innovation that let them take advantage of new possibilities; now a new analysis of stone tools from southern Africa is lending support to the latter camp. Researchers determined that two types of tools were developed during the crucial age from 60,000 to 80,000 years ago when modern humans began to move towards new regions of the globe.
Researchers examined tools from nine sites in South Africa, Namibia, and Lesotho. The sophisticated Still Bay tools were made from hard, fine-grained rock called silcrete, and were fashioned between 71,000 and 71,900 years ago. The Howieson’s Poort implements were made between 59,500 and 64,800 years ago, and were composed of chipped silcrete rock attached to wood shafts to form weapons. Comparing these dates with palaeoenvironmental records failed to turn up a close correlation between the industries and dramatic climatic changes, [lead researcher Zenobia] Jacobs says. “We see no consistent pattern between the timing of these industries and major climatic changes” [Nature News].
(more…)
The Phoenician culture vanished from the Mediterranean following the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, when the Romans razed the city and (according to legend) salted the earth, but the Phoenician people didn’t fade away. A new genetic analysis shows that 1 in 17 men in the Mediterranean region have Phoenician DNA, and must be descended from those ancient seafarers.
The findings could fill a gap in the history of the Phoenician civilization, which originated two to three thousand years ago in the eastern Mediterranean—in what is now Lebanon and Syria—and included prominent traders, according to Chris Tyler-Smith, lead author…. “By the time of the Romans they more or less disappeared from history, and little has been known about them since” [National Geographic News].
(more…)
The oldest human to have his complete mitonchondrial (mtDNA) genome sequenced, a 5,000-year-old “Iceman” mummy known as Ötzi, does not appear to have any living relatives in Europe. The new genetic analysis reveals that Ötzi belonged to a previously unknown branch of human evolution. Said study coauthor Franco Rollo: “Apparently, this genetic group is no longer present…. We don’t know whether it is extinct or it has become extremely rare” [HealthDay News].
The researchers extracted DNA from Iceman’s rectum. They analyzed the genome of the cells’ energy-making structures, called mitochondria. “You only get mitochondrial DNA from your mother, and she gets it from her mother and so on, so it forms an unbroken link all the way back to the common maternal ancestor of all of us,” said researcher Martin Richards [LiveScience]. Earlier studies of fragments of Ötzi’s mtDNA had indicated that he was of the K1 lineage, which is further divided into three branches. But after comparing his complete mtDNA genome with that of 115 modern Europeans of K1 lineage, the researchers found three mutations that place Ötzi in a fourth, previously unknown, branch of K1.
(more…)
